Brazen and the Beast

by Sarah MacLean

  She waved at a pull on the wall. “—and ring the bell when you are ready?”

  Ready for bed, she meant.

  Hattie nodded. “Yes. That sounds ideal.”

  Zeva floated from the room, the quiet snick of the door the only evidence that she’d been there at all.

  Hattie let out a long breath and turned to face the empty room. Alone, she was able to take in the rest of it, the shimmering gold wallpaper, the beautifully tiled fireplace, and the large windows that would no doubt reveal the web of Covent Garden rooftops by day, but now, by night, were made mirrors in the darkness, reflecting the candlelight of the room, and Hattie at its center.

  Hattie. Ready to begin her life anew.

  She approached one large window, trying her best to ignore her reflection, considering instead the darkness surrounding her, limitless, like her plans. Her desires. The decision to stop waiting for her father to realize her potential, and instead to take what she wanted. To prove herself strong enough, clever enough, unfettered enough.

  And perhaps just a little bit reckless.

  But what was the path to success without a bit of recklessness?

  This recklessness would take her out of the running as a wife to any decent man, and make it impossible for her father to refuse her what she truly wanted.

  A business of her own. A life of her own. A future of her own.

  She took a deep breath and turned to face a table nearby, laden with enough to feed an army: tea sandwiches and canapés and petits fours. A bottle of champagne and two glasses stood sentry alongside the food. She shouldn’t be surprised—the survey of her preferences for the evening had been quite thorough, and she’d requested just such a spread, less because she cared for champagne and delicious food—though who didn’t?—and more because it felt like the sort of thing a woman with experience would provide upon such an occasion.

  And so, a table lay in wait of a pair, as though this place were a posting inn on the Great North Road, and the room set for newlyweds. Hattie smirked at the silly, romantic thought. But that was the commodity 72 Shelton Street sold, was it not? Romance, as preferred, purchased and packaged.

  Champagne and petits fours and a four-poster bed.

  Suddenly very ridiculous.

  She gave a little nervous laugh. There was no way she was eating canapés or petits fours. Not without immediately casting them up from her roiling stomach. But champagne—perhaps champagne was just the thing.

  She poured herself a glass and drank it down like lemon water, warmth spreading through her faster than she’d expected. Warmth and just enough courage to propel her across the room to pull the bell. To summon Nelson. Exceedingly-thorough-like-the-war-hero Nelson.

  She supposed there were worse names for the man who would rid her of her virginity.

  Hattie pulled the bell—silent in the room, but ringing in some faraway place in the mysterious building, where Hattie imagined a passel of handsome men waited to provide exceeding thoroughness, like horses at a racing start. She grinned at the wild image, at faceless Nelson—wearing a full uniform and an admiral’s hat for lack of more creative imagining—leaping to movement at the sound, running toward her, long legs taking stairs two, perhaps three at a time, huffing his breath in the race to get to her.

  How should she be arranged when he got here? Should she be at the window? Would he want to see her standing up? To assess the situation? She wasn’t wild about that thought.

  Which left a chair by the fireplace, or the bed.

  She highly doubted he’d wish to converse with her. Indeed, she was not certain that she was interested in being conversed with. This was a means to an end, after all.

  So. The bed it was.

  Should she lie down? That seemed rather forward, though, truthfully, she’d likely passed forward somewhere between seeking out 72 Shelton Street months ago and hitching the carriage that evening. She’d fully lost sight of forward while kissing a man in her carriage.

  And for a wild moment, it wasn’t a faceless admiral who raced toward her. It was a different kind of man entirely. Beautifully faced. With perfect features and amber eyes and dark brows and lips that were softer than she’d ever imagined lips could be.

  She cleared her throat and pushed the thought away, returning to the question at hand. Lying down felt wrong, as did sitting, ankles crossed, on this bed. Perhaps there was a middle ground? A seductive lean of some kind?

  Ugh. Hattie had never been seductive in her life.

  She perched on the most dimly lit corner of the bed and leaned back, wrapping an arm about the post to keep herself steady, pressing herself to it, willing herself to look like the kind of woman who did this sort of thing all the time. A seductress who knew her desires and her preferences. Someone who understood phrases like exceedingly thorough.

  And then the door was opening and her heart was pounding, and a great shadowed figure was entering, and he wasn’t wearing an admiral’s hat or a uniform. Or anything remotely dapper. He was wearing black. An immense amount of black.

  He was inside then, and the light cast his perfect face in a warm, golden glow.

  Her heart stopped and she straightened, overcompensating for her shifting position, nearly tossing herself straight off the bed.

  He moved with singular grace, as though he hadn’t been unconscious in her carriage an hour earlier. As though she hadn’t dispatched him from it. Her gaze traced over him, checking for scrapes and bruises, for aches and pains from his fall. Nothing.

