Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards 3)

He didn’t look to his brother, not even when he answered, “Not a duke any longer.”

Understanding dawned, bright and impossible, and they all looked to him. Grace shook her head. “You cannot mean it.”

“But I do. I spent the last year restoring the estate. It thrives. Her Majesty will no doubt delight in its lucrative return.”

He’d given it all up. For her. For them.

“You do not believe me?” He looked back to the inferno. “No one could survive that blaze. Not even the mad duke Marwick."

They all followed his gaze, his words settling as they watched the house burn.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Whit spoke. “Duke’s definitely dead. Seen it with my own eyes.”

Devil’s white teeth flashed in the glow of the fire. “Aye, lost to history as Burghsey House burned—all tragic like.”

Ewan looked to Devil and Whit, watching them carefully. “And with him, all the ghosts that have haunted us.”

And that was how Robert Matthew Carrick, Earl Sumner, Duke of Marwick—the duke who had never really existed—died.

“You’re lucky you walked out of there, bruv,” Whit added. “Else Grace would’ve been in there on your heels, willing the flames away and pulling you back from hell.”

Ewan turned to her, pulling her close. “If anyone is strong enough to win that battle, it’s you.”

She reached up for him, letting her fingers tangle in his hair. “I’ve plans for you, yet.”

That smile—the one that never failed to turn her inside out. “I’ve a plan or two of my own.”

“Tell me,” she said. What was next?

“A fresh start. A new life. Whatever it takes to be with the woman I love.”

“What are you offering?” she asked.

“Honest work by day, and your fantasies by night.”

Heat flooded through her at the sinful promise in the words. “Our fantasies,” she whispered, coming up on her toes and kissing him again, her hands coming to his face. “So, what, then, we make you Duke of the Garden?”

“I was hoping for something higher.”

“You can never go back to Mayfair,” she said. “Not if you’re killing off the Duke of Marwick. The whole world will know you there.”

“I know, love. I don’t want Mayfair. There’s nothing there for me. All the work I’ve done—Mayfair can’t make it right. Mayfair can’t make good on my long-ago promise to the Garden. And it can’t make good on the one I made to you.” His thumbs traced over her cheeks. “I don’t wish to be a duke any longer. Not when I might stand next to a queen. Not when I might be her king.”

You are a queen. I am your throne.

The words sizzled through her.

He set his forehead to hers and whispered. “I do not want to be Your Grace ever again. All I want is for you to be my Grace.” He kissed her again. “It’s always been you. Every day. Every night. Every minute. Since the beginning. This is the sum of my ambition: To be worthy of you. Of your love. Of your world. To stand by your side and change it.”

Yes.

“To live by your side. To love there and hang the rest of it.”

The fire blazed behind him—the end of their past—the beginning of their future.

He’d set the seat of the dukedom on fire.

“I’ll say this for it,” Devil spoke up from where he and Whit watched the house burn. “It’s one hell of a gesture.”

Whit grunted his agreement, and Grace heard the approval there, too. Ewan had set them free as well.

She couldn’t control the wild laugh that came at the commentary. “It’s true what they say. You’re a madman.”

“Maybe,” he allowed with a grin. “Mad about you, to be sure.”

Devil groaned at the words and Ewan kissed her again, before adding, “You said I could never have her back. But what if I don’t want her? What if I want you, instead? This isn’t first love. This is next. This is last.”

She nodded, tears in her eyes. “Yes.”

He smiled—that smile, the one that never failed to lay her low. “Yes.”

“I love you,” she said, the only words that she could find.

“Good,” he replied. “Tell me again.”

“I love you.”

He pulled her close. Kissed her deep. Smiled again. “Grace,” he said, softly, like a litany. “My Grace. Finally here.”

“Finally here,” she whispered, pressing kisses across his face. Along his jaw, over his cheek bones, at his brow, where she could smell the fire. “What do you need?”

The echo of all the times he’d said it to her.

“Tomorrow,” he said, his arms coming around her. “I need tomorrow. With you.”

The Future

“There you are.”

Ewan turned from his place at the edge of the rooftop to find his wife striding toward him, stunning gold corset over tight black trousers, beneath a topcoat lined with a matching gold thread. Her riotous red curls tumbled around her shoulders and her cheeks were rosy with the crisp air and a day in the sun.

He’d still never seen anything so beautiful, even now, after years by her side.

Before she could say anything more, he reached for her, pulling her close for a long, lingering kiss, stealing her breath and her pleasure before lifting his head and ending the caress, loving the way she lingered in his arms, her eyes closed in pleasure.

When she did open her eyes, it was with a dreamy smile—one he matched with his own, full of arrogant pride. There were very few things he liked more in life than the look of his wife in pleasure.

She laughed. “You look like a cat in the bin outside the fishmonger.”

He recoiled at the analogy. “You know the saying is the cat that got the cream, do you not?”

She waved away the correction. “Have you ever seen the sheer arrogance of a cat with a bit of stolen fish? You’re showing your not-so-humble beginnings, husband.”

He pulled her in for another kiss at that, until she went loose in his arms again and he lifted his head, pressing his forehead to hers and whispering, “Say it again.”

Pleasure lit in her beautiful brown eyes, the light from the setting sun turning them to fire. “Husband.”

They’d been married mere weeks after the fire at Burghsey House, in the church of St. Paul’s Covent Garden—where Ewan had been baptized thirty years earlier—not that a little thing like a falsified baptismal record would have stopped the Bareknuckle Bastards from a wedding and subsequent celebration. And afterward, Mr. and Mrs. Ewan Condry—the name his choice—had walked the streets of Covent Garden as king and queen, Grace showing Ewan every corner of the world where he had been born, and she had been made.

The dukedom had returned to the Crown after the fire, the old duke’s plans for legacy fully thwarted. The land and tenants in Essex still thrived, and the staff in Mayfair had been snatched up by myriad aristocratic households—the mistresses of which were all members of a certain Covent Garden club.

The responsibilities properly handled, Ewan had never looked back to his title, too focused on his work, his love, and his future.