Daring and the Duke EPB

by MacLean, Sarah

  She didn’t want it. She didn’t want the whispers of their past. Didn’t want the confusion of the present. She didn’t want the taste of him on her lips or the memory of the way he unraveled her with his touch and his mouth.

  He was close enough to touch. “Are you going to eat that?”

  What?

  He nodded between them, and she followed the line of his attention to the scone, still in her hand, half eaten. “The cake,” he said. “Do you intend to eat it?”

  She clasped it to her breast. “Are you asking me for it?”

  “’Twould be a pity for it to go to waste.”

  She narrowed her gaze on him. “Are you deprived of treats, Duke?”

  The question wrought an instant change. “Yes.” His voice was suddenly low and dark. “Christ, yes. I’ve had a lifetime of treat deprivation.”

  Her jaw slackened at the words.

  That half smile again. The one she knew so well from their youth. “But, I don’t want the scone.”

  He lifted his hand to her face, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, and heat shot through her at the touch. She sucked in a breath. “What, then?”

  “Only what you want, as well.” He changed his grip, and he was tilting her up to him. Then his lips were on hers, the hotly contested scone tumbling to the ground, and she was lost.

  It was different from the kisses the other night—when she’d been masked and wigged and kohled beyond recognition. When he’d given her private pleasure for the sake of just that—pleasure. No past, no future, just present.

  Of course it was different. Because this kiss was all time. This kiss was promise and threat, history and speculation. And it was the summation of twenty years of wanting him even as she knew that she would never have him.

  It was aching and sweet and delicious and awful and it laid her bare there, in the golden light of the setting Covent Garden sun, where she’d never been bare before. Where she’d never been safe enough to be bare.

  But now, as his arms came around her, collecting her against him, he was home. And she was safe. At least for as long as they kissed.

  Don’t ever stop.

  The thought raced through her as she lifted her arms to encircle his neck, to keep him there, against her, pure pleasure.

  Please, don’t ever stop.

  He didn’t seem interested in stopping. Instead, as she came up on her toes to even their height, his arms wrapped tight around her waist, pulling her into him, pressing her along the hard length of his body, all muscle and strength. She rocked her hips into his, the soft, aching part of her pressing along the straining length of him.

  He wanted her. As much as she wanted him.

  She sighed at the realization, the sound lost in their kiss even as he growled his pleasure and pulled her tighter, his large, warm hand coasting up her back and into her wild curls. There was nothing gentle about the caress, his fingers tightening . . . fisting around a mass of her hair, holding her still.

  Good. She didn’t want gentle.

  He deepened the kiss and she opened for him, his tongue sliding over hers as her hands mirrored his own, clenching in the silken strands of his hair as she licked across his lips and met him movement for movement. He couldn’t get enough of her. She couldn’t get enough of him. And then he was turning her, lifting her, walking her back behind a tall stack of crates and barrels.

  He set her to the wall, barely out of sight of the washwomen, and planted his hands on either side of her head, caging her in for his kisses—more and more drugging, more and more desperate, threatening to pull her deeper and deeper into whatever it was that had brought him back.

  Threatening to make her beg for him—

  Don’t ever stop.

  And then he fit his strong thigh between hers, the heavy weight of it against her aching flesh pulling a little cry from the back of her throat—only loud enough for him to hear, and still it seemed to set him aflame. She slid her hands down his chest, splaying her fingers wide across the broad expanse of him—so different now than a year earlier, when she’d mapped the lean contours of him.

  There was nothing lean about him now. He was all muscle, fresh topography, worthy of a new map.

  Her fingers traced over a rib, and he sucked in a breath. Pain. An iron Rookery fist. A broken rib. And still, he’d found time to flirt and tease. He’d found strength to follow her.

  I’ll follow you, Gracie. Always.

  A promise, echoing over the years.

