Daring and the Duke EPB

by MacLean, Sarah

  But still, it mattered that he stood here with her.

  She came back around the desk. She kicked the edge of the carpet spread wide across the office floor.

  He didn’t have to be told more, immediately bending down to pull the heavy rug back. Grace counted the floorboards and set her toe to one, throwing a hidden latch and revealing a secret door. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. Instead, he leaned down and opened it, revealing piles and piles of paper within. He backed away, making room for Grace to crouch and set an armload of books inside.

  “Accounts,” she explained, though he did not ask. “Membership rolls.”

  “He’s on our side now?” Veronique asked.

  Grace ignored the question and closed the door, throwing the latch once more. He extended a hand down to her, and she let him pull her to her feet.

  Veronique raised her brows at the touch. “I hear the Garden boys nearly took you down a few days back, toff. And you expect to keep Dahlia safe?”

  “I do.” He returned the carpet to its original seat.

  Veronique must have seen something in him, because she released the women who flanked her. “Go. Don’t hesitate to do damage.”

  “Good fight,” Grace said as they turned to leave, already turning for her desk, fetching her scarf and looping it around her waist.

  Veronique reported the situation below as she watched. “We’re pushing everyone abovestairs to the roof, and everyone in Dominion to the tunnels.”

  “And the intruders?”

  “A dozen, maybe fifteen. Strong bruisers. Armed with clubs and fists, and looking like the kind of gang you don’t fuss with.”

  “How’d they get in?” Ewan again.

  Veronique cut him a look. “Same way you did, toff. Through the front door, as though they’d had a fucking invitation.”

  Grace asked, “Who are they? Police?”

  A shake of the head. “Not any police anyone’s talking about.”

  But that didn’t mean they weren’t organized. And it didn’t mean they weren’t Crown. All it meant was that they were out for the kind of blood no one wanted proof of.

  And Grace would be damned if she’d let them have it without a fight. She nodded, heading for the door. “Then we’d better get down there.”

  Veronique pulled a pistol from its holster under her arm and looked to Ewan. “You’re sure he can fight?”

  Grace met the eyes of the man she loved, in trousers and shirtsleeves, all muscle and strength, fury in his eyes and his jaw, looking for all the world as though he was prepared to walk through fire for right.

  For her.

  “I’ve never seen his equal.”

  She opened the door, and the trio headed toward the screams.

  They ran down the center stairs to the main oval room of the club, where a half-dozen fights had broken out. The men who had come to destroy 72 Shelton were easily recognizable—dirty and ruthless. But they hadn’t wagered on Veronique’s security being equally ruthless and prepared to do battle.

  Nor on the Bastards’. Across the room, Annika, who ran Devil and Whit’s smuggling operation, pushed Lady Nora Madewell behind her and threw a wicked punch, breaking her opponent’s nose, if the howl he let out was any indication.

  “Not without me, you don’t!” Lady Nora shouted, picking up a heavy crystal vase, laden with hothouse flowers, and cracking him over the head, setting him to his knees. With a grin, Nora looked to her love, pride on her open, pretty face. “Not bad, if I do say.”

  “Not bad,” Annika agreed with a half smile—the highest praise a body could receive from the stoic Norwegian—pulling her lady close. “Very good.”

  Nearby, one of Shelton Street’s army took a chair to a brute with a heavy club, and dropped him to the ground, summoning a collection of little shrieks from the members who were herding past, through to the back rooms, and the staircase that would lead to the underground tunnels that would take them safely from the club.

  “That was a solid hit for Cate,” Grace said.

  “You’ve trained them well,” Ewan said.

  “Tell me that when we’re on the other side of this,” she said.

  “Whoever this is, they’ll never get away with it,” Ewan said, looking over the crowd. “I recognized a dozen of the most powerful members of the House of Lords here tonight.”

  “They’re not here for the men,” Grace replied. “They’re after the members; every woman here.”

