He blustered.
Instead of listening, Ewan roped another block of ice and focused on the crowd, knowing that if the Irishman started a brawl, the Garden would finish it. And Ewan would be in the thick of it. Pleasure shot through him at the idea. He was good for the fight.
He’d been good for a fight for days. For decades.
Hefting the heavy weight, he ignored the wicked burn at his shoulder and made his way back across the yard, this time able to see the man who would come for him first. Able to recognize the slur in his Irish brogue. Able to register his slight swerve—a need for balance, even as he stood still.
The man was drunk. Which meant a fight was on.
The crowd knew it, too. They circled, closing in on Ewan. Building him a ring. He kept his gaze on the far end of the yard, but watched the faces, a dozen screwed tight already. More willing to jump into the fray when there was one for the jumping.
How many would he have to fight?
A clump of mud smacked Ewan on the back of the head.
He stilled. Stiffened. Turned.
The bruiser approached. “I’m talkin’ to you, Duke.”
He was eight feet away.
Six.
Ewan looked to the rooftops, where Grace watched, riveted, just like the rest of the Garden. His heart pounded, and his chest broadened.
He wanted to show her what he was still able to do.
Four.
Ewan set the ice down.
Two.
When the blow came, he was ready.
He caught the other man’s fist in his hand, startling him. Ewan’s brows rose as the Irishman’s jaw slackened. “Don’t expect a duke to have a right hook, do you?” he said softly, letting the Garden seep into his voice.
His opponent’s eyes went wide at the words, and then he scowled. “You ain’t got nuffin’ yet, toffer.” He followed the words with a massive swing of his free hand—fisted to the size of a ham.
Ewan dodged the blow and straightened, planting his fist directly into the face of his attacker. “How about now?”
If there was a reply, it was lost in the roar that sounded from all around them, echoing off the brick walls of the warehouse. For a moment, Ewan thought perhaps it was the sound of the thrill of an audience—how interesting could his hauling ice have been for them? But then he heard the sounds of fists meeting flesh. Everywhere.
It wasn’t the thrill of the audience. It was the thrill of the fight.
The whole yard had been watching, waiting, wanting a shot at their own blows. And now, they’d been gifted a proper brawl.
He landed a second blow—a sharp uppercut that knocked his opponent back on his feet, snapping his head properly back on his neck, but before the other man could catch his balance and return to their fight, a hand grasped Ewan’s raw shoulder, sending fire through him as it pulled him around to face him.
He roared the agony of the touch, his blows already launched as he came to face another man, who happily took a punch to the nose before setting his own fist firmly into Ewan’s gut.
The Duke of Marwick hunched over the blow, but recovered quickly, coming back to his full height and the admiration of his new opponent. “You ain’t like any duke I’ve ever seen,” the man said.
“I ain’t like any duke anyone has ever seen,” he replied, and the two were back at it—sparring until another man launched himself into the fight, wanting his own chance to bring down the duke who’d come into the Garden.
And so it went for seconds, minutes, hours—time was lost with dodging blows and throwing his own, making sure they were soft enough when they landed that they didn’t do real damage. He knew why he’d been brought here—to take his knocks. And he would do just that.
Proving to the Bareknuckle Bastards that the money wasn’t all he offered.
Giving the Garden the fight they wanted—on equal footing, no titles or power or money or privilege changing the outcome of the game.
And giving her a look at the man he had become.
Grace.
Just the thought of her was enough to pull his attention from the fight, just enough to miss a dodge and take a strong punch directly to the nose. Pain knocked his head round, and when the stars subsided, he couldn’t help himself—he looked to the rooftops once more.
She was gone.
He froze. A mistake, as another bruiser leapt into the fray to have a go at him. He blocked a swing, pushing the man into another crowd that happily swallowed him up for their own fight.
She was gone, but his brothers remained. Whit watched with intense scrutiny, as though he was learning how to exploit any weakness in Ewan’s strategy for his own purposes, and Devil observed with a smirk that made Ewan wish he could scale buildings for the second time that afternoon—this time to wipe the smile off his arrogant brother’s face.
Where had she gone?
Why hadn’t they gone with her?
Was she safe?
Another round of sparring pulled him away from the rooftops, a half-dozen fighters coming from all directions. Fighting dirty. A hand grabbing his hair, another at the waist of his trousers. A third with a club of some sort. He raised a brow. “Unsportsmanlike, that.”
The brute grinned—revealing a handful of missing teeth, and took a swing. Ewan dodged the blow, just barely, but was not out of danger. Someone grabbed him from behind, slipping one arm beneath his own, and a second around his neck. Holding him tight. Choking him. He struggled, the other men closing in, taking leisurely shots at his torso.
The blows were enough to take the breath from him, and he looked up to the rooftop, meeting first Whit’s eyes, then Devil’s. Neither of his brothers moved to help.
Neither of them would save him.
The arm around his throat tightened, and Devil reached out a gloved hand, extending his thumb. Ewan understood instantly.
