Knowing where he was going, she narrowed her gaze on him. “Women aren’t allowed the luxury of anger.”
“They say you’ve been mooning over him.”
Anger came then, to be sure, and her fingers tangled in the red scarf at her waist. “Who says that?” When Whit did not answer, she turned to Devil. “Who says that?”
Devil slowly tapped his walking stick on the floor twice. “You have to admit, it’s odd you’ve mended him. Zeva said you did it yourself. Collected him from death’s door. Refused to call a doctor.” He cast a pointed look to her desk, in disarray. “And the work of the club piling up as you nursemaid.”
It was Grace’s turn to scowl. “First, Zeva talks too much.” When they did not reply, she added, “Second, my desk always looks like that and you know it. And third, the more people who know he’s here, the less likelihood he gets his punishment.”
That was it. That was why she’d cleaned his wounds. Why she’d set her fingers to his brow, waiting for fever. Why she’d stood in the darkness, listening to the even rise and fall of his breath.
That was all.
It had nothing to do with the past.
“The more people who know he’s here, the more of a danger he is to all of us,” she added.
“He’s a danger to us all as it is,” Devil said.
Frustration flared at the words, calm and quiet, as though her brother was discussing the next shipment coming into port. She knew the steady truth in the words was just that—truth. Knew, too, that keeping the Duke of Marwick prisoner on the fourth floor of 72 Shelton was not the most sensible course of action.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t be able to kill him after everything he’s done. After what he did to Devil. After Hattie. After the shipments he came for. The men he had attacked. The ones who didn’t survive. Five men. The Garden is owed ’is blood.” Whit’s voice went hoarse even as surprise flooded through Grace. She hadn’t heard him speak so many words all at once in . . . well, perhaps ever.
Devil’s eyes were wide with similar surprise when she met them, but he recovered quickly. “He’s right, Grace. We deserve a crack at him.”
She shook her head. “No.”
The wicked scar down the side of Devil’s face went white as the muscle in his cheek flexed. “Then you’d best have a reason why.”
She pressed her lips together, her thoughts wild with frustration and fear and anger and a decades-long desperation for justice. And then she said, “Because he took the most from me.”
Silence fell, thick and potent, eventually punctuated by a low curse from Whit. She turned to Devil, long and lean, with his wicked scar—put there by Ewan’s hand. “Not long ago, we stood together on the docks and you said it, bruv. He took more from me than from you.”
Devil watched her for a long moment, his cane tapping against his boot. “And so? What, he gets your care? Tender mending from the woman he loves?”
“Get stuffed,” she said. “He doesn’t love me.”
Twin amber gazes leveled her.
Her heart began to pound. “He doesn’t.”
No reply.
“What he feels—it’s never been love.”
It didn’t matter that they’d called it that, when they were children, playing at a soft, kindhearted version of the emotion—young and fresh and too sweet to be real. Something they were never destined to see to adulthood.
She willed her brothers to drop it.
They did, miraculously. “What, then?” Whit asked. “He goes free? Back to Mayfair? Over my corpse does that happen, Grace. I don’t care what he took from you—we’ve been waiting for this day for years, and I’ll be damned if he gets returned to the life he stole.”
“You mistake me,” she said. Two decades earlier, when Ewan had betrayed them, they’d vowed retribution if he ever came for them. She’d promised it herself as she’d mended them. “You weren’t the only ones who promised him vengeance. I was there, too.”
Whit with his cracked ribs, Devil with his slashed face.
And Grace, with her broken heart and worse—her trust, shattered.
“And you think you’re strong enough to keep that promise, Gracie?” Whit asked, low and dark.
Grace lowered her hand to the scarf at her waist, her fingers tangling in the fabric there. “I know I am.”
A knock sounded, punctuating the vow.
“Revenge is mine.” She looked to Beast. “I shall fight you both for it, and you won’t like the outcome.”
Silence, again, as the two most feared men in London considered the words. Devil was the first to give his agreement. A tap of his stick. A quick nod.
Whit growled, low at the back of his throat. “If you don’t . . .”
“I shall,” she vowed.
The knock repeated itself, louder and quicker. “Come,” she called out, the word still in the air when the door opened to reveal another of her lieutenants, Veronique.
Where Grace kept the finances and managed the business beyond the walls of 72 Shelton and Zeva handled the inner workings and requirements of the clientele, Veronique ensured the entire operation ran safely. Now, the black woman stood sentry in the doorway, her coat hanging open to reveal a linen shirt, tight-fitting breeches, and high, over-the-knee leather boots to match those Grace wore. What did not match was the pistol strapped to one thigh, at the perfect height to be drawn without hesitation.
Still holstered.
Not that it mattered.
Dark eyes found Grace’s with urgent purpose. “Dahlia.”
Grace did not hesitate. “Where is he?”
Veronique’s gaze tracked to Devil and Whit, and then back to her.
What had she wrought?
“He ripped the door off the hinge.”
Beast cursed, already moving across the room, Devil drawn tight like a bow. “Where?” Grace asked, putting herself in her brother’s path, ignoring the riot of emotion that came with the question.
