“I see we’re getting right to it, then.” Grace’s heart threatened to beat from her chest, and she wondered if others could hear it over the only other sound in the room—a babbling Helena, her little fist clapping against Grace’s cheek.
She took the drink from Devil and looked into it. “Is it safe to drink?”
He smirked, his scar pulling tight on his face. “I’m not the one with a history of trying to kill you, Gracie.”
Devil had never in his life pulled a punch.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Felicity came over from her place by the window, the bright pink skirts of her gown rustling against the plush carpet. “Stand down, will you? Would you listen to this one,” she scoffed. “As though he’s lived the life of a saint.”
“I haven’t tried to seduce a woman I’ve nearly killed,” he said.
“No,” Felicity retorted, “you only tried to seduce a woman in an attempt to ruin her life.”
Hattie coughed a laugh, and Whit and Grace’s brows rose in the kind of unison that proved that siblings didn’t need to share blood to share affect.
“That’s different!” he declared. “I was going to get you sorted, proper spinster-like.”
“Ah, yes. A widow’s cottage in the Hebrides or some such.” Felicity cut him a look before returning her attention to Grace. “So. Tell us.”
“I don’t know what you are asking.”
Lie. But Felicity was not easily waved off. “We know he kissed you after—this part seems very strange—helping Alice with the wash?”
There was no point in denying it. It had been in broad view of half the Rookery. “It’s true.”
Silence again, and Grace felt four sets of hot looks on her as she pretended to be riveted to Helena, her only ally. The baby blew a bubble and laughed, completely unaware of her surroundings.
Devil turned to Whit. “Do you have anything to say?”
Whit shrugged. “I told you.”
“As though we needed a fucking oracle to see it.”
Grace turned to him. “To see what?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “That he was back for you.”
The reason I have done everything from the start, he’d said. For you.
“Not just that,” Whit said. “You’re back for him, too.”
“I’m not.” She shook her head. And then, at the quartet of disbelieving looks, she said, “I shouldn’t be.”
“Damn right,” Devil said.
“Devil,” Felicity said, censure in her tone.
He turned away, grumbling, “She’s not wrong.”
“But what if she is?” Hattie interjected as she stood, crossing the room and selecting a turned carrot from a platter there. “I’m assuming we are not sitting down to dinner, right?” She took a bite of the vegetable and after chewing thoughtfully said, “What if he’s back and he’s changed?”
Grace ignored the thrum that went through her at the question. At the idea that Hattie might think it possible. “Men don’t change,” Grace said. “That’s the first rule of surviving as a woman in the world. Men don’t change.”
“That’s true,” Devil said.
“Bollocks,” Felicity replied. “You changed.”
“You changed me, love,” he said instantly. “That’s different.”
“Of course, I did,” she said, “just as you changed me.” She approached him, sliding into the crook of his arm. “What if Grace changed him?” She paused, then said, “The man who came for you, for Whit, for Hattie . . . for me . . . he was all anguish. No hope.”
They told me you were dead.
Felicity shrugged. “Hope changes a person.”
Grace went still at the words.
What if he finally had hope?
What if she did?
Helena began to fret, and Grace walked her to her parents. Without missing a beat, Devil took the babe and set her in the crook of his arm, pulling a silver rattle from his pocket and handing it to her.
“What’s your point, Felicity?” Devil asked once the baby was settled.
“I think you very well know what my point is,” she said to her husband before looking to Grace. “My point is, don’t listen to them.”
“Hear, hear!” Hattie roundly agreed. “They haven’t any idea what they’re on about.”
“It took them both near-death experiences to know what they wanted.”
“That’s not true!” Devil said. “I knew what I wanted.”
“You did not,” Whit said. “Grace and I had to knock actual sense into you to get you to see that Felicity was far better than you could ever dream of having.” He turned a smile on his sister-in-law. “You know that, don’t you, that you settled?”
Felicity smiled happily. “In fact, I do.”
“I, on the other hand, knew I wanted Hattie from the first moment I saw her.”
Hattie’s brows shot up. “You did, did you?”
He flashed a grin at his wife. “From the moment you pushed me from a moving carriage, luv. How could I not?”
Hattie turned back to Grace. “A glutton for punishment.”
“Yes, well, I’m beginning to think it’s a family trait,” she said, dryly.
“But the duke . . .” Hattie said. “He doesn’t seem to have difficulty setting his sights on what he wants.”
“No,” Whit agreed, dryly. “He’s so certain he wants you, you had to stay in hiding for twenty years.”
Grace was no longer convinced that they had been running from Ewan, though. Something was changed.
Or maybe it was false hope.
Felicity tilted her head. “That is something of a black mark, to be sure.”
“What in hell are we discussing here,” Devil interjected. “Have you forgotten he kept us running scared for years? Have you forgotten that he knocked me over the head and tried to freeze me to death?”
“It’s important to note, you didn’t freeze to death,” Felicity said.
Devil’s brows rose in disbelief. “We shall have words when we get home, wife.”
She shook her head at the group. “We never have words when we get home.”
“That’s because you are distracting, but I shan’t be distracted from this,” he said. “I survived because you saved me.”
She turned to look at Grace. “Not only me. The duke left London the night he left Devil for dead. He’d known that he was being watched. If I hadn’t saved Devil, Whit would have—he would have come to tell Devil that Marwick was gone.”
It wasn’t an impossibility, Grace thought. But it was a gamble.
“I’ve never bought that argument,” Devil grumbled.
“Never?” Grace’s brows rose. “Is this a discussion that is had often?”
“It’s Hattie’s theory,” Whit grumbled. “I don’t like it”—he turned his attention to his wife—“as he exploded her.”
“Again,” Hattie said quite happily, “I was only slightly exploded.”