  They looked over the crowd, scrambling to escape the men who were taking care to destroy everything in their path. Grace watched a brute with a club smash a stained-glass lantern in the corner of the oval salon before slicing a cushion open with a wickedly sharp blade.

  On the other side of the room, someone had toppled a chaise.

  They were after her club, dammit.

  A couple peeled away from the stream of escapees and headed for them—Nelson, a cut on his forehead bleeding more than Grace liked, his arm lodged protectively around the Dowager Countess of Granville, a bloody handkerchief in her hand, her mask having been traded for a furrowed brow.

  He met Grace’s gaze as he pressed a kiss to the lady’s temple. “We’re for the roof.”

  “And for Mayfair,” Lady Granville said, pointedly, worry and something else in her eyes.

  They would never be back. Grace knew love when she saw it.

  She stepped aside to let them pass. “Be well.”

  The couple was gone, a riot of sound following them up the stairs and into the night.

  Grace looked back over the chaos before them. “They don’t want to scare us,” she said. “They want to end us.”

  “Why?” Ewan asked.

  “Because,” she said, watching. Lady Marsham and the Duchess of Pemberton pushed past, wild-eyed, and she saw the terror in their eyes as they peeked over their shoulders, looking for the enemy beyond. “They don’t like that we are the future.”

  Even if they got everyone out that night, it would not be enough. The raid would do what it was meant to do—scare members off. Send them, frightened, back to their Mayfair drawing rooms and their Park Lane teas. Back to gossip on Bond Street and walks along the Serpentine. Back to the safety they enjoyed as the second sex.

  And 72 Shelton would be made an example by the men who ran them back to ground.

  Over her decaying corpse.

  Anger flared, hot in Grace’s throat, and she caught the eye of the aerialist, still high above the crowd, having pulled herself to standing on the trapeze for the best view in the house.

  Grace lifted her chin toward the woman. “Where?”

  Thankfully, the other woman did not misunderstand. She pointed in the direction of the front room, where Fortuna had been earlier in the evening. Where she and Ewan had danced, wild and free—a memory that would forever be tainted by this—these men, in her palace, leaving destruction in their wake.

  Anger became rage.

  Another scream sounded from the front room, and she was already moving, pulling the scarf from her waist and wrapping the ends around her fists with quick, economical movements as she pushed through the crowd.

  She heard Ewan roar her name behind her, but she did not look back. This was her place. Her world. These were her people. And she would protect them at all costs.

  One moment she was with him and the next, she was gone, disappeared into the throngs of people fleeing in one direction, swimming upstream, running, as she had always done, into the fray.

  Grace, always the first to save, no matter what danger she might face.

  A glimpse of her flame red curls the only thing that retained his sanity as he followed her. She was moving too fast, lost almost instantly in the crowd. He roared her name, frustration and fear propelling him into the crowd—which seemed, blessedly, to understand his urgency and make space for him.

  “It’s Mad Marwick!” he heard at the back of his consciousness as he pushed through the crush, the moniker from his past, which he had
worked so hard to overcome in the months since he’d returned—now back because he was mad. He was a wild animal, desperate to get to the woman he loved.

  He looked over his shoulder. “You said fifteen?”

  “Give or take.” Grace’s second-in-command was at his side. “Four in the center room, makes ten or so elsewhere.”

  “And your men? They can fight?” What was Grace headed into?

  “My women are made of stronger stuff than you, toff.”

  He grunted, coming through to the room where the magician and the fiddlers and the acrobat had been earlier in the evening. He pulled up short as the woman with him cursed, under her breath.

  The room had been destroyed. Curtains slit and furniture smashed, tables and chairs upended. Paintings ripped from the walls and slashed.

  This wasn’t sport. It was punishment.

  They don’t like that we are the future.

