Daring and the Duke EPB

by MacLean, Sarah

  The teasing warmed him—and he loved it even as he knew better than to believe this more than a heartbeat of happiness. Wasn’t that always the way with him and Grace? Always chasing happiness, never catching it?

  He climbed out onto the roof, following her into the unseasonably comfortable autumn night. She was already headed to the southern face of the house, where it bordered the square. He watched her for a moment, amazed by her ease here, above the city.

  “Someone might see you.”

  She turned on him with a smile. “Afraid the Marquess of Westminster has a spyglass in the window across the way?”

  “Good God. I wasn’t, but now that you’ve said it . . .”

  “Westminster isn’t a voyeur. He’s far too austere for such a pastime,” she said casually, as though it were perfectly common for a girl who’d kept a roof over her head by bareknuckle fighting to know the personality traits of one of the wealthiest aristocrats in Britain. She kept going. “And even if it weren’t too dark to see anything worth seeing, the only things he’d be looking at through his spyglass are your horses.” She looked to him. “Do you have horses?”

  The question took him aback. “I do.”

  She waved a hand. “Not carriage horses or the grey you’ve been known to ride in Hyde Park. I’m talking about racing horses. That’s what Westminster is interested in.”

  “How did you know I ride in Hyde Park?”

  She shrugged, returning her attention to the square below. “The same way I know Westminster likes horses.”

  “What way is that?”

  “It’s my business to know things.”

  “Such as affinity for horses.”

  “Such as whether or not Westminster’s affinity for horses has anything to do with an affinity for gambling. Such as why Earl Leither is lobbying for looser penalties for opium traffic. Such as why the publisher of the News of London is so devoted to the idea of women’s suffrage.”

  His brows shot up. “And how do you know these things?”

  She lifted a chin toward the square. “You toffs think the whole world is built inside the buildings of this perfectly manicured square, where no one with less than ten thousand a year is welcome, but the truth is, the world is built on trade, and trade, while banal, bourgeois, and boring to the aristocracy, is a business worth being in.”

  “What kind of trade?”

  “Information and pleasure. Sometimes both. Never neither.”

  “And you deal in those commodities?”

  She shrugged one shoulder and looked toward Westminster House. “The point is, Westminster isn’t interested in our location or the state of our dress, or lack thereof. It’s dark, Ewan. No one can see us. And if they do, they shall simply think that Mad Marwick has found his way to the roof with his most recent paramour.”

  “The paramour shall be the most surprising part of that story,” he said, dryly.

  She stilled, and he cursed himself, not wanting this conversation. Not now, just when he’d convinced her to unlock for him. Turning to him, she said, softly, “No mistress, waiting in the wings at Burghsey?”

  Was she jealous?

  “I’m barely in the wings at Burghsey.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t find pleasure there.”

  “There is no pleasure there.” The words came out colder than he intended. Harsher. He cleared his throat, not wanting that place here, between them. Not wanting it close to her ever again. He cleared his throat and said, “Honestly, pleasure is not something with which I have experience.”

  She turned back to him. “How very sad. What is the point of title and money and power and privilege if not to use it in nightly ducal bacchanal?”

  He laughed. “I’m afraid I have never received an invitation to a ducal bacchanal.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “I think you should count yourself lucky on that front. I know a number of duchesses, and their husbands are largely deadly dull or absolutely disgusting; neither quality makes for a good party.”

  “I shall endeavor to avoid both, in that case, and leave all my bacchanals to you.”

  She smiled at that. “I am very good at them.”

  “I have no trouble believing that,” he said, wanting to return to her life.

  She inclined her head. “My business is pleasure, as I said.”

  “And information.”

  “You would be amazed what flows along with pleasure.”

  “I think I can imagine.” He paused, then said, “What have you learned about me?”

  “Who says I’ve asked about you?”

  He smirked. “You have asked about me.”

  A moment, then, “No one knows you.”

  You know me. He didn’t say it.

  “The most anyone can tell me about you is that you have a grey horse. And you like to ride in the park.”

  “I don’t like to ride in the park, as a matter of fact.”

  “Of course, you don’t,” she said, as though everyone knew that. “You like to ride in places where you can ride far and fast.”

  He looked to her. “And pretend I never have to return.”

  “But you always have to, don’t you? Return?”

  He always had, tied to his father and the dukedom like he’d been on a chain. Tethered to Burghsey House. To this one.

  “And no one can tell me where you’ve been for the last year,” she said, softly, to the night.

  He looked to her. “No one knows.”

  She waited. “And so?”

  “You told me to leave,” he replied, looking away, back to the rooftops, shadowed in moonlight.

  “And yet, you returned,” she said.

  “A different man than I left,” he confessed. “A better one.”

  Silence, the autumn wind the only movement between them. “I think you might be,” she said.

  “The man who left didn’t have a purpose.”

  “And now you do?”

  He looked directly at her. “I do.”

