Dahlia made to turn away from the conversation, but the duchess set an emerald-gloved hand on her arm, staying her movement. Dahlia slid her a look. “You can’t be interested in whichever eligible bachelor they’re on about—”
The duchess smiled, but did not move her hand. “I like a good transformation story as much as the next.”
A new participant joined the conversation. “He was at the Beaufetheringstone ball last week—he danced every dance! One with me, and it was like dancing on a cloud. So skilled. And he’s so handsome now. And that smile! He’s not dour any longer.”
A sigh followed. “So lucky for you!”
Dahlia rolled her eyes. “Whoever the poor man is, he’s clearly in the market for a wife if he went from dour to dancing in a year.”
“Mmm,” said the duchess.
“My brother says he’s been at the club for a week, introducing himself to . . . fathers!” came a breathless reply.
The duchess looked to Dahlia. “In the market indeed.”
Dahlia offered the other woman a smug smile. “A tale as old as time. And not in the least bit interesting, except to say that I’ll fetch the betting book if you’d like to make a wager.”
“I hear he’s hosting a masquerade Wednesday, next.” The young woman’s slender hand touched the edge of her stunning golden mask as she tittered, “And here we are, already masked!”
“Well,” came the reply. “That does it—everyone knows a mask is for dalliances. I wager he’s already chosen her. There will be a new duchess before Christmas.”
Duchess.
The word sliced through the air.
It wasn’t he.
“Now that’s interesting,” the duchess in attendance said quietly. “It’s not as though there are eligible dukes just lying about.”
“No,” Dahlia said, distracted. “You had to hie off to a secluded isle for yours.”
“And he never comes when he’s called,” the duchess replied with a tsk. “But this one . . .”
Curiosity got the better of Dahlia. “Who is it?” One shoulder lifted, then fell in wordless ignorance, and Dahlia raised her voice to the women who had been speaking. “The duke you discuss,” she prodded, telling herself it was idle curiosity. Telling herself it was simply because information was currency. “Does this paragon of manhood have a name?”
It wasn’t he. It couldn’t be.
The young woman in the simple black domino answered first, eagerness in her tone, as though she’d been waiting for the moment she could speak to Dahlia. Her lips curved into the kind of smile that came with a magnificent secret, slow and easy, as though she had all the time in the world to share it.
“Who is it?” Dahlia repeated, sharp and urgent, unable to stop herself.
What in hell was wrong with her?
The young woman’s eyes went wide behind her mask. “Marwick,” she said simply. As though she wasn’t sucking all the air from the room.
Blood rushed into Grace’s ears, a roar of heat and frustration and anger clouding all her better judgment. And that name, rioting through her. Marwick.
Impossible. They had to be wrong.
Hadn’t she sent him away? Hadn’t he left, into the darkness?
She turned to the duchess. “I don’t believe it.” He couldn’t be back. He’d left a year ago and disappeared—there was no reason for him to be back.
Of course, it wasn’t true. There was a singular reason for him to be back.
The other woman plucked a glass of champagne off a passing tray with languid, casual movement, unaware of the thunder of Grace’s heart. Of the way her mind stormed. “And why not? Every duke needs a duchess.”
I chose the title to make you my duchess.
You were to be duchess.
“He’s here to marry,” she said.
“What a bore,” the duchess replied.
Grace was many things, but she was not bored. Christ. He was back.
He was back.
And like that, the storm quieted. She knew what she must do.
She met the other woman’s eyes. “I require an invitation to that masquerade.”
Chapter Eight
If she hadn’t known that the Marwick House masquerade was hosted by the Duke of Marwick himself, she never would have believed it. There was nothing about the wild party spread out before her that appeared even remotely suited to the man she’d sent packing a year earlier.
That man would have found every bit of this event frivolous and unworthy of his time. Of course, that man had spent his waking hours chasing Grace, until he’d found her, and discovered that the girl he sought no longer existed.
In the week since she’d discovered his return, she’d done everything she could to understand it. What he sought. How, and why.
And whom.
Because there was only one option for the Duke of Marwick to have returned to London and presented himself in society—no longer as the mad duke they’d once imagined him to be, but now as something else, apparently?
The words of the women in the club echoed through her.
So handsome. That smile! He danced every dance. It was like dancing on a cloud.
She knew the last. They’d learned together—part of his father’s silly contest. For just this purpose. Every duke needs his duchess.
And the Duke of Marwick was back to secure his own, finally.
You were to be duchess.
She resisted the echo of the words from a year earlier. Resisted the urge to dwell on them, on the ache in them as he called them across the ring—his last attempt to win her back, even as she’d made her point. He would never win her back.
Because she was no longer the girl he once loved, and she would never be that girl again.
But that did not change the singular fact that long ago, they’d made a deal. No marriage. No children. No continuation of the Marwick line—the only vow they could make beyond the reach of the boys’ father.
And if he’d returned to marry? To produce an heir?
Grace had no choice but to put a stop to it.
And if he’d returned for something else?
