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he’s done since.
    Nonsense. He wasn’t a killer. He was simply angry. Which she’d expected, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she prepared for it? Hadn’t she considered her options before donning her cloak and heading out into the streets to find him?
    She’d been alone for twelve years. She’d learned to take care of herself. She’d learned to be strong.
    He moved away from her then, heading for one chair near the fireplace. “You might as well sit. You’re not going anywhere.”
    Unease threaded through her at the words. “What does that mean?”
    “It means that you turned up outside my door, Miss Lowe. And I have no intention of letting you escape again.”
    Her heart pounded. “I’m to be your prisoner, then?”
    He did not reply, but his earlier words echoed through her. You’re mine, now.
    Dammit. She’d made a dreadful miscalculation.
    And he left her little choice.
    Ignoring the way he waved at the other seat by the hearth, she headed for the decanter on the far end of the sideboard, pouring first one, then a second glass, carefully measuring the liquid.
    She turned to face him, noting one dark brow raised in accusation.
    “I am allowed a drink, am I not? Or do you plan to take that along with your pound of flesh?”
    He seemed to think about his response before saying, “You are welcome to it.”
    She crossed the room and offered him the second glass, hoping he would not see the shaking in her hand. “Thank you.”
    “You think politeness will win you points?”
    She sat down on the edge of the chair across from him. “I think it cannot hurt.” He drank, and she exhaled, staring down at the liquid, marking time before she said, “I did not want to do this.”
    “I don’t imagine you did,” he said, wryly. “I imagine you’ve quite enjoyed twelve years of freedom.”
    That wasn’t what she’d meant, but she knew better than to correct him. “And if I told you I haven’t always enjoyed it? That it hasn’t always been easy?”
    “I would counsel against telling me those things. I find that I’ve lost my sympathetic ear.”
    She narrowed her gaze on him. “You are a difficult man.”
    He drank again. “A symptom of twelve years of solitude.”
    “I didn’t mean for it to happen the way it did,” she said, realizing even as she spoke the words that they were revealing more than she’d been willing to reveal. “We did not recognize you.”
    He stilled. “We?”
    She did not reply.
    “ We? ” He leaned forward. “Your brother. I should have fought him when he asked. He deserves a trouncing. He was . . .” He hesitated. She held her breath. “He helped you run. He helped you . . .” He lifted a hand to his head. “ . . . drug me .”
    His black eyes went wide with shock and realization, and she shot up from her chair, heart pounding.
    He followed, coming to his full height—more than six feet, tall and broad and bigger than any man she’d ever known. When they were younger, she’d marveled at his size. She’d been intrigued by it.
    Drawn to it.
    He interrupted her thoughts. “You drugged me!”
    She put the chair between them. “We were children,” she defended herself.
    What’s your excuse now?
    He hadn’t given her any choice.
    Liar.
    “Goddammit!” he said, his glass falling from his hand as he lunged toward her, missing his mark, catching himself on the edge of the chair. “You did it . . . again . . .”
    And he collapsed to the floor.
    I t was one thing to drug a man once . . . but twice did seem overmuch. Even in one lifetime. She wasn’t a monster, after all.
    Not that he would believe that when he woke.
    Mara stood over the Duke of Lamont, now felled like a great oak in his own study, and considered her options.
    He hadn’t given her any choice.
    Perhaps if she kept telling herself that, she’d believe it. And she’d stop feeling guilty about the whole thing.
    He’d threatened to keep her prisoner, like some monster.
    Which of them was the