Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

What nonsense.

Where else would she go?

If you’re discovered . . .

I won’t be.

No one ever saw her.

You shouldn’t risk it.

Risk. The word that would come to be everything between them. Of course, she hadn’t known that then. Then, she’d only known that there’d been a time when she would never have risked on that massive, cold estate, miles from anywhere. The barely-there home given to her by a duke to whom she was told she should be grateful. After all, she’d been another man’s bastard, born to his duchess.

She was lucky, she was told, that he hadn’t sent her away at birth, to a family in the village. Or worse.

As though a life hidden away without friends or family or future wasn’t worse.

As though she wasn’t consumed with the ever-present knowledge that she would someday run out her time. Outlive her purpose.

As though she didn’t know that the day would come when the duke would remember she existed. And be rid of her.

And then what?

She’d learned early and well the truth that girls were expendable. And so it was best to stay out of sight, out of hearing. Survival was her purpose. And there was no room for risk.

Until he’d arrived, along with two other boys—his half brothers—all of them bastards, just as she was. No. Not just as she was.

Boys.

And because they were boys, infinitely more valuable than she.

She’d been forgotten the moment she’d been born—a girl, the bastard daughter of another man, unworthy of attention, or even a name of her own, valuable only in that she’d been born at all, a placeholder for a son.

A placeholder for him.

And still, she’d risked for him. To be near him. To be near all of them—three boys she’d come to love, each in his own way—two of them, brothers of her heart if not her blood, without whom she might never have survived. And the third . . . him. The boy without whom she might never have lived.

Don’t—

What?

Don’t leave. Stay.

She’d wanted to. She’d wanted to stay forever.

Never. I’ll never leave. Not until you can leave with me.

And she hadn’t left . . . until he’d given her no choice.

Grace shook her head at the memory.

In twenty years, she’d learned to live without him. But tonight, she had a problem, because he was here, in her club, and every moment he was conscious was a moment that threatened everything Grace Condry—consummate businesswoman, power broker, and the leader of one of the most coveted intelligence networks in London—had built.

He wasn’t just the boy she’d once whispered through keyholes with.

Now, he was the duke. The Duke of Marwick, and her prisoner. Rich, powerful, and just mad enough to bring the walls—and her world—crumbling down.

“Dahlia . . .” Zeva again, at a distance, warning in her lightly accented speech.

Grace shook her head. Hadn’t she made it clear that Zeva was not to follow?

What the fuck had she done?

“What the fuck ’ave you done?” Ah. The reason for Zeva’s warning.

Grace closed her eyes at the sound of her brother’s voice in the darkness, opening them a heartbeat later, even as she turned away from the locked door and her prisoner’s eerie quiet, and strode down the narrow hallway, raising a finger for silence. “Not here.”

She met Zeva’s gaze, dark and altogether too knowing. Ignoring that knowledge, she said, “The room needs a guard. No one goes in.”

A nod. “And if he comes out?”

“He doesn’t.”

A nod of understanding, and Grace was pushing past to meet her brother at the dark entrance to the back stairwell. “Not here,” she repeated, seeing that he was about to talk again. Devil always had something to say. “My offices.”

One of his black brows rose in irritation, punctuated by a quick tap of the walking stick he was never without. She held her breath, waiting for him to agree . . . knowing that he had no reason to. Knowing that he had every reason to push past her and face the duke himself. But he did not. Instead, he waved a hand in the direction of the stairwell, and Grace released her breath silently, leading the way to the top floor of the building, where her private rooms adjoined the office from which she managed a kingdom.

“You shouldn’t even be here,” she said softly as they made their way through the dark space. “You know I don’t like you near the customers.”

“And you know as well as I do that your fine ladies want nothing more than a look at a Covent Garden king. They just don’t like that I’ve a queen now.”

She scoffed at the words. “That part, at least, is true,” she said, ignoring the way her heart pounded, knowing as well as Devil that the conversation was to be forgotten the moment they were inside her quarters. “Where is my sister-in-law?” She’d do anything to have Felicity there now, with her good sense, distracting from Devil’s purpose.

“At Whit’s, watching over his lady,” he said, as they reached the door to her quarters.

She looked over her shoulder at him, her hand stilling on the door handle. “And Whit is not watching over the lady himself because he is . . .”

He lifted his chin, indicating the room beyond.

“Dammit, Dev.”

He shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? Tell him he couldn’t come? You’re lucky I convinced him to wait here while I found you. He wanted to ransack the whole place.”

Grace pressed her lips into a thin line and opened the door to reveal the man inside, already crossing the room toward her, enormous and barely hinged.

Once they were inside, Grace closed the door and pressed her back to it, pretending not to be unsettled by her brother’s obvious fury. In the twenty years she’d known him, since they’d escaped their shared past and rebuilt themselves as the Bareknuckle Bastards, she’d never known Whit to rage. She’d only known him to punish, cold and deadly, and only after reaching the end of a fuse as long as the Thames.

But that was before he’d fallen in love.

“Where the fuck is he?”

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Downstairs.”

Whit growled, low in his throat—acknowledgment barely audible inside the threatening sound—like a wild animal ready to spring. Known to all of Covent Garden as Beast, he was strung tight that night—had been for the week since the explosion on the docks—Ewan’s handiwork—had nearly killed Hattie. “Where?”

“Locked away.”

He looked to Devil. “Is that true?”

Devil shrugged. “Dunno.”

Lord deliver her from obnoxious brothers.

Whit looked to her. “Is it true?”

“No,” she drawled. “He’s downstairs, turning a jig.”

He didn’t rise to the bait. “You should have told us he was here.”

“Why, so you could kill him?”

“Exactly.”

She met his anger head-on, refusing to cower. “You can’t kill him.”

“I don’t care that he’s a duke,” he said, every inch the Beast the rest of London called him. “I’ll tear him apart for what he did to Hattie.”