  Around the room, the intruders brawled with club employees, and at the center of it all, Grace. As he watched, she clocked one of the brutes, setting him off kilter long enough to deliver a heavy kick to his midsection. He landed on the ground and she used her scarf to deliver the final blow, her quick actions inhibiting his movement as she knocked him unconscious.

  She shook out her hand as he landed on the ground and turned around, her brown eyes finding Ewan’s as he watched her, pride bursting in his chest at this view of her, in her element.

  A queen.

  Her brows rose in silent question as he went for her, unable to keep himself from it, from reaching for her, battle raging all around them, pulling her into his arms, and kissing her thoroughly, claiming her for his own—this Boadicea.

  When he was through, she was loose in his arms, and when she opened her eyes, he said, “I’m going to marry you.” Another kiss, quick and lush. “I’m going to marry you, and we will keep this place safe, and you will never have to fight alone ever again. We shall fight together.”

  Her eyes went wide, but before she could say anything, movement came at the outer edge of his vision, and they both turned. The attacker was already lowering his club, aiming for Grace.

  Ewan went wild, blocking the blow with a roar of fury, catching the club with one strong hand and planting his fist in the man’s face once, twice. “No one touches her,” he said on the third hit.

  And on the fourth, “No one touches this place.” He lifted the other man by the collar. “Do you understand?”

  A nod.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Dunno. We was just told to make sure this place wasn’t fit for usin’ again.”

  Frustration flared. “Fucking hired dogs. You go back into the gutter you climbed out of and you tell whoever it is who hired you that this place is under the protection of the Duke of Marwick. Do you understand?”

  Grace sucked in a breath at his shoulder, but he didn’t look at her, too busy waiting for a reply.

  “Y-yes.”

  “Good.”

  He lifted his fist to deliver another blow, but Grace stayed him with a touch, looking to the man. “Are you the same crew that went for Maggie O’Tiernen’s?”

  The bleeding man’s eyes shifted around the room, and Ewan grew more irritated. “Tell the truth, bruv,” he said, the Garden seeping into his voice. “You won’t like the consequences of a lie.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “Yeah. That were us.”

  “And Satchell’s?”

  Ewan looked to her. What did she know?

  “Aye.”

  “What’s your name?”

  He hesitated, and Ewan shook him like a doll. “Mikey.”

  “I never forget a face, Mikey. Stay out of the Garden. You won’t like it if we cross paths again.”

  He nodded, fear and gratitude in his eyes.

  She indicated the rest of the room, where the fighters of 72 Shelton Street had dispatched the interlopers. “Take your boys and get the hell out of my place.”

  The man obeyed instantly—knowing with the keen sense of a hired gun that he had been bested. She watched the men as they left, looking far worse for wear.

  And then she turned to him. “You proposed to me.”

  “I did,” he acknowledged.

  “You proposed to me in the middle of a brawl.”

  His smile was full of chagrin. “We’ve never been conventional.”

  She did not return the amusement.

  “Shall I do it again, now that the brawling is over and we have emerged victorious?”

  “No,” she said, instantly.

  He tilted his head. “Grace . . .” he began.

  “Dahlia,” she corrected.

  “What?”

  “I am not Grace here. I am Dahlia.”

  The air grew heavy between them, and Ewan did not like it. Did not like the harbinger it appeared to be, considering the steel in her words. “I would have thought that right now, of all times, you’d be Grace.”

  “Because you are proposing marriage?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Because you want me for duchess.”

  “Yes.” He wanted it more than he could say. More than he’d ever wanted anything, ever. “Yes. Christ. Yes. That’s what I can do—I can make you duchess and make this place unbreakable. I can give you everything you have worked for. If you want this place? I want it for you. I want you safe in it. I want your employees safe in it.”

  “They are. We are,” she said.

  “Now, yes. But I can make you safe forever. You think those thugs were hired by Mayfair? By men terrified of their wives getting ideas about the queen? By men terrified of women having power?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “Then let me fix it. Marry me. I’m a duke. This was what we said we would do.” He reached for her, but she stepped away from him instead of toward him. “We said we would use the dukedom to win. This is how it begins. You marry me. And this place becomes untouchable.”