Then she had no choice but to put a stop to that, too. Because every second the Duke of Marwick was in the public eye put all of them at risk. He’d stolen a title, and they’d all been a part of it. She’d be damned if he put any of them in danger for his own chance at something more—not when Devil and Whit had happiness in hand with their wives and young families begun.
He didn’t get to return and claim a future.
Not when he’d risked all of theirs without hesitation.
She hadn’t told her brothers that he’d returned, knowing that they would insist on joining her tonight. Knowing they might insist on worse—on meeting Ewan in the darkness and doing what they’d vowed to do years ago. What she’d prevented them from doing, for fear of what might come of them if they’d been caught—the death of a duke was not something easily swept beneath the carpet.
So it had to be Grace who met the Duke of Marwick on his turf, to divine his purpose and mete out his justice. After all, hadn’t it been Grace who had told him never to return? Hadn’t it been Grace who had delivered the blows that night? And not only the physical ones—they would heal and be forgotten—but the ones that she saw land. The ones that had stripped him of his purpose.
Had it been so easy?
She pushed the thought away. It did not matter. What mattered was that he was back, and with a new purpose, winning the aristocracy with his handsome face and his winning smile and his dancing. And she would stop it.
Grace scowled up at Marwick House, a home so elaborate that it spanned nearly an entire Mayfair block, taking in the happy, inviting windows, gleaming gold in the darkness, providing teasing glimpses of revelers within. She spied a Cleopatra with a Marc Antony, and a shepherdess lingering in the window, crook in hand, as though she was waiting for her sheep to arrive.
As she inspected the windows, a gaggle of
people pushed by dressed as chess pieces, black king, white queen, black knight, white rook. Moments later, a masked bishop arrived, and for a fleeting moment Grace thought he might be a clever addition to the chess pieces, but things began to make sense when his companion appeared, dressed in the diaphanous garments of a nun.
London had arrived in droves for the Marwick masque—a fact that left Grace with twin realizations: first, Ewan must have changed, as most of London hadn’t been able to stomach him last year—duke or no; and second, the crush of people would provide the perfect cover for her attendance.
She would get in, sort out this new, improved Ewan, discover his goals, and get out to set plans in motion to end them. And being shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the city could only increase the possibility of her success.
She straightened her shoulders and fluffed her emerald skirts before ensuring that her bejeweled silver mask was properly fitted to her face—large enough to cover three-quarters of it, leaving only her dark eyes and dark red lips visible. And then she entered the fray.
The crush of revelers swept her up the stairs and down the long, elaborate hallway of Marwick House, the movement slowing as the ballroom came into view. All around her, there were gasps and delighted sighs of surprise. One man somewhere to her left said, “Marwick just made enemies of every hostess in Mayfair.”
The crowd parted and Grace saw the room, her heart stopping in her chest for a long moment as she took in the elaborate decor—until it began to thunder.
He’d recreated their place.
The copse of trees on the western edge of the Marwick estate that had been Grace’s favorite spot—their favorite spot. The ballroom was an echo of it.
Jaw slack, Grace entered the massive, welcoming space, her gaze turned up to the ceilings, where the chandeliers glittered happily from a sea of green flora and exotic flowers. Whoever had decorated for the party had spared no expense, designing a full bower of leaves and live flowers that hung low enough over the cavernous space as to add an air of privacy to the raucous ballroom.
As if the canopy above weren’t enough, there were three tree trunks rising up from the dance floor, massive and towering, breaking the flow of dancers as they moved around the room. They were made to be oaks, ancient and soaring, evoking the outdoors. Their outdoors.
Without thinking, she stepped out onto the floor—summoned to those trees as though on a string, and she discovered that the marble tiles had been covered in a soft moss that had to have cost him a fortune.
And that was before the fortune it would cost him to have it removed. Staring down at her feet, at her jewel-green skirts against the moss, gleaming in the candlelight like summer grass in dappled sunlight, Grace’s mind raced, distracted from her work and her plans for that evening—and by what she had discovered here, in his home.
Memory.
Unbidden and unwelcome and unavoidable.
She was thirteen again. It was a warm summer day, and the duke was away from the estate for some reason, and they were released to their childhood. Not that the boys knew quite what to do with childhood, or with freedom, but when their wicked father was gone, they did what they could.
Whit and Devil had headed straight for the stream, where they’d splashed and played and fought like the brothers they were.
Grace had watched them for a while, and then headed into the copse of trees to find Ewan, now more than her friend. Her love.
Not that he knew it. How could she tell him, when their life was in such upheaval? When they had every day only at the whim of his monstrous father?
He’d been seated on the thick, mossy ground, leaning back against the largest of the oaks, his eyes closed. Sound was muffled in the quiet, magical space, but it hadn’t mattered. He’d heard her arrive.
He didn’t open his eyes. “You didn’t have to follow me.”
She approached, Devil and Whit’s shouts falling away. “I wanted to.”
He looked at her then, his eyes glittering in the strange, ethereal light. “Why? I’m not like them.”
