Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards 2)

Whit ignored his instant reaction to the question.

“I have his blade, do I not?”

Clever girl, brazening it through.

“Shit,” Mikey spat, “I ain’t no part o’ this.” He scurried off like the street rat he was, there, then gone.

She turned surprised eyes to Eddie. “Rather disloyal of him, don’t you think?”

Eddie swallowed. “You ain’t tellin’ Beast, are you, lady?”

Whit answered for her, stepping out of the shadows. “She won’t have to.”

Hattie gasped as Eddie spun toward him, hands already up as Whit advanced. “We weren’t doin’ nuffin’, Beast. Just scarin’ ’er a bit. Just enough so she don’ mess wi’ our card men again.”

He came closer. “What are the rules, Eddie?”

The other man’s throat worked, searching for the answer that wouldn’t come. “No hurtin’ gels. But—”

Whit hated the word. There were no qualifiers to the rule. That single syllable made him want to tear the other man apart.

Eddie’s eyes went wide as Whit came closer, his fear spilling stupid words into the dusk. “We didn’t expect ’er to pull a knife, Beast. If you fink abou’ it, the lady started it.”

What a fucking imbecile.

He nodded. “Started it by running from you.”

Eddie’s minuscule brain clamored for a reply. “Runnin’ after the card man. Lookin’ fer you.” Thinking he’d struck on something valuable, he smiled. “We were protectin’ you, see?”

“Oh, please,” Hattie scoffed from over Eddie’s shoulder, but Whit refused to look at her, afraid of what might happen if he did.

Instead, he reached for Eddie, clasping Eddie’s grubby lapels in his hands and pulling him close. “If I ever see you threaten a woman again, I’ll show you just what that blade feels like. Remember, I’m everywhere. I see everything.”

Eddie swallowed, sweat beading on his forehead. Nodded.

“Do you have something to say to the lady?”

“S-sorry,” the filth whispered.

Not good enough. “Louder.”

“Sorry, lady. Beg pardon. Sorry.”

Whit did look to Hattie then, her own eyes wide with surprise. “Yes. All right.” She slid her gaze to his, and he didn’t like the uncertainty there. “I accept. He appears to have learned a lesson.”

“Get out.” He threw Eddie away from them, not watching as he fell to the ground and scrambled immediately backward, rising to a run. Instead, Whit turned to the rooftops and whistled, long and piercing, to the night. “Find me Michael Doolan. Tell him he’d best find me at the fights. And if he doesn’t come to me, he shan’t like what happens when I come for him.”

He turned back to Hattie, whose uncertainty had turned to curiosity. “Do you make a habit of speaking to buildings?”

“I’ll stop when they no longer do my bidding.”

“The stones will fetch this man to you?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “So it’s true what they say?”

Who had spoken to her? What had they said?

He grunted his reply, ignoring the rage that whirled through him at the idea that she might have been hurt here, on his turf. Ignoring the deeply unsettling idea that he might not have been able to protect her had he been a few minutes later. Whether or not the woman held his knife.

Speaking of. He extended a hand. “Give me the weapon.”

She tightened her grip on the onyx blade, and he imagined the warmth of her palm against the design there, the softness of her gloves polishing the fine ridges of steel that kept a grip firm and ensured a straight aim and a true strike. “What are the fights?”

His only solace. Ignoring the question, he said, “The blade, Hattie.”

She looked at it. “They were afraid of it.”

He did not reply, waiting for her to say what she really meant.

“They were afraid of you.”

He tried to find the disgust in the words. She was softness and shine—cleaner and fresher in her starched bonnet and her white shawl than this place had ever been. She was nothing like it, and shouldn’t be here. And she should be disgusted by what she’d witnessed. By the coarseness of it. By the filth.

By him.

“No, not you,” she said, and for a wild moment, Whit imagined she’d heard his thoughts. She lifted the blade, inspected it in the fast-disappearing light, and added, in a whisper, “They were afraid of the idea of you.”

“All fear is fear of an idea,” he said. He knew that better than most. Had been weaned on terror and learned to survive it. The tangible was bearable. It was the intangible that would steal breath and sleep and hope.

She tilted her head, considering him. “And what is the idea of you?”

Beast. He didn’t give voice to the word. To the promise of it. For some wild reason, he didn’t want her thinking of Beast when she looked at him.

He didn’t want her looking at him.

Lie.

“Where is your chaperone?”

She blinked. “What?”

“It makes sense you didn’t have one last night—no need for chaperoning at a brothel—but you’re a woman of means, Henrietta Sedley, and there are any number of people in the marketplace who would have cause to recognize you.”

Her lips, wide and full, opened on a surprised gasp. “You know who I am.”

He didn’t reply. There was no need.

“How?” she pressed.

Ignoring her question, he said, “You still don’t know who I am, if you thought seeking me out was a good idea.”

“I know they call you Beast.” He’d told her that. “I know your brother is Devil.” Uncertainty whispered through him. What else did she know? “Which makes me question the naming protocol in your family.”

“He’s my half-brother. We named ourselves,” he said, hating the speed with which he replied. Hating that he replied at all.

Her face softened, and he hated that, too, irrationally. “I’m sorry for that, if those were the names you chose. But I suppose the Bareknuckle Bastards deserve names that deliver a blow.”

He took a step toward her. “For someone who claims not to know anything about how I came to be unconscious in her carriage last evening, you know a great deal.”

Those sinful lips curved into a smile, the expression like a blow. “You think I would not ask questions after our encounter?”

He should have scowled. Should have pounced on the evidence that she had a close relationship with the enemy that had shot his man and stolen his shipments and knocked him out. Should have held her family and its business to the fire and promised to set it aflame if she did not give him the information he desired.

He should have. But instead, he said, “And what else did you discover about me?”

What the fuck was he doing talking to her?

Her smile turned to secrets. “I am told that once you come for someone, you don’t stop until you find them.”

That much was true.

“But I wasn’t certain you would come for me.”

Of course he would have. He would have come for her in her Mayfair tower even if she didn’t have the information he desired.