Daring and the Duke EPB

by MacLean, Sarah

  Hattie turned back to Grace. “A glutton for punishment.”

  “Yes, well, I’m beginning to think it’s a family trait,” she said, dryly.

  “But the duke . . .” Hattie said. “He doesn’t seem to have difficulty setting his sights on what he wants.”

  “No,” Whit agreed, dryly. “He’s so certain he wants you, you had to stay in hiding for twenty years.”

  Grace was no longer convinced that they had been running from Ewan, though. Something was changed.

  Or maybe it was false hope.

  Felicity tilted her head. “That is something of a black mark, to be sure.”

  “What in hell are we discussing here,” Devil interjected. “Have you forgotten he kept us running scared for years? Have you forgotten that he knocked me over the head and tried to freeze me to death?”

  “It’s important to note, you didn’t freeze to death,” Felicity said.

  Devil’s brows rose in disbelief. “We shall have words when we get home, wife.”

  She shook her head at the group. “We never have words when we get home.”

  “That’s because you are distracting, but I shan’t be distracted from this,” he said. “I survived because you saved me.”

  She turned to look at Grace. “Not only me. The duke left London the night he left Devil for dead. He’d known that he was being watched. If I hadn’t saved Devil, Whit would have—he would have come to tell Devil that Marwick was gone.”

  It wasn’t an impossibility, Grace thought. But it was a gamble.

  “I’ve never bought that argument,” Devil grumbled.

  “Never?” Grace’s brows rose. “Is this a discussion that is had often?”

  “It’s Hattie’s theory,” Whit grumbled. “I don’t like it”—he turned his attention to his wife—“as he exploded her.”

  “Again,” Hattie said quite happily, “I was only slightly exploded.”

  Grace looked to Hattie, feeling a bit like she’d been given too little laudanum and was hallucinating instead of sleeping. “Slightly exploded?”

  Whit grunted his irritation.

  Hattie waved a hand through the air. “And only because he didn’t get to me in time.” She looked to Grace. “I believe he intended to get to me in time. To stop me from being hurt. He wasn’t responsible for the second explosion. That was the one that hurt me and the others. We know that.”

  “And so? We give points for not lighting the match?” Whit said. “For not firing the pistol? Intent wouldn’t have saved you if you’d been . . .”

  Hattie gave him a little kiss on the cheek. “Yes, love. But I wasn’t.”

  “And so, what, we forgive him simply because you survived?”

  She looked to Felicity. “I don’t think he’s gone without punishment, do you?”

  “Hell, no,” Devil said. “But I wouldn’t object to him being packed into the ice hold for a decade or two. Cold storage would do him well.”

  They told me you were dead.

  “And if he’d succeeded in killing Hattie? In harming Felicity? What would you have done?” Grace asked.

  Devil looked to Whit, and she saw the answer pass between them. Recognized it, because it was her answer, too.

  Devil answered. “I would have burned Mayfair to the ground to get to him.”

  She nodded. “The three of us, baptized in revenge.”

  “No,” Whit said, softly. “Four of us.”

  Devil cursed softly, and looked down at his daughter, happily drooling on his sleeve. “As unlucky as we were, we were the lucky ones. I have Felicity and Helena, and the Garden. The business.” He cut her a look. “You, I suppose.”

  Grateful for the levity, Grace put a hand to her breast. “Really, it’s too much flattery.”

  He flashed a smile, and then said, “But what did he get? The estate? The house in Mayfair? The title and all the responsibility that comes with it? And the memories.”

  “We own the memories, too,” she said.

  “Yes, but our memories come with the present.” He stopped. “With the three of us. Grown. Changed. Survived. What does he have but loneliness and regret?”

  Whit grunted.

  “I don’t know,” she said softly.

  Devil continued. “Don’t matter, because what he has ain’t the question, Gracie. What you have is the question.”

  She shook her head. “I have the same as you.”

