Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards 2)

Not that it would do her any good at all in the battle that was to come. Hattie might as well have been holding a violin for all the value it did her. Indeed, a violin might have been more useful, as she could have cracked him over the head with it, which would have made a scene, yes, but also would have resulted in the two men not speaking.

As though he sensed the threat in her thoughts, he lifted his head from where he’d dipped low to speak to her father over the din of the ballroom, his strange amber gaze instantly finding hers. And then, as though he’d spent his entire life in Mayfair ballrooms, he winked at her.

“Interesting . . .” Nora drawled.

“No. It’s not interesting at all. What game is he playing?” And why wasn’t she more angry at him for playing it here, in front of all the world? She should be terrified. She should be furious. But instead . . . she was excited.

Warrior.

“We should go to more balls.”

“We’re never going to another ball again,” Hattie tossed over her shoulder as she began to move, her heart pounding.

And then something gleamed in his eyes, and she recognized the emotion as the one rioting through her.

Anticipation.

He returned to speaking to her father as she pushed through the door. Under other circumstances, it would have been a comic scene: the enormous young man leaning down into the ear of the aging earl, notoriously diminutive. Her father liked to claim that it was his short stature that made him the perfect sailor, which was partially true—he barely had to duck to move about below deck on his ships. But this man—the one she no longer thought of as Beast, the one she could not help but think of as Whit despite that being entirely inappropriate—eclipsed him like the sun.

No. Not like the sun. Like a storm, come upon a ship out at sea, thieving blue skies and replacing it with silent, dark clouds.

A storm, big and beautiful and unpredictable.

What was he telling her father?

It could be anything, as it was just the two of them, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the room. Hattie quickly calculated the probability that they were discussing the mundane—weather, refreshments, the temperature of the room, or the number of footmen present.

Was it possible for something to have a negative probability?

It was far more probable that they were talking about her.

Hattie increased her speed, nearly knocking over the Marchioness of Eversley, tossing back a quick apology. If it were anyone else, she might have—might have—stopped to apologize, but the marchioness came from one of the most scandalous families in Britain, so if anyone would understand the need to quash whatever conversation was taking place between her father and a man who knew far too much about her dealings of the last few days, it was she.

Hattie was nearly upon them when the earl nodded, a shadow on his brow. Hattie caught her breath—she couldn’t identify the emotion, but she didn’t like it. And then she was there, and the words were coming before she could stop them. “That’s quite enough of that.”

The earl’s eyes went wide and he turned to Hattie as Whit straightened and . . .

Oh, dear.

“That’s trouble,” Nora said softly from somewhere behind Hattie’s right shoulder.

No one should have a smile that stunning. Hattie had a mad urge to throw up her hands and block the full force of it. To resist its foreign pull. Keep your head, Hattie.

She swallowed. “What are you doing here?”

He took the rude question in stride, extending a hand. “Lady Henrietta.” The words were cultured and soft, missing their usual coarse darkness.

Hattie’s brows snapped together and she tilted her head, confusion and something startlingly close to disappointment teasing through her. Was this the same man? It couldn’t be. Where was the growl? The accent, grown in the Garden?

A flame lit in his amber eyes—the one that set off a twin flame deep in her.

No. He couldn’t simply tempt her into docility. Her gaze slid to his outstretched hand, wary. She did not reach for it. “Answer my question, please.” When he didn’t—of course that characteristic remained—she turned to her father, registering the censure in them. “What were you discussing?”

The earl’s lips flattened. “Reconsider your tone, gel.”

She swallowed her distaste at the words, barely able to consider her response before Whit spoke. “Cheadle.”

There was the darkness. Warning, too, rougher and harsher than the warning that had come from her father. She turned surprised eyes on Whit, perfectly turned out and beautiful as a Greek statue, suddenly rugged as a cobbled street.

The transformation should have unsettled her, but it didn’t.

Instead, it comforted her.

Which almost made everything worse. She came to her full height and lifted her chin. “You don’t talk to him.”

Nora barked in surprise as conversations quieted around them, a collection of London’s most revered aristocrats doing their very best not to look, but absolutely to listen. She cleared her throat under the weight of her parent’s curiosity, and said, “That is to say, Mr. Whittington”—his lips quirked in amusement at the use of his name—“I require you . . .” One black eyebrow rose in the pause that followed the trail of the words, and Hattie leapt to add, “For a dance.”

She lifted the crumpled dance card in her hand. “You’re on my dance card.” She turned to her father. “He’s on my dance card.”

An interminable silence fell. Months long. Years.

Hattie turned to Nora. “He’s on my dance card.”

Nora, blessed Nora, took up the thread. “Yes. That’s why we’re here. Clearly!”

Hattie could have done without the clearly, but she’d take what she could get.

“You’re to dance . . . with him,” her father said.

Hattie waved the card attached to her wrist. “That’s what it says!”

“Does it, then.” The earl seemed less convinced.

“Quite!” she said, the pitch of her voice somewhere in the realm of a squeaky hinge as she turned to the man in question. “Doesn’t it?”

He was silent, the strains of the waltz beginning behind them the only sound, a starting pistol for Hattie’s worry. Perhaps he couldn’t dance. No, not perhaps. He most definitely couldn’t dance. This was the kind of man who wore holsters full of throwing knives and landed himself unconscious in carriages. He frequented brothels and Covent Garden taverns and threatened street criminals . . . he was a criminal himself. He might dress the part, but he did not waltz.

Which was why she lost her breath when he dipped his head like a practiced, polished aristocrat and said, all calm, “Indeed, it does, my lady.”

It was just the surprise that he was willing to dance. It had nothing to do with the honorific. Nothing at all to do with the fact that he’d never called her his lady before. Not even a bit to do with the fact that suddenly those two little words—the ones that she’d heard her whole life—took on an entirely new meaning on his lips.

And then her hand was in his, and he was leading her into the crush of dancers, pulling her into his arms, her hands settling on the muscles beneath his coat, hard as steel. Of course he couldn’t dance, the thought whispered through her. He is made for stronger stuff than that.