Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

Love.

He should have known the duke would see everything. Would plan for it. Would make it impossible. Evil rarely came with stupidity.

She cannot live, his father had said, no feeling in his voice. None of them can.

Ewan had balked, immediately planning to run. To save them all.

But the duke was ahead of him. And the die had been cast.

Now.

And when he had protested, the older man had said the only thing that could have moved him to action. You do it, boy. You do it, or I do—and she will suffer the most.

Ewan had believed him. How many times had their father turned sadist? How many switchings from a misstep at a waltz, a fork misused at dinner. The nights threatening to kill them with the cold. The darkness threatening to steal their sanity. The beatings.

The sweets, the gifts, the pets . . . destroyed before their eyes.

And now, his final threat.

And Ewan, the only thing that might stop him.

Whit had been first, alone in the room, knowing, in that way that he always did, what was to come. Ewan had dropped him, and though Whit had tried to remain quiet, his cries had summoned the others, which of course had been their father’s sadistic plan.

Devil had crashed through the door, immediately taking in one brother on the ground and Ewan standing over him, blade in hand.

Not Ewan.

Robert. Sumner. Someday, Marwick himself.

The names shattered through him. He didn’t want them. Not any longer. Not at this price.

But he no longer had a choice.

“Get the fuck away from him, bruv,” Devil had growled, coming for him with the pure hot rage that moved him through the world. Fists and fury. He’d driven Ewan back, across the room, and Ewan had taken the blows. Deserving them. Knowing that they’d make his own less powerful.

Needing to be less powerful.

They’d toppled a small table and upended a chair before Ewan had knocked Devil to the ground, buying enough time for him to focus on his real goal.

“What have you done?” Grace’s voice. Soft. Disbelieving.

She was the most beautiful thing he would ever see.

The best person he’d ever know.

The only thing he’d ever love.

And he had no choice.

Robert Matthew Carrick, Earl Sumner, clasped the knife tighter, the bite of the steel hilt sharp in his palm, knowing he had one chance to make this right. Knowing what he had to do.

She stood, seeing what was to come. “Ewan—no!”

Devil moved at his feet, rolling to his knees.

Save her, Robert thought, willing his brother up.

They would, wouldn’t they?

“Ewan, what the fuck—” Whit, from his place on the floor, trying to straighten. To ignore the pain in his ribs, tears in salty tracks on his face.

“Ewan—” Grace, her hair a cloud of fire around her, her brown eyes enormous and full of confusion . . . confusion and something worse . . . betrayal.

“Don’t do it,” Devil yelled from behind him. “Fucking hell, bruv.”

The foul little bastards deserve what’s coming to them. If he didn’t, his father would.

I’ll never let you all go. His fucking father.

Do it, and I’ll bring your mother here. Ewan knew it was a lie. But he also knew he had only one chance to make sure that this man didn’t destroy everyone he cared for.

Sacrifice. His father meant it for the title.

Sacrifice. Fuck the title.

He tightened his grip on the knife, willing his brothers to be what he knew them to be. Willing them to be more than he ever could be. He met her eyes, across the room. He could read her thoughts—he’d always been able to read her thoughts. She didn’t believe he would do it.

Of course she didn’t.

She knew he loved her.

She shook her head, barely a movement, but he saw it. Saw it, and heard the words they’d whispered to each other night after night: We’ll run. All of us.

But she didn’t know the rest. Didn’t know his father would never let them go together. She didn’t know that their best bet at survival was this—Ewan, staying.

He deserved to stay. He wasn’t like them . . . he’d wanted the title. Which maybe made him as bad as their father.

But they deserved to live.

I’m sorry.

Behind him, Devil was on his feet.

Save her.

He went for her, unable to look away from her eyes—those eyes he dreamed of every night. The eyes he’d loved almost from the first moment he’d seen her. Those eyes that would haunt him, forever.

They went wide with shock. Then understanding. Then fear.

She screamed, and his blade met flesh.

A sharp rap on the door to his study yanked Ewan from the memory, and he nearly dropped the tumbler of whisky that dangled from his hand as he returned to the present.

He stood at the window, staring down into the quiet gardens that, a week earlier, had teemed with revelers. The night sky was clear and the autumn moon was nearly full, revealing the roof of the gazebo behind the secret wall in the distance. The place he’d last seen Grace. The place where she’d left him.

“Come,” he said.

The door opened before the word was fully formed, and he looked over his shoulder at O’Clair, the impeccable butler who came with the London house and appeared never to require sleep or food or time to himself.

“Your Grace,” O’Clair said, with perfect clarity, stepping into the room. The words set Ewan immediately on edge. Christ, he hated that title. “There are . . . gentlemen below.”

The emphasis made it clear that whoever was below had not passed the inspection of the butler, and that was enough for Ewan at the moment. He had no interest in visitors. “It’s the middle of the night. Whoever it is can return at a reasonable hour.”

The butler cleared his throat. “Yes, well, they don’t seem to—”

“We ain’t the kind of men who show face in Mayfair at reasonable hours, Duke,” came a voice from behind O’Clair, whose eyes went wide with a mix of shock and affront that would have amused Ewan if he wasn’t so surprised himself by the new arrivals.

Devil punctuated his words with a kick to the door, sending it swinging back on the hinge and crashing into the wall. He entered the room as Whit took up residence in the doorway behind him, arms crossed over his massive chest, looking every inch the Beast London called him.

No longer runt of the litter.

Ewan narrowed his gaze on his brothers. He appeared to have summoned them with his memory. Bad luck, that.

“Sirs! I must insist—” O’Clair, for his part, was beside himself and still soldiering on. “The duke is not receiving.”

“Oho! Is he not?” Devil tapped O’Clair on the shoulder with the silver handle of his ebony cane, his scar flashing white and wicked down the side of his cheek. “No need to stand on ceremony, good man—the duke’s more than happy to see us.” He didn’t look to Ewan as he said, “Ain’t you, bruv?”

“I wouldn’t use the word happy, no.”

“Too fuckin’ bad,” Beast said from the doorway, the words coming like gravel.

The butler blustered, and Ewan bit back a curse. He might as well save the man. “Thank you, O’Clair.”

The butler turned wide eyes on him. “Your Grace?”