  One of his enormous hands slid inside her coat, clasping her hip to hold her still and tight to him as he pressed that glorious thigh higher, firmer. When she rocked into him, he released his hand, sliding it up over her side to palm her breast.

  They were in the middle of the Rookery. Yards from an audience. She should stop him.

  But she didn't want to.

  The feel of his hands on her was unbearable. Grace was not a stranger to pleasure, but had she ever felt such? Had any man ever touched her with such fire? With such certainty?

  The questions were gone before they came.

  There were no other men.

  As his thumb slipped beneath the edge of her corset and traced a rough circle around the straining nipple there, Grace lowered her own hand, setting it to the wicked, wonderful length of him. He was hard and hot and perfect, and when he offered her a deep, delicious grunt, she returned it with a throaty laugh—his pleasure hissing through her as keenly as her own. The fingers of her free hand fisted again in his hair, and she gave his lower lip a long, delicious suck, reveling in the rich taste of him, in the lush fullness of that lip.

  His grunt turned into something else. Something predatory.

  But she was not prey any longer.

  Today, now, they were equals.

  Hunting each other.

  How would she ever stop herself.

  “Everything all right back there?” The excited question came from a distance. Miles away, it felt, but loud like cannon fire, and followed by a cacophony of devious, delighted laughter.

  She pulled away from him, gasping for breath, returning to the Garden. Her gaze tracked over the alleyway, over the stones growing darker by the second, the sun now turning the western sky into an inferno.

  She pushed past him, straightening her coat, rounding the stack of crates to face the collection of women, wide-eyed, bold, unapologetic, deeply knowing smiles on their lips.

  He spoke from behind her, calm and at ease, as though everything were perfectly normal. “Beg pardon, ladies.”

  She stiffened at the words, at the tittering from their audience, and looked at him, resisting the urge to put her fingertips to her lips, to settle the buzz in them, the delicious sting he’d left with his kiss.

  No. It wasn’t delicious.

  She shouldn’t have kissed him.

  It didn’t matter that he’d made it difficult not to, with his newfound swagger, as though Covent Garden brawls were his daily bread.

  It didn’t matter that those brawls seemed to suit him.

  She didn’t have to touch her lips. His dark, penetrating gaze found them anyway, and in his throat rumbled a little growl that sent heat straight through her, her eyes immediately finding his. Recognizing the want there.

  Want?

  Need.

  It didn’t feel like want in her. It felt like need as he snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her in tight, leaning down and kissing her again, lazy and lingering, as though they had a week for it, and weren’t being watched.

  Before she could protest—she would have protested—he released her again, lowered his lips to her ear and whispered, “Grace.” Her name, like a benediction. Again. “Grace.” And then, “Christ, I’ve wanted that for so long.”

  So had she.

  “Take ’im home and give ’im a nice wash, Dahlia!” Jenny called out, and the rest of the women hooted and cheered from where they had unstuck themselves, their chores and their voyeurism finally finished, lifting baskets to
hips and preparing to head home.

  For a moment, Grace imagined it. Taking him home. Calling for a bath. Washing the day and the dirt from him, until he was clean and the sun was gone and they were cloaked in darkness and the permission it gave people to take what they wanted.

  For a moment, she reveled in that fantasy.

  For a moment, she forgot that he was not safety.

  He was not home.

  He was the enemy—hers, and her brothers’ and the whole of Covent Garden’s.

  She pushed at his shoulders, and he went more readily than she would have expected. More readily than she wished.

  She pushed the realization aside, hating the questions that followed. Hating the answers more. Anger and frustration coursed through her. “That was a mistake.”

  He shook his head. “No, it wasn’t.” He said it like it wasn’t a discussion. Like they discussed the time of day. Or the color of the sky.

  “Of course it was. This is the game we play,” she said, letting her exhaustion seep into her words. She was tired of running from him. Tired of hiding from him. “We make mistakes.” She paused. “You make them.”

