Wicked and the Wallflower (The Bareknuckle Bastards 1)
He was taken aback. “What?”
She pointed. “See there? Where the mist and the light have turned the cobblestones gold? It’s beautiful.”
He stared at the spot for a moment, his scar white and angry. And then he smiled. But it wasn’t a kind smile. Or a friendly one. It was something much more dangerous. “You think the wide world beautiful, don’t you, Felicity Faircloth?”
Felicity stepped back from him. “I—”
He did not let her answer. “You think it’s here for you, and why shouldn’t you? You were raised in power and money without even a sense of anything ever going poorly for you.”
“That isn’t true,” she said, hotly indignant. “Plenty has gone poorly for me.”
“Oh, of course, I forgot,” he said, snidely. “You’ve lost your terrible friends at the center of your silly world. Your brother can’t keep coin in his pocket. Your father, neither. And you’re stuck having to win a duke you don’t want.”
Her brow furrowed at the tone, as though she was a child without any sense of what was important. She shook her head. “I don’t—”
He cut her off. “And here’s my favorite bit of your sad story. You’ve never felt passion; you think passion is sweet and kind and good—love beyond reason. Protection. Care.”
Resentment flared. “Not think. Know.”
“Let me tell you about passion, Felicity Faircloth. Passion is obsession. It is desire beyond reason. It is not want, but need. And it comes with the worst of sin far more often than it comes with the best of it.”
She tugged on her arm, where his fingers dug harshly into her flesh. “You’re hurting me.”
He released her, instantly. “Silly girl. You don’t know what hurt is.”
He pointed up toward the dark windows above, to the shadowed overhangs and gaping black wounds in the side of the brick structures. “Once again. What do you see?”
“Nothing,” she said, anger making the word loud and harsh. “What next, you tell me that I don’t understand how to look at a rooftop?”
He ignored her, pointing up the curving empty road, where the entrances to half a dozen alleyways lurked. “And there?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Darkness.”
He turned her in the opposite direction. “There?”
Unease threaded through her. “N-nothing.”
“Good,” he said. “That feeling? The fear? The uncertainty? Hold on to that, Felicity Faircloth, for it shall keep you safe.”
He turned her back to him, pushing her behind as he stepped forward and tapped his walking stick twice on the hard stones of the street. He looked up at the shadowed buildings and spoke, his words firm and clear, echoing against the stones. “No one touches her.” Down the street, calling out to no one, “She is under my protection.”
And the other way, once again, speaking to ether. “She belongs to me.”
Felicity’s gaze went wide. “I beg your pardon! Are you mad?”
He ignored her. Silver tapped against the ground, clear and crisp. Once. Twice.
Its echo came like thunder. Two taps, everywhere. Above her, on either side of her, against windowpanes and stone walls and the street itself, knocked with wood and steel, and the claps of hands and the stomps of boots.
There must have been a hundred of them, and not one of them seen.
She looked to him, shock coursing through her. She shook her head. “How could I not have known?”
His dark gaze glittered in the moonlight. “Because you’ve never had to. Go home, Felicity Faircloth. I shall see you three nights hence. Keep up your ruse until then—tell no one the truth about you and Marwick.”
She shook her head. “He’s going to—”
“I’ve had enough of this conversation. You wanted proof I could do as I promised, and I provided it. You remain unruined, do you not? Despite your best efforts to land yourself otherwise by traipsing through Covent Garden in the dead of night.”
“I didn’t traipse.”
He turned away, and she thought for a moment that he cursed beneath his breath. He reached into his pocket and extracted a gold coin, pressing it into her palm before pointing up the road, the opposite direction from whence they had come. “That way for hacks. The other, for hell.”
“Alone?” With a hundred pairs of eyes watching from the shadows? “You do not plan to escort me?”
“I don’t, as a matter of fact,” he said. “You’ve never in your life been safer than you are right now.”
She did as she was told, walking to the high street. With every step, she lost her fear. Her nervousness.
At the end of the street, a man stepped from the shadows and hailed her a hack, opening the door, tipping his cap as he let her pass into the conveyance.
As the carriage rocked back and forth, clattering along the cobblestones, Felicity watched the city beyond the window, turning dark to light, until she was home.
Devil had been right. Felicity had never felt more safe.
Or more powerful.
Chapter Ten
Three evenings later, Devil was in the back gardens of Bourne House, watching the teeming masses highlighted in the massive ballroom windows beyond, listening to the music spilling out through the open doors, when his brother appeared at his elbow.
“You spend too much time watching her.”
Devil did not turn to face the accusation. “Watching who?”
Whit did not reply. He didn’t have to.
“How do you know how much time I spend watching her?”
“Because the boys tell me where you go.”
Devil scowled. “I don’t have the boys following you.”
“I never leave the Garden.”
“That doesn’t seem like truth tonight.” Unfortunately. Whit remained silent, and Devil added, “We have street runners to run the streets, not to skulk about spying on me.”
“You’re the only one allowed to spy on people?”
Devil ignored the logical reply. “I am making sure she’s done as she was told.”
“When was the last time you went unheeded?”
“Felicity Faircloth does not ascribe to the rules the rest of the world so intelligently follows.” Whit made a low noise, and Devil cut him a look. “What does that mean?”
A massive shoulder lifted and dropped.
“You think it’s a bad plan.”
“I think it is a plan that will not end as you imagine.”
“The Marwick line ends with Ewan. We agreed to that.”
An affirmative grunt.
“And yet he is there, inside Bourne House, drinking tepid lemonade and eating crumpets and dancing the quadrille.”
Whit cut him a look. “Crumpets?”
“Whatever they fucking eat,” Devil growled.
“He’s waiting for us to blink.”
Devil nodded. “And we’re not blinking.”
“He hasn’t met the girl yet. Felicity Faircloth.”
“No.” Devil had had a watch on Felicity and the duke since the night of the Marwick ball, and they’d still not met. But Marwick’s silence on the subject had all London talking about the future marriage of the Duke of Marwick to a long-shelved lady.
“He has a plan, Dev,” Whit said. “He always had a plan. And I like whatever this one is even less than I like yours.”
Memory flashed—three young boys sitting side by side on one edge of a river, with matching eyes and matching puppies. He stopped it before it played through, shaking his head and letting his gaze return to the ball beyond.
“You won’t like it, either, when it comes time to use the girl proper,” Whit said.
“I don’t care about the girl.” The words didn’t feel right in his throat, but Devil ignored them.
“I heard you banished Reggie from the Garden.”
“Reggie is lucky I didn’t banish him from the fucking Earth.”
“That’s my point. Hester said the lady begged you not to, and you went soft
.”
Devil shoved his hands in his pockets, ignoring the truth of the words. “I need her on our side, don’t I? Can’t keep her there if she sees me gut a man in an alleyway.”
Whit’s grunt made his thoughts clear. “Placing her under our protection?”
That bit had been unexpected. Born of his own fury at the idea that she might have been hurt on their streets, and his frustration that he couldn’t carry her to his bed and keep her there for a night. Or two. Or more. “I can’t very well have an aristocratic chit turning up dead a stone’s throw from our headquarters, can I?”
“You invited her.”
“I gave her my card. It was an error in judgment.”