  This was the beginning of their future. The next part of their life. Their happily-ever-after. But something was wrong.

  “Not even you have the power to stop whatever this is, Duke.” He resisted the urge to flinch at the title—one she hadn’t used with him in weeks. “This threat is vanquished from below, not above. Stopped by me, not you.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be stopped by us? Together?”

  A pause, and she went still. “Together.”

  “Yes,” he said, and he would have given his entire fortune to know what she was thinking. “Together.”

  Grace watched him for a long moment, and there was something in her eyes, something he recognized from a long-ago night—twenty years gone.

  Disappointment.

  And then she said, softly, “You planned all this.”

  The irony, of course, was that the only time Grace had ever allowed herself to linger on the idea of marriage, it had been marriage to him.

  It had been marriage to that boy she’d loved a lifetime earlier, who had made plans to be duke, and made plans to return to London, triumphant and powerful, and change the world from which he’d come.

  And he had made plans for her to be duchess, and change the world by his side.

  But she was no longer that girl of twelve, of thirteen, of fourteen. She was no longer the fifteen-year-old who shivered in the cold and dreamed of him coming back to her.

  She was a grown woman who had saved that world and herself, without title or privilege. She’d built power from nothing. An empire from nothing. And when it came under threat, she fought. And she triumphed.

  Had he not just seen it?

  And now he offered her a title, as though it were a gift. As though it weren’t the thing that had brought their whole world down around him.

  And then that word—together.

  The same word the Duchess of Trevescan had used earlier in the evening, when she’d been so delighted to see Grace and Ewan. Together.

  Grace looked to him. “You sent her to me. The Duchess of Treve
scan. That night. To tell me you were back.”

  He looked away.

  “You did. You sent her, and she, what, planted the conversation about you? The revelation that you were hosting a masque and looking for a wife?”

  That got his attention. “I wasn’t looking for a wife. I’d already found her.”

  She ignored the pounding of her heart at the words, and the truth of them, glittering in his gaze. “All you had to do was convince me you’d changed.”

  “I had changed,” he said.

  “I thought that was true,” she replied.

  “It is!”

  “No. I don’t want to be your duchess. I have no desire to be complicit in your world—the world that ruined us. That ruined our mothers. My brothers. The world that threatens the Garden every day and tonight came for women because God forbid they should have a moment of their own pleasure. Their own satisfaction. Their own joy . . .” She paused, hating the words. Hating the rest. “And all that, before we even discuss how it ruined you.”

  Her anger grew hot as she added, “You think a title can save us from this?” She spread her arms wide to indicate the destruction around them. “It cannot,” she said. “The only thing the dukedom of Marwick has ever done is threaten us.”

  He shoved his fingers through his hair and rounded on her, and she saw him come to the edge of his anger. “You think I do not know how it ruined me? You think I have not regretted that fucking title for twenty years? I loathe it. Every time someone speaks it into being, I hate it more. Tonight, in stripping me of it, you and this place gave me the most magnificent gift I’ve ever received—a taste of life without the fucking dukedom.”

  Her eyes went wide as he railed. “You think I don’t remember the pact we made every day? No heirs. No future. Nothing that carries on the name.” He stopped, his gaze wild on her face. “You think I don’t remember that pact every time I look at you and think about what a life with you could be, if only I wasn’t the fucking duke? Shall I tell you? What that life would be? What we could have?”

  She shook her head, her heart tight in her chest. “No.”

  But he was already there. “You think I don’t imagine days in the sun here in the Garden? Hauling on the docks? You think I don’t ache for a life where I return to you, here, in this magnificent place you have built, and sleeping next to you all night, until I can kiss you awake in the morning? You deal in fantasy. Would you like to know how mine goes?”