Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(49)

The mark his father had left on him when he’d discovered Ewan’s most prized secret—love. The old duke had found them curled together in the darkness on a summer evening, wrapped in each other’s warmth—a warmth Grace could still remember if she allowed herself to—and he’d gone mad with rage.

No heir of mine will lie with the dreck that came from her bitch of a mother, he’d screamed, coming for her.

Ewan had defended her, but his father had been stronger, with six inches and a hundred pounds on him. He’d taken Ewan to the ground and left his sadistic mark on him, as she watched.

And the next day, everything had been different.

The boy she’d loved was gone.

He’d betrayed them days later.

“What’s he doing here?” she asked, pushing the thought away. “Hauling ice doesn’t win you and it most definitely doesn’t win the Rookery. If anything, it riles them up.”

“He’s back for you,” Devil said, simply, not looking away from Marwick’s movement below.

The words ripped through her along with the memory of his touch in the gardens earlier in the week. Along with his whispered questions—urging her to tell him her name. Along with the whisper of doubt that had chased her away in the end . . . the sense that perhaps he had known it all along.

She shook her head, having no other choice but to disagree. “He isn’t.”

Why did the words feel like a lie?

What if he is?

She ignored the thought and spoke to the yard, “He’s on the marriage mart.”

“Yes,” Devil drawled. “That would be a problem, if it were true. But it’s not.”

She looked at him. “What?”

Beast grunted. “It’s a trap.”

“A trap for whom?” she asked. “He can’t think I would . . .” She trailed off, the words lost to the memory of the way she’d turned herself over to him in the gardens of his ball. “He can’t think he can win me back.”

Devil stared at her for a long moment. “Can’t he?”

She stiffened. “No.”

“All right then,” Devil said, thoroughly agreeable, and utterly infuriating.

“It’s a trap,” Beast repeated.

Without thinking, she looked back at Ewan, letting her gaze track over the ridges and planes of his chest, down over his muscled thighs and then back up, slowly—slower than she should have been, over the beautiful planes of his face, more proof that the boy was gone.

This was no boy.

She met his eyes, not knowing what to expect. Definitely not expecting the knowing curve of his lips, the rise of one blond brow, as though he had witnessed every inch of her perusal. As though he’d liked it. He lifted his chin in her direction, as though to acknowledge her careful inspection, a knight in tourney, searching for his lady’s favor.

Where in hell had that come from?

She was no lady, and he was certainly no knight.

“Oy! Duke!”

“There it is,” Devil said, softly. “They don’t like the way he looks at you, Dahlia.”

Grace barely heard it, too busy watching the duke in question as he ignored the shout. Ignored, but heard—the proof of the hearing in the way his long strides slowed, just barely. Another movement that one would notice only if she was really looking.

Grace noticed it.

Ignoring the way the realization unsettled, she said, “I suppose you told them everything?”

“Nah,” Devil said, casually, one hand in his pocket, rocking back on his heels. “If we’d told them everything, he’d’ve been dead the moment he showed his face. We just told them that he was a duke.”

She slid him a look. “What sort of duke?”

Letting Covent Garden into his voice, Devil flashed her a grin, his scar gleaming white on his cheek. The scar Ewan had put there twenty years earlier. “The sort wot deserves what ’e gets.”

It was true, she reminded herself. And this crowd would give it to him today.

“I didn’t expect the O’Malleys out of the gate first, though.”

Beast grunted. “The O’Malleys are always first out of the gate.” He looked to the sun, creeping lower over the west edge of the yard. “And at this hour? Patrick O’Malley’s already soused enough to go up against a duke.”

Patrick O’Malley was a proper bruiser who was ever ready for a fight. He stepped out from the crowd. “You think you can just climb down into the muck wiv us? Slum it for a bit, until the work starts to sting, and then go back to polishin’ yer knob wiv the rest of your kind, tellin’ tales of yer time in the Garden? You think we’re a lark?”

They didn’t know Ewan had been born in the Garden.

They didn’t know he had no interest in ever telling tales of his time here.

“If O’Malley starts it, the whole place’ll finish it,” Beast said. “The duke doesn’t know what a boon he just got—men’ll take his side just for the pleasure of goin’ in against the O’Malley brothers.”

She looked to her brothers. “You’re asking for a riot.”

Devil shrugged. “Nah. It won’t be a riot. It’ll just be a proper brawl. As God intended.”

“And if he dies? Who’ll hang for it?” she said, sensing that the whole thing was about to get far out of hand.