Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

“Did I?” He was watching her carefully, and she resisted the urge to look away, afraid he would look too hard. See too much.

Instead, she pulled her masks tight to her and gave him a knowing smile. “You’ve turned your ballroom into the outdoors, Your Grace. If that is not fleeting, I don’t know what is.”

“Mmm,” he said, and the low rumble warmed her, even as she knew she should not let it. “And so? What should we do with tonight?”

He didn’t know it was she. The proof of it was there in his gaze—full of curiosity and playfulness.

She was a stranger. She’d planned to be, of course. But she hadn’t expected him to be one, as well.

“The same as we should do with every night,” she said, softly, suddenly more honest than she had imagined she would be with him. “We should savor it.”

Silence—and then, “Would you like to dance?”

She was caught off guard by the question. When was the last time she’d been asked to dance? Had she ever been asked to dance? Once or twice, she supposed, in the Garden, by someone full of liquid courage. But the last time she’d danced like this? In a ballroom?

It had been with him.

And he was made for it. Handsome and charming and with a smile that could win the coldest of skeptics, standing in front of her, dressed like any woman’s fantasy.

You could do with a fantasy now and then.

Veronique’s words from earlier in the week whispered through her, and on their heels certainty and focus. Drive. Purpose.

This was not fantasy. This was reconnaissance.

She had a plan.

She placed her gloved hand in his outstretched one.

“I would very much like to dance.”

Chapter Nine

He’d known it was her from the moment she’d stepped into the ballroom, in a dress that fell in lush emerald waves to the floor, despite the mask covering everything but her beautiful kohled eyes and the dark wine color staining her lips, and the wig that stole her flame-colored curls from him.

He presumed she was trying for disguise, as though he’d ever not sense her. Not feel her. As though there would ever come a time when she walked into a room and his whole body did not draw tight like a spring.

But disguise required something more than Grace would ever have—an ability to be unnoticed. And Grace would always be the first thing he noticed in any room, ever.

She’d come.

His heart began to pound the moment she’d entered—he’d been speaking to someone—a lord, about a vote in Parliament—something Ewan had been working on for months.

Or maybe it had been a lady, wanting to introduce her daughter to the Duke of Marwick? Maybe it had been an old friend from school. Ewan didn’t have old friends from school, so it wasn’t that, but he couldn’t be sure about the rest. Because he’d looked up from the conversation and she’d been there, at the edge of the ballroom, her face tilted up into the canopy that he’d had designed for exactly this moment.

Her favorite place on the Marwick estate.

The place he’d never returned to once she’d left.

Once she’d run. Once he’d scared her away.

Not that he’d had a choice.

He’d built this masquerade for her, making the staff and the gardener certain he was still as mad as he’d always been, but this time with his wild requests for indoor trees and moss-covered dance floors. And he’d known it would cost a fortune and very likely be wasted—because she might not have come.

After all, the last time they’d been together, she’d made it clear she had no interest in ever seeing him again.

But he’d built it for her, knowing she would discover that he was returned to London—a duke did not rejoin society’s circuit without people talking, after all—and hoping that she might not be able to resist her curiosity.

Hoping she might come to discover his plan. Hoping she might come to be a part of it. Therein lay the true madness, however.

You can never have her back.

He’d heard the words every day since that night, when she’d delivered the only blow that mattered. The one that had set him back, the proof that the girl he’d once loved, the one he’d sought and pursued and dreamed of, was gone.

Her fists were like stone, certainly, and they’d landed with noble force—punishment he well deserved for what he’d done. To her. To his brothers. To their world. But when she’d spoken—when she’d looked him straight in the eye, her beautiful brown gaze full of loathing, and told him that he’d killed her, she’d destroyed him.

Because in those words—he’d heard the truth.

So, he’d done as she asked. He’d left. And he would continue to do as she asked. And never chase her again. And that decision had required him to become someone different. Someone stronger. Better. More worthy.

A different man from the one who had betrayed her. Who had betrayed his brothers, and himself in the balance.

Her words from that night still haunted him.

You, who stole everything from me. My future. My past. My fucking name. Not to mention what you took from the people I love.

So, he’d built this mad ballroom and thrown this mad masquerade, with the singular vow that he would never chase her again.

But that, instead, she might chase him.

Or, at least, come through the door.

She had, and it was like breath after being under water for too long. He’d watched as she took in the room, as she tracked the tree trunks and the massive canopy, as she’d been surprised by the moss beneath her feet. He’d fallen away from his conversation, every inch the mad duke London expected him to be when he turned away and crossed the room toward her, unable to stop himself from cataloguing her movements: the way her throat worked; the way her lips softened, opening on a little gasp of surprise—surprise? Or memory? The way her eyes widened . . . in recognition?

Be memory.

Be recognition.

As he watched, she locked whatever it was away. He saw her cast off one layer of emotion and don something else entirely, her spine lengthening, her shoulders straightening, her chin rising in a little, defiant gesture.

Like that, Grace was gone. Another woman in her place.

He moved faster, eager to meet her, the woman the girl he’d loved had become. Faster still, when that woman turned a smile the color of French wine on the Duchess of Trevescan—in herself, a bit of trouble. And then Ewan was there, and Grace was turning toward him, her beautiful brown eyes on his, but without any indication that she knew him.

The years had made her many things—a stunning beauty, a brilliant mind, a boxer with a fist like fury . . . and an actress, apparently. Because she was able to hide everything that had come before.

And so, they began with fresh lies, ignoring the fact that there had been a time when they’d known each other better than they’d known anyone, and instead starting anew—with his jokes and her teasing and both of their smiles, hers bright and beautiful enough to make him willing to do anything to witness it again.

Even asking her to dance, knowing that holding her in his arms would be a special kind of torture. Because it was—pulling her into his arms, but not as close as he wished. The scent of her wrapping around him—citrus and spice, but without the possibility of him burying his nose in her hair to breathe her in. And when she looked up at him with her cool, controlled gaze, and her cool, controlled smile, as though they had just met and had not spent a lifetime in a different kind of dance, he ached to pull her from this room and its crush of people and revel in her.