Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(26)

The crowd parted and Grace saw the room, her heart stopping in her chest for a long moment as she took in the elaborate decor—until it began to thunder.

He’d recreated their place.

The copse of trees on the western edge of the Marwick estate that had been Grace’s favorite spot—their favorite spot. The ballroom was an echo of it.

Jaw slack, Grace entered the massive, welcoming space, her gaze turned up to the ceilings, where the chandeliers glittered happily from a sea of green flora and exotic flowers. Whoever had decorated for the party had spared no expense, designing a full bower of leaves and live flowers that hung low enough over the cavernous space as to add an air of privacy to the raucous ballroom.

As if the canopy above weren’t enough, there were three tree trunks rising up from the dance floor, massive and towering, breaking the flow of dancers as they moved around the room. They were made to be oaks, ancient and soaring, evoking the outdoors. Their outdoors.

Without thinking, she stepped out onto the floor—summoned to those trees as though on a string, and she discovered that the marble tiles had been covered in a soft moss that had to have cost him a fortune.

And that was before the fortune it would cost him to have it removed. Staring down at her feet, at her jewel-green skirts against the moss, gleaming in the candlelight like summer grass in dappled sunlight, Grace’s mind raced, distracted from her work and her plans for that evening—and by what she had discovered here, in his home.

Memory.

Unbidden and unwelcome and unavoidable.

She was thirteen again. It was a warm summer day, and the duke was away from the estate for some reason, and they were released to their childhood. Not that the boys knew quite what to do with childhood, or with freedom, but when their wicked father was gone, they did what they could.

Whit and Devil had headed straight for the stream, where they’d splashed and played and fought like the brothers they were.

Grace had watched them for a while, and then headed into the copse of trees to find Ewan, now more than her friend. Her love.

Not that he knew it. How could she tell him, when their life was in such upheaval? When they had every day only at the whim of his monstrous father?

He’d been seated on the thick, mossy ground, leaning back against the largest of the oaks, his eyes closed. Sound was muffled in the quiet, magical space, but it hadn’t mattered. He’d heard her arrive.

He didn’t open his eyes. “You didn’t have to follow me.”

She approached, Devil and Whit’s shouts falling away. “I wanted to.”

He looked at her then, his eyes glittering in the strange, ethereal light. “Why? I’m not like them.”

He wasn’t. The trio might have been born on the same day, to the same father, but each had been raised by a different mother. Ewan wasn’t an orphan like Devil. Nor was he raised with books and a hope for education like Whit. He’d spent the first decade of his life in a Covent Garden brothel, raised by a cast-off mistress and a dozen other women who’d taken him in when his mother had turned up with her expensive gowns and her jeweled hairpins.

She hadn’t kept them, but she’d kept him, and that was what had mattered, Grace knew.

Grace knew, and she thanked God and his mother for it every day.

It had been eighteen months they had all been together, long enough for them to have learned each other’s stories. Or, for Grace to have learned their stories. She didn’t have stories. None worth sharing.

She hadn’t been allowed them.

The only stories she had were the ones that she’d written with these boys, and with this one, in particular—the tall, blond, impossibly handsome boy she’d always imagined was half magic for the way he could win her in a moment with a smile. For the way he masterminded their silent battle with the man who seemed to own their fates.

That day, though, he’d been different. More serious. And Grace had sensed what was to come, even if she hadn’t known it with certainty. It was almost over.

She’d dropped to her knees in front of him, the rich, earthy scent of the glade cloaking them. “You’re going to win.”

His gaze went sharp. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” She nodded. “I’ve known it from the start. You’re strong and smart and you look the part—Devil is too angry, and Whit is too uncertain. It will be you.” The old duke wanted an heir, and it would be Ewan.

And it would be soon.

“I am angry,” he said, fiercely. “I am uncertain.”

“But you don’t show it,” she said, her chest growing tighter.

“I can’t.” The whisper was the kind that shouldn’t have come from a boy. It was too grown, and Grace hated his father for it. “I can’t.”

She reached for him, her fingers traced the high arc of his cheek. “You can with me.”

He’d gone stern, then—stormy enough for her to forget the sunshine beyond the trees. He’d grabbed her hand in his, pulling her touch away. “I don’t want to show it with you. I never want you to see it.”

Confusion flared. “Why?”

A pause, and then his touch changed, and he wasn’t pushing her away anymore. He was pulling her closer, coming up to his knees to meet her. He set his forehead to hers, and they stayed like that for an age, Grace’s heart pounding in that mysterious way that young hearts do, with a promise of something that cannot be named, and a hope for something that cannot be imagined.