Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards 2)

“And he didn’t give you permission to use it whenever you like.”

He had, as a matter of fact, but Hattie had no interest in having such an argument. “Oh, but he’s allowed you full permission to kidnap men and leave them tied up inside of it?”

They both looked to Nora in the wake of the question. Nora, who had moved to fill the teakettle. “Don’t mind me. I’m barely paying attention.”

“I wasn’t going to leave him there.”

Hattie spun toward her brother. “What were you going to do with him?”

“I don’t know.”

She caught her breath at the hesitation in the words. “Were you going to kill him?”

“I don’t know!”

Her brother was many things, but a criminal mastermind was not one of them. “Good God, Augie—what are you into? You think a man like that would simply disappear—possibly die—and no one would come looking for you?” Hattie pressed on. “You’re damn lucky all you did was knock him out! What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking he put a knife in me!” He waved at his bandaged thigh. “The one in your hand!”

She tightened her fingers around the hilt and shook her head. “Not until you went after him.” He didn’t deny it. “Why?” He didn’t answer. Lord deliver her from men who decide to wield silence like a weapon. She huffed her frustration. “It seems to me that you must have deserved it, Augie. He doesn’t seem the kind of man who goes around stabbing people who don’t deserve it.”

Everything stilled, the only sound in the room the fire beneath Nora’s kettle. “Hattie—” She closed her eyes and looked away from her brother. “What would you know of what kind of man he is?”

“I spoke with him.”

More than that.

I kissed him.

“What?” Augie came off the table with a wince. “Why?!”

Because I wanted to.

“Well, I was rather relieved he wasn’t dead, August.”

Augie ignored the warning in her words. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Who is he?” She waited.

He began to pace the length of the kitchen. “You shouldn’t have done it.”

“Augie!” she said firmly, summoning his attention again. “Who is he?”

“You don’t know?”

She shook her head. “I know he calls himself Beast.”

“That’s all anyone calls him. He’s Beast. And his brother is Devil.”

Nora coughed.

Hattie cut her a look. “I thought you weren’t listening.”

“Of course I’m listening. Those are ridiculous names.”

Hattie nodded. “Agreed. No one is called Beast or Devil outside of gothic novels. And even then—”

Augie had no patience for her jest. “These two are called that. They’re brothers—criminals. Though I shouldn’t have to tell you that, considering he stabbed me.”

She tilted her head. “What kind of criminals?”

“What kind of—” Augie looked to the ceiling. “Christ, Hattie. Does it matter?”

“Even if it didn’t, I should like to know the answer,” Nora said from her spot by the stove.

“Smugglers. The Bareknuckle Bastards.”

Hattie inhaled at the words. She might not have known what the men called themselves, but she knew of the Bareknuckle Bastards—the most powerful men in East London, possibly the rest of London as well. They were whispered about in the Docklands, only ever moving the cargo from their ships under cover of night, and paying a premium for the men with the strongest hooks.

“Also a ridiculous name,” Nora said while pouring her tea. “Who are they?”

Hattie looked to her brother. “They’re ice dealers.”

“Ice smugglers,” he corrected her. “Brandy and bourbon and other things, too. Silks, playing cards, dice. Whatever Britain taxes, they move beneath the Crown’s notice. And they’ve earned the monikers you two think are silly. Devil’s the charming one, but quick to take your head if he thinks you’ve been doing disservice in Covent Garden. And Beast—” Hattie moved forward during Augie’s pause. “They say Beast is—”

He cut himself off, looking unnerved.

Looking frightened.

“What?” Hattie said, desperate for him to finish. When he did not reply, she forced a scoff. “King of the jungle?”

He met her eyes. “They say that once he comes for you, he does not rest until he’s found you.”

A shiver went through her at the words. At the truth in them.

I shall find you.

The words made an excellent promise and a terrible threat.

“Augie, if what you’re saying is true—”

“It is.”

“Then what on earth makes you think you can go up against such men? That you could steal from them? That you could hurt them?”

For a moment, she thought he would balk at the question. At the suggestion that he was no match for these men. But he wasn’t. There were few men in the world who were matches for the one she’d met earlier that evening. And that was without his knife in their thigh.

Augie seemed to know that. Because instead of masculine bluster, he lowered his voice and said, “I need help.”

“Of course he does.” The snide comment came from the stove.

“Shut up, Nora,” Augie said. “This isn’t your business.”

“It shouldn’t be Hattie’s, either,” Nora pointed out. “And yet, here we are.”

Hattie held up a hand. “Stop it. Both of you.”

They did, miraculously.

She turned to Augie. “Speak.”

“I lost a shipment.”

Hattie’s brows furrowed and she considered the ships’ logs she’d left on her desk earlier in the day. No shipments were missing from her father’s records. “What do you mean, lost?”

“Remember the tulips?” She shook her head. There hadn’t been tulips in a cargo since—“It was in the summer,” he added.

The ship had come in laden with tulip bulbs, fresh from Antwerp, already marked for estates across Britain. Augie had been responsible for the cargo and the delivery. The first he’d overseen after their father had announced his plan to pass on the business. The first her father had insisted Augie manage from start to finish—to prove his mettle.

“I lost them.”

It didn’t make sense. She’d seen the shipment marked unloaded in the books. The overland transport had been marked complete. “Lost them where?”

“I thought—” He shook his head. “I didn’t know they had to be delivered immediately. I put it off. I couldn’t find the men to do the job when it came in. They were working other cargo, and so I let them sit.”

“In the warehouse,” she said.

He nodded.

“In the dead of London summer.” Wet London summer.

Another nod.

She sighed. “For how long?”

“I don’t know. For Christ sakes, Hattie, it wasn’t beef. It was fucking tulips. How was I to know they’d go to rot?”