Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards 2)

He grunted.

She smiled. “That meant you’d like to change the subject.” She looked up through her lashes at him, and her sweet smile was a welcome distraction. “I’m learning your sounds.”

Her fingers smoothed over his ribs, where a purple bruise bloomed fast and furious, and he sucked in a breath. “I don’t have to be a good student to know what that one meant.” She lifted her hand, her task complete. “May I bandage you?”

Another grunt, and she smiled, lifting the roll of linen at her side. “I’m taking that as a yes.”

“Yes,” he said.

She began to roll the strip around his body carefully, her touch a constant temptation. On the third pass, her lips parted, and her breath began to come more quickly. She spoke to the bandage. “Why would you do this? You’re rich beyond measure and have the respect of every man from the Thames to Oxford Street—and beyond. Why would you let them hurt you?”

Because he deserved it.

He didn’t tell her that. Instead, he said, “It’s how we survived.”

Her touch stuttered. “Your brother and sister? And you?”

He looked down, watching her long fingers roll out the bandage. Marveled at them. At her. At the way she summoned his words. “We ran from our father. And from our . . . brother.” He hated even speaking Ewan into existence with her now, as he threatened like a specter.

“Why?” This wonderful, compassionate woman, with a brother she protected even though he’d ruined everything for her.

She wouldn’t understand the truth about his past, but he spoke it anyway. “We endangered everything the old man lived for. Everything the young one had worked for. And Ewan—he was willing to do anything for my father’s love.” He gave a little humorless laugh. “Not that there was any love in the bastard to give.”

Her brow furrowed. “He was even willing to see you flee?”

“He made sure we fled.” His gaze fell to the basket of bandages and ointments. “That night, he’d come for Grace. Devil stopped him—took the knife for them both.”

She gasped. “His face. The scar.”

“A gift from our brother. And our father.”

Loathing flashed in her beautiful eyes. “I should like to have a word with both of them.”

“My father is dead.”

“Good.” She lifted a pair of sewing scissors and he raised a brow—she looked prepared to do battle with the tiny blades. Considering her anger, Whit might even wager on her. “And your brother?”

He shook his head. “Not dead.”

Too alive. Too close.

She finished the bandaging, tying off the ends in a perfect knot. “Well, he’d best not find me in a dark alley.” Whit might have been amused if he weren’t so irrationally unsettled by the idea of Hattie in the way of Ewan.

You’ll give her up. Or I’ll take her.

He set his hands to her shoulders, urging her to look to him. “Listen to me. If you ever have cause to meet my brother, you run the other way.”

Her eyes went wide at the words, at the seriousness in them. “How did you escape?”

“I didn’t.” Memory flashed. The dark night and Grace screaming—he and Devil breaking down a door to find their brother with a massive knife, their father at the edge of the room, watching. Pride and something else on his face—delight.

Fucking monsters.

Whit had leapt into the fray, but Ewan had been too strong. He’d always been the strong one. The perfect manifestation of ducal blood. Devil had been too hotheaded. Whit, too small. But Ewan had been strong enough to lay Whit flat, and with enough force that he couldn’t get up.

Devil had leapt in. Taken the blow meant for Grace.

And it had been Grace who put Ewan down.

“Devil and Grace dragged me away. Into the night. I’d be nowhere without them.”

“You were children.”

“Fourteen. All of us born on the same day. Ewan, too.” She tilted her head, the obvious question in her eyes. “Different mothers. And Grace, the luckiest of the bunch—different father, too. She’s never had to suffer the idea of his blood in her veins.”

“So, not your sister.”

“Sister where it counts,” he said, remembering the red-haired, square-jawed girl who’d protected them without hesitation, even as she lost more than they’d ever had. Even as she’d lost the only boy she’d ever loved. “We ran. We ran, and we didn’t stop until we reached London. Once we were here we had no choice but to sleep on the street. But sleep wasn’t enough. We had to eat, too.”

She was still as stone, which was the only reason why he kept talking. “Devil thieved us some bread. I scavenged the cores of a half-dozen apples. But it wasn’t enough. We had to survive, and that would take more.”

He could still feel the bone-deep ache of the damp streets of the Rookery, the only thing that rivaled the aching loss of his mother. But he didn’t tell her that. Didn’t want to sully her with that.

He didn’t even understand why he was telling her any of it.

He didn’t want her close. Lie.

He couldn’t have her close.

Instead, he turned the conversation to the fights. “On our third night, Digger turned up.” He met her gaze. “He was another kind of bastard. Ruthless and out for no one more than himself, but he ran a dice game and a street ring and needed fighters.”

Her brows knit together. “You were children.”

Every time she said it, he was reminded of how different they were. How he could do nothing but sully her. He clung to the thought. To the hope that it would keep him from doing something mad. “Fourteen is more than old enough to throw a punch, Hattie.”

Her attention flickered to the cut on his swelling cheek. “And what of catching them?”

One side of his mouth went up in a cocky grin. “Don’ ’ave to if yer fast ’nough to get out the way.”

She smiled at the way his voice slid into the Garden. “And were you very fast?”

“I had to be. I wasn’t anything near strong. The runt of the litter.”

She made a show of assessing his broad frame. “I find that very difficult to believe.”

He lifted one shoulder and dropped it. “I grew.”

“I noticed.”

He felt the pleasure in the words keenly, and he went hard with a speed that surprised him. Before he could act on it, she said, “Go on,” and he had no choice but to obey.

“Devil and I were middling fighters. We could bob and weave, and when we landed a punch we knew how to put force behind it. We didn’t always win, but we always gave the crowd a show.” The tale should have been bleak—the story of brothers given no other choice but to fight for their beds and their supper—but it wasn’t. The fights were some of the best memories of those years.

“And now he is married to Felicity Faircloth.”

Surprise flared and faded. “I forget she was a toff.”

Hattie grinned. “I was always a bit jealous of her for being able to leave it. And for having such a good reason.” A pause, and then, “You have the same eyes.”

The Marwick eyes.