Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

Not knowing what to expect, Ewan turned to look.

And there she was.

Their queen.

No. Not theirs.

She didn’t spare the crowd a look as she parted it like the sea, her hair a riot of flame around her shoulders, her black coat, perfectly tailored, blowing back to reveal the sapphire lining somehow pristine in the dirt, a match to the pristine sapphire corset she wore, designed, clearly, to be worn just so, above trousers, without shame. Everyday wear.

And at her waist, the scarlet scarf he remembered from a year earlier—not a nod to frivolity or a whimsical belt . . . a weapon.

There was nothing hesitant about her movements—her strides even and certain. She neither sped her pace nor slowed it, knowing, with the certainty that came of royalty, that her path would clear.

And it did with each step, her gaze fixed on her destination.

Him.

His heart pounded as he watched her approach, as he read the beautiful angles of her face, the gold of the setting sun on her cheeks, the firm set of her jaw and those lips, full and soft like sin. She was magnificent, and regal, and he’d waited a lifetime for this moment—for her to come to him.

She’d come for him.

On the heels of the realization, a single word ripped through him.

Mine.

Pure pleasure curled through him as she reached him, her gaze impenetrable as she took him in, looking over his face, where he knew a half-dozen bruises must be forming, down to his chest, where his white shirt had gone dark with fight and filth, the open V of the neck ripped to display a wide swath of his chest. Her lips pressed together in a line that could have been distaste or displeasure, and she lifted her eyes back to his.

She was mere inches from him, tall enough that he would not have to bend to kiss her—and for a wild moment he considered it, desperate for another taste of her. For the feel of her breath against his skin. For the softness of her skin.

He wanted to touch her here, in this place where she reigned, unmasked and more beautiful than she’d ever been because here she called every shot, ruled every corner, knew every move, before anyone made them. She was all-powerful, stopping a Garden brawl with sheer will, and that power made him want her more than he’d ever wanted anything.

She saw the desire in him—he let her see it, loving the recognition in her beautiful brown eyes, exactly as he remembered—the only thing left of the girl he’d loved. They quickly narrowed, and he did not back down, refusing to look away from her. Not after all these years of looking for her.

He stiffened, defying the pain in his shoulder, in his ribs, in his nose. Refusing to show it to her even as his heart pounded as he prepared for whatever came next, knowing that whatever the game they were about to play, the outcome would change everything.

Who would she be when she spoke? The masked woman in his gardens? Or Grace, finally revealed?

Neither. Someone new. Masked in a different way.

She spoke, the words for him alone. “I told you not to return.” A year earlier, when she’d left him in her ring, and gone on to live her life, without him.

“I was invited.”

She tilted her head. “You could have refused.”

Never. “That was not an option.”

She held his gaze for a long moment. “My brothers brought you here for sport.”

“And I gave it to them, though I would have preferred they come down from their perches, up on high.”

A tiny muscle in her cheek twitched. Was she amused? Christ, he wanted that smile—the one that had come so easily to him when they were young. “They prefer the spectacle.”

“And you?” he asked, softly, his fingers itching to touch her. She was so close. He could snake an arm around her waist and pull her to him in seconds. In less. He could give her the pleasure she’d begged for in his garden here . . . in hers. “What do you prefer?”

“I prefer peace,” she said. “But you’ve only ever brought us war.”

He did not miss the reference to the havoc he’d wreaked on the Rookery when he’d been mad with loss and anguish. The pain he’d delivered to this place that he’d once vowed to keep safe.

But today, she kept it safe. She kept him safe.

And there was immense pleasure in that. Because keeping him safe meant she hadn’t forgotten. Keeping him safe meant there was hope.

She’d stopped them from killing him.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said.

“I would not have missed it,” he replied.

“Why?”

You. “Would you believe I came for penance?”

“Penance is sport in the Rookery,” she said. “But you know that better than any of us, don’t you? You cut your teeth on it.” She lifted her chin, defiant. Angry. “You also know you haven’t come close to getting your due. You don’t know all you’ve done to this place. You don’t know what it owes you.”

“And you? What do you owe me?” The question should have been smug, but it wasn’t. Instead, it was honest.

Grace met it with the same. “All they will give you and more.”

He did not release her gaze. “And yet you stopped the fight.”

She narrowed her gaze. Ewan didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.

“You were pulling your punches,” she said.

It was the truth, but she was the only one who would have seen it.

“Stupid, that. If I’d let it go, they’d’ve killed you.” She made a show of inspecting his face—his nose and jaw throbbing from the blows he’d taken. “You’re half there already.”

He raised a brow. “Careful, or I’ll think you prefer me alive.”

She didn’t like the suggestion that she’d done it for him—that much he could see. But Christ, he liked it very much. If she didn’t want him dead, she wanted him alive. And that was something he could work with.

“Dead dukes tend to attract attention, and I don’t like the Crown in my business.”

“No place for it here,” he said. “The Garden already has its queen.”

He heard the echo of the night earlier in the week, when she’d come to him masked and free of their past.

You are a queen. Tonight, I am your throne.

She heard it, too. He saw her breath catch for a moment. Watched her pupils dilate a touch—just enough to reveal the truth. She heard it, and she remembered it. And she wanted it again.

She’d come for him.

As though she could sense his arrogant pleasure, her lips flattened into a thin line. “I told you not to come back.”

She was angry, but anger was not indifference.

Anger was like passion.

She straightened and stepped away from him, leaving their intimacy and returning to her subjects. She lifted her voice to the assembled masses. “I think we’ve doled out enough Rookery medicine this afternoon, lads.” She looked to the brute who’d started the fight. “Your kind ain’t for dukes, Patrick O’Malley. Careful next time—I may not be here to save you from the hangman.”

“Aye, Dahlia.” The Irishman gave her a sheepish smile that made Ewan want to set him into the ground for the familiarity of it.

Until that very moment, it hadn’t occurred to him that she might have a lover. That one of these men, born of this place and built by it, might be hers.