  The words should have scared her and sent her running over the rooftops, back to the Garden. And perhaps they would have done in the past. But tonight, here—Ewan had the distinct feeling that he was not the only one who had changed.

  As though she’d heard the thought, she swallowed and looked away. He followed her gaze, looking down into the square, where the tops of the trees were barely visible in the moonlight. “It never occurred to me that I had a roof.”

  “That’s what comes of never having to worry about having one.”

  He looked down at her. “I have had to worry, you know.”

  Worrying about a roof was what had thrown them together in the first place. Fear of loss. Fear of uncertainty. Fear of hunger and want.

  “I know,” she said, softly. “We all have.”

  He didn’t think she meant it as a barb, but it struck true as she pulled on her coat and turned away from the edge, moving to the chimney stacks at the center of the roof. She perched herself on the brick step that led to the chimney block, extending her booted legs, watching him.

  “Christ.” He shook his head, turning back to the darkness. “Grosvenor Square. It still feels impossible.”

  He felt this way every time he came to London to this house that had never felt like his, in this city that no longer felt like his, in this world where he had never felt like he belonged—it did not matter how many tutors, and years at Eton and Oxford, and dancing lessons and land management tutorials he’d had. It did not matter the tailors and valets and butlers and cooks he’d had. When he walked the hallways of Marwick House, he always felt like the fraud he was.

  “It shouldn’t.” She pulled him from his thoughts. “We always said you’d end up here, Duke.”

  He gritted his teeth. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

  “It is your title, is it not?” When he didn’t reply, she said, “Would you prefer Your Grace?”

  “No,” he said instantly. “Christ. No. I’ve always hated that.�
�� It was a never-ending memory of her, like torture, ensuring that she was always with him and still never there.

  She tilted her head. “So you don’t like the name, you don’t like the title, you don’t like the honorific. You don’t like the butler or the neighbors or the house or the attire or the privilege.” She paused. “Is there anything about the dukedom that you do like?”

  Instead of answering, Ewan turned to look over the dark roofs, the light from the waning moon barely enough to see the next house, let alone across the square. “I don’t see how it’s possible for you to travel London like this.”

  She flashed him a grin. “You mean by sky?”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “I’ve always rather liked the poetry of it,” she said. “The truth is, the sky would be easier. But when the moon is out and the street lamps are lit? I know the way.”

  The words echoed through him, something strange about them. He met her eyes. “You know the way?”

  The air between them thickened with the question. It didn’t make sense that she would know the way. It didn’t make sense that the girl who had been raised on the streets and become Covent Garden royalty, running information and spies and pleasure like she did, would have the time, interest, or inclination to learn the way from the Rookery to the northern edge of Grosvenor Square.

  It didn’t make sense that she would know the wheres and hows to get herself to the rooftops here, in Mayfair, where the city was more manicured, less labyrinthine, and teeming with people who would send round to Bow Street without second thought if they saw someone skulking about on the roof.

  It didn’t matter how beautiful she was, or how commanding.

  Unless she’d been doing it long enough that she knew all the ways to avoid being seen. Ewan caught his breath at the idea, immediately closing the distance between them, knowing that the question was a risk. If he was right, it could scare her off.

  But was this not their life? Did they not risk?

  As he drew close, she deliberately did not look at him, picking at something invisible on her trouser leg. Even if there was something there, it was the dead of night—there was no way she could see it. She was avoiding him.

  “How do you know the way, Grace?”

  “It’s only a mile,” she replied, and he heard the caution in her tone. “It’s not like knowing the way to Wales.”

  They both knew Mayfair might as well be Wales for as far away as it was from the Rookery. He was close enough to her that he could see her a bit, her face glowing gold in the flickering candlelight, and her hair shot through with silver from the moon.

  “Tell me,” he said softly, moving toward her and suddenly very eager to know the truth. “Tell me how you knew this was my roof.”

  She fidgeted, the movement so shocking that it set him back. Had she ever fidgeted? He reached for her, his fingers pushing a lock of her red hair behind one of her ears—how had he never noticed her ears were perfect?

  “It’s Grosvenor Square, Marwick. There aren’t that many homes, and I can count chimney stacks as well as the next girl.”

  He shook his head. “Not Marwick. Not now, dammit.”

  Her eyes went wide at the steel in his tone. “Careful,” she warned.

  Ewan didn’t care. There was something there, and he would know more. “Tell me how you know there’s an opening in my roof, Grace.”

  Her gaze snapped to his, defensively. “There’s an opening in everyone’s roof. Toffs don’t know, because they don’t sweep chimneys and they don’t tar roofs, so why should they spend time here?”

  “Tell me how you knew how to get inside.”

  “I’ve never been inside,” she said, not liking the direction of his questions. “With the exception of the ball, I’ve never been inside.”

  He believed her. But something was off. Something had happened here.

  There was something else.

  “What, then?” he asked.

  An eternity passed while he waited for her to speak. Finally, “I used to come here.”

  “Why?”

