Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

She caught her breath. “We all loved you. Whit and Devil like a sister—each of them willing to protect you without hesitation. And me . . .” He trailed off, and she reached for his hand, threading her fingers through his. “Like you were a part of me.” He sighed. “Christ, you were so brave.”

“No, I wasn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I was nobody. I was nothing. No one noticed me.”

“You were there, always. You think I don’t remember all the times you rescued me? Us? Blankets in the cold. Food when we were hungry. Light in the dark. You mended us all again and again. And always out of sight.”

“It wasn’t brave,” she said. Yes, she’d done everything she could to help them without the duke discovering her, but, “I never stood up to him. I could have done so much more to keep you all safe. I was proof of his crime. And I never—” She looked away, hating the memories of her time at the house—of the time they’d shared there. “I never stood up to him.”

“Neither did I.”

I did get you out.

The words from the other night, when she’d accused him of chasing them away. Of leaving them behind.

“Except I think perhaps you did.” She watched him for a long moment, her eyes narrowing on him. “I think you stood up to him that night.”

A candle on the bedside table flickered out. They’d been in her rooms for a long time. Two hours. Maybe more. She looked to the clock across the room. Half three. The party would still be in full swing below.

But here, time had stopped.

“Sometimes, I play that week over in my head. I remember every moment with such clarity.” He looked to her. “Do you remember? We were planning to leave.”

She nodded. “You’d decided it was time. Before winter came and he decided to make an example of one of you.”

“It had been two years there,” he said. “Two years, and we were all old enough for school, and Devil and I were already growing taller.”

She remembered. “You wouldn’t soon be easily hidden.”

“That, and we knew that if we could just get to the Garden, we were able-bodied now. We could all work.” He looked at her. “And we were big enough to protect you.”

She smiled at that. “It turned out it was Covent Garden that needed protecting from me.”

He stroked his hand over her skin again, pulling her tight against him. “I wish I had been here. I wish I had seen you take this place by storm.”

She grew serious. “I wish that, too.”

“Instead, he found us out.” He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “You and me.”

He set her hand to his left shoulder, where his scar still burned.

“I remember that night with crystal clarity,” she said. “Chaste kisses and sweet words, and being wrapped in your arms.” In the darkness, whispering their plans for a future. Together. Far from Burghsey and the dukedom.

“Do you remember what I said to you? Before he found us?”

She nodded, meeting his eyes. “You told me you’d find a way to make us safe.”

“And what else?”

She smiled. “You told me you loved me.”

“And you told me the same,” he said, pressing a kiss to her temple and breathing deep in her hair.

“Then he found us, and he hurt you. And in hurting you, he hurt me, as well.” She lifted her hand from where he’d been marked, and kissed the scar there once more. “I am sorry.”

“Do not ever, ever apologize for that. I would take a hundred like it if it meant keeping those memories of you. The happiest of my life . . . until now.”

She stroked her thumb over the raised skin of his scar. “And now? What is the happiest memory of your life?”

His hand came to her cheek, and she looked up to find him staring at her. “Tonight. In this place that you have built—a palace of pleasure and power and pride—this place you have entrusted to me, this world you have shared with me. This is my happiest night.”

Tears sprang at the words, full of sorrow and regret—what might they have had if they’d run together? What might have happened?

“What happened, Ewan?” she asked again. “How did everything change?”

“He chose me. And in choosing, made it impossible for me to come with you.” He brushed her hair back from her face, and whispered, “I couldn’t come with you.”

Confusion flared, the words not making sense. Why not? She shook her head, confusion and disbelief on her face. “Why? Because of the title?”

“Because of the man,” he said, lifting her hand and setting it to his left shoulder, mirroring his own touch on his own mark. “Because of the monster.”

“Tell me.”

He took a deep breath, and then, softly, “He left my mother with nothing.”

Grace didn’t understand why he began there, but he did, and she would have lain in his arms and listened forever, if he’d asked her to.

Or, perhaps he chose to start there because it was where he started. Where they started—like strands of silk, woven together by fate.

“She went out for a walk, mistress to the Duke of Marwick, and returned home to discover that her home had been emptied of its contents,” he said, the words cool and easy, as though he’d heard them a hundred times before, and she imagined he had—a story burned into his memory by its heroine. “Everything was gone. Jewels, furniture, art. Anything of value. Gone.”

Grace’s fingers stroked over his chest, running back and forth through the dusting of brown hair there, his voice vibrating against them and in her ear. And as he spoke, she wished she had a healing balm for this—for the stories of the past that harbored anger and pain . . . and sometimes, the pain of others—always stinging, and never to be assuaged.

He gave a little humorless laugh to the room. “My mother talked about that day more than she talked about anything else. The day the duke had tossed her out. That day and the days before, with the parties and the privilege and the power she held over Mayfair—the Duke of Marwick’s impeccable mistress.” He paused, and then, “I don’t imagine she took kindly to knowing that he had been consorting with Devil’s and Whit’s mothers at the same time.”

She couldn’t help her dry, “Well, his wife wanted nothing to do with him . . . what else is an able-bodied aristocrat to do?”

He grunted, and she thought she heard real humor in it. “Not able-bodied for long, though.”

Scant months later, Grace’s mother, the Duchess of Marwick, had used a pistol to ensure that the old duke never had the opportunity to take advantage of another woman.

“The Lord’s work,” Grace said. “One of the few things I know about my mother, and the thing of which I am most proud.”

His fingers traced circles on her shoulder. “I imagine you take after her in strength and righteousness.”

“And aim,” she teased.

“And aim.” She heard the smile in his voice, turned dry as sand when he said, “I imagine that my mother would have liked to have been her second in that gunfight. She would have liked to have punished him as he punished her.” He stilled, and she did not move, except for her fingers, circling in light, languid strokes.