Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards 2)

No. Whit resisted the thought—an impressive feat until she added, that punishing dimple flashing in her cheek, “So I came for you.”

He would never admit the pleasure that coursed through him at that confession. Nor would he admit to the pleasure that came when she reached for his hand, lifting it in one of hers.

“What happened to your hand?” The kidskin gloves she wore did not stop the sting of her heat as she stroked her fingers over his knuckles, red and stinging from the blow he’d put to the wall earlier. “You’re hurt.”

He sucked in a breath and removed his hand from her grasp, shaking it out. Wanting to erase her touch. “It’s nothing.”

She watched him for a moment, and he imagined her seeing more than he wished. And then, softly, she said, “No one would tell me about you.”

He grunted. “That didn’t stop you asking. Which returns us to the issue of your chaperone. Any number of toffs could have seen you. And I imagine any number of toffs would have questioned your lack of subtlety in asking for me.”

Her lips twisted in a wry smile. “I am not known for subtlety.” There was something more in her tone than humor, though—something he found he did not like.

He refused to show it. “I can’t imagine why. I’ve known you for less than a day and during the time I was not unconscious, you were frequenting a brothel and threatening to knife a pair of Garden criminals.”

“It’s not as though you’re a Mayfair gentleman yourself.” She smiled. “Or did you forget the bit where I made an improper arrangement with you yesterday?”

Arrangement. The word sizzled through him with the memory of the night before. Of the taste of her. Of the feel of her in his arms. Of the damn look of her—like a banquet.

“Why not make one with one of your toffs?”

She seemed to consider the option. Don’t consider it, he willed silently before she replied, “Well, first, I don’t have a single toff, let alone more than one.” Because toffs were fucking imbeciles.

He grunted. “No choice but to slum it.”

Her eyes widened. “I don’t consider it . . .” She couldn’t repeat the words. Christ, she was soft. “. . . that.”

“What, then?”

She tilted her head. “I don’t care if you’re not a gentleman. I don’t require someone who knows their way around Mayfair. I see no reason why our arrangement should have anything to do with your ability to waltz or your knowledge of the hierarchy of the peerage.”

But he did know all those things. He’d been trained to be a peer. He’d spent two years learning the intricacies of the aristocracy. Of their shit world. And but for a single moment two decades ago, he might have been a different man. He might have met her under a different circumstance. If Ewan had lost and Whit had won—he would have been a duke.

And he could have come for her in another way entirely.

Not that he wished to. All he wanted was to get her out of Covent Garden.

What was it they’d been talking about? “The chaperone.”

She lifted a shoulder and let it drop beneath that finely knitted shawl that he imagined would never be white again after an afternoon in the muck. “I don’t require one.”

His exhale might have been shock if he were a different sort of man. “Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t. I am not a child. I am twenty-nine years old today, which, by the way, would usually merit some kind of felicitation.”

He blinked. “Happy birthday.” Why in hell had he said that?

She smiled, bright as the damn sun, as though they were in a ballroom somewhere, instead of a back alley. “Thank you.”

“You don’t need a chaperone. You need a jailer.”

“Literally no one cares a bit about where I go.”

“I do.”

“Excellent,” she said smartly, “as I came for you.”

It was the second time she said it, and the second time he liked it, and he did not wish to repeat the experience. “Why?”

She extended the knife to him then, opening her palm to reveal the hilt, dark against the pale glove she wore—a glove he wished wasn’t there, so he might see the ink stains on her wrists and read the story they told on her palm. “This belongs to you,” she said simply. “I promised you I would return it.”

He looked to the weapon. “Why do you have it?”

She hesitated, and he loathed the pause—the idea that this woman, who was full of honesty and truth, had hidden her reply.

“Because I promised I would return it,” she repeated. “I’m sorry.”

He took the knife. What did she apologize for? Was it as simple as the knife? As the set from which it had come? Was it the attack on the shipment the night before? The ones that had come earlier? Did she know they’d taken thousands of pounds? That they’d threatened the lives of his men?

Or something else?

Was it Ewan?

Fury and disbelief roared through him at the idea. And something else. Something like panic. If she was anywhere near Ewan, Whit wouldn’t be able to keep her safe.

He pushed the thought away. She wasn’t working with Ewan. He’d know if she was betraying him so keenly, wouldn’t he?

He struggled to tear his gaze from her, hating the way the light thieved her from him, the narrow streets of the Garden disappearing the sun prematurely, and his frustration had him reaching for her, taking her hand, and pulling her through the maze of streets, back to the market square, where white stone was aflame with the last vestige of orange.

He released her the moment they stepped into the clearing. “There. Back where you began.”

She turned to him. “It’s not just the knife.”

“No,” he replied. “It’s not. The sheer amount of what has been taken from me is far more than this knife.”

“I know that now. I didn’t last night.”

He believed her because he wanted to, even as he knew he shouldn’t. Even as he had absolutely no reason for it. “I want a name, Lady Henrietta.”

Prove you’re not a part of it.

Tell me the truth.

She shook her head. “Surely you can understand why I might not be able to give it.”

“Able? Or willing?”

No hesitation. “Willing.”

She was more honest than anyone he’d ever met. Far and away more honest than he was. “And so we are at an impasse.”

“We aren’t, though.” She turned a bright face toward him, full of truth and a simplicity that Whit wasn’t certain he’d ever exhibited on his own. “I have a solution.”

He shouldn’t have given the words even a moment’s thought. Should have stopped her from speaking and ended whatever madness she was about to suggest right there, as the sun set on the market square.

Instead, he said, “What kind of solution?”

“Reimbursement,” she said, happily, as though it were all perfectly easy, and trotted off toward the market, leaving him no choice but to follow her.

He did, like a hound, knowing that the spies on the rooftops above wouldn’t hesitate in reporting his actions to his brother and sister and Nik. Knowing, and somehow not caring. Instead, he followed Hattie toward the market stalls, staying several steps behind her, watching, until she crouched to inspect the contents of a basket at the feet of an older woman from the Rookery. Hattie looked up, an unspoken question on her open, friendly face, and received the only reply such an expression elicited. Yes.