  Another grunt from Whit. And then, “You have worse.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my ribs healed. And Devil’s face. And the other breaks—” He reached for Hattie, who slipped a hand into his instantly. “We’ve had a chance to mend. But you—your break can’t mend.”

  He’d broken her heart.

  “And because it never mended, you were never able to love again. Which is why you’ve spent your whole life caring for the Garden. For the employees in your club and the girls on the rooftops and for us—never once taking a moment to think about how you might care for yourself. Never once being willing to take a risk and love again. Instead, you serve up love without ties over on Shelton Street, and pretend nobody notices that at the end of the night, you’re alone.”

  She hated every word, for its truth, and hated that Whit, silent and stoic, always knew precisely the problem. “I like you better when you don’t talk.”

  He grunted.

  “I love,” she replied, defensively. When her brothers looked to each other, she said, “I do! Against my will, I love the two of you. And your wives. And Helena.” She pointed to Hattie, already sitting at the foot of the dining room table. “And the babe in Hattie’s belly—when is that babe coming, anyway?”

  Hattie rubbed a hand over the enormous swell of her pregnant belly. “Never, it seems. He wants to stay in.”

  “She’s not stupid. The world is a perilous place,” Whit said, tipping his chin at Grace. “Aunt Grace is thinking of taking up with a fucking madman.”

  “I’m not taking up with him.”

  One black brow rose. “What then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve said that more in the last hour than you have in our entire life together,” Devil said.

  She shot him a withering look. “Don’t think I don’t hate that.”

  Silence fell for an age before he replied. “Grace, if there is one thing I know . . . one thing I have learned in the last year . . . it is that this business—love—is the only thing we cannot know.”

  “So, take up with the madman,” Whit said.

  I’m sorry.

  “He’s not a madman,” she said.

  “No, he’s not,” Hattie said, looking to Whit.

  “What does that mean?” Grace asked, looking from one person to the next, all of them looking as though they’d taken the last Christmas sweet. “What?”

  Hattie sighed. “He came to me several days ago, at the Sedley-Whittington offices.”

  “He did?” Sedley-Whittington, named for Hattie and Whit, dominated the business at the London docklands. What did Ewan want with them?

  “He’s lucky Whit didn’t drop him in the Thames,” Devil said, taking another drink.

  “Why?” Grace asked. “To give the docks more money?”

  “No,” Hattie said, curiosity in her voice. “He asked for work.”

  “What?”

  Whit grunted. “My exact words.”

  Grace ignored him, all her focus on her sister-in-law. “What did you say?”

  “Yes, wife, what did you say?”

  “I gave him what he asked.”

  Surely she wasn’t hearing right. “You gave the Duke of Marwick work.”

  Hattie nodded. “I’m not a fool—I heard he’s a brute with a block of ice. Imagine what he can do with a hook.”

  Grace’s eyes went wide. “You gave him a job hefting boxes?”

  Hattie shot her a wry look. “He did try to explode me, Grace. I wasn’t about to be kind.”

  The words sh
ocked a laugh from her. “What does he want?”

  “Well, it sure ain’t a job,” Devil said.

  “He’s damned good at it for someone who doesn’t want to do it,” Hattie said. “I’ve a mind to give him a promotion.”

  Whit cursed at the reply. “Of course you do.”

  Grace ignored the banter. “But why?”

  Hattie shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe it needn’t be complicated. Maybe he wants another chance. Maybe he wants hope.”

  Hope.

  Helena offered a little, slobbery coo, and Grace looked to the babe, who had happily traded her rattle for one of her father’s knuckles. She spoke to the child. “He’s the reason there’s a bill in Parliament to help the Rookery.”

  Silence. And then Beast knocked back his whisky. “It is to fail. He tilts at windmills.”

  Didn’t they all?

  “Grace,” Felicity said quietly. “What do you want?”

  What do you need?

  The words echoed, over and over.