Beast looked to the other woman. “Is he gone?”
Something like affront came over Veronique’s face. “No. We took him down.” She met Grace’s eyes. “Conscious.”
Another emotion she did not care to name surged.
“I wager he loved that,” Devil said, his smirk audible.
Veronique turned a wide smile on the Bareknuckle Bastards, the Caribbean in her voice as she replied, “He didn’t go without a fight, but we were good for it.”
“I’ve no doubt,” Devil said. The 72 Shelton guards were the best fighters in the Garden, and everyone knew it.
There wasn’t time for pride, though. “He’s asking for Grace.” The name was foreign on Veronique’s lips—it had never been spoken in front of her, and still, the other woman knew.
And here it was, the past, come for a reckoning.
Beast leveled her with a look. “He’s seen you.”
She considered denying it. After all, the room had been dark. He couldn’t have possibly really seen her. And still, “For a heartbeat.”
I touched him.
I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t stop it.
“I’m surprised they took him down, then,” Beast replied.
“Why?”
“Because you just gave him something to fight for.”
She didn’t ask him to clarify. She was too unsettled by what he meant.
Veronique filled the silence. “What shall we do with him, Dahlia?”
She didn’t hesitate, the name a welcome reminder of her purpose. Of the life she had built in the two decades since she’d left him. Of the dominion over which she reigned. “If he’s well enough to take a door off the wall, he’s well enough to fight.”
“He’s strong enough for it; gave the lads a good bout.”
She nodded. “Then I get my bout, too. This ends tonight.” She crossed the room toward her private chamber, already untying the scarf at her waist.
Devil’s words followed her. “I almost feel sorry for the bastard
. He won’t know what’s hit him.”
And then, Whit’s reply. “Almost.”
Chapter Five
She was alive.
Even now, on his knees, hands bound behind his back, blinded by the sack that had been placed over his head when he’d been subdued, muscles straining from the tussle that had brought him down mere feet from the doorway where he’d seen her, he was consumed by that single thought.
She was alive, and she had run from him.
He hadn’t been knocked unconscious in the fray—he’d been taken to the ground, then hauled, bound and blindfolded, to a room large enough to echo with quiet—somewhere in the distance was a low hum of unintelligible sound. The people who’d brought him there had checked his bonds and—once certain he could not escape—had left. He’d waited, the boards beneath his knees slick with something that eased his movement, rubbing his wrists raw on the ropes that refused to budge. He’d waited there as seconds turned to minutes, to a quarter of an hour. Half.
Counting time was a skill he’d honed as a boy, locked in the darkness, waiting for light to return to him. Waiting for her to return. And so it seemed as natural as breathing that he would count the minutes now, even as he was tormented by the idea that he might not be waiting for her this time.
He might be giving her time to run.
And still the fear that she might have fled was overshadowed by the sheer, unmitigated relief that she lived. How many times had his brothers told him she was dead? How many times had he stood in the darkness—in Covent Garden, in Mayfair, on the Docklands—and heard them lie? His brothers, who had escaped their childhood home with Grace in their care . . . how many times had they lied?
She’d run north, they’d told him. Become a maid. Lost touch. And then . . .
How many times had he been tempted to believe them?
Hundreds. Thousands. With every breath since the first time Devil had told that lie.
And then, when he had finally believed them, how he’d gone mad with grief. He’d wanted nothing but their punishment at his hands, under his boot, in his power. To the point where he’d set the London Docklands aflame, willing to watch it burn as punishment for what they had taken from him.
The only person he’d ever loved.
No longer gone.
Alive.
The thought—and the peace that came with it—altered him at his core. For years, he’d ached to find her. To know that she was well. For years, he’d told himself that if he could only see for himself—prove, without doubt, that she was well and happy—that would be enough. And now, he did know that. She was well. She lived.
That single, perfect thought consumed him as he waited, unable to stop thinking of the dark shadow of her figure in the doorway to the room from which he’d broken free. Unable to stop wondering how the girl he’d once loved had changed. The way she would look at him, now. Again.
A door opened off to the left, behind him, and he turned toward it, his vision stolen by the rough burlap sack over his head. “Where is she?”
No response.
Uncertainty and desperation flared as the newcomer approached, footsteps slow and even. Behind, there were others. Two, maybe three, but they did not approach. Guards.
His heart raced.
Where was she?
He craned his neck, swiveling on his knees, ignoring the twinge in his thigh as he moved. Pain wasn’t an option. Not now. “Where is she?”
No answer as the door closed in the far corner of the room. Silence fell, those slow footsteps drawing ever nearer, an ominous promise. He straightened, steeling himself for what might come. Having one’s sight and movement hindered did not bode well, and as the bold newcomer approached, he prepared for attack.
Whatever physical blow came would be nothing compared to the mental torture.
What if he’d lost her, just as he’d found her?
The thought echoed through him like a scream. He squirmed, the sack over his head suddenly suffocating, the bindings at his wrists now too tight as he fought and twisted and writhed to no avail. “Tell me where she is!”
The command hung heavy in the silent room, and for a heartbeat, there was no movement, the entire space so still that he wondered if he’d been left alone once more. If he’d imagined the entire thing. If he’d imagined her.
