Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

He sucked in a breath at the thought. It was impossible. Not a week earlier, she’d come apart in his arms. Against his mouth, her hands in his hair and her cries in the air between them. She’d chosen him that night.

Tonight, only, she’d whispered.

One night. That’s what she’d promised him. Fantasy for one night.

No. He resisted the thought. One night was not enough. Would never be.

Mine.

While he was planning the bruiser’s demise, she turned away, leaving him, her leather-encased legs devouring the yard. Frustration flared at the idea that this might be all there was.

“And you, Dahlia?” he called out, using the name this place had given her. “What of you? Is your kind for dukes?”

A ripple of surprise tore through the crowd at the bald question. She froze. Turned back. He had her.

“I’ll ’ave ’im if you won’t!” a woman shouted off to his left.

For a moment, she was still as stone. But he saw the anger flash in her eyes just before she turned to address her subjects. When she spoke, her words ricocheted off the buildings, ensuring that everyone assembled heard her. “This toff wants to come to scratch, and Lord knows we’re all itching to give him the fight he’s asking for. But he ain’t for you.”

Anger flared, and he took a step toward her, the movement sending a sharp pain up his side, licking through his shoulder like fire.

She looked up to the rooftops, to where he knew his brothers watched. She repeated herself. “He ain’t for you.”

What was she doing?

And then she looked at him, something in her eyes that he wasn’t expecting. She held his gaze for a long moment, and he would have given anything—paid anything—done anything—to know what she was thinking.

“He’ll get the fight he wants,” she said, her voice a clarion call. “But hear me now—this fight is mine.” The words thrummed through him as she turned to the Garden. “Understood, lads?”

Around the yard, a chorus of grunted agreement.

She met his eyes.

“He’ll get it from me.”

His whole body drew tight at the words and the underlying promise in them. That they weren’t done with each other. That she wasn’t through.

That she’d come for him.

And then she turned away, and a thrill of pleasure rioted through him even as she disappeared into the crowd.

She’d come for him, and now it was time for him to go to her.

Chapter Fifteen

Grace left, knowing what she had wrought.

Knowing—even as she slipped from the yard and its crush of people, even as she increased her pace, half wanting to lose him, half wanting him to follow—that he would follow. She moved more quickly, eager to get into the web of labyrinthine streets, away from him and the way he made her feel. Away from the fact that he made her feel, at all.

She turned down the nearest alleyway, and then another, then down a long, curving Garden street, past half a dozen children playing skip the stones and a gaggle of women around a metal washtub, gossiping over the last of their laundry in the late afternoon sun.

The women smiled as she passed—the two she recognized lifted hands in greeting—but no one wavered from the conversation. “I ain’t never seen a duke lookin’ like that,” Jenny Richley said. The appreciation in the words sent a lick of memory through Grace that she didn’t care for.

“Cor, you ain’t never seen a duke, t’all, Jenny,” came a retort from Alice Neighbors.

Jenny laughed. “Do you think they’re all so handsome?”

No, Grace thought. They weren’t.

They shouldn’t be. They should be old and horse-faced. Soft and with a stink of privilege and a touch of gout. And he wasn’t.

Because he was never meant to be a duke.

She clung to that: the duke’s son who had stolen the dukedom. And he’d done it by leaving her to the wolves. And then he’d kept it by making sure the wolves stayed on the hunt.

Hadn’t he?

Doubt, fresh and unsettling.

Past the women, at the far end of the alley, there was a spot to take to the rooftops, footholds built into the side of the building, and Grace headed for it, knowing it was the surest way to lose him.

She wanted to lose him.

Didn’t she?

“I don’t know, but I’d be very happy to ’ave a second look at that one—really be certain he’s as pretty as he seemed.”

Grace reached for a brick protruding from the wall, ready to begin her climb, when the reply came—and not from the women. “I’d be more than happy to give you a second look, ladies.”

“Good God!” one of the women she did not know squeaked. “It’s ’im!”

Grace froze, clinging to the wall, the tails of her coat billowing out behind her, admiration flaring before she could stop it. He’d found her more quickly than she’d expected. She turned her head just enough to see him at the entrance to the alleyway, the blood from the gash on his cheek now dried, his once-white shirt now stained beyond repair, torn at the shoulder, clinging to the taut muscles of his chest.

Not that she noticed.

He raised a brow, noticing her not noticing.

Grace lowered herself to the ground and slowly turned around. “Lookin’ a bit worse for wear if you ask me, Duke.”

The women tittered.

“That much is true—the men in your Rookery know how to throw a punch.” He lifted a hand and touched the bruise blooming beneath his left eye.

“The women, too,” one of them said with a low, throaty laugh.

Ewan smirked at that, but did not look away from Grace. “Aye, I’ve experience with that, as well.”

She lifted her chin. “Seems like you’ve crossed the wrong crew, if you ask me.”

“It takes me time to learn my lesson.”

The women assembled laughed at the self-deprecation. “Well, he ain’t done nuffin’ to cross me,” Alice said as she reached for a nearby basket. “Are you hungry, my lord? Would you like cake?”

“He doesn’t want cake,” Grace said.

“Nonsense. Of course I want cake,” he said, approaching the women. The words were barely made before a tea cloth was extracted from the basket and unwrapped, a treat passed in his direction.

With a thank-you, he turned and fetched a nearby crate, flipping it upside down. She saw the tiny wince as he hefted the box with one hand. Barely there.

He was in pain.

She ignored her response to the realization, instead gritting her teeth as he joined the circle of women around the tub as though he’d spent every day of his life marauding through Covent Garden, availing himself of proffered cakes.

She crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall, watching as he accepted the cake and took an enormous bite, nothing polite or mannered about it.

“Now that’s a man,” Alice said with pride.

“Aye,” Jenny replied. “I would’ve thought dukes would be more concerned wiv crumbs.”

He smiled around his chewing, his jaw working like he was a cow in pasture. Grace ignored how the exaggerated movements underscored the angle of that jaw. The beauty of it. The fact that a body could draw a straight line with it.