Grace looked to Hattie, feeling a bit like she’d been given too little laudanum and was hallucinating instead of sleeping. “Slightly exploded?”

Whit grunted his irritation.

Hattie waved a hand through the air. “And only because he didn’t get to me in time.” She looked to Grace. “I believe he intended to get to me in time. To stop me from being hurt. He wasn’t responsible for the second explosion. That was the one that hurt me and the others. We know that.”

“And so? We give points for not lighting the match?” Whit said. “For not firing the pistol? Intent wouldn’t have saved you if you’d been . . .”

Hattie gave him a little kiss on the cheek. “Yes, love. But I wasn’t.”

“And so, what, we forgive him simply because you survived?”

She looked to Felicity. “I don’t think he’s gone without punishment, do you?”

“Hell, no,” Devil said. “But I wouldn’t object to him being packed into the ice hold for a decade or two. Cold storage would do him well.”

They told me you were dead.

“And if he’d succeeded in killing Hattie? In harming Felicity? What would you have done?” Grace asked.

Devil looked to Whit, and she saw the answer pass between them. Recognized it, because it was her answer, too.

Devil answered. “I would have burned Mayfair to the ground to get to him.”

She nodded. “The three of us, baptized in revenge.”

“No,” Whit said, softly. “Four of us.”

Devil cursed softly, and looked down at his daughter, happily drooling on his sleeve. “As unlucky as we were, we were the lucky ones. I have Felicity and Helena, and the Garden. The business.” He cut her a look. “You, I suppose.”

Grateful for the levity, Grace put a hand to her breast. “Really, it’s too much flattery.”

He flashed a smile, and then said, “But what did he get? The estate? The house in Mayfair? The title and all the responsibility that comes with it? And the memories.”

“We own the memories, too,” she said.

“Yes, but our memories come with the present.” He stopped. “With the three of us. Grown. Changed. Survived. What does he have but loneliness and regret?”

Whit grunted.

“I don’t know,” she said softly.

Devil continued. “Don’t matter, because what he has ain’t the question, Gracie. What you have is the question.”

She shook her head. “I have the same as you.”

Another grunt from Whit. And then, “You have worse.”

“Why?”

“Because my ribs healed. And Devil’s face. And the other breaks—” He reached for Hattie, who slipped a hand into his instantly. “We’ve had a chance to mend. But you—your break can’t mend.”

He’d broken her heart.

“And because it never mended, you were never able to love again. Which is why you’ve spent your whole life caring for the Garden. For the employees in your club and the girls on the rooftops and for us—never once taking a moment to think about how you might care for yourself. Never once being willing to take a risk and love again. Instead, you serve up love without ties over on Shelton Street, and pretend nobody notices that at the end of the night, you’re alone.”

She hated every word, for its truth, and hated that Whit, silent and stoic, always knew precisely the problem. “I like you better when you don’t talk.”

He grunted.

“I love,” she replied, defensively. When her brothers looked to each other, she said, “I do! Against my will, I love the two of you. And your wives. And Helena.” She pointed to Hattie, already sitting at the foot of the dining room table. “And the babe in Hattie’s belly—when is that babe coming, anyway?”

Hattie rubbed a hand over the enormous swell of her pregnant belly. “Never, it seems. He wants to stay in.”

“She’s not stupid. The world is a perilous place,” Whit said, tipping his chin at Grace. “Aunt Grace is thinking of taking up with a fucking madman.”

“I’m not taking up with him.”

One black brow rose. “What then?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve said that more in the last hour than you have in our entire life together,” Devil said.

She shot him a withering look. “Don’t think I don’t hate that.”

Silence fell for an age before he replied. “Grace, if there is one thing I know . . . one thing I have learned in the last year . . . it is that this business—love—is the only thing we cannot know.”

“So, take up with the madman,” Whit said.

I’m sorry.

“He’s not a madman,” she said.

“No, he’s not,” Hattie said, looking to Whit.

“What does that mean?” Grace asked, looking from one person to the next, all of them looking as though they’d taken the last Christmas sweet. “What?”

Hattie sighed. “He came to me several days ago, at the Sedley-Whittington offices.”

“He did?” Sedley-Whittington, named for Hattie and Whit, dominated the business at the London docklands. What did Ewan want with them?

“He’s lucky Whit didn’t drop him in the Thames,” Devil said, taking another drink.

“Why?” Grace asked. “To give the docks more money?”

“No,” Hattie said, curiosity in her voice. “He asked for work.”

“What?”

Whit grunted. “My exact words.”

Grace ignored him, all her focus on her sister-in-law. “What did you say?”

“Yes, wife, what did you say?”

“I gave him what he asked.”

Surely she wasn’t hearing right. “You gave the Duke of Marwick work.”

Hattie nodded. “I’m not a fool—I heard he’s a brute with a block of ice. Imagine what he can do with a hook.”

Grace’s eyes went wide. “You gave him a job hefting boxes?”

Hattie shot her a wry look. “He did try to explode me, Grace. I wasn’t about to be kind.”

The words shocked a laugh from her. “What does he want?”

“Well, it sure ain’t a job,” Devil said.

“He’s damned good at it for someone who doesn’t want to do it,” Hattie said. “I’ve a mind to give him a promotion.”

Whit cursed at the reply. “Of course you do.”

Grace ignored the banter. “But why?”

Hattie shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe it needn’t be complicated. Maybe he wants another chance. Maybe he wants hope.”

Hope.

Helena offered a little, slobbery coo, and Grace looked to the babe, who had happily traded her rattle for one of her father’s knuckles. She spoke to the child. “He’s the reason there’s a bill in Parliament to help the Rookery.”

Silence. And then Beast knocked back his whisky. “It is to fail. He tilts at windmills.”

Didn’t they all?

“Grace,” Felicity said quietly. “What do you want?”

What do you need?

The words echoed, over and over.

Tags: Sarah MacLean The Bareknuckle Bastards Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net