Please, let her be alive. Let me see her.
Just once.
Like that, the sack over his head was gone. And his wild prayer was answered.
He sat back on his heels, his jaw slackened like he’d just taken a blow.
For twenty years, he’d dreamed of her, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He’d imagined how she might have aged, how she might have grown and changed, how she would have gone from girl to woman. And still, he was not prepared for it.
Yes, twenty years had changed her. But Grace had not gone from girl to woman; she had gone from girl to goddess.
There were little hints of her youth, only visible to someone who’d known her then. Who’d loved her then. The bright orange curls of her childhood had darkened to copper, though they remained thick and wild, tumbling around her face and shoulders like an autumn wind. The crooked scar on one brow was barely noticeable—only there if you knew to look for it. He noticed. He’d been there when she’d earned it, learning to fight in the woods. Ewan had put his fist into Devil’s face for the infraction before wiping her blood away with the sleeve of his shirt.
And though she revealed nothing in the moment as she stared at him, Ewan drank in the fine lines at the corners of her mouth and at the outer edges of her eyes, lines that proved she knew well how to laugh, and had done it often over the last twenty years. Who had made her laugh? Why hadn’t it been he?
There’d been a time when he was the only one who could. There, on his knees, wrists bound, he struggled with a wild urge to do it again.
The thought consumed him as he met her beautiful brown eyes, ringed with black, the same as they had been when they were children, but with none of the openness they’d once had for him. None of the adoration. None of the love.
The fire in those eyes was not love, but loathing.
Still, he drank her in.
She’d always been tall, but she’d grown into her awkward lankiness, nearly six feet of it, towering above him, and with curves that made him ache. She stood in an impossible pool of light—the space somehow cast in golden glow, despite the scarcity of candles in the room. There were others there—he had heard them enter, hadn’t he?—but he could not see them, and he did not try. He wouldn’t waste a moment looking at others when he could look, instead, at her.
She turned away, crossing out of the light, out of sight.
“No!”
She didn’t respond, and Ewan held his breath, waiting for her to come back. When she did, it was with a long strip of linen in her right hand, and another slung over her shoulder. She began to methodically wrap the material about her left knuckles and wrist.
That’s when he understood.
She wore the same trousers from earlier in the evening—black and fitted tight to her legs, long and perfect. The boots over them were made of supple, dark brown leather that hugged her calves, ending a half foot above her knees. They were scuffed at the toes, not enough to look unkempt, but enough to prove that she wore them regularly—and did business in them.
At her waist, two belts. No. One belt and a scarf, scarlet, inlaid with gold thread—the gold thread he’d always promised her when they were children, playing at dreams. She’d bought it herself. Above the belt and the scarf, a white linen shirt, the arms cut short, leaving her bare from her fingers to above her elbows. The shirt was tucked in carefully and tied up the middle, no loose fabric to be found.
No loose fabric, because loose fabric was a liability in a fight.
And as she wrapped her wrist carefully, around and around, like she’d done it a hundred times before—a thousand—Ewan knew a fight was what she had come for.
He didn’t care. Not as long as he was the one to give it to her.
He would give her whatever she wished.
“Grace,” he said, and though he meant it to be lost in the sawdust on the floor between them, the word—her name, his title—carried like gunshot in the room.
She didn’t react. Not a flinch, not even a flicker of recognition in her face. No change in her posture. And something unpleasant whispered through him.
“I hear you tore my door off the wall,” she said; her voice, low and liquid and magnificent.
“I’ve brought London to its knees searching for you,” he replied. “You think a door would keep me away?”
Her brows rose. “And yet here you are, on your knees, so it seems something has kept you from me after all.”
He lifted his chin. “I’m looking at you, love, so I don’t feel kept from you at all.”
A slight narrowing of her gaze was the only indication he’d struck true. She finished wrapping her wrist, tucking the end of the bandage neatly in the palm of her hand before beginning to wrap the second. And only then, only once she’d begun the measured, methodical movement, did she speak.
“It is strange, is it not, that we call it bareknuckle fighting, but we do not fight with bare fists?”
He did not reply.
“Of course, we did fight with bare knuckles. When we came here.” She met his eyes then. “To London.”
The words were a blow, harsher than any she could have given him, with or without the wraps. A reminder of what they’d faced when they came here. He went still beneath them.
“I can still remember the first night,” she said. “We slept in a field just outside the city. It was warm and we were under the stars and we were terrified but I’d never felt such freedom. Such hope.” She met his eyes. “We were free of you.”
Another blow, nearly knocking him back.
“I stitched Devil’s face in that field, with a needle I’d snatched as we left the manor, and thread pulled from my skirts.” She paused. “It didn’t occur to me that I might need unripped skirts to find work.”
He closed his eyes. Christ. They’d been in such danger.
“No matter,” she said, “I learned quickly. After the third day of no kind of work that would care for all three of us—no decent food to be had, and no decent roof over our heads, we learned that we had limited choices. But I—I was a girl—and I had one more readily available to me than Dev and Whit.”
Daring and the Duke EPB Page 4