And what, you make me a gladiator and feed me to the lions?
Devil snapped his thumb down, to face the earth.
As though waiting for the emperor’s ruling, the arm at Ewan’s neck tightened. He reached up to grab it, unable to get a decent grip. He shouldn’t have pulled his punches with this one.
He looked back at his brothers, high above. Whit was talking, his eyes on something beyond. Devil’s attention followed.
They didn’t even care to watch him die.
The roar of the crowd had lessened, replaced by a different roar, this one in his ears. He was losing consciousness. The air around him was stilling, the brawl seeming to quiet. He leaned his head forward in a last effort to break the hold. He snapped his head back, connecting with the nose of the man behind him, who cried out in pain and released him.
Ewan pulled loose and turned. It was the original Irishman. No. A different one, but with the same face. The same meaty arms. Brothers?
How must that feel? he thought as he stumbled back, gasping for breath. To have brothers who stand with you?
He’d known how it felt once.
Ignoring the blood that streamed from his nose—it seemed Ewan had broken it—the man came for him once again, no doubt to finish the job that had been interrupted.
He backed away, slowly, expecting another set of hands and fists to come from another direction. They didn’t. Instead, silence came.
And it wasn’t in his head.
The fight had come to a stop, all around him.
No. The fight had been stopped, all around him. He looked to the rooftops, where his brothers remained sentry.
Broken Nose’s attention flickered to something in the distance, over Ewan’s shoulder, and whatever he saw there had him coming up short. Whatever it was, it brought restraint to the Garden—a place where restraint was virtually unheard of.
Not knowing what to expect, Ewan turned to look.
And there she was.
Their queen.
No. Not theirs.
She didn’t spare the crowd a look as she parted it like the sea, her hair a riot of flam
e around her shoulders, her black coat, perfectly tailored, blowing back to reveal the sapphire lining somehow pristine in the dirt, a match to the pristine sapphire corset she wore, designed, clearly, to be worn just so, above trousers, without shame. Everyday wear.
And at her waist, the scarlet scarf he remembered from a year earlier—not a nod to frivolity or a whimsical belt . . . a weapon.
There was nothing hesitant about her movements—her strides even and certain. She neither sped her pace nor slowed it, knowing, with the certainty that came of royalty, that her path would clear.
And it did with each step, her gaze fixed on her destination.
Him.
His heart pounded as he watched her approach, as he read the beautiful angles of her face, the gold of the setting sun on her cheeks, the firm set of her jaw and those lips, full and soft like sin. She was magnificent, and regal, and he’d waited a lifetime for this moment—for her to come to him.
She’d come for him.
On the heels of the realization, a single word ripped through him.
Mine.
Pure pleasure curled through him as she reached him, her gaze impenetrable as she took him in, looking over his face, where he knew a half-dozen bruises must be forming, down to his chest, where his white shirt had gone dark with fight and filth, the open V of the neck ripped to display a wide swath of his chest. Her lips pressed together in a line that could have been distaste or displeasure, and she lifted her eyes back to his.
She was mere inches from him, tall enough that he would not have to bend to kiss her—and for a wild moment he considered it, desperate for another taste of her. For the feel of her breath against his skin. For the softness of her skin.
He wanted to touch her here, in this place where she reigned, unmasked and more beautiful than she’d ever been because here she called every shot, ruled every corner, knew every move, before anyone made them. She was all-powerful, stopping a Garden brawl with sheer will, and that power made him want her more than he’d ever wanted anything.
She saw the desire in him—he let her see it, loving the recognition in her beautiful brown eyes, exactly as he remembered—the only thing left of the girl he’d loved. They quickly narrowed, and he did not back down, refusing to look away from her. Not after all these years of looking for her.
He stiffened, defying the pain in his shoulder, in his ribs, in his nose. Refusing to show it to her even as his heart pounded as he prepared for whatever came next, knowing that whatever the game they were about to play, the outcome would change everything.
Who would she be when she spoke? The masked woman in his gardens? Or Grace, finally revealed?
Neither. Someone new. Masked in a different way.
She spoke, the words for him alone. “I told you not to return.” A year earlier, when she’d left him in her ring, and gone on to live her life, without him.
“I was invited.”
She tilted her head. “You could have refused.”
Never. “That was not an option.”
She held his gaze for a long moment. “My brothers brought you here for sport.”
“And I gave it to them, though I would have preferred they come down from their perches, up on high.”
A tiny muscle in her cheek twitched. Was she amused? Christ, he wanted that smile—the one that had come so easily to him when they were young. “They prefer the spectacle.”
“And you?” he asked, softly, his fingers itching to touch her. She was so close. He could snake an arm around her waist and pull her to him in seconds. In less. He could give her the pleasure she’d begged for in his garden here . . . in hers. “What do you prefer?”
“I prefer peace,” she said. “But you’ve only ever brought us war.”
He did not miss the reference to the havoc he’d wreaked on the Rookery when he’d been mad with loss and anguish. The pain he’d delivered to this place that he’d once vowed to keep safe.
