Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(50)

“Do you forget how he fights, Gracie?” Whit asked.

“Don’t Gracie me,” she snapped. “I’m not a child.”

Whit looked to Devil. “I told you.”

Her brows snapped together. “Told him what?”

Devil sighed. “So you did.”

“Told him what?”

Beast looked back to the ground. “I’m only sayin’ that the young Duke of Marwick fights like Lucifer himself. He isn’t going to die.”

“I’m talkin’ to you, Duke,” Patrick O’Malley shouted below. “You want the full taste of the Garden, I’ve got it for you.”

Ewan didn’t reply, except to rope another block of ice from the wagon immediately beneath them and head back to the warehouse, keeping his focus on the door where a man with a strong hook and a stronger back leaned against the jamb, arms like tree trunks crossed over his chest, waiting. Refusing to meet the duke halfway.

The crowd tightened, taking up more space in the warehouse yard.

Grace swore. “This is madness.”

A clump of mud smacked Ewan on the back of the head. He stilled. Stiffened.

O’Malley approached, wiping his dirty hands on his already filthy trousers. “I said, I’m talkin’ to you, Duke.”

“He’ll take that bait,” Devil said.

Beast grunted his reply. “Can’t help it. Never could back down.”

Memory flashed, Ewan reeling from a solid punch when they were children. Turning instantly, swinging, coming back for more.

Far below, he rounded on Patrick O’Malley.

“Fifty quid says he’s down in under two.”

Grace turned surprised eyes on Devil. “You think Ewan goes down?”

He raised a black brow. “You don’t?”

She didn’t.

Beast removed two watches from his pocket, eyes still on the yard, seeing the way the people assembled fairly vibrated with excitement. The heat and the crowd making them ready for riot. “Two minutes? Or seconds?”

Devil laughed. “Be generous, bruv.”

Beast looked down at his watches, then back at Ewan, turned to face them now, scanning the crowd . . . then up, over the buildings. To the rooftops. His gaze lingered on them. On her.

Beast saw it. “Aye, alright. I’ll take your money.”

“You think ’e’s still got it?” Devil sounded surprised.

He still had it, Grace thought.

Beast nodded to Grace. “I think he’s always had it when she’s in the mix.”

She shot him a look. “I’m not in the mix.”

And in that split second, while she was looking away, hell broke loose below.





Chapter Fourteen


She’d come for him.

It had been a calculated risk—he’d known without question that whatever punishment Devil and Whit had designed for him would end with him battered and bruised, and likely by more than just his brothers.

But he’d also known that this might be the only chance he’d have of her coming to him. He’d made himself a promise, that he’d stay away from her. That he’d let her come to him. That he’d give her what she asked.

That’s what he had done. He’d gone away, and he’d rebuilt himself a better man. A worthier one. Stronger. Saner. And he would wait for her to come for him, because that was what she needed.

It did not matter that all he needed was her.

But when his brothers demanded he return to the Garden and pay his debts with sweat and blood as well as money, he’d agreed, unable to resist the invitation to this world that had once been his and was now theirs. Hers.

It was a cheat, he knew. A way around the promise he’d made to let her come to him. To let her choose him, unmasked. It might be a cheat, but he was not beyond cheating to win her back.

So he’d taken the knocks and carried the ice, feeling every inch a spectacle, the sole focus of a crowd of people who were out for blood. They didn’t know his truth—that he’d stood in countless similar crowds. That he’d watched men and dogs and bears fight, and he’d cut his teeth on the bloodlust that came from a world where cruelty was commonplace and inhumanity was armor.

He’d always imagined that his father saw that in him from the start.

The sheer want of a boy willing to do anything to survive. To thrive. To win.

And he hefted the weight for the crowd, hearing every shift in it, every quiet threat in it—the way some watched with admiration and others with anger and others with disdain, hating the fine lawn of his shirt, the polish of his boots, the clean shave of his jaw. The trappings of money and power, distributed at random. At birth.

They didn’t know he didn’t come by them randomly.

They didn’t know they’d been hers at birth.

He’d dropped the dozenth block at the door of the warehouse and turned back to fetch another, knowing that the only way out of the exercise was through—it would end with fatigue or fighting. Those were the only options, and he would never let the first happen.

He’d learned his pride in the Garden, as well as any of them.

He slowed his pace a touch—only as much as he could without attracting notice—taking the extra fractions of seconds to stretch his shoulders—only as much as he could without attracting notice. His left shoulder was on fire, rubbed raw by the rough rope he used to carry the massive blocks of ice.