Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards 2)

The man had the most beautiful face Hattie had ever seen. The most beautiful face anyone had ever seen. She leaned closer, taking in his warm, bronze skin, the high cheekbones, the long, straight nose, the dark slashes of his brows, and the impossibly long lashes that lay like sin against his cheeks.

“What kind of man . . .” She trailed off. Shook her head.

What kind of man looked like this?

What kind of man looked like this and somehow landed in the carriage of Hattie Sedley—a woman who was very unused to being in the vicinity of men who looked like this.

“You’re embarrassing yourself,” Nora said. “You’re staring and your jaw has gone fully slack.”

Hattie closed her mouth, but did not stop staring.

“Hattie. We have to go.” A pause. Then, “Unless you’ve changed your mind?”

The casual question brought Hattie back to the moment. To her plan. She shook her head. Lowered the lantern. “I haven’t.”

Nora sighed and placed her hands on her hips, staring past Hattie into the carriage. “You get his bottom, and I’ll take his top, then?” She looked to a shadowed alcove behind her. “He can resume consciousness there.”

Hattie’s heart pounded. “We can’t leave him here.”

“We can’t?”

“No.”

Nora slid her a look. “Hattie. We can’t take him with us just because he looks like a Roman statue.”

Hattie blushed in the darkness. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“You lost the power of speech.”

She cleared her throat. “We can’t take him because Augie left him here.”

Nora’s lips flattened into a perfect, straight line. “You don’t know that.”

“I know,” Hattie said, holding the lantern near the rope at the man’s wrists, and sweeping it down to the place where he was bound at the ankles, “because August Sedley can’t tie a Carrick bend worth a damn, and I fear that if we leave this man here, he’ll find his way loose and head straight for my useless brother.”

That, and if the stranger didn’t find his way loose, who knew what Augie would do to him. Her brother was as cabbageheaded as he was reckless—a combination that routinely required Hattie’s intervention. Which, incidentally, was a significant reason for her decision to claim her twenty-ninth year as her own. And still, here her infernal brother was, ruining everything.

Unaware of Hattie’s thoughts, Nora said, “Recently unconscious or no . . . this doesn’t look like a man who loses in a fight.”

The understatement was not lost on Hattie. She sighed, reaching in and hanging the now glowing lantern on its peg, taking the opportunity to cast a long, lingering look at the man in her carriage.

Hattie Sedley had learned something else in her twenty-eight years, three hundred and sixty-four days: If a woman had a problem, it was best she solve it herself.

She pulled herself up into the carriage, stepping carefully over the man on the floor before looking back at wide-eyed Nora on the drive below. “Come on, then. We’ll drop him on our way.”

Chapter Two

The last thing he remembered was the blow to the head.

He’d been expecting the ambush. It was why he’d been driving the rig, six fine horses pulling a massive steel conveyance laden with liquor and playing cards and tobacco, destined for Mayfair. He’d just crossed Oxford Street when he’d heard the gunshot, followed by a pained cry from one of his outriders.

He’d stopped to check on his men. To protect them.

To punish those who threatened them.

There’d been a body on the ground. Blood on the street beneath it. He had just sent the second outrider for help when he heard the footsteps at his back. He’d turned, knife in hand. Thrown it. Heard the shout in the darkness as it found its seat.

Then the blow to the head.

And then . . . nothing.

Not until an insistent tapping against his cheek returned him to consciousness, too soft for pain, still firm enough to be irritating.

He didn’t open his eyes, years of training allowing him to feign sleep as he gathered his bearings. His feet were bound. Hands, too, behind his back. The bindings stretched the muscles of his chest tight enough for him to take note of what was missing—his knives, eight steel blades, set in onyx. Stolen along with the brace that strapped them to his chest. He resisted the urge to stiffen. To rage.

But Saviour Whittington, known in London’s darkest streets as Beast, did not rage; he punished. Quick and devastating and without emotion.

And if they’d taken the life of one of his men—of someone under his protection—they would never know peace.

But first, freedom.

He was on the floor of a moving carriage. A well-appointed one, if the soft cushion at his cheek was any indication, and in a decent neighborhood for the smooth rhythm of the cobblestones beneath the wheels.

What was the time?

He considered his next move—envisioning how he would incapacitate his captor despite his bindings. He imagined breaking a nose with the flat weapon of his forehead. Using his bound legs to knock the man out.

The tapping at his cheek began again. Then a whispered, “Sir.”

Whit’s eyes flew open.

His captor wasn’t a man.

The wash of golden light in the carriage played tricks with him—seeming to come somehow not from the lantern swaying gently in the corner, but from the woman.

Seated on the bench above him, she looked nothing like the kind of enemy who would knock a man out and tie him up in a carriage. Indeed, she looked like she was on her way to a ball. Perfectly done, perfectly coiffed, perfectly colored—her skin smooth, her eyes kohled, her lips full and stained just enough to make a man pay attention. And that was before he got a look at the dress—blue the color of a summer sky, perfectly fitted to her full figure.

Not that he should be noticing anything about that, considering she had him tied up in a carriage. He shouldn’t be noticing the curves of her, soft and welcoming at her waist, at the line of her bodice. He shouldn’t be noticing the gleam of the smooth, golden skin at her rounded shoulder in the lantern light. He shouldn’t be noticing the pretty softness of her face, or the fullness of her lips, stained red with paint.

She wasn’t for noticing.

He narrowed his gaze on her, and her eyes—was it possible they were violet? What kind of a person had violet eyes?—went wide. “Well. If that look is any indication of your temperament, it’s no wonder you are tied up.” She tilted her head. “Who tied you up?”

Whit did not reply. He did not believe she didn’t know the answer.

“Why are you tied up?”

Again, silence.

Her lips flattened into a straight line and muttered something that sounded like “Useless.” And then, louder, firmer, “The point is, you’re very inconvenient, as I have need of this carriage tonight.”

“Inconvenient.” He didn’t mean to reply, and the word surprised them both.

She nodded. “Indeed. It’s the Year of Hattie.”

“The what?”

She waved a hand, as though to push the question away. As though it weren’t important. Except Whit imagined it was. She pressed on. “It is my birthday. I have plans for myself. Plans that don’t include . . . whatever this is.” Silence stretched between them, then, “Most people would wish me a happy birthday at this juncture.”