In twenty years, she’d convinced herself it wasn’t true. That whatever they’d been—whatever she’d longed for—had been fantasy. A figment.
And she’d been half right. It had been fantasy.
But she should have known better than anyone that fantasy was often more real, and more powerful than reality.
And tonight, she wished to make it reality, full stop.
If only this carriage would go a touch faster.
She looked out the window again, the sunset still blazing red in the distance. It was only then that she realized that it was impossible. That it was far too late for sunset.
She wasn’t looking at the sun.
No.
“No.” She sat up and put her hands on the window. “What has he done?”
It wasn’t sunset.
It was fire.
Burghsey House was engulfed in flames.
The carriage came to a stop one hundred yards from the inferno, as close to the flames as the coachman was willing to get, the gig rocking with his weight coming down from the driving block even as Grace scrambled for the handle and flung the door open, flying from the carriage.
What had he done?
Where was he?
“What has he done?"
“He’s always been mad . . . but this . . .”
Whit and Devil were on her heels as she made her way past the horses, already running, headed for the manor, ablaze in the night.
He was burning it all down. For her.
“Grace!” came Devil’s shout behind her. “No!”
She didn’t listen, tearing through the darkness toward the flames.
A great steel arm came around her, and she screamed, writhing against it. Whit. “Get the fuck off me!” she yelled as he hauled her back.
“Stop,” he growled.
Frustration and fury came hot and angry, and she struggled against her brother’s grip, wild with the need to get free. To get to Ewan.
She turned back, her hand already fisting, already flying, already landing directly on his nose and setting his head back. “Christ!” he growled as he took the blow . . . and she took off once more.
“Grace! Stop!” Devil shouted as he caught her, this time.
“I have to get to him!” she screamed, struggling against his grip. “I’ll take you out, too!”
Devil was stronger than he looked. “And I’ll take it,” he said, in her ear. “I’ve taken worse for you, Gracie. We all have.”
She turned back, ready to do more damage, but Devil was also ready, blocking her fist with one of his heavy hands. “Grace,” he said again, calm and even, as though they were anywhere but here, on the ancestral lands of his father, where they’d all been through hell.
“Grace,” Whit repeated from Devil’s shoulder, where he’d caught up with them, nose bloodied, the red-gold glow of the fire making the worry on his face clear.
The worry on both their faces.
It was the worry that broke her. The softness in their eyes, those eyes that were part of a set. A trio. Her heart pounded. “He’s inside.”
“You don’t know that.” Devil.
She looked to him. “I do,” she said, panic flaring even as she looked to Whit. “I do. He’s in there, and he’s alone, and I have to get to him.”
She would be damned if she let this place have him.
Not after all they’d been through.
“Please,” she whispered.
“We made a promise, all those years ago,” Devil said, his voice ragged. “We promised him we would keep you safe. You ain’t runnin’ into fire.”
“And how many times did he run into fire for us?” she cried. “How many times did he do it here? That night, a lifetime ago, he chased us from this building . . . and he has lived in its fire ever since.”
“Grace . . .”
There was a beat of silence, and then, like a gift, Whit grunted.
Grace seized on the sound. “Please. I would know,” she whispered to him. “I would know if he were dead.”
Recognition flared in his eyes. A knowledge that came only from someone who knew the anguish she felt. “I believe you.”
Devil’s grip loosened.
Mistake.
Grace was already turning to run, smarter now. Her brother’s wicked curse rent the darkness as she headed for the house, for the flames. For the man she loved.
And then he was there. The door of the great manor house opened, and he was there, in shirtsleeves, tall and magnificent and alive, framed by the fire behind him, like no duke she’d ever seen before.
He was alive.
Grace pulled up short at the look of him, hiccupping her relief, their last conversation playing through her. The confession he offered her. No. Not a confession.
He’d called it a fight.
His last battle for her.
Second to last.
Because when she’d pushed him away, he’d made one final choice. Thrown one final punch. And landed it perfectly. He’d come here and set this place they had all loathed so much on fire.
“Fucking hell,” Devil said softly. “He did it.”
This mad, magnificent man had burned down the past.
For their future.
She was already moving, toward him, desperate to get to him, when the wicked crack tore through the night. He looked up at the sound, and she knew what was to come.
No!
She screamed his name into the night, tearing toward the house, her brothers on her heels, as the windows blew out of an upper window and he was swallowed by flame.
No. This place did not win him.
He was hers.
And as though she had willed it, the flames parted, and he was there again, walking through fire, just as he’d promised, tall and beautiful, covered in soot and ash, the house burning like hell itself behind him.
And he came straight for her.
She flew to him, launching herself into his arms, and he caught her, lifting her high against him, and kissing her, dark and deep and perfect, pulling away eventually to look into her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to get you. I came to tell you that I love you. I came to tell you that you’re mine, and I’m never letting you go again.”
He kissed her again, long and lush, setting their hearts to racing before he set his forehead to hers and said, “I shall allow it.”
Pleasure rioted through her at the lush words, at the promise in them. Forever. “What have you done?”
“What I should have done years ago,” he said. “I should have destroyed this place from the start. This place that threatened to destroy us every day we were here. And threatened to destroy me every day after you left.” He kissed her again, and she could taste the aching regret on his lips.
“It did not destroy you,” she said. “It made you so much stronger.”
“No. You made me stronger. Strong enough to free us. Strong enough to leave the past behind and build a new future. With you. In the Garden. If you’ll have me.”
Always.
She would always have him.
“Christ, Duke,” Devil said as he and Whit approached. “This would have really set the old man off.”
Ewan didn’t release Grace as they turned to face the house, blazing in the night, and watched as an interior wall collapsed, sending flames shooting from the empty places in the stone facade where windows used to be.