  Come and see me when you know.

  She looked up at her brothers. “Perhaps I want hope, too.”

  “Goddammit.”

  “Fuck.”

  Felicity grinned at the men’s united response. “Well, then. Isn’t this exciting.”

  Chapter Twenty

  There was a fire-eater outside 72 Shelton Street.

  She’d said she was an expert at parties, Ewan thought, watching the flames dance in the night as his driver trundled off down the narrow cobblestone street. And this is a party, if ever there was one.

  If he’d given it much thought, he might have expected the raucous laughter, and the windows lit up like the sun, pouring golden light into the street, turning the cobblestones to gold. He might have expected the crush of masked women in elaborate dress, all reveling in the freedom of being far from Mayfair and recognition, but when she’d boasted her skill, he’d never imagined it was the kind that came with fire-eaters.

  There was a fire-eater, however, flask on his hip and torch in his hand, surrounded by wide-eyed children from the Garden and flanked on both sides by men on stilts that lifted them nearly to the first floor of the building beyond—a building Ewan had been inside only once before, when Grace had brought him here to end his attacks on her brothers, and deliver him a lesson he richly deserved.

  One he remembered with crystal clarity.

  You can never have her back.

  He had left, that lesson firmly in hand. And returned, hoping that the reverse was not true—that she might one day decide to have him back.

  He’d made himself a better man, and there had been moments in the past weeks, fleeting ones, when her lips had curved and her guard had dropped, and he’d thought perhaps she warmed to him. And when she kissed him. When she came apart in his arms and she cried his name in pleasure.

  Then, he was almost certain that she warmed to him.

  And then came the night on the rooftops, when he’d gone too far—revealed too much—and she’d run from him. And he’d been certain that he’d ruined it all. He’d gone to Lady Henrietta the next day, having decided that if he could not win Grace, he could at least pay his Garden debts, beginning with her. With the ships she’d lost due to his anguish and grief. With the docks she’d had to rebuild, and the men who’d worked alongside her.

  He’d apologized, and miraculously, she had accepted.

  Ewan had spent a week tarring decks and hauling crates, and going home to Mayfair to collapse into his bed, sleeping well for the first time since he could remember. He told himself it was the physical exhaustion that helped, but he knew the truth. It was the knowledge that he was building, and not destroying.

  It was the hope that with enough penance, he might be forgiven.

  If not by Grace, then by her people.

  And then, a week later, he’d received the package, a thin ebony box, wrapped all in black, with a gold 72 on the outside. He’d known instantly that it was from her.

  Inside, on a bed of white silk, lay a black domino, like the one he’d worn at his masquerade. He lifted it to discover a card, bearing a single line of text.

  Come see me.

  The back had indicated a precise date and time, and an address: 72 Shelton Street. Below, at the center of the ecru card, a pink dahlia.

  Her signature.

  Come see me, he thought. The same words he’d used with her after he’d left her in the Garden. But she’d left off the bit he’d included.

  He knew what he needed. Did she?

  Was that what this was?

  Whatever it would be, he was not about to lose an opportunity to be with her. Especially here, in her element. He’d asked her to tell him about Dahlia, and now, she offered to reveal her secrets.

  But he had not expected a fire-eater.

  The man in question took a swig from his flask, held out his torch, and lit the night, the column of flame easily four feet high. The children who crowded the performer let out a collective wild cheer that became even more cacophonous as the stilt walkers lit their own torches and began to toss them back and forth, the performance creating the illusion that the door to 72 Shelton sat under an arc of fire.

  Ewan slowed his approach, waiting for the performance to end, but the fire-eater had already seen him. “Welcome, milord!” He doffed his high hat and bowed with a tremendous flourish. “Please! Go right in.”

  When Ewan returned his attention to the stilt walkers with their torches, the fire-eater laughed a great laugh and said, “They’re perfectly safe, good sir. And if they interest you, just wait until you discover what’s in store . . . inside!”

