Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

And though she revealed nothing in the moment as she stared at him, Ewan drank in the fine lines at the corners of her mouth and at the outer edges of her eyes, lines that proved she knew well how to laugh, and had done it often over the last twenty years. Who had made her laugh? Why hadn’t it been he?

There’d been a time when he was the only one who could. There, on his knees, wrists bound, he struggled with a wild urge to do it again.

The thought consumed him as he met her beautiful brown eyes, ringed with black, the same as they had been when they were children, but with none of the openness they’d once had for him. None of the adoration. None of the love.

The fire in those eyes was not love, but loathing.

Still, he drank her in.

She’d always been tall, but she’d grown into her awkward lankiness, nearly six feet of it, towering above him, and with curves that made him ache. She stood in an impossible pool of light—the space somehow cast in golden glow, despite the scarcity of candles in the room. There were others there—he had heard them enter, hadn’t he?—but he could not see them, and he did not try. He wouldn’t waste a moment looking at others when he could look, instead, at her.

She turned away, crossing out of the light, out of sight.

“No!”

She didn’t respond, and Ewan held his breath, waiting for her to come back. When she did, it was with a long strip of linen in her right hand, and another slung over her shoulder. She began to methodically wrap the material about her left knuckles and wrist.

That’s when he understood.

She wore the same trousers from earlier in the evening—black and fitted tight to her legs, long and perfect. The boots over them were made of supple, dark brown leather that hugged her calves, ending a half foot above her knees. They were scuffed at the toes, not enough to look unkempt, but enough to prove that she wore them regularly—and did business in them.

At her waist, two belts. No. One belt and a scarf, scarlet, inlaid with gold thread—the gold thread he’d always promised her when they were children, playing at dreams. She’d bought it herself. Above the belt and the scarf, a white linen shirt, the arms cut short, leaving her bare from her fingers to above her elbows. The shirt was tucked in carefully and tied up the middle, no loose fabric to be found.

No loose fabric, because loose fabric was a liability in a fight.

And as she wrapped her wrist carefully, around and around, like she’d done it a hundred times before—a thousand—Ewan knew a fight was what she had come for.

He didn’t care. Not as long as he was the one to give it to her.

He would give her whatever she wished.

“Grace,” he said, and though he meant it to be lost in the sawdust on the floor between them, the word—her name, his title—carried like gunshot in the room.

She didn’t react. Not a flinch, not even a flicker of recognition in her face. No change in her posture. And something unpleasant whispered through him.

“I hear you tore my door off the wall,” she said; her voice, low and liquid and magnificent.

“I’ve brought London to its knees searching for you,” he replied. “You think a door would keep me away?”

Her brows rose. “And yet here you are, on your knees, so it seems something has kept you from me after all.”

He lifted his chin. “I’m looking at you, love, so I don’t feel kept from you at all.”

A slight narrowing of her gaze was the only indication he’d struck true. She finished wrapping her wrist, tucking the end of the bandage neatly in the palm of her hand before beginning to wrap the second. And only then, only once she’d begun the measured, methodical movement, did she speak.

“It is strange, is it not, that we call it bareknuckle fighting, but we do not fight with bare fists?”

He did not reply.

“Of course, we did fight with bare knuckles. When we came here.” She met his eyes then. “To London.”

The words were a blow, harsher than any she could have given him, with or without the wraps. A reminder of what they’d faced when they came here. He went still beneath them.

“I can still remember the first night,” she said. “We slept in a field just outside the city. It was warm and we were under the stars and we were terrified but I’d never felt such freedom. Such hope.” She met his eyes. “We were free of you.”

Another blow, nearly knocking him back.

“I stitched Devil’s face in that field, with a needle I’d snatched as we left the manor, and thread pulled from my skirts.” She paused. “It didn’t occur to me that I might need unripped skirts to find work.”

He closed his eyes. Christ. They’d been in such danger.

“No matter,” she said, “I learned quickly. After the third day of no kind of work that would care for all three of us—no decent food to be had, and no decent roof over our heads, we learned that we had limited choices. But I—I was a girl—and I had one more readily available to me than Dev and Whit.”

Ewan sucked in a breath, rage steeling his jaw and straightening his spine. They’d run together, his only comfort in the idea that they would protect each other. That his brothers would protect her.

She met his gaze and raised a dark brow. “I didn’t have to choose. Digger found us soon enough.”

He’d find this Digger, and he would eviscerate him.

She smirked. “And would you believe there was a market for child fighters?” Grace finished wrapping her wrist. She came closer, and he imagined he could scent her, lemon cream and spice. “That was a thing we all knew how to do, didn’t we?”

They had. They’d learned together.

“Digger didn’t give us wraps that first night. They’re not just to protect your knuckles, you know. The padding actually makes the fight longer. It was a kindness—he thought the fights would end faster for us if we fought bare.” She paused, and he watched the memory wash through her, saw her preen beneath it. “The fights did end faster.”

“You won.” The words came out like gravel, as though he hadn’t used his voice in a year. In twenty.

Maybe he hadn’t. He couldn’t remember.

Her eyes flew to his. “Of course I won.” She paused. “I’d learned to fight alongside the best of them. I learned to fight dirty. From the boy who won, even if it meant the worst kind of betrayal.”

Ewan somehow avoided flinching at the words, dripping with disdain. At the memory of what he’d done to win. He met her gaze, straight and honest. “I’m thankful for that.”

She did not reply. Instead, she advanced, and continued her tale. “It didn’t take long for them to give us a name.”

“The Bareknuckle Bastards.” He paused. “I thought it was just them.” Just Devil and Whit, one with a wicked scar down the length of his face—a scar Ewan had put there—and the other with fists that landed like stone, propelled by fury Ewan had sparked on that long-ago night. Just the two boys-turned-men who’d become smugglers. Fighters. Criminals. Kings of Covent Garden.

When, all along, there’d been a queen.

One side of her mouth turned up in a ghost of a smile. “Everyone thinks it’s just them.”