Still, if anyone was to bring out the worst in him, it was these two. “I’m game if you are.”
Devil’s brows rose and he shot a wolfish smile to Whit, who pulled his fists—the size of hams—from his pockets. “Me first, if you’re offering. Or do we get the coward who met Grace in the ring last year—willing to take his licks like the toff he was trained to be?”
How he wanted to put a fist into his brothers’ faces. Instead, he stayed distant, playing the role they expected. “I owe her more than I owe you.”
Truth.
“Ah, so you gave her a gift? By not fighting her?”
“I’d never hurt her.”
The words froze the other two men, and Ewan felt their surprise, looking quickly from one to the other before Devil shook his head. “My God.”
“He doesn’t see it,” Whit said.
“See what?”
“That you’ve hurt her every day since we ran.”
Silence fell in the wake of the words, and he watched Devil’s jaw tighten, the scar that ran six inches down the side of Devil’s face—the one Ewan had put there decades earlier—went white with the movement, and no doubt with the memories of Ewan’s past actions. He’d a lifetime of threatening them. Their lives, their futures, their wives, their world.
And threatening them was the least of what he’d done.
Whit continued, the words hitting heavier because they came from the brother who so rarely spoke. “She’s never been safe. Never not been in hiding. Never had a day when she did not have to look over her shoulder. For you. You’ve been chasing her since the night you chased her from Burghsey.”
“Not chasing. Searching.”
“Aye, searching so you could finish what you started.” Devil, this time. “Eliminate the proof that you stole a dukedom and a life and a future.”
He’d never intended to steal it. He’d meant for her to have it with him. “That’s not true.”
“Nah. I know that, now. But she don’t and even if she did, it wouldn’t matter.”
Anger flared, irrational and full of indignation even as he heard the ring of truth in the words. “Tell me why you are here, or get the hell out of my house.”
Devil watched him for a long moment, and then said, “Careful, bruv, you’re starting to sound like a real Marwick.”
At the suggestion that he was like their father, the facade of ducal disdain was gone, Ewan’s vision clouding with rage as he moved with speed he hadn’t needed in two decades. He was out of his chair and at the desk, his hands flat on the wood as he faced down Devil. And then, clear and strong, like a bell, “Say it again. Give me a reason to rip you apart.”
Devil tapped that infernal stick against his boot again and again. When Ewan was ready to snap it in two, his brother asked, entirely casual, “Did you kill him?”
Their father.
For a heartbeat, he imagined that this was what it would be like if they’d stayed together. The three of them, late at night, with scotch and the past.
He swallowed back the hint of regret that came with the realization and lifted his glass. “Does it matter?” He knocked the whisky back.
Two sets of dark brows rose as his brothers shared a look—one Ewan could not read. The silent communication grated.
Devil replied. “Not really, no.”
“Then why don’t you two get the hell on with it?”
“No need to get angry.”
“We’re all angry,” Ewan spat. “Always have been. Three brothers, born beneath the same angry star.” On the same day, at the same hour, they’d been told. Cut from the same cloth, and somehow vastly different.
“Mmm.” Devil tilted his head. “But it wasn’t just us, was it?”
It wasn’t. Grace had been born that same day. That same hour. To a different man, but to the same fate.
Did they think he didn’t know? Did they think he didn’t think of that fate every damn day? That she wasn’t first in his mind in the morning and last in it at night and present in every dream that came in between?
Did they think he did not ache for her?
He wanted her. And he wanted them gone so he could go back to wanting her.
“Why are you here?”
For a moment, he thought this was why—to torment him. To force him to face the past and question the present and dread the future—alone. For a moment, he saw all of that in Devil’s eyes.
And then Whit spoke from immediately behind him. “We came to discuss the blunt.”
Cold, unpleasant surprise washed through him and he straightened, looking over his shoulder at his enormous brother—the handsomest man London had ever seen, despite his moniker—then down at the mahogany desk, which generations of dukes had called their own. He tracked the grain of the wood—perfectly straight, to a heavy, dark knot that had been unable to be hidden beneath the stain that finished the desk.
Staring at that knot, he said, “What blunt?”
“What blunt,” Devil said, disdain in his voice. “You know what blunt. The case of coin you sent to buy forgiveness in the Garden. It ain’t every day ten thousand pounds turns up at our warehouse.”
Ewan’s head snapped up. “I didn’t send it to the warehouse.”
Amber eyes gleamed. “It doesn’t matter where you sent it, bruv. Money like that turns up in the Garden, it lands at our warehouse.”
Ewan clenched his jaw at the words. “It’s not for you.”
Devil was insulted. “You think we’d take your blood money?”
Blood money.
He ignored the words, and the way they carved space in him. “I think that ten thousand pounds is enough to tempt better men into worse things.”
Beast cursed softly. “We ought to put him into the ground for that alone.”
Devil’s gaze narrowed on him. “First things first, Duke—we’re rich as kings. Why, Beast alone owns half of Berkeley Square. We don’t need your money. And even if it weren’t tainted with the past, we wouldn’t take it.”
“Good, as it wasn’t for you.”
“Nah. It’s for the boys you killed.”