He wasn’t. The trio might have been born on the same day, to the same father, but each had been raised by a different mother. Ewan wasn’t an orphan like Devil. Nor was he raised with books and a hope for education like Whit. He’d spent the first decade of his life in a Covent Garden brothel, raised by a cast-off mistress and a dozen other women who’d taken him in when his mother had turned up with her expensive gowns and her jeweled hairpins.
She hadn’t kept them, but she’d kept him, and that was what had mattered, Grace knew.
Grace knew, and she thanked God and his mother for it every day.
It had been eighteen months they had all been together, long enough for them to have learned each other’s stories. Or, for Grace to have learned their stories. She didn’t have stories. None worth sharing.
She hadn’t been allowed them.
The only stories she had were the ones that she’d written with these boys, and with this one, in particular—the tall, blond, impossibly handsome boy she’d always imagined was half magic for the way he could win her in a moment with a smile. For the way he masterminded their silent battle with the man who seemed to own their fates.
That day, though, he’d been different. More serious. And Grace had sensed what was to come, even if she hadn’t known it with certainty. It was almost over.
She’d dropped to her knees in front of him, the rich, earthy scent of the glade cloaking them. “You’re going to win.”
His gaze went sharp. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.” She nodded. “I’ve known it from the start. You’re strong and smart and you look the part—Devil is too angry, and Whit is too uncertain. It will be you.” The old duke wanted an heir, and it would be Ewan.
And it would be soon.
“I am angry,” he said, fiercely. “I am uncertain.”
“But you don’t show it,” she said, her chest growing tighter.
“I can’t.” The whisper was the kind that shouldn’t have come from a boy. It was too grown, and Grace hated his father for it. “I can’t.”
She reached for him, her fingers traced the high arc of his cheek. “You can with me.”
He’d gone stern, then—stormy enough for her to forget the sunshine beyond the trees. He’d grabbed her hand in his, pulling her touch away. “I don’t want to show it with you. I never want you to see it.”
Confusion flared. “Why?”
A pause, and then his touch changed, and he wasn’t pushing her away anymore. He was pulling her closer, coming up to his knees to meet her. He set his forehead to hers, and they stayed like that for an age, Grace’s heart pounding in that mysterious way that young hearts do, with a promise of something that cannot be named, and a hope for something that cannot be imagined.
And then he’d kissed her. Or she’d kissed him.
It didn’t matter who did the kissing. Only that the kiss happened. Only that it had transformed them both in the way firsts did, making itself memory that could never be lost.
Memory that crashed through her now, twenty years later, in this room that felt like it had been designed as pure resurrection of that memory, which felt as though it had happened yesterday. As though it had happened only moments earlier. As though it was happening now.
She took a breath, grateful for the shield provided by the crush of people gathered around her, all agog at the elaborate decor, and for the mask and wig that protected her from discovery—not that anyone in the room who might recognize her would reveal her identity. After all, if someone knew Dahlia, then they had reason to frequent 72 Shelton Street, and that was a far more dangerous piece of gossip than Dahlia’s introduction to society.
“Playing at being a brunette tonight, are we?” someone said close at her ear.
The irony of the intrusion at that particular moment, as Grace dwelled on her anonymity, was not lost, though the new arrival was a more than welcome intrusion, forcing her to stop th
inking of the past.
She turned to the other woman—a woman whose dark eyes glittered behind an intricately worked peacock mask—all while ensuring that her own masks, physical and emotional, were well in place. She immediately recognized the Duchess of Trevescan—who had procured the invitation Grace had requested.
“Am I that easily identified?”
The duchess smiled. “I make it my business to know everyone.” That much was true. The duchess had the farthest reach of any woman Grace knew—which made her a powerful foe and an essential friend.
“The wig is fantastic,” the duchess said, reaching to tug on one of the mahogany curls artfully piled atop Grace’s head. “French?”
“French.” Brought in on one of her brothers’ ships two weeks earlier.
“I suppose in your case, natural is a dead giveaway. It’s gorgeous, anyway.”
“I could say the same for you.” Grace dipped her head, allowing surprise into her voice. “I so rarely see you masked.”
The duchess laughed and shook out the skirts of her magnificent gown, sending a riot of silken teals and sapphires and greens and purples shimmering in the glow of the canopy, along with the explosion of peacock feathers that had been added to the costume. “You rarely see me masked because you regularly see me in a location that should not require masks, as you well know. Men never hide their identity when visiting their private clubs. Why should I?”
It wasn’t entirely true, but Grace could not deny the double standard that existed when it came to gender and pleasure. Nevertheless, she could not stop herself from looking about to see who might be listening.
“Don’t worry,” the duchess said. “The masks ensure that absolutely no one is interested in what we have to say.” She sighed. “You see why I much prefer to be fully identifiable?”
Before Grace could reply, the duchess continued. “I confess, having never seen you on this side of Piccadilly, I was rather surprised when you asked for an invitation.” She flipped open her enormous peacock-feather fan and added, “Are you going to tell me why you took such a keen interest in this particular party?”
Daring and the Duke EPB Page 8