Page 117 of Just About a Rake


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Dare glanced over his shoulder and then snapped all the way around so fast a muscle in his neck pulled. He ignored the pain. There she stood. Watching him. Her hair tumbled down the way he loved, his jacket draped over her shoulders as though she belonged to him.

Utterly riveting.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Leonora stared atthe man in the center of the warehouse, bare chested, his skin marred with bruises, her heart in her throat, pulsing fiercely. She didn’t know if he had won or lost, but drat it all—he had never looked more devastatingly handsome. After leaving the drawing room... After what she had discovered...

She’d fought hard to hold her tongue in that room, to keep from blurting something she could never take back. It was certainly not how she had envisioned her first official meeting with her mother would go. Leonora still couldn’t fathom the duchess’s degree of meddling. On the brighter side, standing in that stifling drawing room, beholding Heart and the duchess together, the entire array of their life choices had flashed before her eyes.

And she had come to a clear, vivid conclusion.

Their life was notherlife.

Their end was not her and Dare’s end.

Period.

And speaking of that rake... his eyes, socketed in a face mottled blue, black, and purple, and streaked with smears of red, stared back at her with an expression she couldn’t quite place. When he hadn’t been home, she’d set upon his friend Lord Knoxley, who had pointed her here. And now here she was. She’d come to get answers, prepared to accept them.

She stepped up to him. One step. Two steps. Three, four, five, and all that followed until she stood before him. Her gazetouched every battle stain on his handsome face. “It looks worse closer than from a distance.”

His lips parted but no words came out.

“Like a parrot,” she said, her eyes finally locking with his.

The warehouse quieted, save for a few low snickers from the crowd, and a scowl formed on his brow. “A parrot?”

His gruff voice sent a tiny thrill through her. But she wouldn’t allow it to soften her. “All words but no substance.”

More snickers followed, but the man before her merely stared, raw and unflinching, taking it all, and not denying her claim. Was he not going to say anything? Would she have to challenge him to a boxing match to get a reaction?

“You took the deed.” She couldn’t keep a note of accusation out of her voice.

“I did.”

Leonora balled her hands into fists. “Do you still have it?”

“Yes.”

She paused. He did? Her gaze flickered to Drake and back again. If Dare had made a deal with the duchess, shouldn’t he have given his cousin the deed by now? She searched his gaze for any clue to his thoughts, but he gave away nothing except for a flicker of something that looked very much like naked desperation.

“I’ll give it back,” Dare said hoarsely. “The deed.”

Her entire body stilled, rooted to the spot, as her thoughts scrambled to make sense of what he’d just said. Give it back? What did that mean? Did he mean he’d take back what he’d done, what he’d agreed to? Did that mean... did she dare hope? Lord, those bruises. She couldn’t look at them, and yet she couldn’t look away.

“I object to that,” Drake called from his seat on a wooden crate. He didn’t look any better than Dare, in fact.

Laughter from the crowd registered dimly, but Leonora ignored it, ignored Drake. She didn’t give a whit about his deed or his problems. She only cared about the man before her.

“Why would you do that?” Leonora asked. “Why would you give the deed back?”

“I should never have taken it in the first place.”

“Why did you?” Leonora whispered. “I ask, because I find myself rather attached to you, Lord Dare, and rather disappointed that my family members conspired against me to keep us... unattached.”

“What about me? You must be equally disappointed in me. I accepted their conditions.”

She nodded. He had. Yet Leonora didn’t blame him, not when it came to it. She might want to pummel the man, but blame him she could not. He had his own burdens he needed to unshackle himself from.