“I have always been something of an arborist.”
The duchess burst out laughing. “What a tragic lie. I can only assume it has something to do with Marwick’s obvious search for a bride.”
Grace allowed one side of her mouth to rise in a little smirk. “No. As I said, I quite like moss, and where else can you find so much of it in city limits?” The other woman’s laugh faded to a grin as she added, “And indoor oak trees—what a treat! Of course I angled for an invitation.”
The duchess rapped her on the arm with her ridiculous fan and said, “I shall divine the truth, you know.”
Grace offered her most secret smile. “No, you shan’t, Your Grace, but I invite you to try.”
The other woman’s brown eyes twinkled behind her feathered mask. “Accepted.”
Before Grace could reply, the air around them changed, heralding something new and exciting. Not something.
Someone.
She turned to look behind her, and a thrum of heat shot through her as her gaze fell on a tall, handsome man in perfectly tailored black trousers and coat, white cravat starched to perfection. A simple black domino that was a mere nod to the festivity and not designed to hide his identity—not that he could hide his identity in this room.
The Duke of Marwick, whom she had not seen in a year, since she’d put him to his knees and thrown him out into the streets, stood not ten feet from her.
Six feet.
Three.
She hated the breath that caught in her throat as she took him in, close enough to touch if she reached for him. Close enough to notice how he had changed. He was still tall and lean and handsome, but now, somehow broader than he’d been, more muscular, and with a face that held fewer hollows, even as his cheeks remained perfectly carved below his mask.
Not that she’d ever mistake his beautiful whisky-colored eyes, with their dark fringe of lashes. And if they weren’t enough? That full, handsome mouth was his and his alone.
She’d marveled at his handsomeness in the club a year earlier, but tonight—he put the past to shame.
He’d been eating.
He’d been sleeping.
More than the physical, however, he seemed changed in other ways—his movements more languid, his smile easier—his smile existent.
He’d been well.
For a moment, Grace wondered if perhaps she was wrong, and it wasn’t he, after all. Except of course it was, because she would never mistake him. He was written upon her, for better or worse. Etched with desire and sorrow and anger.
Seizing the last, she watched his gaze slide over the duchess’s extravagant gown, taking in the wild costume even as she extended a hand. He accepted it with perfect manners and bowed low over it as she delighted in the treatment. “Ah! Another surprising discovery among the rabble.”
“Did you think I would not stay for the revelry?” He offered a look of joking offense, so utterly unlike him, and the room around Grace began to tilt.
He’d heard her. He’d listened. He’d left her.
“I think you’ve never cared for revelry before,” the duchess intoned, leaning in close—close enough for something in Grace to hesitate. “Why start now?”
“Perhaps I’ve never had such winning company,” he offered, his lips curving in a magnificent smile, leaving Grace with the wild, momentary thought that she might be going mad. And then he turned and met her eyes, and the damn man winked.
He didn’t recognize her.
He couldn’t. Nothing about his response to her indicated that he recognized her in the slightest. How could that be?
It didn’t matter. Indeed, it made things easier.
Still, shock wound through her, even as she should have been satisfied—after all, wasn’t this what she’d intended? To be hidden from him in plain sight? Wasn’t this part of the plan she’d worked on again and again as she’d heavily kohled her eyes and stained her lips? And put on Dahlia’s mask?
She would never again meet him as Grace.
Especially not here, in his Mayfair home—the home of a line of dukes. And even if she did—even if he had expected her—he wouldn’t expect her like this. Not elaborately turned out in the dress, the mask, the hair, the maquillage—all perfectly designed for a woman of the height of aristocracy. A woman who’d had the best education, a battalion of ladies’ maids, wealth beyond reason, and a life of privilege, sparing no expense.
He’d expect her to come as she always had, in trousers and topcoat, boots over her knees and weapons over her shoulders, ready to take prisoners.
And if she had come, he wouldn’t have smiled at her.
They did not smile at each other any longer.
He bowed low, and for a moment, Grace was thrown back in time, or maybe not back. Maybe tossed sideways, into another time, another place, when they would have crossed paths not as once friends and forever enemies, but as a lady and a gentleman.
A duke and a duchess.
She rejected the thought and relished his ignorance as she sank into a low curtsy.
“Your Grace.”
He tilted his head at her words. “You have the better of me.”
She willed Grace away for now, letting Dahlia take the lead with a flirt. She was here for a reason, after all. “I am sure that is not true.”
“It is.” He leaned in closer. “Do you have a name?”
Only the one you gave me.
The response—which she would never say aloud—tore through her, but years of practice kept her from revealing it. “Not tonight.”
That smile again, the one that set her back with confusion and something she was not interested in naming. Something she would never take for herself.
He looked to the duchess. “And you, lady, will you tell me your name?”
The other woman looked at the duke, and then Grace, and then the duke once more. “I’m not certain you wish to know my name, Duke.” Grace’s eyes went wide at the reply, even as the words dissolved into laughter, bright as bells. “In any event, I’m afraid I tire of conversation—no offense.” She was one of the few people in the world who could say such a thing and actually offer no offense. “And I see an empty swing hanging on the tree in the distance.” She wiggled her full bottom beneath her vibrant skirts. “Waiting for a peacock, I’m sure.”
