Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(19)

He stiffened, and she was there with a smart jab. “There’s one for what you did to Whit for threatening his lady.” Another. “And there’s one for the lady, who you’re lucky did not die, or I’d let ’im kill you.” A wicked punch to the gut, and he didn’t block it. Grace didn’t care. “And there’s one for Devil’s lady, whom you were ready to ruin.” And another two in quick succession, her breath coming faster, a sheen of perspiration at her brow. And hot fury to feed her. “Them’s for Devil. One for leaving him to die in the cold last year, and the other for the gash you put in his face twenty years back.” She paused. “I ought to put one on your face to match.”

He took them all. Again and again, and she fed on his inaction, air to her flame. Another blow, this one setting his nose to bleeding. “And that one? That’s for the boys no longer in the Rookery because of you. Gone, because your henchmen were out for blood. Because you were on your own mad pursuit of your own security.”

That got his attention. He looked up, his amber gaze finding hers instantly. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.” She spat. “You fucking monster. Making us all hide from you because it wasn’t enough that we’d given you everything you ever wanted. You needed our lives, as well.” She turned away from him, crossing the ring.

“Behind!” Beast’s warning had her spinning back as Ewan came for her across the ring. Before she could resist, he lifted her by the waist and carried her to the wall, putting her back to it. Not with force—if there’d been force, she might have welcomed it. Might have taken glee in an opponent.

They froze in tableau, their breath coming hard and fast, somehow synchronized. His lips were at her ear, close enough for her to feel the ragged words he whispered. “I didn’t come for myself. I came for you. I swore I’d find you. How many times did I promise you I’d find you?”

I’ll find you, Gracie. You worry about keeping safe. I’ll find you.

A vow, whispered across decades by a boy who no longer existed.

“I never stopped looking for you,” he said, his lips sliding over skin. Into hair. She gasped. How did still he smell like leather and black tea? After days upstairs in a locked room? How did he still feel like this? After years of being the enemy?

How did he set her aflame?

“I never stopped missing you,” he whispered, his breath hot at her ear.

Making her want.

No. She wouldn’t have it.

Grace squirmed in his grip, her fists free enough to bat him about the head and shoulders, but without the angle to do proper damage.

“They told me you were dead.” She could hear the ache in the words, and for a wild, unexplained moment, she wanted to comfort him.

“The leg!” Devil shouted from the darkness, pulling her away from the mad thoughts. He’d seen what she had from the start. The weakness. A strong kick to the wound in Ewan’s thigh and she would set him to his knees. He’d release her. This would be over.

She dropped a hand to the scarf at her waist. Wrapped her fist in it. “What they told you is true. The girl is dead. Killed by a boy she trusted, who came at her with a knife, willing to do anything to win.”

She yanked the scarf, pulling it loose from its moorings and, holding one weighted end, letting the other sail over their heads in a wide scarlet arc. She caught it with her other hand, pulling it taut. In an instant, the straight cloth was at his throat, as dangerous as a knife’s point when wielded by someone who knew how.

Grace had spent years learning how.

He reached for the scarf, a natural course, and the wrong one. With a flick of her wrists, his hands were caught in the fabric, cuffed and immobile. He had no choice but to back away, lowering his hands. “Release me.”

Instead, she knotted the silk, knowing it would make movement impossible.

“I would never have killed you,” he said. “I would never have hurt you.”

She narrowed her eyes on him. “What a lie.”

“It’s the truth.”

“It’s not,” she spat. “You hurt me.”

Was the word past tense or present?

He growled his wordless reply, the sound wrenched from low in his throat.

She ignored it. “And even if it were true, you hurt them. Whit with a half-dozen ribs broken and Devil with a gash that could have killed him, if not from blood loss, then from fever. Do you forget that I was there? That I saw you turn into this?” She looked him up and down, the way one might look at a rat or a roach.

“I watched you, Ewan. I watched you become this. I watched you turn duke.” She fairly spat the word. “I watched you choose the fucking title over us—who were supposed to be your family.”

A pause. He met her eyes.

Before he could speak, she did. “You chose it over me. And you killed me then. The girl I was. Everything I dreamed. You did that. And you can never have it back.” She paused, refusing to let him look away. Wanting him to hear it. Needing to hear it herself. “You can never have her back. Because she is dead.”

She saw the words strike.

Saw the truth of them course through him.

Saw him believe her.

Good.

She turned away, focusing on the ache in her knuckles, the proof that she’d finally taken the vengeance she’d wanted.