Ewan forced himself to remain still. He’d sent the money to the Rookery doctor, after having heard that the man had saved two of the boys harmed in the dock explosion that had been the final act of violence perpetrated against his brothers at his directive. He’d sent it via three layers of emissaries, not wanting the money to be tracked back to him. Not wanting to attract attention. Never wanting this conversation.
It seemed that three layers had not been enough.
“You weren’t supposed to know,” he said.
“We know everything that happens on our turf,” Devil said.
“What do you want—you want me to apologize for wanting to help?”
Devil laughed again, the sound without humor, his gaze flickering past Ewan to Whit, behind him. “You hear this?” He returned his attention to Ewan. “This bastard blows up the Garden, comes for our men—kills five of them and maims another half dozen during two years of mayhem, and thinks a few ’undred quid is enough to wave it away?”
Five.
He closed his eyes, the number vicious in his mind. He’d been desperate to find her, then desperate to avenge her. But it didn’t matter. Those were lives. Snuffed out. He hadn’t pulled the trigger but he’d hired the men who had, and he hadn’t thought twice, because he’d been after bigger game—his brothers.
He’d wanted them dead, thinking of nothing but their destruction for years. Mad with fury and grief and a desire for vengeance that rotted him from the inside.
They’d told him Grace was dead, and he’d spiraled away from morality and ethics, with no sorrow and less intent of ever coming back.
But she’d been alive.
And with that discovery had come another—the return of his humanity.
So, yes, he’d sent the money and asked for it to be distributed to those he had harmed. He’d grown up in the poverty of the Garden—he could stil
l remember it. The stench of the offal shops and dogs fighting over scraps and the fights in the darkness. Hungry bellies and empty eyes. His mother’s silent tears in the quiet moments when the men left, and the sky turned pink with dawn.
Death of a child, of a partner, of a friend—it could destroy a future. A whole batch of futures. And these bastards thought to keep the money from those who suffered? To what, punish him? For what, pride?
Fury rioted through him. “What do you think you do? That kind of money changes lives,” he said, staring down first Devil and then Whit. “It could buy food, let homes, give children education. A life. A fucking future! Think of what we could have been if we’d had a few hundred pounds.”
“Nah. A few hundred pounds wouldn’t’ve made you a duke, though, would it?” Devil smirked, and Ewan wanted to tear him apart.
In the past two years, he’d learned everything he could about the Bareknuckle Bastards and how they operated—how they’d done everything they could to bring up Covent Garden. Doctors. Schools. Running water. His brothers—who would never claim him again—had made good on his long-ago promise. And in the dark of night, when he allowed it, Ewan was grateful for it.
So this—whatever it was—didn’t make sense. “You toy with their lives to toy with me?”
“No,” Whit said, the fury in his voice matching Ewan’s. “You toy with them by thinking you can pay them for their sorrow and sleep well at night.”
“I haven’t slept well in twenty-two years.”
Beast grunted at that.
“You’re not fools. You know as well as I that money can help.”
“Aye,” said Devil. “And it will.”
Confusion furrowed his brow. “You’re keeping it.”
“Course we’re keepin’ it!”
Fucking hell. “Then why—”
“’Cuz it ain’t enough,” Beast growled from behind. “We’ll give them your money, but they deserve more. They’ll be gettin’ more.”
He did not pretend to misunderstand. “But not money.”
“Not only money,” Devil corrected him.
“What, then? My head on a pike in Seven Dials? Are we back to who gets to kill the duke?”
“It still ain’t the worst idea,” Whit said, looking very much like he was sizing up Ewan’s head for a strong stake.
“These aren’t aristocrats, Marwick. These are real people, with real lives and real memories. And they don’t want you paying them to leave off their anger and grief. And if you ever thought a moment about your life before you became a toff, you’d know that.”
A memory flashed at the words. Grace, inside the copse of trees on the western edge of the Burghsey estate. Their place. Devil and Whit had been playing in the distance, shouting and tilting at each other, inseparable like they’d always been, and Grace had asked him for the thousandth time to tell her about London.
He’d told her about the Garden—the only part of the city he’d known. The only part that had mattered. He’d told her about the people. About how they fought for everything they had. How they did it with pride and determination, because they couldn’t afford anything less.
They don’t get what they need, and not what they deserve, neither, he’d said. But we’re going to change all that.
He hadn’t made good on that promise.
But she had.
He looked to his brothers, knowing, instinctively, that they understood what Grace hadn’t the other night. They weren’t here to keep him from taking a debutante bride and carrying on the family name. They knew he’d sooner drown himself in the sludge of the Thames than touch a woman who wasn’t Grace.
And that’s when Ewan knew the worst of it. Whit and Devil were here to tell him he was to leave the Garden alone. That he was to leave her alone.
Impossible.
“I owe you; I won’t argue with that,” he said. “But I won’t leave.”
“You misunderstand, Duke,” Devil said. “You don’t owe us. You owe them. You don’t need our forgiveness. You need the forgiveness of the Garden.”
He’d never get it. But he wanted it.
We’re going to change all that.
“You need the forgiveness of Grace,” Devil added.
He wanted that, too. More. “How.”
