Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards 2)

“Oh, no . . .” Hattie said softly, reaching for him, her fingertips brushing the leather straps of the holster that caged him. The weapons he kept close.

“But I can protect you,” he went on. “I can protect you forever. I can keep you away from my brother. And I can keep you away from all of this.”

“This is part of it!” she said. “It’s part of the world I wish. Part of the life I wish. With you.” She shook her head. “Don’t you see? I’d rather have a night with you than a lifetime without you.”

He shook his head. “No. I’ll never see you into danger.”

Tears sprang, frustrated and angry. “You don’t get to decide. I do.”

“Goddammit, this isn’t the Year of Hattie anymore, this is your life! This is my sanity!” He closed his eyes. “Please. Get in the fucking hack. Now.”

She narrowed her gaze. “Make me.”

And he did, the wretched man, lifting her from her feet like she was a sack of grain and tossing her into the conveyance. Making sure she was unbalanced enough that she wouldn’t be able to stop him from closing the door.

She heard the thump of his fist on the side of the hack, barely sounded before the wheels were in motion. Outrage and fury flared as Hattie sat up, looking out the window, barely able to make out the shape of him, running back to the docks. Back to danger.

She banged on the roof of the hack. “Stop this carriage right now!”

“Can’t help!” came the muffled reply from the driver. “The man gave me a quid to take you to Mayfair!”

“A quid to abduct me, you mean!”

“If I was abductin’ you, lady, I wouldn’t be takin’ ye to Berkeley Square!”

She didn’t even live in Berkeley Square, but that was a moot point. “I’ll pay you to stop!”

Hesitation. “Seems like whatever was going on at the docks wasn’t for you, luv!”

So now the hack driver had decided to find his sense of right and wrong. “Argh! Men!” Hattie pounded on the roof of the carriage. She didn’t need protection from this stranger or from the man who’d just tossed her into his carriage. Dammit, hadn’t it been Hattie who’d tossed Whit out of a carriage all those nights ago?

“Dammit, dammit,” she screamed, moving to the door, watching the buildings sail past. She’d never felt as useless as in those moments as the carriage raced from the docks, where Whit and his men raced against water and flame.

She belonged there. With him. Alongside him.

Marry me. Join me.

Had he honestly believed that if she agreed to his offer, she wouldn’t stand with him? Did he not see that being a wife meant being a partner? Being an equal? Did he not know that if he was going to share his life with her, she wanted all of it? Even this bit?

Especially this bit.

The carriage decelerated, and she looked out the window. They were coming up on a collection of taverns where people flooded the streets, making high speed impossible . . . now was her chance.

The hack slowed to a crawl, and Hattie measured the curve in the street. She took a deep breath and pushed open the door, closing her eyes and leaping.

She tumbled, a heavyset black man with a wide-brimmed hat and a big beard breaking her fall with a loud “Oof!” followed by a “Christ, gel! What in hell would possess you?” And then . . . “Wait! Yer the Sedley gel. The one who bought up the hooks tonight.”

She nodded, already righting herself and turning to return to the docks in question. “Hattie Sedley.”

He smiled. “Bollocks of brass, goin’ in against the Bastards.”

“Not against,” she said. “With. I simply needed to get their attention.”

He laughed, full and deep, and said, “Beast’s lady, then?”

“If he’d come to his senses,” she tossed over her shoulder, already leaving him, heading back to the docks, as quickly as she could.

She wove her way in and out of the streets and alleys of the neighborhood until she landed back where she’d come from, where Whit had left her. Turning a corner, she passed through the crowd that had assembled outside a popular drinking hole on one end of the dock, tankards in hand and each man with a theory on what had happened a hundred yards away. “I heard the Bastards are fighting each other. Beast don’t like Devil’s bride.” What utter nonsense.

“That ain’t it. I heard another group wants in on the ice business.” Hattie nearly laughed at that, as though the trade in frozen water was cutthroat enough to involve explosives.

“Must be somefin’ to do with Sedley payin’ the dockworkers not to work tonight. Too much of a coincidence—no one local on the dock to get ’urt when a damn bomb sinks the Bastards’ cargo.”

“Tide’s out,” came a reply. “There ain’t no sinkin’ to be done. Ice’ll just slide out the hold and melt into the river.”

“Winter freeze’ll come early this year,” came a loud masculine guffaw.

Hattie rolled her eyes, having no patience for the gawkers and gossipers who knew nothing but seemed to enjoy fabricating plenty. She looked to one of the quieter observers. “Has anyone been hurt?”

“Three men taken to the Bastards’ surgeon in the Garden. Beast refused to let the dockside butcher touch ’em.”

Of course he had. Whit would have rather cut off his own arm than let a leech with a bloody apron and a sturdy saw see to his men. Hattie increased her pace, eager to find him. She could see the ship now, lit by the flames still burning but now under better control—managed by a line of men working in unison—lifting river water by the bucketful, working to combat the fire that threatened the whole dock. The men moved quickly and with steady control, as though they’d done this precise thing a dozen times before. More.

And they had. The landing saw its fair share of gunpowder and rifle ships—and fire. Confident in the men’s work, she pushed forward, aiming for the burning ship. For the man she loved.

“Lady Henrietta?”

She turned at the sound of her name as a man stepped from a doorway in the darkness, tall and fair. Recognition flared. He was the Duke of Marwick—recognizable to any self-respecting spinster in the ton, even unshaven and wild-eyed. Hattie did not for a moment believe that this particular duke was simply taking a late night stroll on the London docks, no matter how mad society thought him to be.

Rage came tight in her throat and she slipped her hand into her pocket, feeling her pocketknife there, heavy and warm. “Ewan.”

Surprise flashed in his eyes. “He told you about me.”

“He told me he had another brother who was a monster.” She tightened her fist on her knife. “You look the part.”

A shout came from down the dock, and she looked to it, two men racing past, unaware of the two conversing in the darkness. Returning her attention to Ewan, she said, “This is your doing.”

“Yes.” His words were devoid of emotion.

“And it’s not enough? Three men to the surgeon? Another shipment destroyed? Now you think to what . . . come for me?”

“Do I?”

“Isn’t that what you do? Threaten your brothers and their livelihoods and their future?”