Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

He’d heard her. He’d listened. He’d left her.

“I think you’ve never cared for revelry before,” the duchess intoned, leaning in close—close enough for something in Grace to hesitate. “Why start now?”

“Perhaps I’ve never had such winning company,” he offered, his lips curving in a magnificent smile, leaving Grace with the wild, momentary thought that she might be going mad. And then he turned and met her eyes, and the damn man winked.

He didn’t recognize her.

He couldn’t. Nothing about his response to her indicated that he recognized her in the slightest. How could that be?

It didn’t matter. Indeed, it made things easier.

Still, shock wound through her, even as she should have been satisfied—after all, wasn’t this what she’d intended? To be hidden from him in plain sight? Wasn’t this part of the plan she’d worked on again and again as she’d heavily kohled her eyes and stained her lips? And put on Dahlia’s mask?

She would never again meet him as Grace.

Especially not here, in his Mayfair home—the home of a line of dukes. And even if she did—even if he had expected her—he wouldn’t expect her like this. Not elaborately turned out in the dress, the mask, the hair, the maquillage—all perfectly designed for a woman of the height of aristocracy. A woman who’d had the best education, a battalion of ladies’ maids, wealth beyond reason, and a life of privilege, sparing no expense.

He’d expect her to come as she always had, in trousers and topcoat, boots over her knees and weapons over her shoulders, ready to take prisoners.

And if she had come, he wouldn’t have smiled at her.

They did not smile at each other any longer.

He bowed low, and for a moment, Grace was thrown back in time, or maybe not back. Maybe tossed sideways, into another time, another place, when they would have crossed paths not as once friends and forever enemies, but as a lady and a gentleman.

A duke and a duchess.

She rejected the thought and relished his ignorance as she sank into a low curtsy.

“Your Grace.”

He tilted his head at her words. “You have the better of me.”

She willed Grace away for now, letting Dahlia take the lead with a flirt. She was here for a reason, after all. “I am sure that is not true.”

“It is.” He leaned in closer. “Do you have a name?”

Only the one you gave me.

The response—which she would never say aloud—tore through her, but years of practice kept her from revealing it. “Not tonight.”

That smile again, the one that set her back with confusion and something she was not interested in naming. Something she would never take for herself.

He looked to the duchess. “And you, lady, will you tell me your name?”

The other woman looked at the duke, and then Grace, and then the duke once more. “I’m not certain you wish to know my name, Duke.” Grace’s eyes went wide at the reply, even as the words dissolved into laughter, bright as bells. “In any event, I’m afraid I tire of conversation—no offense.” She was one of the few people in the world who could say such a thing and actually offer no offense. “And I see an empty swing hanging on the tree in the distance.” She wiggled her full bottom beneath her vibrant skirts. “Waiting for a peacock, I’m sure.”

Before a reply could form, the duchess was off, pushing between an elaborately dressed Marie Antoinette and a tall, forbidding plague doctor, and disappearing into the crowd, no doubt delighting in the idea that a duke and the owner of one of London’s most exclusive brothels were conversing—and due to her own influence. Grace gave a little growl of disappointment that they’d been left alone, even as she knew that alone was the only way she had a hope of understanding why he’d returned.

“Is your friend always so . . .”

“Fleeting?” Grace supplied. “Yes.”

“I was going to say eccentric,” he replied.

“That, too,” she said.

He looked to her then, “And you?”

She couldn’t help the little, secret smile. “I, too, am eccentric.”

“I was asking if you planned to be fleeting.” Somehow, in the crush and cacophony of people, his words were low and lush, and they settled deep in her belly even as she reminded herself that she was not to derive pleasure from this man.

This man who had thieved everything from her.

Tonight was not about pleasure. It was about planning.

But he had designed a room and an event that was pure fantasy, and for her to understand why—to properly understand what he was planning and cut him off at the pass—Grace was going to have to play.

Which should not be difficult—did she not trade in play?

She was not a fool—she knew what he asked for.

From whom?

She ignored the insidious whisper, and the thread of unease that came with it. Ignored, too, the idea that he flirted with another woman. Let him flirt. Let him imagine a future of partnership, as though she hadn’t vowed to take that from him from the start.

Grace would wear her mask and give him what he wished, and in the process, she would clarify the objective of his return. Of his change. Of his newfound entrance into this world they’d always sworn never to embrace.

This world to which he was never supposed to return.

That was why she was here. Reconnaissance.

In, then out. Here, then gone.

“Isn’t everyone here fleeting?”

“Are they? They’re the collective product of centuries of aristocratic breeding.”

Not you, though, she thought. Not I. “I’ve never put much stock in aristocratic breeding, Duke.” The title was a test. Would he flinch?

He placed a hand to his chest in mock disappointment, his winning smile widening. “You wound me, lady. Truly.”

He didn’t recognize her. Something loosened in her chest, relaxing her. Settling her into her role. “Look around you,” she said, waving a hand in the direction of a Henry VIII and a Sir Thomas More nearby, in raucous conversation with an Anne Boleyn and a Duchess of Devonshire, wig so high it was a miracle she could keep her head straight above her scandalously low-cut gown. “None of you can bear to behave as you wish without masks. What is the purpose of the power you’ve amassed, if not to find delight?”

He tilted his head in her direction. “We? Are you not one of us?”

She shook her head. “I am none of you.”

“And you found us how? Wandering lost in my gardens?”

She couldn’t help the hint of smile. “I’ve an invitation.”

“From me?”

She ignored the question. “There are whole swaths of the city that would do anything for a chance at the joy you can take in an instant,” she said, instead. “And still you hesitate, allowing yourselves a taste of pleasure only when you can reasonably deny you’ve ever had it. What a waste.”

“What then? Take pleasure as it comes?”

The words washed over her like silk. That was precisely what she meant. She, who dealt in pleasure as it came.

Grace smiled. “I am nothing if not a realist.”

“Tell me something real, then.”

She did not hesitate. “I am fleeting. So is this evening.” Her gaze flickered past him, to the massive trees soaring above the crush of revelers. “But you knew that already.”