Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

He remembered everything.

“Much of it is the same, you know. The carts on the cobblestones still clatter and clang, and there’s never a moment when a brawl isn’t ready in a tavern. And the market square is full of farmers and broad tossers, all looking to sell you something.”

When they were young, he painted her countless pictures of the Garden, full of life and freedom, glossing over the bad bits and giving her the good, convinced that she’d never have to face the first.

“And so? Have you learned all the curse words?”

She grinned, her teeth flashing white in the darkness. “Every last one. I’ve created some of my own.”

“I should like to hear them.”

“I don’t think you’re ready for them.”

That tease again, a hint of what could be. He clung to it. “And now you know the best part,” he said, softly.

“The rain turns the streets to gold.”

He reached for her at that, thinking she might flinch from him, but she didn’t. He touched the side of her face, pushed a lock of her beautiful hair behind one ear, loving the memory of it. There had been a thousand things they’d never done together—but this—a gentle touch, a stolen moment—it was all familiar.

“I never wanted the dukedom,” she said. “I wanted the Garden. That was what you promised me. That we would give it what it deserved.”

We’re going to change all that.

“And did you?” he asked, knowing the answer. “Did you make good on my promise?”

She nodded. “We did.”

Her. Devil. Whit. He hadn’t been a part of it. In fact, he’d made it worse.

He looked to the sky. “I sent money. To the families.”

“I know.”

And back to her. “You asked me if there was anything I liked about being duke.”

“And?”

“I like being able to pour his money into the Garden. I like being able to use his name to make change there.”

“The bill in debate. It’s not Leighton’s or Lamont’s. It’s yours.” Her gaze found his, sharp and understanding. Seeing more than he was ready for her to see. “For the Garden.”

“I thought that if Mad Marwick introduced it, no one would consider it.”

“No one will consider it anyway,” she said. “No one in the Garden ever gets what they deserve.”

She was right. There weren’t enough in Parliament who stood with the men and women in London’s poorest corners. Even now, he could not make good on his long-ago promise. Not like she had.

“I don’t expect forgiveness.”

“Good.”

“But I wish it.”

I wish it from you, as well.

She looked past him then, over his shoulder. “The sun is coming.”

He looked in the direction she pointed, to the east, at first, not seeing anything but the black sky. And then he saw it, the barely-there charcoal edge on the horizon, a collection of angles. Rooftops.

“You never told me the best part of it.”

He looked to her and shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“You never told me that the Rookeries are the first to get the sun.”

They had changed it.

The words, a simple observation that shouldn’t have meant anything, stole his breath. Whether it was the words or the distant promise of dawn, he would never know, but he said, “I wish I had run with you.”

The confession was a risk, and he immediately wished he could take it back. It would remind her of that night, when he’d ruined everything with the worst kind of betrayal. But it was suddenly essential she know the truth, even if it ended with her anger.

But perhaps it was the dawn that kept her anger at bay, because when she spoke, there was no vitriol in the words. Instead, there was something wistful there.

“Something else would have ruined us,” she said to the rooftops in the distance—her country, awaiting her return. “We were too much each other to have ever really loved each other.”

He hated the words. “I loved you,” he said, knowing it wasn’t enough.

“I know,” she said. “And I loved you. But it was a springtime love. A summer one. Left alone to flourish until the cold came. Until the wind threatened to rip it apart and the frost killed it off.”

He hated the image. Hated that he was the cold, when she had only ever been the sun.

She returned to the moment, her eyes finding his. “First love is not forever.”

The words were another blow, harsher than the ones he’d taken earlier in the day. “And so? What now?”

She was close enough that he heard the breath she took, the slow, even inhale, giving her time to think. “Ewan,” she said, softly, and for the first time since he’d returned and they’d begun this dance, or game, or whatever it was they did, he heard something in her voice like care.

He clung to it, and said, “What if we freed ourselves from it?” Confusion furrowed her brow and he said the rest. “What if we began again?”

“Began again?” she said, disbelief in her words. “How would we do that? I have never been able to live my life free from you.” His heart began to pound as she spoke to the darkness, to this city that had been his and now was hers. “Not before I met you and not after. I was nobody before you, a placeholder, waiting for you, like a fly in amber.”

“I, too, was nobody,” he said, wanting to touch her and knowing he shouldn’t.

“You weren’t, though,” she said, her eyes glittering in the flickering candlelight. “You were Ewan, strong and smart, and the one who swore you’d get us all out.”

“I did get you out.”

She stiffened at the words, like she was made of steel. “You chased us out. You scared us out. And you left us alone, living in your”—she waved a hand over the square, before she spat—“palace while we scraped and fought for everything we had.”

It was true. And also false.

Tell her.

How would she ever understand?

“You lied to us,” she said, her long, loose hair whipped up in the wind. “You—” Christ. Her voice cracked. He didn’t think he could bear it if she cried. “You lied to me,” she said, the words coming like thunder, crashing all around them. “And we can never begin again, because everything you were—everything we were—it remains. And it cannot be erased. And I should hate you for it.”

It was time to tell her, and he might have. He might have explained then. Might have begun the work of telling her the truth—explaining what had happened on that long-ago night. And it might have been enough.

Except she wasn’t finished. “And even if I could forgive the boy you were, what of the things you did as a man? Devil. Whit. Hattie. Five boys in the garden—you may not have pulled the triggers or lit the match, but they are gone because of you. You threatened our livelihoods. Our home.” She narrowed her gaze at him. “You say you’ve changed.”

He had.

“You say you are a better man.”

He was.

Wasn’t he?

“But I’m not sure it matters.”

All that mattered was that he had harmed her.