We’re going to change all that.
“And did you?” he asked, knowing the answer. “Did you make good on my promise?”
She nodded. “We did.”
Her. Devil. Whit. He hadn’t been a part of it. In fact, he’d made it worse.
He looked to the sky. “I sent money. To the families.”
“I know.”
And back to her. “You asked me if there was anything I liked about being duke.”
“And?”
“I like being able to pour his money into the Garden. I like being able to use his name to make change there.”
“The bill in debate. It’s not Leighton’s or Lamont’s. It’s yours.” Her gaze found his, sharp and understanding. Seeing more than he was ready for her to see. “For the Garden.”
“I thought that if Mad Marwick introduced it, no one would consider it.”
“No one will consider it anyway,” she said. “No one in the Garden ever gets what they deserve.”
She was right. There weren’t enough in Parliament who stood with the men and women in London’s poorest corners. Even now, he could not make good on his long-ago promise. Not like she had.
“I don’t expect forgiveness.”
“Good.”
“But I wish it.”
I wish it from you, as well.
She looked past him then, over his shoulder. “The sun is coming.”
He looked in the direction she pointed, to the east, at first, not seeing anything but the black sky. And then he saw it, the barely-there charcoal edge on the horizon, a collection of angles. Rooftops.
“You never told me the best part of it.”
He looked to her and shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“You never told me that the Rookeries are the first to get the sun.”
They had changed it.
The words, a simple observation that shouldn’t have meant anything, stole his breath. Whether it was the words or the distant promise of dawn, he would never know, but he said, “I wish I had run with you.”
The confession was a risk, and he immediately wished he could take it back. It would remind her of that night, when he’d ruined everything with the worst kind of betrayal. But it was suddenly essential she know the truth, even if it ended with her anger.
But perhaps it was the dawn that kept her anger at bay, because when she spoke, there was no vitriol in the words. Instead, there was something wistful there.
“Something else would have ruined us,” she said to the rooftops in the distance—her country, awaiting her return. “We were too much each other to have ever really loved each other.”
He hated the words. “I loved you,” he said, knowing it wasn’t enough.
“I know,” she said. “And I loved you. But it was a springtime love. A summer one. Left alone to flourish until the cold came. Until the wind threatened to rip it apart and the frost killed it off.”
He hated the image. Hated that he was the cold, when she had only ever been the sun.
She returned to the moment, her eyes finding his. “First love is not forever.”
The words were another blow, harsher than the ones he’d taken earlier in the day. “And so? What now?”
She was close enough that he heard the breath she took, the slow, even inhale, giving her time to think. “Ewan,” she said, softly, and for the first time since he’d returned and they’d begun this dance, or game, or whatever it was they did, he heard something in her voice like care.
He clung to it, and said, “What if we freed ourselves from it?” Confusion furrowed her brow and he said the rest. “What if we began again?”
“Began again?” she said, disbelief in her words. “How would we do that? I have never been able to live my life free from you.” His heart began to pound as she spoke to the darkness, to this city that had been his and now was hers. “Not before I met you and not after. I was nobody before you, a placeholder, waiting for you, like a fly in amber.”
“I, too, was nobody,” he said, wanting to touch her and knowing he shouldn’t.
“You weren’t, though,” she said, her eyes glittering in the flickering candlelight. “You were Ewan, strong and smart, and the one who swore you’d get us all out.”
“I did get you out.”
She stiffened at the words, like she was made of steel. “You chased us out. You scared us out. And you left us alone, living in your”—she waved a hand over the square, before she spat—“palace while we scraped and fought for everything we had.”
It was true. And also false.
Tell her.
How would she ever understand?
“You lied to us,” she said, her long, loose hair whipped up in the wind. “You—” Christ. Her voice cracked. He didn’t think he could bear it if she cried. “You lied to me,” she said, the words coming like thunder, crashing all around them. “And we can never begin again, because everything you were—everything we were—it remains. And it cannot be erased. And I should hate you for it.”
It was time to tell her, and he might have. He might have explained then. Might have begun the work of telling her the truth—explaining what had happened on that long-ago night. And it might have been enough.
Except she wasn’t finished. “And even if I could forgive the boy you were, what of the things you did as a man? Devil. Whit. Hattie. Five boys in the garden—you may not have pulled the triggers or lit the match, but they are gone because of you. You threatened our livelihoods. Our home.” She narrowed her gaze at him. “You say you’ve changed.”
He had.
“You say you are a better man.”
He was.
Wasn’t he?
“But I’m not sure it matters.”
All that mattered was that he had harmed her.
“It shouldn’t matter.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, as though she was speaking to herself and not him. “It shouldn’t matter . . . and I should hate you.”
He clung to that should, reaching for her, telling himself that he would let her go the second she pushed him away. The second she resisted him.
But she didn’t resist him.
“Who am I without that hate?” she whispered.
His heart ached at the question.
“Who are you without it?” she added.
