Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

Beast cursed, already moving across the room, Devil drawn tight like a bow. “Where?” Grace asked, putting herself in her brother’s path, ignoring the riot of emotion that came with the question.

Beast looked to the other woman. “Is he gone?”

Something like affront came over Veronique’s face. “No. We took him down.” She met Grace’s eyes. “Conscious.”

Another emotion she did not care to name surged.

“I wager he loved that,” Devil said, his smirk audible.

Veronique turned a wide smile on the Bareknuckle Bastards, the Caribbean in her voice as she replied, “He didn’t go without a fight, but we were good for it.”

“I’ve no doubt,” Devil said. The 72 Shelton guards were the best fighters in the Garden, and everyone knew it.

There wasn’t time for pride, though. “He’s asking for Grace.” The name was foreign on Veronique’s lips—it had never been spoken in front of her, and still, the other woman knew.

And here it was, the past, come for a reckoning.

Beast leveled her with a look. “He’s seen you.”

She considered denying it. After all, the room had been dark. He couldn’t have possibly really seen her. And still, “For a heartbeat.”

I touched him.

I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t stop it.

“I’m surprised they took him down, then,” Beast replied.

“Why?”

“Because you just gave him something to fight for.”

She didn’t ask him to clarify. She was too unsettled by what he meant.

Veronique filled the silence. “What shall we do with him, Dahlia?”

She didn’t hesitate, the name a welcome reminder of her purpose. Of the life she had built in the two decades since she’d left him. Of the dominion over which she reigned. “If he’s well enough to take a door off the wall, he’s well enough to fight.”

“He’s strong enough for it; gave the lads a good bout.”

She nodded. “Then I get my bout, too. This ends tonight.” She crossed the room toward her private chamber, already untying the scarf at her waist.

Devil’s words followed her. “I almost feel sorry for the bastard. He won’t know what’s hit him.”

And then, Whit’s reply. “Almost.”

Chapter Five

She was alive.

Even now, on his knees, hands bound behind his back, blinded by the sack that had been placed over his head when he’d been subdued, muscles straining from the tussle that had brought him down mere feet from the doorway where he’d seen her, he was consumed by that single thought.

She was alive, and she had run from him.

He hadn’t been knocked unconscious in the fray—he’d been taken to the ground, then hauled, bound and blindfolded, to a room large enough to echo with quiet—somewhere in the distance was a low hum of unintelligible sound. The people who’d brought him there had checked his bonds and—once certain he could not escape—had left. He’d waited, the boards beneath his knees slick with something that eased his movement, rubbing his wrists raw on the ropes that refused to budge. He’d waited there as seconds turned to minutes, to a quarter of an hour. Half.

Counting time was a skill he’d honed as a boy, locked in the darkness, waiting for light to return to him. Waiting for her to return. And so it seemed as natural as breathing that he would count the minutes now, even as he was tormented by the idea that he might not be waiting for her this time.

He might be giving her time to run.

And still the fear that she might have fled was overshadowed by the sheer, unmitigated relief that she lived. How many times had his brothers told him she was dead? How many times had he stood in the darkness—in Covent Garden, in Mayfair, on the Docklands—and heard them lie? His brothers, who had escaped their childhood home with Grace in their care . . . how many times had they lied?

She’d run north, they’d told him. Become a maid. Lost touch. And then . . .

How many times had he been tempted to believe them?

Hundreds. Thousands. With every breath since the first time Devil had told that lie.

And then, when he had finally believed them, how he’d gone mad with grief. He’d wanted nothing but their punishment at his hands, under his boot, in his power. To the point where he’d set the London Docklands aflame, willing to watch it burn as punishment for what they had taken from him.

The only person he’d ever loved.

No longer gone.

Alive.

The thought—and the peace that came with it—altered him at his core. For years, he’d ached to find her. To know that she was well. For years, he’d told himself that if he could only see for himself—prove, without doubt, that she was well and happy—that would be enough. And now, he did know that. She was well. She lived.

That single, perfect thought consumed him as he waited, unable to stop thinking of the dark shadow of her figure in the doorway to the room from which he’d broken free. Unable to stop wondering how the girl he’d once loved had changed. The way she would look at him, now. Again.

A door opened off to the left, behind him, and he turned toward it, his vision stolen by the rough burlap sack over his head. “Where is she?”

No response.

Uncertainty and desperation flared as the newcomer approached, footsteps slow and even. Behind, there were others. Two, maybe three, but they did not approach. Guards.

His heart raced.

Where was she?

He craned his neck, swiveling on his knees, ignoring the twinge in his thigh as he moved. Pain wasn’t an option. Not now. “Where is she?”

No answer as the door closed in the far corner of the room. Silence fell, those slow footsteps drawing ever nearer, an ominous promise. He straightened, steeling himself for what might come. Having one’s sight and movement hindered did not bode well, and as the bold newcomer approached, he prepared for attack.

Whatever physical blow came would be nothing compared to the mental torture.

What if he’d lost her, just as he’d found her?

The thought echoed through him like a scream. He squirmed, the sack over his head suddenly suffocating, the bindings at his wrists now too tight as he fought and twisted and writhed to no avail. “Tell me where she is!”

The command hung heavy in the silent room, and for a heartbeat, there was no movement, the entire space so still that he wondered if he’d been left alone once more. If he’d imagined the entire thing. If he’d imagined her.

Please, let her be alive. Let me see her.

Just once.

Like that, the sack over his head was gone. And his wild prayer was answered.

He sat back on his heels, his jaw slackened like he’d just taken a blow.

For twenty years, he’d dreamed of her, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He’d imagined how she might have aged, how she might have grown and changed, how she would have gone from girl to woman. And still, he was not prepared for it.

Yes, twenty years had changed her. But Grace had not gone from girl to woman; she had gone from girl to goddess.

There were little hints of her youth, only visible to someone who’d known her then. Who’d loved her then. The bright orange curls of her childhood had darkened to copper, though they remained thick and wild, tumbling around her face and shoulders like an autumn wind. The crooked scar on one brow was barely noticeable—only there if you knew to look for it. He noticed. He’d been there when she’d earned it, learning to fight in the woods. Ewan had put his fist into Devil’s face for the infraction before wiping her blood away with the sleeve of his shirt.