Whit grunted, then said, “I told you.”
Devil smiled, his scar—the scar Ewan had put there with his own blade—pulling tight on his cheek. “Come and see us.”
For the Garden? Or for Grace?
“And what, you make me a gladiator and feed me to the lions?”
“High opinion of your fighting, bruv,” Whit said, dry as sand.
Devil’s smile turned into a rich laugh. “You’ve been away from us for too long, toff.” He popped his hat on his head, pulling it down low on his brow, so all that was left was his scar and the lower half of his face. “Come and see us to make amends, or we’ll come back and take them.”
He headed for the door, Whit coming shoulder to shoulder with him. Once there, the brother the Garden called Beast turned back to face him. “You didn’t ask us.”
“Ask you what?”
“Whether Grace made us promise not to kill you.”
He didn’t have to ask. He knew she had. He lifted his chin, refusing to ask the more important question. The one that would haunt his sleep.
“You didn’t ask why she made us promise not to kill you.”
That one.
He almost kept quiet. Almost. “Why?” The question came out harsher than he expected. More urgent.
Whit looked to Devil. “I told you.”
Tap. Tap.
Whit looked back at him, and in that amber gaze he knew as well as his own, Ewan saw fury and betrayal and something else—something like sorrow. “It’s what you did to her. What you owe her.”
“What?” The word was out before he could take it back.
Devil looked at Whit, then back at him.
“Tell me, or get the fuck out,” Ewan said, desperation in his voice.
Whit answered. “You broke her heart.”
The words sent pain straight through him, sharp and ragged enough to have him raising a hand to his own chest.
Whit watched him for a moment, seeing the truth. “We don’t have to wreck you,” his quiet brother, who’d suffered so much at his hands, said. “She’ll do the wrecking. And you won’t for a minute think you don’t deserve it.”
Chapter Twelve
“They say she won’t last the year.”
Grace looked up from where she was checking the line of debits from the monthly ledger as Zeva and Veronique entered.
Today, Zeva wore an elaborate aubergine gown, shot through with silver and worth a fortune, and Grace admired the ensemble even as she shook her head at the other woman’s utter disregard for practical dress. Veronique, on the other hand, wore breeches and a crisp white shirt, crisscrossed with a holster that held a pair of pistols at easy access beneath her arms. Grace couldn’t remember a time when the head of the club security had been without her weapons, though they were not always so visible.
She waved the duo—different as chalk and cheese and somehow the perfect team—into the chairs opposite her desk. “Who won’t last the year?”
“Victoria,” Zeva said, simply.
“I assume we discuss the queen and not a member?” Grace’s weekly meeting with her lieutenants almost always began with Zeva’s read on the latest scandal sheets. More often than not, some excitement relating to members was involved.
“Good God, yes. Can you imagine Queen Victoria, a member?” Zeva laughed, then said, “It would be good for business, I suppose.”
It would be terrible for business, Grace was certain.
“Anyway,” the other woman went on. “I read it in the news—and with Dominion coming up, it seems it should be added to the betting book. No one thinks a woman can last as monarch for any legitimate length of time.”
“You mean no man believes that,”
Veronique snorted, crossing one buckskin-covered leg over the other and relaxing into her chair. “Women can easily remember that Elizabeth existed.”
“And rode men into battle,” Grace pointed out.
“Sadly, did not ride men in any other way, poor virgin queen,” Zeva said. “A bit like you, Dahlia.”
“That’s not what I hear,” Veronique said slyly.
Grace snapped her attention to her lieutenant. “What was that?”
Zeva’s eyes went wide and she flashed a smile broad enough to be seen from the rooftops beyond the window. “Oh, yes, let’s investigate! What was that?”
Veronique shrugged. “The girls talk.”
“The girls shouldn’t talk,” Grace said.
“You pay them to talk.”
“Not about me!”
Zeva’s attention bounced between them as though she watched shuttlecock. “What about her?”
“She went to Marwick’s ball,” Veronique said, waving a hand through the air, as though that would be enough information for Zeva. Forgetting that no amount of information was enough for Zeva.
Grace looked back at her ledger, the numbers swimming on the page as she willed the floor to open up and drag her to another, faraway land.
“Well, we knew she was doing that,” Zeva said.
“Yes, but apparently she didn’t spend all her time in the ballroom.”
“So?” A pause. A weighty, information-filled pause. “Oh. Ohhhhh.” Another pause, and a wolfish grin. “Where did she spend her time?”
“In the gardens,” Veronique whispered, loud enough for the entire building to hear.
“Dahlia! I must say,” Zeva said, putting a hand to her breast. “I’m really quite proud of you.”
Grace rolled her eyes.
“Well, we did suggest she get herself some fantasy,” Veronique said, smartly.
“Enough!”
“How interesting.” Another pause. “This is the same duke you beat black and blue a year ago? The one who wanted to make you his duchess?”
Not just duchess.
You are a queen. Tonight, I am your throne.
Her cheeks flushed at the memory of the words. Perhaps they wouldn’t notice.
“Oh, interesting . . .” Zeva said, noticing, of course. She paid Zeva to notice, as well.
Daring and the Duke EPB Page 13
