Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards 2)

There, in the words, was the echo of their past. Cold, calculating Ewan, who always knew the best way to fight. The best route to triumph. Now their father, who always knew the best path to pain.

Whit’s mind was already racing, unraveling the plans from earlier in the evening, restitching them to keep Hattie safe. To keep her far from him. From danger.

She’ll think you betrayed her.

She’ll be right.

It didn’t matter. Whit strained beneath the knife, furious for this moment, once again at Ewan’s absent mercy. But this time, it was not his life in the balance. It was something far more precious. “If you hurt her, I vow to you and God—duke be damned. Grace be damned. The past be damned—I’ll see you directly into hell.”

Ewan watched him for a moment, then said, “I am already there.”

And then he raised his hand, and knocked Whit out cold.

Chapter Fifteen

“Now, that’s a winning smile.”

Hattie finished checking a crate of silks that had come in on the ship from France—destined for Bond Street just as soon as the Sedley warehouse marked them arrived and unharmed. With a nod to the workman, she turned to find Nora coming up the gangway, the sun bright on her grass green walking dress.

Hattie’s smile widened. “What are you doing here?”

Nora stepped onto the deck. “A woman cannot see the new head of Sedley Shipping in her element?”

Hattie laughed, the description making her even lighter on her feet than she’d been earlier in the day. And the day before. And the day before that, the morning after she’d left Whit in the dark Warnick gardens with his promise of both body and business. She waved a young man holding a half-open crate of something forward. “Not head yet.”

Nora scoffed at the word. “If I’ve learned anything about that man, it’s that when he vows something, he does it.”

Hattie peeked inside the open box, considering the packets of sweets within. She met the gaze of the man holding it. “There should be a dozen of these.”

He nodded. “Thirteen.”

She ticked the item off her list and nodded. “To the warehouse.” She reached in and extracted a pack of raspberry sweets. “You’ve girls at home, Miles?”

The boy—no more than three and twenty—smiled. “Aye. Twins. Isla and Clare.”

She pulled out two more packs and tucked them into the loose pocket in his coat. “They’ll be proper happy to see their papa tonight.”

The smile widened. “Thank you, Lady Henrietta.”

When he passed Nora with a little nod, her friend turned to her. “Well, that was darling. And a winning strategy for the new head of the business.”

“Stop calling me that. You’ll curse it.”

Nora waved away the caution. Of course. This was Nora, after all. “How many times do you think Augie distributed sweets on the deck?”

“I don’t think Augie has ever even realized that the boats have to be unloaded,” Hattie said, dryly, turning away from Nora’s bark of laughter to consider a cask of Belgian ale coming up from the hold. “That can be delivered straight to the Jack and Jill,” she told the man who had hooked the load. She pointed down the dock to the pub in question, past four empty ships, huge haulers that had been emptied over the last few days, their contents delivered to the Sedley warehouses.

The quiet ships were odd—owners tended not to allow boats to sit empty in harbor—especially something as in demand as a hauler—able to go long distances and with massive holds waiting to be filled. Hattie made a note to speak to the owners about the disuse. Perhaps it was time for Sedley Shipping to increase its export business.

“If I may?” Nora summoned Hattie’s attention again. “I’ve never seen you looking so sorted.” She lowered her voice. “Mr. Whittington certainly knows the way to a lady’s heart.”

Hattie couldn’t stop the smile that came at the words, embarrassed and gleeful and full of anticipation. “My father has a meeting with him today.”

Nora smirked. “How very patriarchal. Is he to ask for your hand?”

For a heartbeat, Hattie let the jest play out—imagining what would happen if the man all London called Beast marched into her father’s offices and asked for permission to marry his daughter.

Though she quickly recalled that marriage meant she would never be able to own the business outright, Hattie would be lying if her first response to the fantasy hadn’t been a speeding heart and a fleeting image of standing on the docks with him by her side.

“I assure you, he is not,” she said, pushing the image to the side. “I haven’t seen him since the night he promised to help me.”

“Since the night he called you a warrior and told you that you were smarter than all the men in London, you mean.”

Heat washed over Hattie’s face. “Most of the men,” she qualified.

“I’m sure he meant all.”

“The point is,” Hattie said, looking down at the packet of sweets in her hand, running a thumb over the pretty French lettering. “He promised to find me. And he hasn’t.”

Nora blinked. “It’s been three days. It takes time to cross off the business bit of the Year of Hattie.”

Hattie huffed a barely agreeable sigh. Three days felt an eternity away from him. And it didn’t take time to cross off the other bit. The body bit.

But he’d given her a taste. And that had been the most wonderful torture she could imagine. What would the rest be like? And once it was over, what would she do when she had no reason to see him?

Perhaps he’d keep seeing her.

The thought rioted through her, with a memory of his kisses, his touches, the magnificent things he did to her in that dark room at the back of The Singing Sparrow. Perhaps he’d be willing to continue their lessons.

Three weeks earlier, Hattie had been planning one night at a brothel and now she was considering how she might tempt a man into taking her as mistress. Into letting her take him as mistress.

“Well. That blush is very telling and I should like very much to hear more about what caused it,” Nora said, dry and quiet. “But we’re about to be ambushed.”

Before Hattie could follow the direction of Nora’s gaze, she heard her father from a distance. “Hattie-girl!”

She waved to the earl, approaching with Augie at his shoulder. The sight of her brother, looking worse for the wear of whatever he’d done the night before, rumpled and unshaven, had Hattie steeling herself for the confrontation that was no doubt to come. She prepared for Earl Cheadle to read his youngest child the full riot act and insist on a report on how Augie had entered into criminal activity on behalf of Sedley Shipping.

She prepared for him to insist on Augie’s full cooperation with Whit.

And, heart pounding, she prepared for him to announce that he was, in fact, transferring control of Sedley Shipping to Hattie.

“This is it,” she whispered.

The Year of Hattie was about to begin.

“I shall be here to toast you when it’s over,” Nora said. “Courage.”

Hattie made her way from the boat to the docks to meet her father, his silver hair shining in the brilliant afternoon sun. She willed herself calm—and failed—unable to keep herself from whispering again, this time to herself, “This is it.”