And that was how Robert Matthew Carrick, Earl Sumner, Duke of Marwick—the duke who had never really existed—died.
“You’re lucky you walked out of there, bruv,” Whit added. “Else Grace would’ve been in there on your heels, willing the flames away and pulling you back from hell.”
Ewan turned to her, pulling her close. “If anyone is strong enough to win that battle, it’s you.”
She reached up for him, letting her fingers tangle in his hair. “I’ve plans for you, yet.”
That smile—the one that never failed to turn her inside out. “I’ve a plan or two of my own.”
“Tell me,” she said. What was next?
“A fresh start. A new life. Whatever it takes to be with the woman I love.”
“What are you offering?” she asked.
“Honest work by day, and your fantasies by night.”
Heat flooded through her at the sinful promise in the words. “Our fantasies,” she whispered, coming up on her toes and kissing him again, her hands coming to his face. “So, what, then, we make you Duke of the Garden?”
“I was hoping for something higher.”
“You can never go back to Mayfair,” she said. “Not if you’re killing off the Duke of Marwick. The whole world will know you there.”
“I know, love. I don’t want Mayfair. There’s nothing there for me. All the work I’ve done—Mayfair can’t make it right. Mayfair can’t make good on my long-ago promise to the Garden. And it can’t make good on the one I made to you.” His thumbs traced over her cheeks. “I don’t wish to be a duke any longer. Not when I might stand next to a queen. Not when I might be her king.”
You are a queen. I am your throne.
The words sizzled through her.
He set his forehead to hers and whispered. “I do not want to be Your Grace ever again. All I want is for you to be my Grace.” He kissed her again. “It’s always been you. Every day. Every night. Every minute. Since the beginning. This is the sum of my ambition: To be worthy of you. Of your love. Of your world. To stand by your side and change it.”
Yes.
“To live by your side. To love there and hang the rest of it.”
The fire blazed behind him—the end of their past—the beginning of their future.
He’d set the seat of the dukedom on fire.
“I’ll say this for it,” Devil spoke up from where he and Whit watched the house burn. “It’s one hell of a gesture.”
Whit grunted his agreement, and Grace heard the approval there, too. Ewan had set them free as well.
She couldn’t control the wild laugh that came at the commentary. “It’s true what they say. You’re a madman.”
“Maybe,” he allowed with a grin. “Mad about you, to be sure.”
Devil groaned at the words and Ewan kissed her again, before adding, “You said I could never have her back. But what if I don’t want her? What if I want you, instead? This isn’t first love. This is next. This is last.”
She nodded, tears in her eyes. “Yes.”
He smiled—that smile, the one that never failed to lay her low. “Yes.”
“I love you,” she said, the only words that she could find.
“Good,” he replied. “Tell me again.”
“I love you.”
He pulled her close. Kissed her deep. Smiled again. “Grace,” he said, softly, like a litany. “My Grace. Finally here.”
“Finally here,” she whispered, pressing kisses across his face. Along his jaw, over his cheek bones, at his brow, where she could smell the fire. “What do you need?”
The echo of all the times he’d said it to her.
“Tomorrow,” he said, his arms coming around her. “I need tomorrow. With you.”
The Future
“There you are.”
Ewan turned from his place at the edge of the rooftop to find his wife striding toward him, stunning gold corset over tight black trousers, beneath a topcoat lined with a matching gold thread. Her riotous red curls tumbled around her shoulders and her cheeks were rosy with the crisp air and a day in the sun.
He’d still never seen anything so beautiful, even now, after years by her side.
Before she could say anything more, he reached for her, pulling her close for a long, lingering kiss, stealing her breath and her pleasure before lifting his head and ending the caress, loving the way she lingered in his arms, her eyes closed in pleasure.
When she did open her eyes, it was with a dreamy smile—one he matched with his own, full of arrogant pride. There were very few things he liked more in life than the look of his wife in pleasure.
She laughed. “You look like a cat in the bin outside the fishmonger.”
He recoiled at the analogy. “You know the saying is the cat that got the cream, do you not?”
She waved away the correction. “Have you ever seen the sheer arrogance of a cat with a bit of stolen fish? You’re showing your not-so-humble beginnings, husband.”
He pulled her in for another kiss at that, until she went loose in his arms again and he lifted his head, pressing his forehead to hers and whispering, “Say it again.”
