After he’d railed about loyalty to title above all else—above even God—he’d left them trembling in the cold with clear instructions. There was a bed inside for one of them. But only one. The first to betray the others would get it. And the others—they spent the night in the snow. No shelter. No fire. If death came, so be it.
Whit watched his once-ally’s face. “When he left us in the cold, you turned to me, and do you remember what you said?”
Of course he remembered. Ewan might have stayed, but he was broken by the place just like they had been. And now he was duke, wearing their father’s face and his title and his shameful legacy. “We shouldn’t be here.”
With the duke. At the estate. They shouldn’t have followed their father’s pretty promises—health and wealth and a future without care. Without worry. With privilege and power and everything that came with aristocratic benevolence.
In the wake of the pronouncement, the boys had sprung into action, knowing from experience that they lived or died that night, together. They went for anything they could find that was dry in the snow—anything that might be warmth.
Whit could still remember the cold. The fear. The darkness as they’d huddled together. The keen knowledge that he was going to die, and his brothers with him. The desperate, futile attempts to stay alive. A child’s aching need for his mother.
“But it wasn’t true, was it, Duke? I shouldn’t have been there. Neither should Devil. But you—you did right there, yeah? Because you’re a storybook character. The boy born in the muck of Covent Garden, who landed himself a dukedom. The fucking hero of the play.”
Ewan revealed no shame in the wake of the words, and that alone was enough to keep Whit going. “But that’s a lie, too. You were never a hero. And you never will be. Not with your thieved name and your shit dukedom, built on the backs of your brothers.” He paused, drove the point home. “And the girl you claim to have loved. Who saved us all that night.”
They would have died. If not for Grace.
Grace, who had found them in the cold and rescued them, risking her own skin. And that night, a band of three had become four. “Which you seem not to remember.”
“I remember,” Ewan said, the words ragged and broken. “I remember every fucking breath she took in my presence.”
“Even the one she took to scream when you tried to kill her?” What was left of Ewan’s composure shattered, and Whit let loathing edge into his voice, along with the Garden. “Nah. Killin’ is too good for you, bruv. No matter how much you deserve it. You don’t get your fight.”
Fury returned to Ewan’s face, fury and something strangely like betrayal. “I can’t kill you,” Ewan said, the words coming in a frenzy. “I can’t come for you.” Why? Whit didn’t say it. He didn’t have to. “You two—you’re what’s left of her.”
Grace. The dead girl who wasn’t dead.
Whit met that wild gaze—so like his own. “She was never for you.”
The words weren’t meant as a blow, but they froze Ewan in his tracks. And then they set him on fire. “I can’t kill you,” he repeated, full of wild rage. “But I can end you.”
Whit turned away, knowing a man lost to reason when he saw one.
And then, “You’d best watch your lady, Saviour.”
Whit froze at the words, at the way they dropped like stone into the darkness between them, as though spoken by another man entirely. No longer full of explosive anger; but instead all cold menace, more unsettling than the rant that had come earlier.
More threatening.
Whit turned, heart in his throat and knife in his hand, resisting the urge to send it flying—deep into the chest of the man he’d once thought his brother. Instead, he pinned Ewan with an icy stare and said, “What did you say?”
“From what I hear, Henrietta Sedley spends a great deal of time free of the protections of Mayfair and chaperones.” A pause, then a low laugh. “Which explains how she landed here tonight, making eyes and arrangements with you.”
Whit’s entire body drew tight as a bowstring, prepared to let fly. “You don’t go near her.”
“Don’t make me have to.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Whit didn’t have to ask. He knew.
“I saw you together. I saw the way you promised her the world. The stars in her eyes. The stars in yours. Like she was your happiness. Like she was your hope.”
That word again. Like a weapon.
Like truth.
“But you’ll never be able to protect her. Not from me.”
Whit didn’t throw the knife. He’d lost the cool calculation necessary to do it, to seat it deep in Ewan’s left breast and stop his heart and this madness with a perfectly placed blow. Instead, he went for Ewan as he had when they were children, fear and fury propelling him into a fight that would have made their sire proud.
Only, this time, Whit was not the runt. He was the Beast.
He took the heir down in the darkness, rolling with him through the dirt and leaves, retaining his upper hand as he put the fist holding the knife directly into the other man’s face. Once. Twice. Blood spurted from Ewan’s nose. “Try it.” Another direct hit, Ewan squirming beneath him. “Test me. Twenty years have made me blade sharp. And I will protect her with my last breath, Your Grace.”
Everything shifted with the miscalculated honorific, meant to invoke another Grace, and doing just that—but making Ewan even more crazed. With madness came strength. In a rage, he fought back, coming for Whit like a runaway bull. “You don’t say her name!”
Within seconds, Whit’s back was to the ground, the hand holding his knife trapped in his brother’s impossible steel grip. They struggled, grappling for control, until Ewan caught a break, knocking Whit’s head back to the ground, where a large rock, unseen in the night, sent stars across his field of vision.
He lost his grip on the knife’s hilt.
And then the blade was at his throat. He froze, his eyes opening to find Ewan staring down at him, beyond reason. “Would you know if she were dead?”
Whit’s brow furrowed at the strange question. “What?”
“She’s gone,” Ewan said, nothing making sense. “I gave her into your keeping and she died and I didn’t—” He shook his head, lost to the thought. “I would know if she were dead. And it’s making me . . .” He trailed off.
Whit waited, beneath his own blade, seeing the truth.
They’d broken Ewan to protect Grace.
And now he threatened Hattie.
As though he heard the words, Ewan looked to him. “If I don’t get love, you don’t. If I don’t get happiness, you don’t. If I don’t have hope, you don’t.”
Heart pounding like thunder, Whit willed himself to sound calm. Unmoved. “Her destruction wins you nothing. If you come for someone, come for me.”
“You were so busy hating our father that you learned nothing from him,” Ewan said. “This is how I come for you. And she is the weapon I won’t hesitate to use. You care for her.”
No.
Yes.
“You care for her, and you’ll give her up. Like I did. Or I’ll take her from you. Like you did.”