Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

“It shouldn’t matter.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, as though she was speaking to herself and not him. “It shouldn’t matter . . . and I should hate you.”

He clung to that should, reaching for her, telling himself that he would let her go the second she pushed him away. The second she resisted him.

But she didn’t resist him.

“Who am I without that hate?” she whispered.

His heart ached at the question.

“Who are you without it?” she added.

“I don’t know,” he told her. Truth. “All I know is that I want to know.” He put his forehead to hers and closed his eyes, and said the words that had haunted him every day since the day she’d left. “I’m sorry.”

He’d never meant anything so much.

They crashed together like thunder, the kiss robbing them both of breath and threatening to rob Ewan of far more. As he pulled her close, she was already tilting up to him, her hands already coming into his hair to pull him to her, her lips full and open as they met his, breath and tongues tangling as they consumed each other.

Like fire.

And it was fire, hot and made nearly unbearable with the knowledge that she wanted him as he wanted her. That though she should hate him, whatever she did feel—wherever they stood now—was not hate. It was something else.

Ewan could work with something else, if only she would let him.

His lip stung with the force of the kiss but he did not care, not when her tongue was stroking against his and he was so quickly lost, a groan escaping as he tasted her again, pulling her close and lifting her to him until they were pressed against each other, like two halves of a whole.

Like they’d always been.

Though he could not tell where his ended and hers began, he could taste the emotion in the urgent kiss—sorrow and anger and frustration and desire, and something that she would not name but that he knew would always be there.

Her fingers sank into his hair, and he settled into her mouth, stroking deep until she sighed her pleasure, the sound rushing through him, straight to the core of him, where he was hard and aching once more.

The evening hadn’t been enough.

It would never be enough.

It was a claiming. He was claimed. Hers forever.

And she . . .

Mine.

Christ. He would give everything to claim her in return.

As though she’d heard the thought, she stopped the kiss, pushing him away, taking a step back to put space between them, their breaths heavy and aching, shock and desire flashing along with wild frustration in her eyes.

But that wasn’t it. There was something else.

Need.

She needed him, and Christ, he needed her, too.

She saw it. Saw that he would give her everything she asked. Everything she wanted. She took another step back, shaking her head, and held up an accusing hand. “No.”

“Grace,” he said, reaching as she turned, her hair, her coat, everything about her slipping through his fingers as she took off across the roof, and disappeared into the night.

Every ounce of him raged to follow her. To catch her and tell her everything. To make her understand.

I’m not sure it matters.

She disappeared from view and he stared after her, watching the eastern sky grow lighter, charcoal giving way to lavender and then the deepest red he’d ever seen, like the whole city was aflame.

And only once the blinding sunlight climbed over the rooftops did he let himself go. Around Grosvenor Square, servants climbed from their beds to the frustrated roar he let out to the dawn.

Chapter Nineteen

One week later, Grace went to Berkeley Square for dinner.

When they’d married, Whit had bought his wife a stunning town house on the western edge of the square, because she’d said she liked it, and he had set himself a singular life’s goal—spoiling Hattie. The house sat empty most days of the week, because Hattie ran one of London’s largest shipping operations and Whit was never without work at Bastards’ headquarters, and they both preferred their more convenient home in Covent Garden.

But Whit didn’t like visitors in his private quarters—even family—so they hosted family dinners each Friday in the town house, affording Whit and Devil the pleasure of doing their very best to “scare off the toffs” when they arrived, which usually involved making a racket in an ancient gig, complete with mud-caked boots and faces in dire need of a shave.

Suffice to say, the venerable aristocratic residents of Berkeley Square had a great deal to discuss on Saturday mornings.

The dinners were usually one of Grace’s happiest times of the week, allowing her a heartbeat of time to cuddle with Devil and Felicity’s Helena, eight months old and perfect in every way.

But that night, a week after she’d fled the rooftops of a different Mayfair square, she dreaded the event, knowing that she would no longer be able to avoid thinking about the Duke of Marwick’s rooftop.

Nor would she be able to avoid thinking about the evening in the Duke of Marwick’s home. Nor the moments on the Duke of Marwick’s lap, nor the afternoon with the Duke of Marwick in the Garden, blood and dirt on his shirt as though brawling was an everyday occurrence.

And she would absolutely not be able to avoid thinking of the Duke of Marwick himself, who was no longer the Duke of Marwick in her mind. It had taken her years to stop thinking of him as Ewan, and mere days for her to return to it.

Ewan.

And that change, barely anything to the rest of the world, was enough to send Grace into internal chaos.

Who am I without that hate?

Who are you?

The questions had echoed for a week, as she’d lived her life and run her business and planned the October Dominion. And for a week, the answers had eluded her.

Still, she attended the dinner, entering the house, shucking her coat, and accepting a gurgling Helena from her smiling nurse, grateful to have the baby as a shield for what she suspected was to come.

She wasn’t the only one in Covent Garden with spies. She merely had the best. And it didn’t take the best of spies to notice when a duke came kissing Dahlia in broad daylight with a bevy of washerwomen looking on in delight.

Her cheeks warmed as she entered the dining room of the home—one-half long, elaborately set table, already laden with platters of game and veg, as though Hattie had prepared for the queen herself, and one-half sitting room. It was a design choice that Grace had always rather liked, stemming from the fact that Hattie abhorred the trend of ladies and gentlemen separating after meals, and she prevented it by making the dining room comfortable for more than eating.

Grace had barely stepped into the room—was still having a nonsense chat with Helena, in fact—when Devil turned from the sideboard where he’d poured himself two fingers of whisky and said, “Ah, we wondered if you’d be too busy to join us tonight.”

Ignoring the tightening in her gut at the words, Grace tossed a quick smile to her sisters-in-law, Felicity, by the high windows on one end of the room, and Hattie, perched on the arm of the large chair where Whit sat, and said, brightly, in a singsong voice to Helena, “Why would I be too busy to join you?”

“I don’t know,” Devil said, approaching her with a second glass. “We thought perhaps you’d be too busy catting about with Marwick.”