“I don’t know,” he told her. Truth. “All I know is that I want to know.” He put his forehead to hers and closed his eyes, and said the words that had haunted him every day since the day she’d left. “I’m sorry.”
He’d never meant anything so much.
They crashed together like thunder, the kiss robbing them both of breath and threatening to rob Ewan of far more. As he pulled her close, she was already tilting up to him, her hands already coming into his hair to pull him to her, her lips full and open as they met his, breath and tongues tangling as they consumed each other.
Like fire.
And it was fire, hot and made nearly unbearable with the knowledge that she wanted him as he wanted her. That though she should hate him, whatever she did feel—wherever they stood now—was not hate. It was something else.
Ewan could work with something else, if only she would let him.
His lip stung with the force of the kiss but he did not care, not when her tongue was stroking against his and he was so quickly lost, a groan escaping as he tasted her again, pulling her close and lifting her to him until they were pressed against each other, like two halves of a whole.
Like they’d always been.
Though he could not tell where his ended and hers began, he could taste the emotion in the urgent kiss—sorrow and anger and frustration and desire, and something that she would not name but that he knew would always be there.
Her fingers sank into his hair, and he settled into her mouth, stroking deep until she sighed her pleasure, the sound rushing through him, straight to the core of him, where he was hard and aching once more.
The evening hadn’t been
enough.
It would never be enough.
It was a claiming. He was claimed. Hers forever.
And she . . .
Mine.
Christ. He would give everything to claim her in return.
As though she’d heard the thought, she stopped the kiss, pushing him away, taking a step back to put space between them, their breaths heavy and aching, shock and desire flashing along with wild frustration in her eyes.
But that wasn’t it. There was something else.
Need.
She needed him, and Christ, he needed her, too.
She saw it. Saw that he would give her everything she asked. Everything she wanted. She took another step back, shaking her head, and held up an accusing hand. “No.”
“Grace,” he said, reaching as she turned, her hair, her coat, everything about her slipping through his fingers as she took off across the roof, and disappeared into the night.
Every ounce of him raged to follow her. To catch her and tell her everything. To make her understand.
I’m not sure it matters.
She disappeared from view and he stared after her, watching the eastern sky grow lighter, charcoal giving way to lavender and then the deepest red he’d ever seen, like the whole city was aflame.
And only once the blinding sunlight climbed over the rooftops did he let himself go. Around Grosvenor Square, servants climbed from their beds to the frustrated roar he let out to the dawn.
Chapter Nineteen
One week later, Grace went to Berkeley Square for dinner.
When they’d married, Whit had bought his wife a stunning town house on the western edge of the square, because she’d said she liked it, and he had set himself a singular life’s goal—spoiling Hattie. The house sat empty most days of the week, because Hattie ran one of London’s largest shipping operations and Whit was never without work at Bastards’ headquarters, and they both preferred their more convenient home in Covent Garden.
But Whit didn’t like visitors in his private quarters—even family—so they hosted family dinners each Friday in the town house, affording Whit and Devil the pleasure of doing their very best to “scare off the toffs” when they arrived, which usually involved making a racket in an ancient gig, complete with mud-caked boots and faces in dire need of a shave.
Suffice to say, the venerable aristocratic residents of Berkeley Square had a great deal to discuss on Saturday mornings.
The dinners were usually one of Grace’s happiest times of the week, allowing her a heartbeat of time to cuddle with Devil and Felicity’s Helena, eight months old and perfect in every way.
But that night, a week after she’d fled the rooftops of a different Mayfair square, she dreaded the event, knowing that she would no longer be able to avoid thinking about the Duke of Marwick’s rooftop.
Nor would she be able to avoid thinking about the evening in the Duke of Marwick’s home. Nor the moments on the Duke of Marwick’s lap, nor the afternoon with the Duke of Marwick in the Garden, blood and dirt on his shirt as though brawling was an everyday occurrence.
And she would absolutely not be able to avoid thinking of the Duke of Marwick himself, who was no longer the Duke of Marwick in her mind. It had taken her years to stop thinking of him as Ewan, and mere days for her to return to it.
Ewan.
And that change, barely anything to the rest of the world, was enough to send Grace into internal chaos.
Who am I without that hate?
Who are you?
The questions had echoed for a week, as she’d lived her life and run her business and planned the October Dominion. And for a week, the answers had eluded her.
Still, she attended the dinner, entering the house, shucking her coat, and accepting a gurgling Helena from her smiling nurse, grateful to have the baby as a shield for what she suspected was to come.
She wasn’t the only one in Covent Garden with spies. She merely had the best. And it didn’t take the best of spies to notice when a duke came kissing Dahlia in broad daylight with a bevy of washerwomen looking on in delight.
Her cheeks warmed as she entered the dining room of the home—one-half long, elaborately set table, already laden with platters of game and veg, as though Hattie had prepared for the queen herself, and one-half sitting room. It was a design choice that Grace had always rather liked, stemming from the fact that Hattie abhorred the trend of ladies and gentlemen separating after meals, and she prevented it by making the dining room comfortable for more than eating.
