Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(73)

She tilted her head. “So you don’t like the name, you don’t like the title, you don’t like the honorific. You don’t like the butler or the neighbors or the house or the attire or the privilege.” She paused. “Is there anything about the dukedom that you do like?”

Instead of answering, Ewan turned to look over the dark roofs, the light from the waning moon barely enough to see the next house, let alone across the square. “I don’t see how it’s possible for you to travel London like this.”

She flashed him a grin. “You mean by sky?”

“Is that what you call it?”

“I’ve always rather liked the poetry of it,” she said. “The truth is, the sky would be easier. But when the moon is out and the street lamps are lit? I know the way.”

The words echoed through him, something strange about them. He met her eyes. “You know the way?”

The air between them thickened with the question. It didn’t make sense that she would know the way. It didn’t make sense that the girl who had been raised on the streets and become Covent Garden royalty, running information and spies and pleasure like she did, would have the time, interest, or inclination to learn the way from the Rookery to the northern edge of Grosvenor Square.

It didn’t make sense that she would know the wheres and hows to get herself to the rooftops here, in Mayfair, where the city was more manicured, less labyrinthine, and teeming with people who would send round to Bow Street without second thought if they saw someone skulking about on the roof.

It didn’t matter how beautiful she was, or how commanding.

Unless she’d been doing it long enough that she knew all the ways to avoid being seen. Ewan caught his breath at the idea, immediately closing the distance between them, knowing that the question was a risk. If he was right, it could scare her off.

But was this not their life? Did they not risk?

As he drew close, she deliberately did not look at him, picking at something invisible on her trouser leg. Even if there was something there, it was the dead of night—there was no way she could see it. She was avoiding him.

“How do you know the way, Grace?”

“It’s only a mile,” she replied, and he heard the caution in her tone. “It’s not like knowing the way to Wales.”

They both knew Mayfair might as well be Wales for as far away as it was from the Rookery. He was close enough to her that he could see her a bit, her face glowing gold in the flickering candlelight, and her hair shot through with silver from the moon.

“Tell me,” he said softly, moving toward her and suddenly very eager to know the truth. “Tell me how you knew this was my roof.”

She fidgeted, the movement so shocking that it set him back. Had she ever fidgeted? He reached for her, his fingers pushing a lock of her red hair behind one of her ears—how had he never noticed her ears were perfect?

“It’s Grosvenor Square, Marwick. There aren’t that many homes, and I can count chimney stacks as well as the next girl.”

He shook his head. “Not Marwick. Not now, dammit.”

Her eyes went wide at the steel in his tone. “Careful,” she warned.

Ewan didn’t care. There was something there, and he would know more. “Tell me how you know there’s an opening in my roof, Grace.”

Her gaze snapped to his, defensively. “There’s an opening in everyone’s roof. Toffs don’t know, because they don’t sweep chimneys and they don’t tar roofs, so why should they spend time here?”

“Tell me how you knew how to get inside.”

“I’ve never been inside,” she said, not liking the direction of his questions. “With the exception of the ball, I’ve never been inside.”

He believed her. But something was off. Something had happened here.

There was something else.

“What, then?” he asked.

An eternity passed while he waited for her to speak. Finally, “I used to come here.”

“Why?”

“I knew a duke who needed a good fleecing.”

He shook his head. “No, Grace. Why?”

It was his turn to wait an eternity. More.

“I came to wait for you,” she said.

The confession nearly put him to his knees. “Why?”

She looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”

It was the only thing that mattered.

“I thought I could—” She trailed off.

She didn’t need to. She couldn’t have. Whatever Grace had thought she could do if she’d seen him in those years after he’d run them off—whatever she’d thought she could convince him to do if only she’d seen him . . . she wouldn’t have been able to.

Finally, she said, “What happened after we left?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does, though. Where did you go? You were never here.”

“School,” he said. He’d gone to school, mercifully, and there, he’d found something like solace—even as the rest of the boys thought him mad. Even as they might have been right. “Eton, and then Oxford, and then away—to the continent. Wherever I could go and be rid of him and his threats.”

“He never stopped hurting you,” she said, softly.