  “I knew a duke who needed a good fleecing.”

  He shook his head. “No, Grace. Why?”

  It was his turn to wait an eternity. More.

  “I came to wait for you,” she said.

  The confession nearly put him to his knees. “Why?”

  She looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”

  It was the only thing that mattered.

  “I thought I could—” She trailed off.

  She didn’t need to. She couldn’t have. Whatever Grace had thought she could do if she’d seen him in those years after he’d run them off—whatever she’d thought she could convince him to do if only she’d seen him . . . she wouldn’t have been able to.

  Finally, she said, “What happened after we left?”

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does, though. Where did you go? You were never here.”

  “School,” he said. He’d gone to school, mercifully, and there, he’d found something like solace—even as the rest of the boys thought him mad. Even as they might have been right. “Eton, and then Oxford, and then away—to the continent. Wherever I could go and be rid of him and his threats.”

  “He never stopped hurting you,” she said, softly.

  Of course he hadn’t. But not in the way she thought. His father had hurt him again and again by promising that if Ewan ever misstepped, Grace would suffer. Devil and Whit, too. Ewan would play the part of doting son. Of Earl.

  And if he didn’t, the people he loved would pay.

  Of course the whole world had thought him mad. And if he’d known she’d come here? To this rooftop, to wait for him? He would have razed the building to keep her safe.

  And then, a worse thought. One that terrified him. “Did you ever see him?”

  It was the only thing that mattered. Ewan did not think he could bear the idea of her coming face to face with his father—even now, even as a Covent Garden queen who could more than easily hold her own against the dead duke.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  She could have been killed.

  “You should never have had to find your way here. You should never have had to count chimney stacks,” he said, anger flaring. “This was supposed to be—” It was supposed to be she who was the child of this home, and instead, in a wild twist of fate, it had become he. “This should have been your house. You should be the one with the coveted address, the warm bed waiting below. The servants and the carriages and the money beyond imagining.”

  “I have a warm bed waiting,” she replied, her eyes dark and unreadable. “And servants and carriages and money beyond imagining. I’ve even a coveted address, as far as addresses go in the East End.” She paused. “Don’t wring your hands. I never wanted the title, the pomp, or the circumstance. And I’ve done quite well on my own.”

  “Who is Dahlia?”

  She smiled. “You’re looking at her.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m not. I’ve seen her. At my masquerade. In the warehouse yard, ending a riot. Downstairs, for a heartbeat, until you gave me access to Grace.” She fidgeted beneath the words and he knew he was right. “But who is she?”

  She met his gaze. “She’s the queen.”

  He hated that she wouldn’t tell him. Hated that she didn’t trust him with her truth.

  But he couldn’t blame her.

  He took a deep breath, his gaze tracing over her corset, the gold thread gleaming in the barely-there light from the candle at her feet, an echo of a memory. “Do you remember what I promised you? When we were young?”

  “We promised each other a thousand things, Ewan.”

  He nodded, loving the sound of his name on her lips. “You remember, though.”

  For some reason, it mattered that she did, and he let out a long breath when she said, “You promised me gold thread.”

  Relief shot through him and he nodded, wa
tching her. “At the time, it was all I could think to promise you. My mother . . .” He paused, and she watched him so carefully, her beautiful eyes so full of understanding, even now, even as he’d betrayed her. Even as he’d betrayed them all. “She’d talk about gold thread like it was currency. I thought it was the most extravagant thing I could give you.”

  “I never wanted extravagance.”

  “I wanted to give it to you, nonetheless. I promised you—”

  I would make you duchess.

  She heard it. “I never wanted that, either,” she said, softly, before coming to her feet and approaching him. “I only ever wanted the world you offered me.” She stopped in front of him and looked up, her eyes black with the darkness, the light from the moon and the candle she’d left behind barely enough to see her. “Do you remember that?”

  He remembered everything.

  “Much of it is the same, you know. The carts on the cobblestones still clatter and clang, and there’s never a moment when a brawl isn’t ready in a tavern. And the market square is full of farmers and broad tossers, all looking to sell you something.”

  When they were young, he painted her countless pictures of the Garden, full of life and freedom, glossing over the bad bits and giving her the good, convinced that she’d never have to face the first.

  “And so? Have you learned all the curse words?”

  She grinned, her teeth flashing white in the darkness. “Every last one. I’ve created some of my own.”

  “I should like to hear them.”

  “I don’t think you’re ready for them.”

  That tease again, a hint of what could be. He clung to it. “And now you know the best part,” he said, softly.

  “The rain turns the streets to gold.”

  He reached for her at that, thinking she might flinch from him, but she didn’t. He touched the side of her face, pushed a lock of her beautiful hair behind one ear, loving the memory of it. There had been a thousand things they’d never done together—but this—a gentle touch, a stolen moment—it was all familiar.

  “I never wanted the dukedom,” she said. “I wanted the Garden. That was what you promised me. That we would give it what it deserved.”