Wicked and the Wallflower (The Bareknuckle Bastards 1)

She hadn’t been the one reborn on the roof, he had been.

But if he told her that, she would stay. And he couldn’t have her stay. Not here. Not when he could give her the rest of the world.

Sadness gave way to anger. Good. Anger was good. She could channel anger. She could survive it. And so he would stoke that anger. “Shall I tell you something true?”

“Yes,” she said, and he hated the word on her lips . . . that word that had echoed in his ear as he’d made love to her. That word that meant they were together. That they were partners. The word that marked her pleasure and their future.

But there was no shared future. Only hers. He could give her a future. He could give her the present. And she deserved it. She deserved all time.

“Tell me,” she said, letting the words come, angry and forceful. “Tell me something true, you liar.”

So he did the only thing he could do. He cut her loose from this world that did not deserve her. He set her free.

He lied.

“You were the perfect revenge.”

She went still, her eyes going narrow with a hot loathing that was nothing close to the one he had for himself—the one that seeped through him, settling in muscle and bone and stealing every shred of happiness he might ever have.

Loathing was good, he told himself. Loathing was not tears.

But it also was not love.

He’d stolen that from her, like a thief. No, not from her. From himself.

And his love, his beautiful, spinster, wallflower lockpick, she did not cry. Instead she lifted her chin and said, calm as a queen, “You deserve the darkness.”

And she left him to it.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The next morning, instead of heading to the warehouse to oversee the movement of the ice from the shipment that had just come in, instead of preparing for that evening’s delivery of nearly two tons of untaxed, illegal goods, instead of heading for the docks of the Thames or the Bastards’ rookery warehouse, Devil donned his coat and hat and went to see Arthur, Earl Grout, heir to the Marquessate of Bumble.

He was, it would come as no surprise to anyone, turned away at the door by a butler who could have stepped out of any number of toffs’ houses for the skill he exhibited in looking down his nose at a man no fewer than six inches taller and five stone heavier than he was.

The Earl Grout, Devil was told, was not receiving.

Which, no doubt, was the result of Devil’s calling card saying just that. Devil.

“Fucking Mayfair,” he grumbled as the door shut firmly in his face, nearly removing his nose. Did no one on this side of town realize that men like Devil were often richer and more powerful than they could dream, and therefore good allies?

Not to Felicity.

He pushed the thought to the side.

Goddammit. He had to find another way in. For her.

Walking around the back of the house, he investigated a variety of different avenues: he could break a window to enter the ground floor; he could climb the ivy-covered back wall to God knew what was in the third-floor window above; he could go back to the door and strongarm the butler; or he could climb the tree that had a prominent branch leading to a second-floor balcony.

A balcony not unlike Felicity’s at Bumble House.

As he’d had good luck with that particular balcony, Devil chose the tree, making quick work of scaling it before setting down gently on the wrought-iron Juliet, quietly testing the door, which was open.

All aristocrats were idiots. It was a miracle no one had robbed this house blind.

Just before he stepped into the room, he heard a woman’s voice from within. “You should have told me.”

“I didn’t wish you to worry.”

“It did not occur to you I would begin to worry when you started leaving the house before I woke and returning after I took to bed? It did not occur to you that I would notice that something was terribly wrong when my husband stopped speaking to me?”

“Dammit, Pru—it’s not for you to worry about. I told you, I would take care of it.”

Devil closed his eyes and turned his face to the sky. He appeared to have discovered a bedchamber, in which Grout and his wife were having a lovers’ quarrel.

“Not for me to worry about . . . you’re mad if you think that I shan’t take interest in our life.”

Devil remained quiet, listening. By all accounts Devil had found in his reconnaissance on Felicity’s family, Lady Grout was quite dull, largely interested in books and watercolors, but one half of a long-time love match. Grout had married her when they were both twenty, after which they’d lived happily in town while he amassed a fortune in good investments, before they had their first child, a son, five years earlier. The lady was increasing once more, Devil had been told.

“You can’t take care of this, Arthur. Not by yourself. You’re at a loss. And while I haven’t two crowns to rub together, I’ve a brain in my head and a willingness to help, despite your cabbageheaded decision to keep secrets from me.”

The bit about Lady Grout being dull appeared unreliable.

“I have shamed us! And my parents! And Felicity!”

“Oh, idiot man. You made a mistake! As did your father. As did your sister, I might add, though I imagine she had more than a decent reason to strike the duke and I would dearly like to know it.”

There was a long pause, and then a quiet, gutted “This is my job, Pru. To keep you happy. Safe. Comfortable. To provide for you. That’s what I agreed to when we married.”

Devil understood the frustration in the words. The sense of desperation that came with wanting to keep one’s love safe. Was that not why he was here? To keep Felicity safe?

“And I agreed to obey! But I am rather through with doing that, I’ll tell you, Arthur.” Devil’s brows rose. The lady was not happy. “We are either partners in life or we are not. I do not care if we are poor as church mice. I don’t care if all of London refuses us entry to their homes. I don’t care if we’re never invited to another ball as long as we live, so long as we are together in it.”

I’m not the same. I don’t care about Mayfair and balls.

“I love you,” the countess said, quietly. “I’ve loved you since we were children. I’ve loved you rich. And now I love you poor. Do you love me?”

Do you love me?

The question had been echoing through Devil since Felicity had asked it, six hours earlier. And now, spoken on another set of lips, it threatened to put him on his knees.

“Yes,” said the earl within. “Yes, of course. That’s why I have made such a hash of everything.”

Yes.

Yes, of course he loved her. He loved everything about her. She was sunlight and fresh air and hope.

Yes. He loved her wildly.

And he’d ruined that. He’d used her and lied to her and turned her against him. He’d betrayed her and her love. And he would suffer his own damnation by living his days wi

ldly in love with her, and living without her.

Which was likely best, because love did not change the fact that Felicity would always be Mayfair, and he would always be Covent Garden. He would never be good enough to stand in her sunlight, but he could absolutely protect her from the darkness.

More than protect her. He could give her everything she’d ever dreamed.

It was time for Devil to walk into a second Faircloth bedchamber and offer its inhabitants everything they wished. And this time, he did not intend to fail.

When he was through speaking to the earl and countess, Devil returned to the warehouse, where he continued his bruising work, preparing the hold for a new shipment, grateful for the ache in his muscles—his hair shirt for sins committed against the woman he loved.

Punishment for his lies.

He worked tirelessly, alongside half a dozen other men who were rotating in shifts to avoid spending too long in the freezing temperatures. Devil embraced the cold as he did the darkness and the pain, accepting it as his punishment. Welcoming it as such. The dozen or so lanterns hung high against the ceiling were not enough to keep the darkness at bay, and he ignored the thread of panic that came every now and then when he looked the wrong way and found infinite blackness, just as he ignored the sweat soaking his clothes. Not long after he’d begun to work, he removed his coat and draped it over one of the high ice walls to allow greater freedom of movement.

Long after he’d lost the ability to recall how many shifts had rotated through the hold, Whit arrived, closing the great steel door behind him to keep the cold in. He wore a thick coat and hat, and boots to the knee—which had been helpful as he’d spent his day in the ice melt at the dock.

Whit watched Devil hook and lift several immense blocks of ice before he growled, “You need food.”

Devil shook his head.

“And water.” Whit extended a skein toward him.

Devil moved to the pile of ice at the center of the hold and picked another cube. “I’m surrounded by water.”