Before a reply could form, the duchess was off, pushing between an elaborately dressed Marie Antoinette and a tall, forbidding plague doctor, and disappearing into the crowd, no doubt delighting in the idea that a duke and the owner of one of London’s most exclusive brothels were conversing—and due to her own influence. Grace gave a little growl of disappointment that they’d been left alone, even as she knew that alone was the only way she had a hope of understanding why he’d returned.
“Is your friend always so . . .”
“Fleeting?” Grace supplied. “Yes.”
“I was going to say eccentric,” he replied.
“That, too,” she said.
He looked to her then, “And you?”
She couldn’t help the little, secret smile. “I, too, am eccentric.”
“I was asking if you planned to be fleeting.” Somehow, in the crush and cacophony of people, his words were low and lush, and they settled deep in her belly even as she reminded herself that she was not to derive pleasure from this man.
This man who had thieved everything from her.
Tonight was not about pleasure. It was about planning.
But he had designed a room and an event that was pure fantasy, and for her to understand why—to properly understand what he was planning and cut him off at the pass—Grace was going to have to play.
Which should not be difficult—did she not trade in play?
She was not a fool—she knew what he asked for.
From whom?
She ignored the insidious whisper, and the thread of unease that came with it. Ignored, too, the idea that he flirted with another woman. Let him flirt. Let him imagine a future of par
tnership, as though she hadn’t vowed to take that from him from the start.
Grace would wear her mask and give him what he wished, and in the process, she would clarify the objective of his return. Of his change. Of his newfound entrance into this world they’d always sworn never to embrace.
This world to which he was never supposed to return.
That was why she was here. Reconnaissance.
In, then out. Here, then gone.
“Isn’t everyone here fleeting?”
“Are they? They’re the collective product of centuries of aristocratic breeding.”
Not you, though, she thought. Not I. “I’ve never put much stock in aristocratic breeding, Duke.” The title was a test. Would he flinch?
He placed a hand to his chest in mock disappointment, his winning smile widening. “You wound me, lady. Truly.”
He didn’t recognize her. Something loosened in her chest, relaxing her. Settling her into her role. “Look around you,” she said, waving a hand in the direction of a Henry VIII and a Sir Thomas More nearby, in raucous conversation with an Anne Boleyn and a Duchess of Devonshire, wig so high it was a miracle she could keep her head straight above her scandalously low-cut gown. “None of you can bear to behave as you wish without masks. What is the purpose of the power you’ve amassed, if not to find delight?”
He tilted his head in her direction. “We? Are you not one of us?”
She shook her head. “I am none of you.”
“And you found us how? Wandering lost in my gardens?”
She couldn’t help the hint of smile. “I’ve an invitation.”
“From me?”
She ignored the question. “There are whole swaths of the city that would do anything for a chance at the joy you can take in an instant,” she said, instead. “And still you hesitate, allowing yourselves a taste of pleasure only when you can reasonably deny you’ve ever had it. What a waste.”
“What then? Take pleasure as it comes?”
The words washed over her like silk. That was precisely what she meant. She, who dealt in pleasure as it came.
Grace smiled. “I am nothing if not a realist.”
“Tell me something real, then.”
She did not hesitate. “I am fleeting. So is this evening.” Her gaze flickered past him, to the massive trees soaring above the crush of revelers. “But you knew that already.”
“Did I?” He was watching her carefully, and she resisted the urge to look away, afraid he would look too hard. See too much.
Instead, she pulled her masks tight to her and gave him a knowing smile. “You’ve turned your ballroom into the outdoors, Your Grace. If that is not fleeting, I don’t know what is.”
“Mmm,” he said, and the low rumble warmed her, even as she knew she should not let it. “And so? What should we do with tonight?”
He didn’t know it was she. The proof of it was there in his gaze—full of curiosity and playfulness.
She was a stranger. She’d planned to be, of course. But she hadn’t expected him to be one, as well.
“The same as we should do with every night,” she said, softly, suddenly more honest than she had imagined she would be with him. “We should savor it.”
Silence—and then, “Would you like to dance?”
She was caught off guard by the question. When was the last time she’d been asked to dance? Had she ever been asked to dance? Once or twice, she supposed, in the Garden, by someone full of liquid courage. But the last time she’d danced like this? In a ballroom?
It had been with him.
And he was made for it. Handsome and charming and with a smile that could win the coldest of skeptics, standing in front of her, dressed like any woman’s fantasy.
You could do with a fantasy now and then.
Veronique’s words from earlier in the week whispered through her, and on their heels certainty and focus. Drive. Purpose.
This was not fantasy. This was reconnaissance.
She had a plan.
She placed her gloved hand in his outstretched one.
“I would very much like to dance.”