Pleasure lit in her beautiful brown eyes, the light from the setting sun turning them to fire. “Husband.”
They’d been married mere weeks after the fire at Burghsey House, in the church of St. Paul’s Covent Garden—where Ewan had been baptized thirty years earlier—not that a little thing like a falsified baptismal record would have stopped the Bareknuckle Bastards from a wedding and subsequent celebration. And afterward, Mr. and Mrs. Ewan Condry—the name his choice—had walked the streets of Covent Garden as king and queen, Grace showing Ewan every corner of the world where he had been born, and she had been made.
The dukedom had returned to the Crown after the fire, the old duke’s plans for legacy fully thwarted. The land and tenants in Essex still thrived, and the staff in Mayfair had been snatched up by myriad aristocratic households—the mistresses of which were all members of a certain Covent Garden club.
The responsibilities properly handled, Ewan had never looked back to his title, too focused on his work, his love, and his future.
In the years since his return, 72 Shelton had been restored, the clientele growing along with the space—Ewan and Grace now lived in a handsome row house not far from Drury Lane, connected to the rest of the Bastards’ homes by rooftop. Their daughters grew in the sun and shade of Covent Garden, surrounded by hard working men and strong, smart women, and a world that their parents worked to make better every day.
“I will never grow tired of that word on your lips,” he said, pulling her tight against him and pressing a kiss to her temple.
“You’re missing the festival, husband,” she said as they turned back to the edge of the roof, and looked down on the Covent Garden market square, where the barkers and hawkers of the day had given way to musicians and pie sellers and a fire eater who looked more than a little familiar. They watched as Felicity and Devil danced in a whirlwind to a wild fiddle, around and around until they were tangled in each others’ arms and out of breath.
“I’m not missing it. I was just watching for a bit before I came down.” After a day in the Garden, arguing about fresh water piping and the plans for new housing for the workers in the Rookery, he’d come to watch the rooftops turn gold in the setting sun and cast the market in gold.
And yes, he’d come to watch his wife as she reigned queen over it.
“I know,” she said. “I’ve been watching you watching us.”
“Oh?” he said.
“It’s hard to miss such a handsome voyeur.”
He grinned at the words, pulling her tight to him, again. “I see the girls are happy.”
On the far corner of the square, beneath a torch that had been lit as the daylight faded, a half-dozen girls—cousins—crowded around Whit and Hattie. Felicity and Devil’s Helena and her younger sister, Rose, each as clever as their mother and cunning as their father,
were joined by Hattie and Whit’s brilliant Sophia, who could happily take control of the shipping business at the age of nine. And with them, three flame-haired girls—seven, five, and four, each with a riot of curls to match their mother’s, and amber eyes like their father.
“Whit’s been doling out sweets all day,” she said. “Lemon drops, raspberry drops, strawberry, his pockets appear to be bottomless.”
“Hattie brings them in by the case,” he said.
“She spoils him.”
He looked to her. “He deserves it.”
She grinned. “So do we all, I say.” She paused, and then tilted her head and said, slyly, “Is there something sweet I can provide you, husband?”
The question sent a lick of heat through him. “I think I can imagine one or two things.”
“Only one or two?” she said. “I’m disappointed.”
He kissed her again, long and deep, until they both came away breathless. “I confess,” he said, “I feel spoiled every day I am with you and the girls. I feel spoiled every day I stand with my brothers, in this place. I feel spoiled every night when I come home to you.”
She leaned up to press a kiss to his beard-roughened cheek as he added, “Sometimes feeling so spoiled makes me wonder if it’s all real.”
“I’ve an idea,” Grace said, pulling away from him, her fingers tangling in his. “Come down and play. Laugh with me and dance with me, and spend an outrageous amount of blunt, and let the broad tossers give you a good fleecing, and let Devil challenge you to a bout, and let Whit convince you to buy the girls a hound.”
“No hound,” he said, firmly.
His gorgeous wife grinned. “There’s a little brown pup who might win your heart yet, husband . . . but I’m not finished.”
“By all means,” he replied. “Go on.”
She approached again, pressing her long, lush body to his and wrapping her arms about his neck. And then she pressed kisses to his face and jaw and cheeks. “Come and play, until our feet are tired and our hearts are full . . . and then let’s go home and tumble into bed. Happy. Just as we deserve.”
And because they deserved it, that is precisely what they did.
