Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

He turned to the far corner of the room, where Devil and Whit sat in the darkness, invisible. “You let her fight your battles for you?”

“Aye, bruv,” came Devil’s clear reply. “We cast dice for the honor. She’s always been the lucky one.”

Ewan looked to her. “Have you?”

She lifted her chin and rocked back on her heels. “I’m in the ring, am I not?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched as he seemed to consider his next move. Grace waited, trying to ignore the long lines of him, the way his dark blond hair fell over his brow, the way his limbs remained loose even as he faced her, preparing for a fight.

He’d been a natural fighter when they were children. The kind every street rat in London ached to be. The kind every street rat in London ached to beat. Grace included.

She took a deep breath, willing herself calm. How many had she fought before now? And with virtually no losses? Her heartbeat slowed along with time in the room. He approached and she raised her fists, ready for the fight as he closed the gap between them.

But he didn’t close the gap. Instead, he launched a different kind of attack. One for which she had not been prepared.

He began to disrobe.

She stilled as he lifted his arms, clasping the back collar of the linen shirt he wore, pulling it out of his trousers and over his head without hesitation, and casting it to the side, forgotten in the dust. Her gaze followed the discarded shirt. “A gross mistreatment of the only clothing you have.”

“I shall fetch it later.”

When she looked back at him, it was to discover that he was closer than she would have imagined. She resisted the instinct to take a step back, refusing to reveal her response to the way he filled the ring. This was different from seeing him unconscious in a bed.

If his face had changed over the last two decades, his body had been revolutionized. He was tall—over six feet, and his broad shoulders tapered to narrow hips via a vast expanse of lean, corded muscle lightly dusted with hair. The trail of hair darkened as it descended past his navel, into the waist of his trousers. If the warm color of his skin was any indication, that athleticism had been honed in the outdoors. In the sunlight.

Doing what?

She might have asked if the scar on his left pectoral muscle hadn’t distracted her. Three inches long, a quartet of jagged, pale lines against smooth tan skin. She was transfixed by it—the proof that this man was the boy she’d once known. She’d been there when he’d taken it.

His father had put it there as punishment for protecting her. As a reminder of what was truly valuable. She could remember the bite of her fist tight against her lips, desperate to keep her cries silent as the blade had sliced through his skin. Her cries hadn’t been silent though. He’d shouted them for her as he’d taken the pain.

Days later, the letter M still fresh on his skin, he’d stopped taking it.

And he’d come for her.

The thought returned her to the present. To the fight. Her gaze flickered up over his chest and the cords of his neck, to the line of his jaw, the high angles of his cheekbones—and finally, to his eyes, watching her. Betraying nothing.

And then, the bastard smirked. “Like what you see?”

She narrowed her gaze. “No.”

“Liar.”

The single word sent a hot flush through her. Twenty years earlier, the flush might have been pleasure or embarrassment. A keen understanding that he’d seen right to the heart of her. But now, it was anger. Frustration. And a refusal to believe that he might still see through her. That she might still be the same girl she’d been all those years ago. That he might still be the same boy.

“I felt you,” he said, low enough that only she would hear. “I know you touched me.”

Impossible. He’d been dosed with laudanum. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Not me.”

“It was. It was you,” he said, softly, advancing on her with slow, predatory grace. “You think I would forget your touch? You think I wouldn’t know it in the darkness? I would know it in battle. I would walk through fire for it. I would know it on the road to hell. I would know it in hell, which is where I’ve been, aching for it, every day since you left.”

She ignored the pounding of her heart at the words. Empty. Meaningless. She steeled herself. “Since you tried to kill me, you mean,” she tossed out, lifting her chin. “I’ve a building full of decent men abovestairs; I’ve no need for a mad duke.”

A shadow crossed his face, there, then gone in an instant. Jealousy? She ignored the zing of pleasure that shot through her at the realization, instead focusing on his approach. He was within reach now.

He spread his arms wide. “Go on, then.”

Perhaps he didn’t think she would do it. Perhaps he thought back on the girl he’d known, who never would have hit him. Never would have hurt him.

He was wrong.

She let her right fist fly, packing pure power in the punch. It connected with a wicked crack, sending his head back with the force of the blow. She danced backward as he caught his balance.

Grace let out a breath, slow and even.

Devil’s walking stick pounded twice with approval in the darkness.

Ewan met her eyes. “You always could land a good blow.”

“You taught me.”

She saw the memory cross his face. The afternoons hidden in the glade on the estate at Burghsey House, when the four of them had planned and plotted against the duke who had vowed to steal their futures along with their childhoods. The afternoons when they’d made their promises—whoever won the duke’s perverse tournament would protect the others. Whoever became heir would end the line.

They’d been brought together because there was no other possible heir—no brothers or nephews or distant cousins. On the duke’s death, the dukedom, centuries old, would revert to the Crown. The trio of boys were his only chance at legacy.

And they would take it from him.

He would never win, they promised. Not in the long run.

Grace saw him remember those afternoons, when they’d worked so hard to choreograph their fights—Ewan’s idea, stolen from stage fighters his mother had known on Drury Lane—so they would survive the fights their father forced on them. He could not keep them safe from all the duke’s warfare, he knew, but he could keep them safe from each other.

And Ewan did. Until he did not.

The thought set her fist flying again. Years of fury and frustration landed the blow, and a second, at his ribs. He let the third punch push him back, toward the edge of the ring, out of the light.

And that was when she realized he was not blocking her.

She stopped. Stepped back. Drew a line in the sawdust with the toe of her boot. Lifted her fists. “Come to scratch, Duke.”

He stepped forward, toward her, but he did not lift his fists.

Anger flared. “Fight.”

He shook his head. “No.”

She stepped toward him, her voice rising with frustration. “Fight me.”

“No.”

She lowered her hands and turned from him, crossing the ring away from him. A wicked curse sounded from the darkness, nearly feral. Beast wanted in. She grasped the wall of the ring, the bite of the wooden planks welcome on her bare fingers.

How many of these rings had she claimed? How many had she triumphed in, and all because of this man? How many nights had she cried herself to sleep thinking of him? “I’ve waited twenty years for this,” she said. “For this punishment. For my vengeance.”