Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(16)

Few had known that the babe in the nursemaid’s arms was a girl—and those who had . . . they were too terrified of the duke to say anything as he broke the laws of God and country.

And it didn’t matter, in the long run, as eventually, there had been a boy who took the name. A boy who had won, even as Grace and Devil and Whit had run before he could complete his final task.

They’d tried to forget, building their family and their empire without him. But they’d none of them found peace—at least, not until Devil and Beast had found love.

But Grace had never had peace.

It would come tonight, however, when she made good on her promise to her brothers, and sent the man on his knees before her into the street with the certainty that he would never again come for them. He’d spent years searching for them—for her—and they’d spent years hiding her from him. It was time for him to understand that what he sought did not exist, and hadn’t for twenty years.

Memory flashed, Devil and Whit shouting as Ewan advanced on her, blade in hand. She hadn’t moved quickly enough. She’d been frozen by the realization that he would actually hurt her. No matter what the monstrous duke had promised him, Ewan had claimed to love her. He’d vowed to protect her. They’d all vowed to protect each other. How many times had the three brothers fought as one? How many plans had the four of them made in the dark of night?

How many promises had the two of them made?

Future. Family. Safety. Love.

None of it had mattered that night. Not once the dukedom was on the line. Not once it was in hand. Ewan had won the day, and with it, power and privilege that rendered the rest of them at best useless and at worst dangerous.

And Grace the most dangerous of them all, because she was the proof that Ewan—now Robert Matthew Carrick, Earl Sumner, Duke of Marwick—was a fraud.

As Grace and Devil and Whit had grown stronger—as they had built names of their own from the soot of the Rookery where they still lived and from which they managed businesses that employed hundreds and made them hundreds of thousands—they’d known they were building more than names. They had been building the power to protect themselves from the inevitable—the arrival of this man, their enemy, whom they’d known would one day come for them—the only other people in the world who knew his secret . . . a secret that would see him hanged for treason.

All the years of preparation ended tonight. Now. At Grace’s hands, as her brothers looked on.

But before she punished him, she’d touched him.

She didn’t know why.

It wasn’t because she’d wanted to.

And the kiss—she hadn’t wanted that, either.

Lie.

She hadn’t wanted to want it.

But there, in the darkness of that underground room, the sounds of the party raging above muffled by sawdust, she hadn’t been able to resist. He had been a handsome boy—taller than most, whipcord lean, with amber eyes that saw everything and a slow, easy smile that could tempt a body to follow him to the ends of the earth. As they’d all been willing to do.

Ewan. The boy king.

There was no smile now. It was gone in the magnificent angles of his face. All three of them—Devil, Beast, and Ewan—carried the marks of their father in their eyes and their jaws, but Devil had grown tall and rakish, and Beast had become a massive bruiser with the face of an angel. Ewan was neither of those things. He had become an aristocrat, all planes and shadows, a long aquiline nose, clefted chin, hollowed cheeks, a noble brow—and his lips, pure temptation.

Grace was the owner and proprietress of 72 Shelton Street, the most discreet, highest-end brothel for ladies in London, and a place that was known to offer a discerning clientele a bevy of men who were each more perfect specimens of masculinity than the next. She considered herself a connoisseur of handsomeness. She traded in it.

And he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen even now. Even a touch too thin for his frame. A touch too hollow in the cheeks. A touch too wild in the eyes.

So, of course she’d been tempted. Just for a moment. A second. A fraction of one. She would have wanted to kiss anyone with such a face. She would have wanted to touch anyone with such a body.

Another lie.

She’d touched him because there would never be another chance to touch the boy she’d once loved. To look into his eyes, and maybe find a glimpse of him, hidden inside the cold, hard duke he’d become.

And perhaps, if she’d seen him there, she would have stopped it. Perhaps. But she hadn’t, and so she’d never know. And when she’d let him go, he’d ended any chance of her knowing.

“Untie me, and I’ll give you the fight you want.”

The words hung in the air between them as she considered his face, all its soft boyishness gone, disappeared into the hard angles of manhood, thieved by time.

He’d always known what she wanted.

And tonight, she wanted a fight. The long linen strips weren’t as comfortable as they usually were, wrapped tightly over her knuckles. They did not feel like second skin, as they had for years, night after night, as Grace had taken to the sawdust-covered floor in makeshift rings in the darkest, dingiest, dirtiest rooms in the Garden.

They scraped, just as they had twenty years earlier, when she’d wrapped her knuckles for the first time. Unfamiliar. Unwanted. She shook out her hand as she walked around him, leaning down to extract a blade from her boot and cut the binds at his wrists.