But today, she kept it safe. She kept him safe.
And there was immense pleasure in that. Because keeping him safe meant she hadn’t forgotten. Keeping him safe meant there was hope.
She’d stopped them from killing him.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said.
“I would not have missed it,” he replied.
“Why?”
You. “Would you believe I came for penance?”
“Penance is sport in the Rookery,” she said. “But you know that better than any of us, don’t you? You cut your teeth on it.” She lifted her chin, defiant. Angry. “You also know you haven’t come close to getting your due. You don’t know all you’ve done to this place. You don’t know what it owes you.”
“And you? What do you owe me?” The question should have been smug, but it wasn’t. Instead, it was honest.
Grace met it with the same. “All they will give you and more.”
He did not release her gaze. “And yet you stopped the fight.”
She narrowed her gaze. Ewan didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.
“You were pulling your punches,” she said.
It was the truth, but she was the only one who would have seen it.
“Stupid, that. If I’d let it go, they’d’ve killed you.” She made a show of inspecting his face—his nose and jaw throbbing from the blows he’d taken. “You’re half there already.”
He raised a brow. “Careful, or I’ll think you prefer me alive.”
She didn’t like the suggestion that she’d done it for him—that much he could see. But Christ, he liked it very much. If she didn’t want him dead, she wanted him alive. And that was something he could work with.
“Dead dukes tend to attract attention, and I don’t like the Crown in my business.”
“No place for it here,” he said. “The Garden already has its queen.”
He heard the echo of the night earlier in the week, when she’d come to him masked and free of their past.
You are a queen. Tonight, I am your throne.
She heard it, too. He saw her breath catch for a moment. Watched her pupils dilate a touch—just enough to reveal the truth. She heard it, and she remembered it. And she wanted it again.
She’d come for him.
As though she could sense his arrogant pleasure, her lips flattened into a thin line. “I told you not to come back.”
She was angry, but anger was not indifference.
Anger was like passion.
She straightened and stepped away from him, leaving their intimacy and returning to her subjects. She lifted her voice to the assembled masses. “I think we’ve doled out enough Rookery medicine this afternoon, lads.” She looked to the brute who’d started the fight. “Your kind ain’t for dukes, Patrick O’Malley. Careful next time—I may not be here to save you from the hangman.”
“Aye, Dahlia.” The Irishman gave her a sheepish smile that made Ewan want to set him into the ground for the familiarity of it.
Until that very moment, it hadn’t occurred to him that she might have a lover. That one of these men, born of this place and built by it, might be hers.
He sucked in a breath at the thought. It was impossible. Not a week earlier, she’d come apart in his arms. Against his mouth, her hands in his hair and her cries in the air between them. She’d chosen him that night.
Tonight, only, she’d whispered.
One night. That’s what she’d promised him. Fantasy for one night.
No. He resisted the thought. One night was not enough. Would never be.
Mine.
While he was planning the bruiser’s demise, she turned away, leaving him, her leather-encased legs devouring the yard. Frustration flared at the idea that this might be all there was.
“And you, Dahlia?” he called out, using the name this place had given her. “What of you? Is your kind for dukes?”
A ripple of surprise tore through the crowd at the bald question. She froze. Turned back. He had her.
“I’ll ’ave ’im
if you won’t!” a woman shouted off to his left.
For a moment, she was still as stone. But he saw the anger flash in her eyes just before she turned to address her subjects. When she spoke, her words ricocheted off the buildings, ensuring that everyone assembled heard her. “This toff wants to come to scratch, and Lord knows we’re all itching to give him the fight he’s asking for. But he ain’t for you.”
Anger flared, and he took a step toward her, the movement sending a sharp pain up his side, licking through his shoulder like fire.
She looked up to the rooftops, to where he knew his brothers watched. She repeated herself. “He ain’t for you.”
What was she doing?
And then she looked at him, something in her eyes that he wasn’t expecting. She held his gaze for a long moment, and he would have given anything—paid anything—done anything—to know what she was thinking.
“He’ll get the fight he wants,” she said, her voice a clarion call. “But hear me now—this fight is mine.” The words thrummed through him as she turned to the Garden. “Understood, lads?”
Around the yard, a chorus of grunted agreement.
She met his eyes.
“He’ll get it from me.”
His whole body drew tight at the words and the underlying promise in them. That they weren’t done with each other. That she wasn’t through.
That she’d come for him.
And then she turned away, and a thrill of pleasure rioted through him even as she disappeared into the crowd.
She’d come for him, and now it was time for him to go to her.
Chapter Fifteen
Grace left, knowing what she had wrought.
Knowing—even as she slipped from the yard and its crush of people, even as she increased her pace, half wanting to lose him, half wanting him to follow—that he would follow. She moved more quickly, eager to get into the web of labyrinthine streets, away from him and the way he made her feel. Away from the fact that he made her feel, at all.
Daring and the Duke EPB Page 16
