Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(100)

Anger became rage.

Another scream sounded from the front room, and she was already moving, pulling the scarf from her waist and wrapping the ends around her fists with quick, economical movements as she pushed through the crowd.

She heard Ewan roar her name behind her, but she did not look back. This was her place. Her world. These were her people. And she would protect them at all costs.



One moment she was with him and the next, she was gone, disappeared into the throngs of people fleeing in one direction, swimming upstream, running, as she had always done, into the fray.

Grace, always the first to save, no matter what danger she might face.

A glimpse of her flame red curls the only thing that retained his sanity as he followed her. She was moving too fast, lost almost instantly in the crowd. He roared her name, frustration and fear propelling him into the crowd—which seemed, blessedly, to understand his urgency and make space for him.

“It’s Mad Marwick!” he heard at the back of his consciousness as he pushed through the crush, the moniker from his past, which he had worked so hard to overcome in the months since he’d returned—now back because he was mad. He was a wild animal, desperate to get to the woman he loved.

He looked over his shoulder. “You said fifteen?”

“Give or take.” Grace’s second-in-command was at his side. “Four in the center room, makes ten or so elsewhere.”

“And your men? They can fight?” What was Grace headed into?

“My women are made of stronger stuff than you, toff.”

He grunted, coming through to the room where the magician and the fiddlers and the acrobat had been earlier in the evening. He pulled up short as the woman with him cursed, under her breath.

The room had been destroyed. Curtains slit and furniture smashed, tables and chairs upended. Paintings ripped from the walls and slashed.

This wasn’t sport. It was punishment.

They don’t like that we are the future.

Around the room, the intruders brawled with club employees, and at the center of it all, Grace. As he watched, she clocked one of the brutes, setting him off kilter long enough to deliver a heavy kick to his midsection. He landed on the ground and she used her scarf to deliver the final blow, her quick actions inhibiting his movement as she knocked him unconscious.

She shook out her hand as he landed on the ground and turned around, her brown eyes finding Ewan’s as he watched her, pride bursting in his chest at this view of her, in her element.

A queen.

Her brows rose in silent question as he went for her, unable to keep himself from it, from reaching for her, battle raging all around them, pulling her into his arms, and kissing her thoroughly, claiming her for his own—this Boadicea.

When he was through, she was loose in his arms, and when she opened her eyes, he said, “I’m going to marry you.” Another kiss, quick and lush. “I’m going to marry you, and we will keep this place safe, and you will never have to fight alone ever again. We shall fight together.”

Her eyes went wide, but before she could say anything, movement came at the outer edge of his vision, and they both turned. The attacker was already lowering his club, aiming for Grace.

Ewan went wild, blocking the blow with a roar of fury, catching the club with one strong hand and planting his fist in the man’s face once, twice. “No one touches her,” he said on the third hit.

And on the fourth, “No one touches this place.” He lifted the other man by the collar. “Do you understand?”

A nod.

“Who sent you?”

“Dunno. We was just told to make sure this place wasn’t fit for usin’ again.”

Frustration flared. “Fucking hired dogs. You go back into the gutter you climbed out of and you tell whoever it is who hired you that this place is under the protection of the Duke of Marwick. Do you understand?”

Grace sucked in a breath at his shoulder, but he didn’t look at her, too busy waiting for a reply.

“Y-yes.”

“Good.”

He lifted his fist to deliver another blow, but Grace stayed him with a touch, looking to the man. “Are you the same crew that went for Maggie O’Tiernen’s?”

The bleeding man’s eyes shifted around the room, and Ewan grew more irritated. “Tell the truth, bruv,” he said, the Garden seeping into his voice. “You won’t like the consequences of a lie.”

The man’s eyes widened. “Yeah. That were us.”

“And Satchell’s?”

Ewan looked to her. What did she know?

“Aye.”

“What’s your name?”

He hesitated, and Ewan shook him like a doll. “Mikey.”

“I never forget a face, Mikey. Stay out of the Garden. You won’t like it if we cross paths again.”

He nodded, fear and gratitude in his eyes.

She indicated the rest of the room, where the fighters of 72 Shelton Street had dispatched the interlopers. “Take your boys and get the hell out of my place.”

The man obeyed instantly—knowing with the keen sense of a hired gun that he had been bested. She watched the men as they left, looking far worse for wear.

And then she turned to him. “You proposed to me.”

“I did,” he acknowledged.

“You proposed to me in the middle of a brawl.”