Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(78)

“That’s true,” Devil said.

“Bollocks,” Felicity replied. “You changed.”

“You changed me, love,” he said instantly. “That’s different.”

“Of course, I did,” she said, “just as you changed me.” She approached him, sliding into the crook of his arm. “What if Grace changed him?” She paused, then said, “The man who came for you, for Whit, for Hattie . . . for me . . . he was all anguish. No hope.”

They told me you were dead.

Felicity shrugged. “Hope changes a person.”

Grace went still at the words.

What if he finally had hope?

What if she did?

Helena began to fret, and Grace walked her to her parents. Without missing a beat, Devil took the babe and set her in the crook of his arm, pulling a silver rattle from his pocket and handing it to her.

“What’s your point, Felicity?” Devil asked once the baby was settled.

“I think you very well know what my point is,” she said to her husband before looking to Grace. “My point is, don’t listen to them.”

“Hear, hear!” Hattie roundly agreed. “They haven’t any idea what they’re on about.”

“It took them both near-death experiences to know what they wanted.”

“That’s not true!” Devil said. “I knew what I wanted.”

“You did not,” Whit said. “Grace and I had to knock actual sense into you to get you to see that Felicity was far better than you could ever dream of having.” He turned a smile on his sister-in-law. “You know that, don’t you, that you settled?”

Felicity smiled happily. “In fact, I do.”

“I, on the other hand, knew I wanted Hattie from the first moment I saw her.”

Hattie’s brows shot up. “You did, did you?”

He flashed a grin at his wife. “From the moment you pushed me from a moving carriage, luv. How could I not?”

Hattie turned back to Grace. “A glutton for punishment.”

“Yes, well, I’m beginning to think it’s a family trait,” she said, dryly.

“But the duke . . .” Hattie said. “He doesn’t seem to have difficulty setting his sights on what he wants.”

“No,” Whit agreed, dryly. “He’s so certain he wants you, you had to stay in hiding for twenty years.”

Grace was no longer convinced that they had been running from Ewan, though. Something was changed.

Or maybe it was false hope.

Felicity tilted her head. “That is something of a black mark, to be sure.”

“What in hell are we discussing here,” Devil interjected. “Have you forgotten he kept us running scared for years? Have you forgotten that he knocked me over the head and tried to freeze me to death?”

“It’s important to note, you didn’t freeze to death,” Felicity said.

Devil’s brows rose in disbelief. “We shall have words when we get home, wife.”

She shook her head at the group. “We never have words when we get home.”

“That’s because you are distracting, but I shan’t be distracted from this,” he said. “I survived because you saved me.”

She turned to look at Grace. “Not only me. The duke left London the night he left Devil for dead. He’d known that he was being watched. If I hadn’t saved Devil, Whit would have—he would have come to tell Devil that Marwick was gone.”

It wasn’t an impossibility, Grace thought. But it was a gamble.

“I’ve never bought that argument,” Devil grumbled.

“Never?” Grace’s brows rose. “Is this a discussion that is had often?”

“It’s Hattie’s theory,” Whit grumbled. “I don’t like it”—he turned his attention to his wife—“as he exploded her.”

“Again,” Hattie said quite happily, “I was only slightly exploded.”

Grace looked to Hattie, feeling a bit like she’d been given too little laudanum and was hallucinating instead of sleeping. “Slightly exploded?”

Whit grunted his irritation.

Hattie waved a hand through the air. “And only because he didn’t get to me in time.” She looked to Grace. “I believe he intended to get to me in time. To stop me from being hurt. He wasn’t responsible for the second explosion. That was the one that hurt me and the others. We know that.”

“And so? We give points for not lighting the match?” Whit said. “For not firing the pistol? Intent wouldn’t have saved you if you’d been . . .”

Hattie gave him a little kiss on the cheek. “Yes, love. But I wasn’t.”

“And so, what, we forgive him simply because you survived?”

She looked to Felicity. “I don’t think he’s gone without punishment, do you?”

“Hell, no,” Devil said. “But I wouldn’t object to him being packed into the ice hold for a decade or two. Cold storage would do him well.”

They told me you were dead.

“And if he’d succeeded in killing Hattie? In harming Felicity? What would you have done?” Grace asked.

Devil looked to Whit, and she saw the answer pass between them. Recognized it, because it was her answer, too.