  The words struck true, wildness flooding his gaze. A hint at the mad duke Mayfair thought him. “Then tell me how to pay for them.”

  How many times had she imagined him saying those exact words to her? She shook her head. “There is no paying for them, Duke. Not with money or power or a lifetime of washing clothes.”

  The women behind tittered their interest.

  “What, then?” He pressed on. “I take my knocks from the men in your yard. From your brothers. From you.”

  “Your brothers,” she said.

  “What?”

  “They are your brothers.”

  He shook his head. “No. They ran with you. They protected you.”

  “Yes,” she said, lifting her chin. “They protected me from you, but they are your blood.”

  He ignored the truth of the words. “You still haven’t given me a reason. One good reason, and I’ll leave. One reason why I cannot pay my dues. Say my prayers. Do my penance.”

  “There are a thousand reasons!”

  “One would imagine you could give me one, then.” He paused. “Instead, you lead me on a merry chase through the Garden.”

  “You followed me,” she retorted.

  He raised a brow. “Yeah, but you wanted it.”

  She had. Damn him for saying so.

  Frustration and anger flared, making her want to scream. Instead, she closed the distance between them, reached up and grabbed the already threadbare neck of his shirt—the place where the rope from earlier had torn a hole in the fine lawn. She yanked, finishing what the earlier fight had started, tearing it open to reveal his raw shoulder and on it, the M his father had put there—white and raised against the angry red skin, a wicked scar.

  “There’s your reason!”

  He rocked back on his heels as she let the shirt go.

  “You’ll always be his. And I don’t care what song you sing to the women of the Rookery. I don’t care how skilled you are at doing the wash. I don’t care that the map of the Garden is inked on you, or that you were born in its muck. You walked away from it all the moment you betrayed us. The moment you chose him over us.”

  She stopped, resisting the heavy fullness in her throat. Resisting the prickling pain behind her eyes. The mourning for the boy she’d once loved. The one who’d sworn never to leave her. Never to hurt her.

  That boy had lied.

  “You’ll always be Marwick,” she said, staring into his face, dark with the bruises of the day and the shadows of the evening. “And that means you’ll always be a mistake.”

  And maybe, one day, she would learn it.

  Grace swallowed around the ache in her throat, turning away before he could say anything, but he reached for her, clasping her hand before she could leave him. Pulling her back around to face him.

  “I never chose him.”

  She shook her head, but he refused to let her dismiss him, his hand sliding down her arm until he was holding hers. She should have shaken him off. But she didn’t, even as she hated the feel of him there, against her skin. Rough. Strong. Hot.

  Lie. She didn’t hate it.

  And she hated it even less when he tightened his grip and said again, “I never chose him. I have done terrible things in my life. Things for which I will surely spend an eternity in fire. Things for which you may never forgive me. And I bear them all. But that is one I will never bear.” There was anger in his voice. No. It was not simple like anger. It was hotter. It was fury. “I never chose him.”

  She wanted to believe it. God, there was nothing she wanted to believe more. But when she closed her eyes, she could still see him, years ago, coming for her, knife in hand. She could still see him in the darkness last year, watching the London docks burn.

  But now . . . who was this man? So different?

  He looked to the rooftops. “I swore I would wait.”

  Confusion flared. “Wait for what?”

  He leveled her with a gaze. “What do you need?”

  That question again. He’d asked it before. In her ring. In his gardens.

  What do you need, as though he existed solely for her pleasure.

  No. Not pleasure.

  Purpose.

  For her whole life, she’d known her purpose. She’d been placeholder, prize, protector. She’d been an employer and a friend. She’d been businesswoman and negotiator and fighter and spy. And there had never in her life been a moment when she hadn’t known precisely her purpose. When she had not had a plan.

  When she did not know the answer.

  But there, in the hush before her city turned from day to night, Grace Condry, bareknuckle fighter, unparalleled businesswoman, and queen of Covent Garden, found that she did not have an answer.

