Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards 2)

She turned to him, her mouth opening, then closing. And it was her turn to say, “What?”

“You wanted a ruined reputation. Not a ruined life,” he said. “I didn’t want you with child.”

With child.

A vision flashed, a little boy with dark hair and amber eyes. A little girl with a wide smile and a dimple in her chin. “A child wouldn’t ruin my life,” she said. “I would never think such a thing.” The words surprised her—somehow never imagined and then fully formed, as though they’d been there the whole time.

As though she’d been dreaming of a life with this man since birth.

But it didn’t matter.

And even if it did, there were other ways to prevent pregnancy and still find pleasure. French letters. A method she’d heard about in the ladies’ salon at a ball once which, at the time, had sounded rather messy, but tonight would have been something rather more . . . exciting.

If Hattie had heard of such a solution, she expected Whit had used it.

“A child would have tied you to me,” he replied. “And I can’t let that happen.”

The words stung. She hadn’t even thought of that. A child came with a child’s mother. And he didn’t want that. It made sense. Why would he? With a woman he’d thought of as nothing more than an agreement. An arrangement. A woman he didn’t want.

He didn’t want her.

Hadn’t he just proved it?

“I grew up without a father,” he added. “I know how difficult it is for a mother to provide alone. I would never do that to you. Or to a child.”

She shook her head. “I never would have imagined you would.”

He seemed to cast about for something to say. “Girls like you don’t marry boys like me, Hattie. Boys raised in the Rookery muck, living every day with the stink of it.”

“What proper horseshit,” she said, the words out of her mouth before she could stop them, startling them both. But she was furious. “There are a thousand reasons why I wouldn’t marry you, and where you were raised doesn’t even rank,” she said, and it was the truth. She’d met men born far above him in station and living far below him in character. She pulled on one boot. “There’s nothing wrong with your past.”

“There’s everything wrong with it. Look at my face, Hattie. The shiner’ll be bigger tomorrow.”

“And you got it by choice, not by chance. Don’t for a second think I pity you, Saviour Whittington.”

He stilled. “Don’t ever call me that.”

“Why?” she snapped, pulling on the second boot. “Are you afraid you’ll have to come out from behind the Beast and face the world as a man?”

His gaze narrowed on her. Good, let him glower. She wasn’t about to fear him. How dare he ruin her and then ruin her night? “I can’t keep you safe,” he said, the words sounding like they were tortured from him. “I can’t love you.”

The words were a cold slap, doubling down on the shame she already felt. She knew it, of course. She wasn’t for loving. She wasn’t even for sex.

Good old Hattie.

“I’ve never asked you to keep me safe.” She had to get out of this place before she died of embarrassment or found one of his famed blades and stabbed him. “I never asked you for love,” she said, grateful that he wouldn’t see the lie. She held up a hand before he could speak. “None of this matters, anyway. You made certain it wouldn’t. I am happy one of us was able to remain disconnected from the events of the evening.”

He ran his hands through his hair in fury and frustration, and Hattie tried very hard not to notice how all his muscles bunched and rippled with the movement. She almost succeeded. “I wasn’t disconnected.”

“No. Of course not,” she said, donning her coat, grateful to be covered up, finally. “Everyone knows that men deeply engaged in coitus often fail to complete the task.”

Anger and shock warred in his narrow gaze. “I completed the task, Lady Henrietta. Three times, by my count.”

“But I didn’t!” she cried, feeling like a proper failure. Dear God—all that pleasure he’d delivered her and she couldn’t do the same for him? Was she that undesirable that he could simply ignore the pleasure that had nearly destroyed her?

She’d never been so humiliated.

He didn’t respond, and Hattie used the silence to transform her frustration into anger. Fury coursed through her and she reveled in the way it incinerated her embarrassment. “You know, I wish I’d known it would be this way. I would have returned to the brothel.”

He growled. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“At least there, I would have known precisely what the arrangement entailed.” She paused. “At least there, I could have paid for the privilege of not being made to feel like a chore.”

The muscle in his jaw ticked again and again as he watched her. “Nothing about tonight was a chore.”

She’d never wanted to believe anything more in her life.

Her lips began to tremble. No. She would be damned if she’d show him how hurt he’d made her. She reached into the pocket of her coat and extracted the packet of sweets she’d taken from the shipment earlier that day. “Well, it’s over now.” She tossed the pouch to the settee. “I thought you might like those.”

He did not look at it.

“Right then,” she said, betrayal running through her once more. Hotter. Angrier. “Rivals it is.”

Silence.

She nodded, and headed for the door.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Beast.”

Whit looked up from his quiet sentry on the rooftops high above the offices of Sedley Shipping to find Devil standing several feet away. His brother had clearly said more than his name, and was waiting for acknowledgment, but Whit had been too focused on the street below, where a steady stream of dockworkers entered and exited the building—no doubt to receive their final payment from the business—all while a dozen Sedley employees hurried in and out of the warehouse, boxes and bins and paperwork in hand, preparing it for its new owner.

Not knowing that he stood high above, observing his recent acquisition.

Loathing himself for acquiring it.

“How did you find me?”

“You’ve put every available lookout we have to work searching for signs of Ewan. You think I would not know you would be here? Watching over her?”

Hattie.

It had been three days since she’d left him alone in his home, having destroyed it with the specter of her presence. He couldn’t do anything in the house—not eat or bathe or light a fucking candle—without thinking of her. Without reliving her, smelling like almond cakes and looking like sin.

So, he hadn’t gone home in three days.

Instead, he kept watch over her. He’d followed her at a distance from the moment she’d left him three nights earlier—to her home in Mayfair, to the Docklands, to the warehouse, in Nora’s curricle.

He watched as she kept her shoulders straight and her head high, as though he hadn’t hurt her. As though he hadn’t destroyed the Year of Hattie unequivocally, for no reason she could divine, but because he was a monster.