Author’s Note
Covent Garden holds my whole heart, even now, two hundred years apart from the world of the Bareknuckle Bastards. In the last few years, I’ve been lucky enough to spend days of research time in and around Covent Garden and the London Docklands; this series would not exist without the extensive collection of the Museum of London (particularly its magnificent work with Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People of London), The Museum of the London Docklands, the Covent Garden Area Trust, the Foundling Museum, and the British Library.
A quick note on the raids that play a pivotal role in Grace’s story. It would take time for the new young Queen to usher in the period of rigid morality with which her name has become synonymous—in those early years, there was a rise in social freedoms for women at all levels of society. But, as is too common in situations in which marginalized groups gain social ground, there was an enormous backlash. Between social disdain, political vitriol, and physical violence, the expanding role of women of all classes was hotly contested for the remainder of the nineteen century, resulting not only in commonplace raids like the one on 72 Shelton Street, but also in laws that criminalized sex work, refused women the vote, and widely set women back—all while Queen Victoria held the throne.
Of course, Grace and Ewan—and all the Bastards—fought these changes every step of the way.
When I proposed this story of historical romance featuring criminals and fighters and bordello owners who existed far beyond the ballrooms of Mayfair, Avon Books did not blink. I am keenly aware of how lucky I am to have Carrie Feron, who always knows the path I’m on, even when I don’t, and the entire team there. Thank you to Liate Stehlik, Asanté Simons, Angela Craft, Pam Jaffee, and Kayleigh Webb, to Eleanor Mikucki for bravely suffering my absolutely abhorrent misuse of lay and lie, and to Brittani DiMare, who makes me look better with every book.
It’s surreal to be writing the ending to the Bareknuckle Bastards—these four have kept me company for years, long before I started writing them. I’m so grateful to the Kiawah group over the years, from Sophie Jordan, Carrie Ryan, and Ally Carter, who helped develop the seed of the idea, to Tessa Gratton and Sierra Simone who cheered it on, to Louisa Edwards, who answered every call and text and late-night question I had. Thank you for helping to make my Covent Garden criminals real boys (and girl).
So many of my favorite women are a part of Grace. If you look closely, you’ll see glimpses of my mom, my sister, Chiara, Meghan Tierney, Jen Prokop, Kate Clayborn, Adriana Herrera, Joanna Shupe, Megan Frampton, LaQuette, Nisha Sharma, Andie Christopher, Alexis Daria, Tracey Livesay, Nora Zelevansky, Julia Quinn, Kristin Dwyer, Holly Root, Eva Moore, Cheryl Tapper, and so many more.
As always, to my loves—V, my rebel girl, and Eric, who would absolutely give up a dukedom for me—thank you for always letting me come home.
And finally, to you, dear reader: Thank you for believing in my bastards, for taking this journey with me, and for trusting me to bring Ewan around. I know a leap of faith when I see one. I hope you’ll stay with me for what comes next—I cannot wait for you to meet my Hell’s Belles in 2021.
Hell’s Belles
The Scandal, The Spinster, The Bluestocking & The Duchess
The edge of the ballroom has the best view . . . and the best stories.
HELL’S BELLES
A new series from Sarah MacLean
Coming 2021
About the Author
A life-long romance reader, SARAH MACLEAN wrote her first romance novel on a dare, and never looked back. She is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, the host of the romance novel podcast Fated Mates, and a columnist for The Washington Post, where she writes about the romance genre. She lives in New York City.
sarahmaclean.net
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Also by Sarah MacLean
The Bareknuckle Bastards
Wicked and the Wallflower
Brazen and the Beast
Daring and the Duke
Scandal & Scoundrel
The Rogue Not Taken
A Scot in the Dark
The Day of the Duchess
The Rules of Scoundrels
A Rogue by Any Other Name
One Good Earl Deserves a Lover
No Good Duke Goes Unpunished
Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover
Love by Numbers
Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake
Ten Ways to Be Adored When Landing a Lord
Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart
The Season
“The Duke of Christmas Present” (in How the Dukes Stole Christmas)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
daring and the duke. Copyright © 2020 by Sarah Trabucchi. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
Digital Edition JULY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-269199-6<
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Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-269208-5
Cover design by Patricia Barrow
Cover illustration by Alan Ayers
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HarperCollins is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers in the United States of America and other countries.
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