Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(25)

I chose the title to make you my duchess.

You were to be duchess.

“He’s here to marry,” she said.

“What a bore,” the duchess replied.

Grace was many things, but she was not bored. Christ. He was back.

He was back.

And like that, the storm quieted. She knew what she must do.

She met the other woman’s eyes. “I require an invitation to that masquerade.”





Chapter Eight


If she hadn’t known that the Marwick House masquerade was hosted by the Duke of Marwick himself, she never would have believed it. There was nothing about the wild party spread out before her that appeared even remotely suited to the man she’d sent packing a year earlier.

That man would have found every bit of this event frivolous and unworthy of his time. Of course, that man had spent his waking hours chasing Grace, until he’d found her, and discovered that the girl he sought no longer existed.

In the week since she’d discovered his return, she’d done everything she could to understand it. What he sought. How, and why.

And whom.

Because there was only one option for the Duke of Marwick to have returned to London and presented himself in society—no longer as the mad duke they’d once imagined him to be, but now as something else, apparently?

The words of the women in the club echoed through her.

So handsome. That smile! He danced every dance. It was like dancing on a cloud.

She knew the last. They’d learned together—part of his father’s silly contest. For just this purpose. Every duke needs his duchess.

And the Duke of Marwick was back to secure his own, finally.

You were to be duchess.

She resisted the echo of the words from a year earlier. Resisted the urge to dwell on them, on the ache in them as he called them across the ring—his last attempt to win her back, even as she’d made her point. He would never win her back.

Because she was no longer the girl he once loved, and she would never be that girl again.

But that did not change the singular fact that long ago, they’d made a deal. No marriage. No children. No continuation of the Marwick line—the only vow they could make beyond the reach of the boys’ father.

And if he’d returned to marry? To produce an heir?

Grace had no choice but to put a stop to it.

And if he’d returned for something else?

Then she had no choice but to put a stop to that, too. Because every second the Duke of Marwick was in the public eye put all of them at risk. He’d stolen a title, and they’d all been a part of it. She’d be damned if he put any of them in danger for his own chance at something more—not when Devil and Whit had happiness in hand with their wives and young families begun.

He didn’t get to return and claim a future.

Not when he’d risked all of theirs without hesitation.

She hadn’t told her brothers that he’d returned, knowing that they would insist on joining her tonight. Knowing they might insist on worse—on meeting Ewan in the darkness and doing what they’d vowed to do years ago. What she’d prevented them from doing, for fear of what might come of them if they’d been caught—the death of a duke was not something easily swept beneath the carpet.

So it had to be Grace who met the Duke of Marwick on his turf, to divine his purpose and mete out his justice. After all, hadn’t it been Grace who had told him never to return? Hadn’t it been Grace who had delivered the blows that night? And not only the physical ones—they would heal and be forgotten—but the ones that she saw land. The ones that had stripped him of his purpose.

Had it been so easy?

She pushed the thought away. It did not matter. What mattered was that he was back, and with a new purpose, winning the aristocracy with his handsome face and his winning smile and his dancing. And she would stop it.

Grace scowled up at Marwick House, a home so elaborate that it spanned nearly an entire Mayfair block, taking in the happy, inviting windows, gleaming gold in the darkness, providing teasing glimpses of revelers within. She spied a Cleopatra with a Marc Antony, and a shepherdess lingering in the window, crook in hand, as though she was waiting for her sheep to arrive.

As she inspected the windows, a gaggle of people pushed by dressed as chess pieces, black king, white queen, black knight, white rook. Moments later, a masked bishop arrived, and for a fleeting moment Grace thought he might be a clever addition to the chess pieces, but things began to make sense when his companion appeared, dressed in the diaphanous garments of a nun.

London had arrived in droves for the Marwick masque—a fact that left Grace with twin realizations: first, Ewan must have changed, as most of London hadn’t been able to stomach him last year—duke or no; and second, the crush of people would provide the perfect cover for her attendance.

She would get in, sort out this new, improved Ewan, discover his goals, and get out to set plans in motion to end them. And being shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the city could only increase the possibility of her success.

She straightened her shoulders and fluffed her emerald skirts before ensuring that her bejeweled silver mask was properly fitted to her face—large enough to cover three-quarters of it, leaving only her dark eyes and dark red lips visible. And then she entered the fray.

The crush of revelers swept her up the stairs and down the long, elaborate hallway of Marwick House, the movement slowing as the ballroom came into view. All around her, there were gasps and delighted sighs of surprise. One man somewhere to her left said, “Marwick just made enemies of every hostess in Mayfair.”