Grace had barely stepped into the room—was still having a nonsense chat with Helena, in fact—when Devil turned from the sideboard where he’d poured himself two fingers of whisky and said, “Ah, we wondered if you’d be too busy to join us tonight.”
Ignoring the tightening in her gut at the words, Grace tossed a quick smile to her sisters-in-law, Felicity, by the high windows on one end of the room, and Hattie, perched on the arm of the large chair where Whit sat, and said, brightly, in a singsong voice to Helena, “Why would I be too busy to join you?”
“I don’t know,” Devil said, approaching her with a second glass. “We thought perhaps you’d be too busy catting about with Marwick.”
“I see we’re getting right to it, then.” Grace’s heart threatened to beat from her chest, and she wondered if others could hear it over the only other sound in the room—a babbling Helena, her little fist clapping against Grace’s cheek.
She took the drink from Devil and looked into it. “Is it safe to drink?”
He smirked, his scar pulling tight on his face. “I’m not the one with a history of trying to kill you, Gracie.”
Devil had never in his life pulled a punch.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Felicity came over from her place by the window, the bright pink skirts of her gown rustling against the plush carpet. “Stand down, will you? Would you listen to this one,” she scoffed. “As though he’s lived the life of a saint.”
“I haven’t tried to seduce a woman I’ve nearly killed,” he said.
“No,” Felicity retorted, “you only tried to seduce a woman in an attempt to ruin her life.”
Hattie coughed a laugh, and Whit and Grace’s brows rose in the kind of unison that proved that siblings didn’t need to share blood to share affect.
“That’s different!” he declared. “I was going to get you sorted, proper spinster-like.”
“Ah, yes. A widow’s cottage in the Hebrides or some such.” Felicity cut him a look before returning her attention to Grace. “So. Tell us.”
“I don’t know what you are asking.”
Lie. But Felicity was not easily waved off. “We know he kissed you after—this part seems very strange—helping Alice with the wash?”
There was no point in denying it. It had been in broad view of half the Rookery. “It’s true.”
Silence again, and Grace felt four sets of hot looks on her as she pretended to be riveted to Helena, her only ally. The baby blew a bubble and laughed, completely unaware of her surroundings.
Devil turned to Whit. “Do you have anything to say?”
Whit shrugged. “I told you.”
“As though we needed a fucking oracle to see it.”
Grace turned to him. “To see what?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “That he was back for you.”
The reason I have done everything from the start, he’d said. For you.
“Not just that,” Whit said. “You’re back for him, too.”
“I’m not.” She shook her head. And then, at the quartet of disbelieving looks, she said, “I shouldn’t be.”
“Damn right,” Devil said.
“Devil,” Felicity said, censure in her tone.
He turned away, grumbling, “She’s not wrong.”
“But what if she is?” Hattie interjected as she stood, crossing the room and selecting a turned carrot from a platter there. “I’m assuming we are not sitting down to dinner, right?” She took a bite
of the vegetable and after chewing thoughtfully said, “What if he’s back and he’s changed?”
Grace ignored the thrum that went through her at the question. At the idea that Hattie might think it possible. “Men don’t change,” Grace said. “That’s the first rule of surviving as a woman in the world. Men don’t change.”
“That’s true,” Devil said.
“Bollocks,” Felicity replied. “You changed.”
“You changed me, love,” he said instantly. “That’s different.”
“Of course, I did,” she said, “just as you changed me.” She approached him, sliding into the crook of his arm. “What if Grace changed him?” She paused, then said, “The man who came for you, for Whit, for Hattie . . . for me . . . he was all anguish. No hope.”
They told me you were dead.
Felicity shrugged. “Hope changes a person.”
Grace went still at the words.
What if he finally had hope?
What if she did?
Helena began to fret, and Grace walked her to her parents. Without missing a beat, Devil took the babe and set her in the crook of his arm, pulling a silver rattle from his pocket and handing it to her.
“What’s your point, Felicity?” Devil asked once the baby was settled.
“I think you very well know what my point is,” she said to her husband before looking to Grace. “My point is, don’t listen to them.”
“Hear, hear!” Hattie roundly agreed. “They haven’t any idea what they’re on about.”
“It took them both near-death experiences to know what they wanted.”
“That’s not true!” Devil said. “I knew what I wanted.”
“You did not,” Whit said. “Grace and I had to knock actual sense into you to get you to see that Felicity was far better than you could ever dream of having.” He turned a smile on his sister-in-law. “You know that, don’t you, that you settled?”
Felicity smiled happily. “In fact, I do.”
“I, on the other hand, knew I wanted Hattie from the first moment I saw her.”
Hattie’s brows shot up. “You did, did you?”
He flashed a grin at his wife. “From the moment you pushed me from a moving carriage, luv. How could I not?”
Daring and the Duke EPB Page 23