Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards, #3)

by Sarah MacLean

“You think I would forget your touch? You think I wouldn’t know it in the darkness? I would know it in battle. I would walk through fire for it. I would know it on the road to hell. I would know it in hell, which is where I’ve been, aching for it, every day since you left.”

“Why would I settle for duchess?” she asked, the night cloaking her in fury and vengeance. “I was born the duke.”

Lady S__, a notorious scandal who enjoyed Covent Garden more than Mayfair; Miss L__, a bluestocking who routinely said the wrong thing and landed herself in peril with the ton; Lady A__, a quiet, aging spinster whose keen eye was worth that of a half dozen of Dahlia’s rooftop spies; and finally, Lady N__, daughter of a very rich, very absent, very accommodating duke, and lady love to Dahlia’s brothers’ second-in-command.

He’d known it was her from the moment she’d stepped into the ballroom, in a dress that fell in lush emerald waves to the floor, despite the mask covering everything but her beautiful kohled eyes and the dark wine color staining her lips, and the wig that stole her flame-colored curls from him. He presumed she was trying for disguise, as though he’d ever not sense her. Not feel her. As though there would ever come a time when she walked into a room and his whole body did not draw tight like a spring.