Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(81)

She was inside, and she wanted him with her.

And so he walked through fire to get to her.

The metal door to the club opened without a knock, as though it had been waiting for his arrival. Inside, a tall black woman with elaborately kohled eyes that shimmered in the candlelight whispered in the ear of another woman, who immediately disappeared through a set of heavy velvet curtains.

“I am—”

“I know who you are,” the woman said quietly. She leaned back and opened the curtain, just enough to look through it to something happening inside the building beyond. Satisfied, presumably, with what she saw, she returned her attention to him. “You’ll recall that masks are designed to preserve anonymity, sir.”

Sir. Not duke. Not here. Here, he was without title, and the pleasure that came with the loss was immense.

Ewan looked over his shoulder to discover two enormous men, each with a pistol strapped beneath his arm. Security. Where another man might have been uncomfortable with the show of brute force, Ewan was glad of it. It meant Grace was safer within these walls than he’d hoped.

He nodded at the men. They did not reciprocate.

And then he looked to the woman who had barely acknowledged him. “And so?”

She reached for the curtain and pulled it back, far enough for him to pass through, the movement filling the small entryway with the raucous noise and wild color of the party within. “Dominion awaits.”

Dominion.

Of course it was called Dominion.

And she’d invited him here. To revel in it. To revel in her.

Grace. Dahlia. Both.

Excitement thrummed through him and he looked to the woman who held the portal to Grace’s world open for him. “Where is she?”

Her gaze narrowed on him, assessing. Good. He liked the idea that Grace had people who cared for her, even here, where she reigned.

“I don’t know to whom you are referring, sir.”

He nodded once. He was on his own, apparently, so he did the only thing he could; he pushed through the curtain, and into Grace’s bacchanal.

It was like nothing he’d ever seen—a riot of color and sound, of laughter and shouts and music, bright and celebratory . . . there was no staid orchestra or string quartet here—instead, there were roving musicians. A young woman with a high powdered wig fiddled in one corner of the large open receiving room, playing faster and faster as a masked woman dressed in a cloud of pink gauze whirled with impossible speed, the fabric of her gown spread wide as she twirled, a circle of onlookers clapping in time with the music.

On the other side of the room, a collection of masked women draped over a large circular seat upholstered in lush sapphire velvet, watching the performer above them, who used the center of their seating as a stage. She was an acrobat, in diaphanous trousers and a shirt that wrapped tightly about her body, and she bent and twisted, inverting herself in impossible ways, with a slow speed that only served to underscore her remarkable strength.

As she held herself up by one hand, her legs pointing straight to the ceiling, the women watching burst into applause, and Ewan struggled to resist joining in.

A tray laden with champagne passed in front of him, a half-dozen gloved hands in myriad silks and satins reaching out to lift glasses from it, and the woman holding it didn’t miss a step, delivering precisely what the partygoers asked. Once they were all satisfied, she turned to look up at him, a welcoming smile on her bright face, as though she’d known he was there the whole time.

“Champagne, sir?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“What then?”

She disappeared the moment he asked for bourbon, and Ewan wondered if he’d ever see her again; certainly the wild crush of people would prohibit anything like her finding him.

He turned away, heading for a small antechamber, door open. Inside, an unmasked woman stood behind a table in the corner—a handful of other revelers lingering, watching. She smiled and beckoned him closer. “Join us, good sir,” she said in a thick Italian accent.

He approached, unable to contain his curiosity as the woman, who introduced herself as Fortuna, extracted a stack of cups from beneath the table, each painted with Venetian masks.

She named the empty cups as she set them to the table.

La Tragedia.

La Commedia.

Gli Innamorati.

And then, using tight red rosebuds, she proceeded to dazzle her audience with a collection of impossible tricks, passing the flowers through the ceramic, all while telling the story of star-crossed lovers, who found happiness and sorrow and ultimately, each other.

The cups flew across the table. “. . . fated to be . . .”

The buds appeared and reappeared. “. . . taking love for granted . . .”

And then, disappeared altogether as she showed the audience the empty cup bearing the portrait of two lovers in wild embrace. “. . . heartbreak,” she said, softly, before setting it to the table, upside down.

“But!” Fortuna said, after letting disappointed silence hang around her. “Tonight is not for heartbreak, is it?” She looked to a woman nearby. “Is it, my lady?”

The woman shook her head. “No.”

Fortuna looked to him. “Sir?”

He couldn’t help his smile. “No.”

“Allora . . .” she intoned with glee. “Perhaps, it is true what they say. In love, hope.”