Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(39)

“We ain’t the kind of men who show face in Mayfair at reasonable hours, Duke,” came a voice from behind O’Clair, whose eyes went wide with a mix of shock and affront that would have amused Ewan if he wasn’t so surprised himself by the new arrivals.

Devil punctuated his words with a kick to the door, sending it swinging back on the hinge and crashing into the wall. He entered the room as Whit took up residence in the doorway behind him, arms crossed over his massive chest, looking every inch the Beast London called him.

No longer runt of the litter.

Ewan narrowed his gaze on his brothers. He appeared to have summoned them with his memory. Bad luck, that.

“Sirs! I must insist—” O’Clair, for his part, was beside himself and still soldiering on. “The duke is not receiving.”

“Oho! Is he not?” Devil tapped O’Clair on the shoulder with the silver handle of his ebony cane, his scar flashing white and wicked down the side of his cheek. “No need to stand on ceremony, good man—the duke’s more than happy to see us.” He didn’t look to Ewan as he said, “Ain’t you, bruv?”

“I wouldn’t use the word happy, no.”

“Too fuckin’ bad,” Beast said from the doorway, the words coming like gravel.

The butler blustered, and Ewan bit back a curse. He might as well save the man. “Thank you, O’Clair.”

The butler turned wide eyes on him. “Your Grace?”

Tonight, of all nights, he chose to resist orders? “I shan’t need you for the rest of the evening.”

O’Clair didn’t seem convinced, but still, he collected himself. “Of course.” He bowed, shortly, and moved to leave the room, stopping when he reached Beast in the doorway. “I beg your pardon, sir.”

Beast grunted and moved just enough to let him past.

“I’ll thank you not to torment my servants,” Ewan said.

“Beast ain’t good wiv manners.” It was a lie. They were all impeccable at manners. Their father had made sure of it. He’d delighted in playing abusive Pygmalion before he’d found other ways to entertain himself. Beast grunted as Devil rounded the desk and sat. “Was this the old man’s desk?”

“Yes,” Ewan said, moving to pour more whisky. He sensed he was going to need it.

“Good,” Devil said, the word punctuated with the thunk of his great heavy boots, muddy and full of whatever filth he’d brought in from Covent Garden.

Ewan couldn’t blame him. He fucking hated that desk, and everything else in the house that had belonged to their father. But he’d be damned if he’d show as much.

Had Grace sent them? Had she discovered the truth of the night in his gardens, in the gazebo, and decided to send her brothers to finish the job she’d begun a year earlier? Had he miscalculated?

His heart began to pound. No. She wouldn’t send them to do her dirty work. She was not one to turn away from a fight. Certainly not one from him.

Why hadn’t she come to confront him herself?

He willed himself calm and filled his glass in silence. “What then, are you here for another round of Who Shall Kill the Duke?”

Every time he’d faced these two in the last two years, it had ended in battle. Every time he’d faced them in the last twenty years. And he’d always laid them out. But somehow, they were the ones who had won. They had homes and families and a whole world to bring them purpose and pleasure.

And they had Grace.

“It isn’t the worst idea, innit?” Devil said, the sound of the Garden so thick that Ewan knew it was meant to grate when he added, “Come now, bruv, we ain’t monsters.”

It did grate.

He refused to let it show. “Are you not?”

“No,” came the reply from the doorway. “That’s always been your specialty.”

Ewan did not look up, even as Devil whistled his admiration and tapped his walking stick on his filthy boots, ever the showman. “Look at that. You’ve got Beast out here giving soliloquies.”

“What do you want, Devon?”

The name was a calculated risk, one that paid off with the silence that came in reply. Ewan turned to face his brother, who was staring directly at him. The lightness was gone from Devil’s voice when he said, “I remind you that only one of us has a given name that sees him to the gallows.”

Ewan did not respond. They’d had the means to reveal him an imposter duke for decades, and somehow had never used them. He didn’t worry about it now.

Some days, he wished for it.

Devil tapped his walking stick on his boots again. Once, twice in slow succession, his gaze tracking Ewan from head to toe. “You’ve changed.”

He knew what they’d seen in the ring a year ago—when he’d met Grace after an eternity of thinking she was dead. When he’d taken her hits. And when she’d laid him low with the worst of it—the knowledge that he would never be worthy of the girl he’d once loved.

That that girl no longer existed.

These men had watched his destruction.

He knew what they saw now. He was bigger than he’d been when he’d seen them last. Broader and more muscular. His cheeks shaven, less hollow. His body healthier—and his mind, as well.

Not always, but mostly.