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

by Sarah MacLean

Robert Matthew Carrick, Earl Sumner, heir to the Dukedom of Marwick. She ignored the thread of emotion winding through her and lightened her tone. “You might as well have the name. It’s proper new. I’ve never used it.” She might have been baptized the heir, but she didn’t have access to the name.

Christ, she was moving in closer, leaning over him, blocking out the light. Becoming the light.

“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.”

she fed on his inaction, air to her flame.

Newer members often selected less complicated masks, some as simple as a black domino, but many were magnificently elaborate, designed to showcase a woman’s power and wealth without revealing her identity.

“Because you pay me to know.” “I absolutely do not pay you to know about my—” “Reality?” Zeva offered. “Could we stop calling it that?”

He’d recreated their place. The copse of trees on the western edge of the Marwick estate that had been Grace’s favorite spot—their favorite spot. The ballroom was an echo of it.

He’d known it was her from the moment she’d stepped into the ballroom,

He moved faster, eager to meet her, the woman the girl he’d loved had become.

“It’s a masquerade—every reveler with a mask is ferrying unsuspecting ladies into the gardens.” “It is unfortunate for you, then, that I am never unsuspecting.”

“Who says I’m the one who would be ruined?” He almost missed a step. “Are you offering to ruin me?”

“That’s because most women see a title and think it is pure opportunity—a line to freedom.” “And you?” Her lips curved, but the smile did not reach her eyes. “I know titles are gilded cages.”

“Masks are dangerous. One never knows quite who one is when wearing one.” He did not hesitate. “Or, they make it easier for one to show his truth.”

Who was this new man? Where was Ewan? What had happened to him? You sent him away. And now, this man returns in his place.

What would it be like to never have to hide? Grace was so expert at hiding, at playing a part—myriad parts—that she often forgot her truth.

“Apollo, wandering in the woods, until he stumbled upon the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.”

“You are a queen,” he whispered. She closed her eyes at the words. At the impossible promise in them. And then he added, “Tonight, I am your throne.”

Grace took a deep breath, and Dahlia replied.

She found her idiot brothers exactly where she expected to find them—on

How must that feel? he thought as he stumbled back, gasping for breath. To have brothers who stand with you?

I said your fight was mine.” “And if I told you that I was all fight?”

“What if you cannot claim my fight without claiming me?”

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

“I am your queen,” she whispered to the back of his hand, giving herself up to the fantasy. Willing him to do the same. “Let me have this.”

she said as he pushed the door up and open, sending it slamming down on the roof. “My bottom looks superior in these trousers.”

“I loved you,” he said, knowing it wasn’t enough. “I know,” she said. “And I loved you. But it was a springtime love. A summer one. Left alone to flourish until the cold came. Until the wind threatened to rip it apart and the frost killed it off.”

“Men don’t change,” Grace said. “That’s the first rule of surviving as a woman in the world. Men don’t change.”

“Hope changes a person.”

What does he have but loneliness and regret?”

Instead, you serve up love without ties over on Shelton Street, and pretend nobody notices that at the end of the night, you’re alone.”

“I like you better when you don’t talk.”

“Maybe it needn’t be complicated. Maybe he wants another chance. Maybe he wants hope.”

brothers. “Perhaps I want hope, too.”

Men are curious beasts, are they not? They at once wish to keep us out of their spaces and also loathe the idea of us making space for ourselves.”

as this man she’d spent a lifetime hiding from refused to rip her bodice—Grace fell in love for the second time in her life.

“I searched for you for so long, thinking it would be the same when I found you. Thinking you would be the girl I’d loved.” Her throat worked at the words. “And instead, I found you, beautiful, yes, and bold. But strong and powerful—fucking glorious. You’re glorious, Grace.”

And I stood at the edge of that ballroom, losing my mind, waiting for you to come in some kind of mad hope. And then you did, and I realized that what I felt before you arrived had not been hope, it had been fear. And when you arrived, you were hope.”

“It’s destroyed,” she said. “I sent everyone home.” She didn’t want to face them. “Well, a dozen of them are inside getting a jump on the clean, so I’d say your biggest problem is mutiny,”