No Good Duke Goes Unpunished Read Online Free PDF Page A

well.”
    “Aren’t we all victims of fate?”
    And she had been. She did not pretend that she had not been a willing participant in everything that had happened all those years ago . . . but had she known how it would change her  . . . what it would do to her . . .
    She stopped the lie from completing.
    She would have done it anyway. She didn’t have a choice then. Just as she had no choice tonight.
    There were moments that changed one’s life. And paths that came without a fork in the road.
    “You are alive and well, Miss Lowe.”
    The man was a duke, powerful and wealthy, with all of London at his feet if he wanted it. She lifted her chin at the accusation in his tone. “As are you, Your Grace. ”
    His eyes went dark. “That is debatable.” He leaned back in his chair. “So it appears that fate was not my attacker, after all. You were.”
    When he’d caught her outside, before he’d known why she was there and who she was, there had been warmth in his voice—a hint of heaviness that she’d been drawn to, even as she’d known better.
    That warmth was gone now, replaced with cold calm—a calm by which she was not fooled. A calm she would wager shielded a terrible storm.
    “I didn’t attack you.”
    Fact, even if it was not entirely truth.
    He did not release her gaze. “A liar through and through, I see.”
    She lifted her chin. “I never lied.”
    “No? You made the world believe you were dead.”
    “The world believed what it wished.”
    His black gaze narrowed. “You disappeared, and left it to draw its own conclusions.”
    His free hand—the one that did not grip his scotch in an approximation of casualness—betrayed his ire, fingers twitching with barely contained energy. She noticed the movement, recognizing it from the boys she’d met on the streets. There was always something that betrayed their frustration. Their anger. Their plans.
    But this was no boy.
    She was not a fool—twelve years had taught her a hundred lessons in safety and self-preservation, and for a moment, regret gave way to nerves and she considered fleeing again—running from this man and this place and this choice she’d made.
    The choice that would both save the life she had built and tear it down.
    The choice that would force her to face her past, and place her future in this man’s hands.
    She watched those fingers move.
    I never meant for you to be hurt. She wanted to say it, but he wouldn’t believe her. She knew that. This was not about his forgiveness or his understanding. This was about her future. And the fact that he held its key.
    “I disappeared, yes. And I cannot erase that. But I am here now.”
    “And we get to it, finally. Why?”
    So many reasons.
    She resisted the thought. There was only one reason. Only one that mattered.
    “Money.” It was true. And also false.
    His brows rose in surprise. “I confess I would not have expected such honesty.”
    She lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. “I find that lies overcomplicate.”
    He exhaled on a long breath. “You are here to plead your brother’s case.”
    She ignored the flood of anger that came with the words. “I am.”
    “He is in debt to his eyeballs.”
    With her money.
    “I’m told you can change that.”
    “Can is not will.”
    She took a breath, threw herself into the fray. “I know he can’t beat you. I know the fight with the great Temple is a phantom. That you always win. Which, I assume, is why you haven’t accepted one of his dozen challenges. Frankly, I’m rather happy you haven’t. You’ve given me room to negotiate.”
    It was hard to believe his dark eyes could grow darker. “You are in contact with him.”
    She stilled, considering the miscalculated reveal of information.
    He gave her no time. “How long have you been in contact with him?”
    She hesitated a second too long. Less. Enough for him to shoot from his chair and stalk her across the room, pressing her back, far and fast enough to send her