  She didn’t know what she needed.

  She didn’t know what she deserved.

  And she was terrified of what she desired.

  “I don’t know,” she said, the words too quiet. Revealing too much.

  The confession changed him, his gaze hardening, his jaw tightening. He took a step back and somehow, impossibly, she hated the distance he put between them.

  But didn’t she want distance? Didn’t she want infinite distance between them? Didn’t she want him to leave and never return?

  Didn’t she need that?

  Of course she did.

  Didn’t she?

  He stopped, and two yards might have been two miles.

  And then, over the riot of her thoughts, he spoke. “Come see me when you know.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Waiting for her was torture.

  Ewan stood at the center of his bedchamber later that evening, aching from the bout with the Garden and from the bout with Grace, knowing that only one set of those aches was guaranteed to heal.

  He’d seen the way she wanted him. He’d felt it, when they’d kissed there, in the open alleyway. He’d heard it in her little sighs, as she’d clung to him and pressed herself against him, making him wild.

  And worse, he’d seen how she struggled with that desire when he’d asked her what she needed.

  She needed him, dammit.

  Just as he needed her.

  And he might have convinced her of that, as the sun set over the rooftops. She might have let him follow her as she scaled the wall and made her way to her home, where she might have let him stay.

  She might have let him kiss her again, and finish what they started.

  She might have told him what she needed. And let him give it to her.

  But that wasn’t enough. He didn’t simply want to be allowed to be with her. To touch her. To kiss her. He wanted her to want it too, with the aching, gnawing desire that he wanted it.

  And that meant letting her choose him. Come to him.

  Take him.

  So, he’d left, instead of pulling her into his arms and keeping her
there until she revealed all of it.

  Come see me when you know.

  He growled his irritation at the memory, frustration making him yank his trousers up and button the falls with a roughness that sent pain shooting over his ribs. “You fucking deserve that,” he muttered to himself, stopping before he finished buttoning, and turned to the looking glass on the far side of the room, still in shadow, despite the candles lit all around it to give him the best look at the damage he’d taken earlier in the day.

  If he hadn’t left her, would he be with her still? Would she have tended his wounds? The question came with the memory of her fingers on his chest earlier, sliding down, over his ribs, gentling when he’d sucked in a breath at the pain. The first indication that she hadn’t liked him hurt.

  As though her touch could ever hurt him. Even as she’d delivered his punishment in the boxing ring, even as he’d taken her fists and then the silken scarf at her waist that a lesser man would have underestimated, he’d reveled in her touch.

  She was alive.

  A year later, and the revelation still threatened to break him.

  She was alive, and if he was right, she wanted him, so he’d taken the risk and left her wanting, leaving her there, in the Garden, and returning to the house in Mayfair, his attempt to sneak through the kitchens failing the moment the cook saw his battered face and screamed for O’Clair, who immediately transformed into a mother hen, insisting they call a doctor, Scotland Yard, and the butler’s brother—who was a priest, apparently.

  After convincing the butler that he was bruised but not broken, that no crimes had been committed, and that he had no need for last rites, Ewan had called for a bath, a bottle of whisky, and a basket of bandages.

  He made liberal use of the first two items before settling in with the third, wincing as he inspected the spots that mottled his torso. It was dark, and the candlelight in the room was not ideal for wound care, but he wasn’t about to ask O’Clair for more candles, lest the butler return to panic, so Ewan was left with what he had—a looking glass and a dozen flames casting shadows across his skin as he gingerly tested the ribs within.

  He didn’t think anything required a surgeon, but the pain was considerable—scotch notwithstanding.

  Cursing roundly, he worked to wrap the bandages around his midsection, irritation making the task more difficult than it should have been. He was tired and in pain, and tied in knots from the events of the afternoon—the bout as much as the chase she’d led him on, through the crowd and deep into the Garden. And from the control he’d had to hold tight.