Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(29)

Tonight was not about pleasure. It was about planning.

But he had designed a room and an event that was pure fantasy, and for her to understand why—to properly understand what he was planning and cut him off at the pass—Grace was going to have to play.

Which should not be difficult—did she not trade in play?

She was not a fool—she knew what he asked for.

From whom?

She ignored the insidious whisper, and the thread of unease that came with it. Ignored, too, the idea that he flirted with another woman. Let him flirt. Let him imagine a future of partnership, as though she hadn’t vowed to take that from him from the start.

Grace would wear her mask and give him what he wished, and in the process, she would clarify the objective of his return. Of his change. Of his newfound entrance into this world they’d always sworn never to embrace.

This world to which he was never supposed to return.

That was why she was here. Reconnaissance.

In, then out. Here, then gone.

“Isn’t everyone here fleeting?”

“Are they? They’re the collective product of centuries of aristocratic breeding.”

Not you, though, she thought. Not I. “I’ve never put much stock in aristocratic breeding, Duke.” The title was a test. Would he flinch?

He placed a hand to his chest in mock disappointment, his winning smile widening. “You wound me, lady. Truly.”

He didn’t recognize her. Something loosened in her chest, relaxing her. Settling her into her role. “Look around you,” she said, waving a hand in the direction of a Henry VIII and a Sir Thomas More nearby, in raucous conversation with an Anne Boleyn and a Duchess of Devonshire, wig so high it was a miracle she could keep her head straight above her scandalously low-cut gown. “None of you can bear to behave as you wish without masks. What is the purpose of the power you’ve amassed, if not to find delight?”

He tilted his head in her direction. “We? Are you not one of us?”

She shook her head. “I am none of you.”

“And you found us how? Wandering lost in my gardens?”

She couldn’t help the hint of smile. “I’ve an invitation.”

“From me?”

She ignored the question. “There are whole swaths of the city that would do anything for a chance at the joy you can take in an instant,” she said, instead. “And still you hesitate, allowing yourselves a taste of pleasure only when you can reasonably deny you’ve ever had it. What a waste.”

“What then? Take pleasure as it comes?”

The words washed over her like silk. That was precisely what she meant. She, who dealt in pleasure as it came.

Grace smiled. “I am nothing if not a realist.”

“Tell me something real, then.”

She did not hesitate. “I am fleeting. So is this evening.” Her gaze flickered past him, to the massive trees soaring above the crush of revelers. “But you knew that already.”

“Did I?” He was watching her carefully, and she resisted the urge to look away, afraid he would look too hard. See too much.

Instead, she pulled her masks tight to her and gave him a knowing smile. “You’ve turned your ballroom into the outdoors, Your Grace. If that is not fleeting, I don’t know what is.”

“Mmm,” he said, and the low rumble warmed her, even as she knew she should not let it. “And so? What should we do with tonight?”

He didn’t know it was she. The proof of it was there in his gaze—full of curiosity and playfulness.

She was a stranger. She’d planned to be, of course. But she hadn’t expected him to be one, as well.

“The same as we should do with every night,” she said, softly, suddenly more honest than she had imagined she would be with him. “We should savor it.”

Silence—and then, “Would you like to dance?”

She was caught off guard by the question. When was the last time she’d been asked to dance? Had she ever been asked to dance? Once or twice, she supposed, in the Garden, by someone full of liquid courage. But the last time she’d danced like this? In a ballroom?

It had been with him.

And he was made for it. Handsome and charming and with a smile that could win the coldest of skeptics, standing in front of her, dressed like any woman’s fantasy.

You could do with a fantasy now and then.

Veronique’s words from earlier in the week whispered through her, and on their heels certainty and focus. Drive. Purpose.

This was not fantasy. This was reconnaissance.

She had a plan.

She placed her gloved hand in his outstretched one.

“I would very much like to dance.”





Chapter Nine


He’d known it was her from the moment she’d stepped into the ballroom, in a dress that fell in lush emerald waves to the floor, despite the mask covering everything but her beautiful kohled eyes and the dark wine color staining her lips, and the wig that stole her flame-colored curls from him.

He presumed she was trying for disguise, as though he’d ever not sense her. Not feel her. As though there would ever come a time when she walked into a room and his whole body did not draw tight like a spring.

But disguise required something more than Grace would ever have—an ability to be unnoticed. And Grace would always be the first thing he noticed in any room, ever.