Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(76)

He had.

“You say you are a better man.”

He was.

Wasn’t he?

“But I’m not sure it matters.”

All that mattered was that he had harmed her.

“It shouldn’t matter.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, as though she was speaking to herself and not him. “It shouldn’t matter . . . and I should hate you.”

He clung to that should, reaching for her, telling himself that he would let her go the second she pushed him away. The second she resisted him.

But she didn’t resist him.

“Who am I without that hate?” she whispered.

His heart ached at the question.

“Who are you without it?” she added.

“I don’t know,” he told her. Truth. “All I know is that I want to know.” He put his forehead to hers and closed his eyes, and said the words that had haunted him every day since the day she’d left. “I’m sorry.”

He’d never meant anything so much.

They crashed together like thunder, the kiss robbing them both of breath and threatening to rob Ewan of far more. As he pulled her close, she was already tilting up to him, her hands already coming into his hair to pull him to her, her lips full and open as they met his, breath and tongues tangling as they consumed each other.

Like fire.

And it was fire, hot and made nearly unbearable with the knowledge that she wanted him as he wanted her. That though she should hate him, whatever she did feel—wherever they stood now—was not hate. It was something else.

Ewan could work with something else, if only she would let him.

His lip stung with the force of the kiss but he did not care, not when her tongue was stroking against his and he was so quickly lost, a groan escaping as he tasted her again, pulling her close and lifting her to him until they were pressed against each other, like two halves of a whole.

Like they’d always been.

Though he could not tell where his ended and hers began, he could taste the emotion in the urgent kiss—sorrow and anger and frustration and desire, and something that she would not name but that he knew would always be there.

Her fingers sank into his hair, and he settled into her mouth, stroking deep until she sighed her pleasure, the sound rushing through him, straight to the core of him, where he was hard and aching once more.

The evening hadn’t been enough.

It would never be enough.

It was a claiming. He was claimed. Hers forever.

And she . . .

Mine.

Christ. He would give everything to claim her in return.

As though she’d heard the thought, she stopped the kiss, pushing him away, taking a step back to put space between them, their breaths heavy and aching, shock and desire flashing along with wild frustration in her eyes.

But that wasn’t it. There was something else.

Need.

She needed him, and Christ, he needed her, too.

She saw it. Saw that he would give her everything she asked. Everything she wanted. She took another step back, shaking her head, and held up an accusing hand. “No.”

“Grace,” he said, reaching as she turned, her hair, her coat, everything about her slipping through his fingers as she took off across the roof, and disappeared into the night.

Every ounce of him raged to follow her. To catch her and tell her everything. To make her understand.

I’m not sure it matters.

She disappeared from view and he stared after her, watching the eastern sky grow lighter, charcoal giving way to lavender and then the deepest red he’d ever seen, like the whole city was aflame.

And only once the blinding sunlight climbed over the rooftops did he let himself go. Around Grosvenor Square, servants climbed from their beds to the frustrated roar he let out to the dawn.





Chapter Nineteen


One week later, Grace went to Berkeley Square for dinner.

When they’d married, Whit had bought his wife a stunning town house on the western edge of the square, because she’d said she liked it, and he had set himself a singular life’s goal—spoiling Hattie. The house sat empty most days of the week, because Hattie ran one of London’s largest shipping operations and Whit was never without work at Bastards’ headquarters, and they both preferred their more convenient home in Covent Garden.

But Whit didn’t like visitors in his private quarters—even family—so they hosted family dinners each Friday in the town house, affording Whit and Devil the pleasure of doing their very best to “scare off the toffs” when they arrived, which usually involved making a racket in an ancient gig, complete with mud-caked boots and faces in dire need of a shave.

Suffice to say, the venerable aristocratic residents of Berkeley Square had a great deal to discuss on Saturday mornings.

The dinners were usually one of Grace’s happiest times of the week, allowing her a heartbeat of time to cuddle with Devil and Felicity’s Helena, eight months old and perfect in every way.

But that night, a week after she’d fled the rooftops of a different Mayfair square, she dreaded the event, knowing that she would no longer be able to avoid thinking about the Duke of Marwick’s rooftop.

Nor would she be able to avoid thinking about the evening in the Duke of Marwick’s home. Nor the moments on the Duke of Marwick’s lap, nor the afternoon with the Duke of Marwick in the Garden, blood and dirt on his shirt as though brawling was an everyday occurrence.