Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards 2)

“You are unlucky, then, that I am not that.”

“Reasonable?”

“A gentleman.”

She gave a little surprised chuckle at that. “Well, as we are currently in a brothel, I think neither of us can claim much gentility.”

“That wasn’t on your list of qualifications?”

“Oh, it was,” she said, “But I expected more the approximation of gentility rather than the actuality of it. But there’s the rub; I have plans, approximations be damned, and I’m not letting you ruin them.”

“The plans you spoke of before tossing me out of a carriage.”

“I didn’t toss you.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “All right, I tossed you. But you fared perfectly well.”

“No thanks to you.”

“I don’t have the information you want.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. “How very rude.”

“Take your mask off.”

“No.”

His lips twitched at the unyielding reply. “What is the Year of Hattie?”

She lifted her chin in defiance, but stayed silent. Whit gave a little grunt and moved across the room to the champagne, returning to fill her glass. When the task was done, he returned the bottle to its place and leaned back against the windowsill, watching her fidget.

She was always in motion, smoothing skirts or playing at her sleeve—he drank in the long line of the dress, the way it wrapped her unruly curves and made promises that a man wished she would keep. The candlelight teased over her skin, gilding her. This was not a woman who took tea. This was a woman who took the sun.

She had money, clearly. And power. A woman required both in spades for entry to 72 Shelton—even knowing the place existed required a network that did not come easily. There were a thousand reasons why she might wish access, and Whit had heard them all. Boredom, dissatisfaction, recklessness. But he couldn’t see any of those in Hattie. She wasn’t an impetuous girl—she was old enough to know her mind and to make her choices. Nor was she plain, or a dilettante.

He moved toward her. Slowly. Deliberately.

She stiffened. Her grip tightened on the paper in her hand. “I shan’t be intimidated.”

“He stole from me, and I wish it back.”

But that wasn’t everything.

He was close enough to touch her. Close enough to measure the height he’d noticed in her before, nearly equal to his own. Close enough to see her eyes, dark behind the mask, fixed on him. Close enough to be cloaked in almonds.

“Whatever it is.” She pushed her shoulders back. “I shall see it returned.”

Four shipments. Three outriders with bullets in them. After tonight, Whit’s own throwing knives, which he prized above all else. And, if he was right, more than could ever be repaid.

He shook his head. “It’s not possible. I require a name.”

She stiffened at the doubt. “I beg your pardon; I do not fail.”

Another man might have found the words amusing. But Whit heard the honesty in them. How was she involved in this mess? He couldn’t resist repeating himself. “What is the Year of Hattie?”

“If I tell you, will you leave me alone?”

No. He didn’t say it.

She took a deep breath in the silence, seeming to consider her options. And then, “It is what it sounds like. It is my year. The year I claim for myself.”

“How?”

“I’ve a four-point plan to captain my own fate.”

His brows rose. “Four points.”

She lifted a hand, ticking the answers off on her long, gloved fingers. “Business. Home. Fortune. Future.” She paused. “Now, if you would tell me what precisely was removed from your possession, I will see it returned, and we can go about our lives without bothering one another ever again.”

“Business. Home. Fortune. Future.” He tested the plan. “In that order?”

She tilted her head. “Likely.”

“What kind of business?” Whit had money to spare and could aid her in whatever business she wished . . . for the information he required.

Her gaze narrowed, and she remained silent. She likely had aspirations as a dressmaker or a milliner, both of which would buy her a home, but neither of which would earn her a fortune. But wouldn’t this woman be better suited to a future as a wife and mother on some country estate?

That, and not one of her four points made sense in the context of the Shelton Street brothel. He pointed to the paper clutched in her fist. “What were you hoping for from Nelson, investment?”

She huffed a little laugh at the question. “Of a sort.”

Whit narrowed his gaze. “What sort?”

“There’s a fifth point,” she said.

A clock chimed in the hallway beyond, loud and low, and Whit extracted his watches without thinking, checking the time on both before returning them. “And what is that?”

Her gaze followed his movements. “Do you have the time?”

He did not miss the teasing in the question. “Eleven.”

“On both watches?”

“The fifth point?”

A wash of red flashed over her cheeks at the question, and Whit’s curiosity about this strange woman became almost unbearable. And then she said, clear as the clock in the hallway beyond, “Body.”

When Whit was seventeen, he’d come out of the ring reeling from a bout that had gone too long with an opponent who was too big, the roar of the crowd stuck in his ears for the heavy blows he’d endured. He’d landed in the rear alleyway of a warehouse, where he’d sucked cold air into his lungs and imagined himself anywhere but there, in a Covent Garden fight club.

The door behind him had opened and closed, and a woman had approached, a length of linen in hand. She’d offered to clean the blood from his face. Her soft words and kind touch marked the most pleasure he’d ever felt in his life.

Until the moment he heard Hattie speak the word body.

In the silence that stretched between them, she gave a little nervous laugh. “I suppose it’s more of a first point, considering it is essential to the rest of the points.”

Body.

“Explain.” The word came on a growl.

She appeared to consider the possibility of not explaining, as though he would allow her to leave this place without doing so. She must have realized it, because finally, she said, “There are two reasons.”

He waited.

“Some women spend their whole lives searching for marriage.”

“And you do not?”

She shook her head. “Perhaps at one point I would have welcomed . . .” She trailed off, and Whit held his breath, waiting for her next words. She shrugged a shoulder. “Tomorrow, I am twenty-nine. At this point, I’m a dowry and nothing more.”

Whit did not for a moment believe that.

“I don’t wish to be a dowry.” She looked to him. “I do not wish to be commodified. I wish to be mine. To choose for myself.”

“Business. Home. Fortune. Future,” he said.

She smiled, wide and winning, that damn dimple flashing, and he could not resist lingering on those lips, the feel of which he keenly remembered from earlier in the evening. They moved again. “There is only one way to ensure that I am allowed to choose for myself.” She paused. “I do away with the only thing about me that is prized. I claim myself. And I win.”