A nod in the darkness.
“And heirs?”
Silence. Not ignorance—anger.
Devil watched their bastard brother move through the crowd within, headed for the far end of the ballroom, where a dark corridor stretched into the bowels of the house. It was his turn to nod. “We end it before it begins.” He palmed his ebony walking stick, its silver lion’s mane, worn from use, fitting perfectly into his hand. “In and out, and enough damage that he cannot follow us.”
Whit nodded, but did not speak what they were both thinking—that the man London called Robert, Duke of Marwick, the boy they’d once known as Ewan, was more animal than aristocrat, and the only man who had ever come close to besting them. But that was before Devil and Whit had become the Bareknuckle Bastards, the Kings of Covent Garden, and learned to wield weapons with precision to match their threats.
Tonight, they would show him that London was their turf and return him to the country. It was only a matter of getting inside and doing just that—reminding him of that promise they’d made long ago.
The Duke of Marwick would beget no heirs.
“Good chase.” Whit’s words came on a low growl, his voice ragged from disuse.
“Good chase,” Devil replied, and the two moved in expedient silence to the dark shadows of the long balcony, knowing they would have to act quickly to avoid being seen.
With fluid grace, Devil scaled the balcony, leaping over the balustrade, landing silently in the darkness beyond, Whit following. They made for the door, knowing that the conservatory would be locked and off-limits to guests, making it the perfect entry point to the house. The Bastards wore formalwear—preparing to blend into the crowd until they found the duke and dealt their blow.
Marwick would be neither the first nor the last aristocrat to receive a punishment from the Bareknuckle Bastards, but Devil and Whit had never wished to deliver one so well.
Devil’s hand had barely landed on the door handle when it turned beneath his touch. He released it instantly, backing away, fading into the darkness even as Whit launched himself back over the balcony and onto the lawn below without sound.
And then the girl appeared.
She closed the door behind her with urgency, pressing her back to it, as though she could prevent others from following with nothing but sheer strength of will.
Strangely, Devil thought she might be able to do just that.
She was strung tight, her head against the door, long neck pale in the moonlight, chest heaving as a single, gloved hand came to rest on the shadowed skin above her gown, as though she could calm her ragged breath. Years of observation revealed her movements unpracticed and natural—she did not know she was being watched. She did not know she was not alone.
The fabric of her gown shimmered in the moonlight, but it was too dark to tell what color it was. Blue, perhaps. Green? The light turned it silver in places and black in others.
Moonlight. It looked as though she was cloaked in moonlight.
The strange observation came as she moved to the stone balustrade, and for a mad half-second, Devil considered stepping into the light to have a better look.
That is, until he heard the soft, low warble of a nightingale—Whit cautioning him. Reminding him of their plan, which the girl had nothing to do with. Except that she prevented it from being set in motion.
She didn’t know the bird was no bird at all, and she turned her face to the sky, hands coming to rest on the stone railing as she released a long breath, and with it, her guard. Her shoulders relaxed.
She’d been chased there.
A thread of something unpleasant wove through him at the idea that she’d fled into a dark room and out onto a darker balcony, where a man waited who might be worse than anything inside. And then, like a shot in the dark, she laughed. Devil stiffened, the muscles in his shoulders tensing, his grip tightening on the silver handle of his cane.
It took all his will not to approach her. To recall that he’d been lying in wait for this moment for years—so long he could barely remember a time when he wasn’t prepared to do battle with his brother.
He was not going to allow a woman to knock him off course. He didn’t even have a clear look at her, and still, he could not look away.
“Someone ought to tell them just how awful they are,” she said to the sky. “Someone ought to march right up to Amanda Fairfax and tell her that no one believes her beauty mark is real. And someone ought to tell Lord Hagin that he stinks of perfume and would do well to take a bath.
“And I should dearly love to remind Jared of the time he landed himself backside-first in a pond at my mother’s country house party and had to rely upon my kindness to get him to dry clothes without being seen.”
She paused, just long enough for Devil to think that she was through speaking into the ether.
Instead, she blurted out, “And must Natasha be so unpleasant?”
“That’s the best you can do?”
He shocked himself with the words—now was not the time to be talking to a solo chatterbox on the balcony.
He shocked Whit more, if the harsh nightingale’s call that immediately followed was any indication.
But he shocked the girl the most.
With a little squeak of surprise, she whirled to face him, her hand coming to the expanse of skin above the line of her bodice. What color was that bodice? The moonlight continued to play tricks with it, making it impossible to see.
She tilted her head and squinted into the shadow. “Who’s there?”
“You have me wondering just that, love, considering you’re talking up a storm.”
The squint became a scowl. “I was talking to myself.”
“And neither of you can find a better insult for this Natasha than unpleasant?”
She took a step toward him, then seemed to think twice of approaching a strange man in the darkness. She stopped. “How would you describe Natasha Corkwood?”
“I don’t know her, so I wouldn’t. But considering you were happy to lambast Hagin’s hygiene and resurrect Faulk’s past embarrassments, surely Lady Natasha deserves a similar level of creativity?”
She stared into the shadows for a long minute, her gaze fixed to a point somewhere beyond his left shoulder. “Who are you?”
“No one of consequence.”
“As you are on a dark balcony outside an unoccupied room in the home of the Duke of Marwick, it seems you might be a man of quite serious consequence.”
“By that rationale, you are a woman of serious consequence.”
Her laugh came loud and unexpected, surprising them both. She shook her head. “Few would agree with you.”
“I am rarely interested in others’ opinions.”
“Then you mustn’t be a member of the ton,” she replied dryly, “as others’ opinions are like gold here. Exceedingly cared for.”
Who was she?
“Why were you in the conservatory?”
She blinked. “How did you know it is a conservatory?”
“I make it my business to know things.”
“About houses that do not belong to you?”
This house was almost mine, once. He resisted the words. “No one is using this room. Why were you?”
She lifted a shoulder. Let it drop.
It was his turn to scowl. “Are you meeting a man?”
Her eyes went wide. “I beg your pardon?”
“Dark balconies make for excellent trysting.”
“I wouldn’t know.”