  On another night, at another time, for another man, the words would have piqued his curiosity enough to propel him through the door, but Ewan did not need the promise of extravagant performance and feats of strength. The knowledge that Grace was inside was enough.

  She was inside, and she wanted him with her.

  And so he walked through fire to get to her.

  The metal door to the club opened without a knock, as though it had been waiting for his arrival. Inside, a tall black woman with elaborately kohled eyes that shimmered in the candlelight whispered in the ear of another woman, who immediately disappeared through a set of heavy velvet curtains.

  “I am—”

  “I know who you are,” the woman said quietly. She leaned back and opened the curtain, just enough to look through it to something happening inside the building beyond. Satisfied, presumably, with what she saw, she returned her attention to him. “You’ll recall that masks are designed to preserve anonymity, sir.”

  Sir. Not duke. Not here. Here, he was without title, and the pleasure that came with the loss was immense.

  Ewan looked over his shoulder to discover two enormous men, each with a pistol strapped beneath his arm. Security. Where another man might have been uncomfortable with the show of brute force, Ewan was glad of it. It meant Grace was safer within these walls than he’d hoped.

  He nodded at the men. They did not reciprocate.

  And then he looked to the woman who had barely acknowledged him. “And so?”

  She reached for the curtain and pulled it back, far enough for him to pass through, the movement filling the small entryway with the raucous noise and wild color of the party within. “Dominion awaits.”

  Dominion.

  Of course it was called Dominion.

  And she’d invited him here. To revel in it. To revel in her.

  Grace. Dahlia. Both.

  Excitement thrummed through him and he looked to the woman who held the portal to Grace’s world open for him. “Where is she?”

  Her gaze narrowed on him, assessing. Good. He liked the idea that Grace had people who cared for her, even here, where she reigned.

  “I don’t know to whom you are referring, sir.”

  He nodded once. He was on his own, apparently, so he did the only thing he could; he pushed through the curtain, and into Grace’s bacchanal. />
  It was like nothing he’d ever seen—a riot of color and sound, of laughter and shouts and music, bright and celebratory . . . there was no staid orchestra or string quartet here—instead, there were roving musicians. A young woman with a high powdered wig fiddled in one corner of the large open receiving room, playing faster and faster as a masked woman dressed in a cloud of pink gauze whirled with impossible speed, the fabric of her gown spread wide as she twirled, a circle of onlookers clapping in time with the music.

  On the other side of the room, a collection of masked women draped over a large circular seat upholstered in lush sapphire velvet, watching the performer above them, who used the center of their seating as a stage. She was an acrobat, in diaphanous trousers and a shirt that wrapped tightly about her body, and she bent and twisted, inverting herself in impossible ways, with a slow speed that only served to underscore her remarkable strength.

  As she held herself up by one hand, her legs pointing straight to the ceiling, the women watching burst into applause, and Ewan struggled to resist joining in.

  A tray laden with champagne passed in front of him, a half-dozen gloved hands in myriad silks and satins reaching out to lift glasses from it, and the woman holding it didn’t miss a step, delivering precisely what the partygoers asked. Once they were all satisfied, she turned to look up at him, a welcoming smile on her bright face, as though she’d known he was there the whole time.

  “Champagne, sir?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “What then?”

  She disappeared the moment he asked for bourbon, and Ewan wondered if he’d ever see her again; certainly the wild crush of people would prohibit anything like her finding him.

  He turned away, heading for a small antechamber, door open. Inside, an unmasked woman stood behind a table in the corner—a handful of other revelers lingering, watching. She smiled and beckoned him closer. “Join us, good sir,” she said in a thick Italian accent.

  He approached, unable to contain his curiosity as the woman, who introduced herself as Fortuna, extracted a stack of cups from beneath the table, each painted with Venetian masks.

  She named the empty cups as she set them to the table.