Augie shook his head. “But Russell—”
Hattie groaned. “Yes then. We need Russell. Though I rather hate the sound of that.”
“Too late,” the earl said. “The bastard says he doesn’t require the name anymore. And so he’s made me a generous offer, with the understanding that if I don’t take it and get out of the Docklands, he’ll pauper us.”
Confusion again. None of this was what they’d agreed. Whit was to have asked the earl to pass the business to Hattie. Hadn’t he praised her skill? Hadn’t he understood her desire? Hadn’t he told her he’d help her? “No,” she said. “He promised—”
Her father and brother cut her twin looks.
“You’re in bed with them, too?” She hated the disappointment in her father’s tone.
Augie was a bit kinder. “Hattie. What good is a promise from a Covent Garden smuggler?”
It had been good.
His faith. His promise.
It had been wonderful. And a lie.
Confusion faded into another bout of anger. A new sort of anger—one she felt more than comfortable acting upon.
They’d had a deal. And he’d reneged on every bit of it.
Her teeth clenched.
“Goddammit, I don’t know which of you is worse,” the earl said, looking to Hattie. “You, for trusting a Bareknuckle Bastard’s word, or Augie, for not knowing who they were in the first place.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Augie defended himself. “Of course I have.”
“Then what are you doing stealing from them, you dankwit?” The earl scowled. “The worst bit is that Whittington didn’t have to tell me. He didn’t have to. I might be old, but I’ve a brain in my head, and I know the cargo well enough to know the difference between a hold full of tulips and one full of booze.” He pointed a finger at Augie. “That’s when I realized you’d never be good enough to run it.”
“Maybe,” Augie allowed. “But Hattie was, and you know it.”
On another day, at another time, Hattie might have been surprised by and more than grateful for Augie’s support. But at that particular moment, she was too busy being furious at him. And her father. And Saviour Whittington. Or Beast, or whatever the hell his name was.
These men, members of the only sex that was thought qualified to run a business, and not one of them doing a damn thing to protect it. Fury surged, and she clenched her fist, crushing the lading papers and the packet of sweets, not sure that she could suffer another moment with these men. Let them sort it out. Let them worry. She didn’t want it.
Liar.
Of course she wanted it. It was all she’d ever wanted.
But she couldn’t have it. So she was leaving. She was done.
She looked down the docks at the line of empty boats. The boats.
She looked to her father. “He didn’t just buy the business.”
He turned a frustrated look on her. “What?”
“The boats are empty.” She waved a hand. “He bought the boats, too. To keep us from using them.”
The earl nodded. “Aye. Ships that should have been sailing up the coast, moving our cargo. And suddenly, not one of them available to Sedley Shipping.”
“We’ve contracts with those owners,” Augie argued.
“Not with the new ones,” Hattie said, softly.
“And not with any others, either,” the earl added. “They’ve locked down every other shipping line that works the Thames. No one will do business with us. And this morning, he made his offer.”
“To buy us out.”
The earl nodded. “That was the option. Sell to him, or lose it all.”
“Not much of an offer,” Augie said.
Because it wasn’t an offer. “There’s nothing honorable about this.”
“They’re called the Bareknuckle Bastards, Hat,” Augie pointed out. “They’re not exactly honorable.”
But they were. She’d seen it in him, from the start. Whit hadn’t lied to her. In fact, he’d prized honesty between them from the start. Even when she’d refused to tell him Augie’s name—his part in the play—he’d admired her loyalty.
But more than all that, he’d believed in her. When she’d confessed her plans—her hopes for the future, her desire for the business, her plans for it. And he’d believed in her. He’d offered to help her. Had it all been a lie?
And why did it feel like such a betrayal?
Frustration and sadness stung in her throat. “He promised he wouldn’t do this.”
“Bah,” her father said. “He lied. Men like the Bastards always hit back, Bean. Why do you think I never tangled with them? And you’ve been caught.”
She refused to believe that. Refused to acknowledge it. She looked to the great ship again, her gaze going soft on the warm wood of its hull. Her mind worked, turning over the events of the last several days—playing out the possibilities. She’d spent years here, working these docks, loving them.
This was her turf, not his.
She wouldn’t let him steal it out from under her.
Bastard, indeed.
Finally, she looked up at her father. “You shouldn’t have sold. Not to him. Not to anyone.” Silence stretched like an eternity, the only sound the shouts of the men on the ship beyond, unloading what might be the last of the Sedley Shipping freight if the Bareknuckle Bastards had their way. “You were so afraid of letting me try. So terrified that I might fail and shame you—and you lost it all anyway.”
And in that moment, Hattie realized that her father, for so long immense in her mind, was far less than she’d ever been able to see. Smaller and slighter, white-haired, and with a craggy, weathered face, and a cowardice that he’d hidden for years . . . and could hide no longer.
This man who had built a business that had fed his family and hundreds of others with his sweat and his ethic was now tired and bested, and facing the ignoble, craven end of his legacy—because he couldn’t see how his daughter might have helped to keep it alive.
Might still.
She looked to her brother, then her father.
“You may have agreed to sell, but I haven’t.”
Augie’s brows shot up in surprise and something else—admiration?
“It’s done, gel. There wasn’t a choice.”
“There is always a choice,” Hattie said. “There is always the choice to fight.”
And her father considered her for a long while, a slight gleam in his eye. A glimmer of something more than doubt. “No man has ever gone up against the Bastards and survived.”
There might have been a time when she would have heeded that warning. But Hattie found she lacked the patience for warnings just then.
What was there to lose? He’d already taken it all.
“Then it is time for a woman to do so.”
Chapter Sixteen
That night, Nora and Hattie drove to Covent Garden in Nora’s fastest gig.
“I’ve no wish to die tonight,” Hattie said over the sound of the clattering wheels, clinging to the edge of the curricle as it rocketed past Drury Lane, turning left, then right, then left in quick succession. “Nora!”