Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(47)

Grace nodded. “So it is. What’s your name?”

“Victoria, mum.” The girl bobbed fast as she could—an East End curtsy.

Surprised by the name, Grace looked to Zeva and Veronique, taking in their knowing smiles. “Well, I wouldn’t lay odds against this one, at least.” She reached into her pocket and tossed a coin to the girl, who caught it out of the air with a speed that rivaled her own as a child.

The girl would have made a great fighter—but she’d never have to prove that, because she’d have work with Grace as long as she wanted it.

“You did well, Victoria. Thank you.”

Another bob, and the girl was headed for the door, almost there before she seemed to remember something and turned back.

“Oh, and there’s another thing . . .” The girl paused, fiddling with her cap, then found her voice more quickly than before. “They say ’e’s a toff.”





Chapter Thirteen


She found her idiot brothers exactly where she expected to find them—on the rooftops overlooking the yard of the Bastards’ warehouse, deep in the Covent Garden Rookery.

“Don’t get too close,” she said as she approached them, having used the vast network of the Garden’s maze of interconnected buildings to get to them. “You wouldn’t like someone with sense to push you right over the edge.”

Devil looked over his shoulder at her, his brows rising in amusement. Of course he was amused. Devil liked nothing better than playing puppeteer with those around him. “Ah! You’re here! And just as it’s getting interesting.”

Her heart pounded as she drew closer, tilting her head, expecting to hear jeers and hoots from the yard below, where a crowd had no doubt assembled to watch whatever elaborate scheme her brothers had concocted.

She was surprised to hear quiet instead.

Quiet made her heart pound harder. Quiet was more dangerous.

Grace came abreast of them, and they eased aside, making space between them for her as they’d done for two decades, since the night they’d run. And as unsettled as she was high on that rooftop, she was never so at home as she was with these men—brothers in name if not blood, and proof that family was found, not born.

But that did not mean they would not feel her wrath if they’d mucked everything up.

She took a deep breath and followed their gazes down over the edge of the roof, taking in the yard below, where the afternoon sun cast long shadows into the enormous rectangular space, flanked on all sides by the massive warehouse owned by the Bareknuckle Bastards.

A web of inside corridors connected the buildings, accessible only through the main entrance at the far end of the yard, where Annika, the tall Norwegian genius who ran the Bastards’ business operation, stood framed in the great sliding doorway of the warehouse, against the pitch darkness of the interior. Nik was flanked by a quartet of men who hauled for a living, arms crossed over their broad chests, box hooks in hand. The five stood sentry, unmoving.

Watching.

As everyone else watched. The yard was packed with people, the crowd two deep—three in places—men and women, old and young. Grace recognized the Rookery’s baker on the eastern edge of the crowd, towering behind a collection of the boys she knew hauled fresh water around the neighborhood. A few of the girls who worked the streets stood in the long shadow of the western wall. Even the doctor’s wife had made an appearance.

It took Grace a moment to see what they all saw.

Lie.

She saw him the moment she looked over the edge, at the center of the yard, alone. He was in shirtsleeves, cuffs rolled to his elbows, revealing the muscles of his forearms, straining as he hefted a block of ice three-feet square, held by a length of rough rope over his shoulder.

Those muscles were the only thing about him that did not scream duke. He didn’t have to speak a word for them to know where he came from. There was nothing about him that hid it.

Grace wondered where his coat was, as it was impossible to believe that he’d come without it, or a waistcoat. Or a cravat. Or a hat. As for trousers, they molded to his thighs and were not designed for the Rookery—their color too light to hide the dirt and grime of the Garden.

His face did not hide the truth, either. It didn’t matter that his long nose had been broken when they were children—a well-placed blow on Devil’s part—or that it was streaked with dirt and perspiration. The angles of it were all wrong, sharp and aristocratic, with even the bump on his nose seeming to have a Mayfair accent.

All that, and he was still the handsomest thing she’d ever seen.

No wonder the girls had sent word about him; he didn’t belong here.

He looked every inch the duke he was.

Every inch the enemy.

And the Garden knew it.

All around the edge of the yard, they watched, reveling in his mistakes—the absence of a hook to haul the ice, the lack of a leather shoulder guard to protect his skin from the rough rub of the rope, the gloves that had been made for horses’ reins and walking sticks rather than hard work and wear.

“Truly, it is a miracle you two lived to adulthood. And found women to marry you,” she said softly. “It’s a good thing they’re brilliant, else I would dearly fear for your progeny. What sort of punishment is this? You’ve got him hauling ice? Has he seen the cargo that came packed in it? Because letting a duke near your smuggled goods is truly, madly stupid.”