Chapter Nine
He’d known it was her from the moment she’d stepped into the ballroom, in a dress that fell in lush emerald waves to the floor, despite the mask covering everything but her beautiful kohled eyes and the dark wine color staining her lips, and the wig that stole her flame-colored curls from him.
He presumed she was trying for disguise, as though he’d ever not sense her. Not feel her. As though there would ever come a time when she walked into a room and his whole body did not draw tight like a spring.
But disguise required something more than Grace would ever have—an ability to be unnoticed. And Grace would always be the first thing he noticed in any room, ever.
She’d come.
His heart began to pound the moment she’d entered—he’d been speaking to someone—a lord, about a vote in Parliament—something Ewan had been working on for months.
Or maybe it had been a lady, wanting to introduce her daughter to the Duke of Marwick? Maybe it had been an old friend from school. Ewan didn’t have old friends from school, so it wasn’t that, but he couldn’t be sure about the rest. Because he’d looked up from the conversation and she’d been there, at the edge of the ballroom, her face tilted up into the canopy that he’d had designed for exactly this moment.
Her favorite place on the Marwick estate.
The place he’d never returned to once she’d left.
Once she’d run. Once he’d scared her away.
Not that he’d had a choice.
He’d built this masquerade for her, making the staff and the gardener certain he was still as mad as he’d always been, but this time with his wild requests for indoor trees and moss-covered dance floors. And he’d known it would cost a fortune and very likely be wasted—because she might not have come.
After all, the last time they’d been together, she’d made it clear she had no interest in ever seeing him again.
But he’d built it for her, knowing she would discover that he was returned to London—a duke did not rejoin society’s circuit without people talking, after all—and hoping that she might not be able to resist her curiosity.
Hoping she might come to discover his plan. Hoping she might come to be a part of it. Therein lay the true madness, however.
You can never have her back.
He’d heard the words every day since that night, when she’d delivered the only blow that mattered. The one that had set him back, the proof that the girl he’d once loved, the one he’d sought and pursued and dreamed of, was gone.
Her fists were like stone, certainly, and they’d landed with noble force—punishment he well deserved for what he’d done. To her. To his brothers. To their world. But when she’d spoken—when she’d looked him straight in the eye, her beautiful brown gaze full of loathing, and told him that he’d killed her, she’d destroyed him.
Because in those words—he’d heard the truth.
So, he’d done as she asked. He’d left. And he would continue to do as she asked. And never chase her again. And that decision had required him to become someone different. Someone stronger. Better. More worthy.
A different man from the one who had betrayed her. Who had betrayed his brothers, and himself in the balance.
Her words from that night still haunted him.
You, who stole everything from me. My future. My past. My fucking name. Not to mention what you took from the people I love.
So, he’d built this mad ballroom and thrown this mad masquerade, with the singular vow that he would never chase her again.
But that, instead, she might chase him.
Or, at least, come through the door.
She had, and it was like breath after being under water for too long. He’d watched as she took in the room, as she tracked the tree trunks and the massive canopy, as she’d been surprised by the moss beneath her feet. He’d fallen away
from his conversation, every inch the mad duke London expected him to be when he turned away and crossed the room toward her, unable to stop himself from cataloguing her movements: the way her throat worked; the way her lips softened, opening on a little gasp of surprise—surprise? Or memory? The way her eyes widened . . . in recognition?
Be memory.
Be recognition.
As he watched, she locked whatever it was away. He saw her cast off one layer of emotion and don something else entirely, her spine lengthening, her shoulders straightening, her chin rising in a little, defiant gesture.
Like that, Grace was gone. Another woman in her place.
He moved faster, eager to meet her, the woman the girl he’d loved had become. Faster still, when that woman turned a smile the color of French wine on the Duchess of Trevescan—in herself, a bit of trouble. And then Ewan was there, and Grace was turning toward him, her beautiful brown eyes on his, but without any indication that she knew him.
The years had made her many things—a stunning beauty, a brilliant mind, a boxer with a fist like fury . . . and an actress, apparently. Because she was able to hide everything that had come before.
And so, they began with fresh lies, ignoring the fact that there had been a time when they’d known each other better than they’d known anyone, and instead starting anew—with his jokes and her teasing and both of their smiles, hers bright and beautiful enough to make him willing to do anything to witness it again.
Even asking her to dance, knowing that holding her in his arms would be a special kind of torture. Because it was—pulling her into his arms, but not as close as he wished. The scent of her wrapping around him—citrus and spice, but without the possibility of him burying his nose in her hair to breathe her in. And when she looked up at him with her cool, controlled gaze, and her cool, controlled smile, as though they had just met and had not spent a lifetime in a different kind of dance, he ached to pull her from this room and its crush of people and revel in her.
But that was not what she wished.
What did she wish?
“Why the trees?” The words took him by surprise, and he met her eyes behind the mask.
The trees were for her. What would she say if he told her that? If he yanked the mask from her eyes and said, You know why the trees. The trees, because you loved them. This place, because you loved it. All of it. For you.
Daring and the Duke EPB Page 9