  She swallowed, grateful for the low light. “You’re not Nelson.”

  He did not reply. The door closed behind him.

  And they were alone.

  Chapter Four

  She should have been a needle in a haystack.

  She should have disappeared.

  She should have been one of a thousand women, in a thousand carriages, scurrying like scorpions through the darker corners of London, unseen by the ordinary men of the world beyond.

  And she would have been just that, except Whit wasn’t an ordinary man. He was a Bareknuckle Bastard—a king of London’s shadows, with scores of spies posted in the darkness—and nothing happened on his turf without him knowing it. It was laughably easy for his wide-reaching network of lookouts to find the single black carriage headed into the night.

  They’d been following it before he took to the rooftops. They had its location as quickly as they’d had the information they’d known he’d want. The shipment he’d been driving was gone, the outriders who had been attacked were alive, and their attackers were disappeared. Unidentified.

  But not for long.

  The woman would lead him to the enemy—an enemy for whom the Bareknuckle Bastards had been searching for months.

  If Whit was correct, an enemy they had known for years.

  It didn’t hurt that his boys were always watching the entrances to the brothel. A brother protected a sister, after all—even when the sister in question was powerful enough to bring a city to its knees. Even when the sister was in hiding from the one thing that could strip her of that power.

  Whit had easily found his way into the building and past Zeva, pausing only long enough to discover the location of the woman she would not name. He’d known she wouldn’t. 72 Shelton only succeeded because of uncompromising discretion, and secrets were kept from everyone—Bareknuckle Bastards included.

  Because of that, he did not press Zeva. Instead, he pushed past her, ignoring the way her dark brows rose in silent surprise. Silent for the moment; Zeva was the best of lieutenants, and kept secrets from all but her employer. And when Grace—known to all London as Dahlia—returned to her rightful post as mistress of this place, she’d know what happened. And she wouldn’t hesitate to come asking about it.

  There was no relentless curiosity like that of a sister.

  But for now, there was no Grace to pester him. There was only the mysterious woman from the carriage, full of information, the final piece to the clockwor
k he’d been waiting to set in motion. The spring, waiting to be wound. She had the names of the men who had fired on his shipment. Fired on his boys. The names of the men who were thieving from the Bastards.

  The names of the men who were working with his estranged brother. His enemy. And here she was, in a building belonging to his sister, on the land that belonged to Whit himself.

  Waiting for a man to pleasure her.

  He ignored the thrum of excitement that coursed through him at the thought, and the thread of irritation that followed. She was business, not pleasure.

  It was time to get business done.

  He saw her the moment he entered, his eyes finding her perched on the edge of the bed, clutching a bedpost in the darkness. As he let the door close behind him, he was consumed by a singular thought: Sitting here, in one of the most extravagant brothels in the city—one designed for women of discerning taste and promising the utmost discretion—the woman could not have looked more out of place.

  She should have looked completely at home, considering she had poked him awake, carried on a full conversation with him as though it were entirely ordinary, and then pushed him from a moving carriage.

  After kissing him.

  The fact that she’d been headed here had seemed fully in keeping with the rest of her wild night.

  But something was off.

  It wasn’t the dress, luxurious silken skirts exploding from the darkness in wild, turquoise waves that suggested a modiste of superior skill. It wasn’t the matching slippers, toes peeking out from beneath the hem.

  It wasn’t the way the bodice glistened in the darkness, hugging the curve of her torso and showcasing the lovely swell above it—no, that bit was perfect for Shelton Street.

  It wasn’t even the shadow of her face—barely recognizable in the darkness, but just visible enough to reveal her mouth gaping in surprise. Another man might find that open mouth ridiculous, but Whit knew better. He knew how it tasted. How those full lips softened and yielded. And there was nothing remotely out of place about that.

  72 Shelton Street was more than welcoming of full bodies and full lips and women who knew how to use them.

  But this woman didn’t know how to use them. She was stiff as stone, clinging to the bedpost with one white-knuckled hand and to an empty champagne flute with the other, holding herself at an odd angle, looking altogether out of place.

  Even more so when she straightened impossibly further and said, “I beg your pardon, sir. I am waiting for someone.”

  “Mmm.” He leaned back against the door, crossing his arms over his chest, wishing she weren’t in shadow. “Nelson.”

  She nodded, the movement like jerking clockwork. “Quite. And as you are not him—”

  “How do you know that?”

  Silence. Whit resisted the urge to smile. He could nearly hear her panic. She was about to back down, which would put him in the position of power. She’d give up the information he wished in minutes, like a babe to sweets.

  Except, she said, “You do not match my list of qualifications.”

  What in hell? Qualifications?

  Somehow, miraculously, he avoided asking the question outright. The chatterbox provided additional information nonetheless. “I specifically requested someone less . . .”

  She trailed off, and Whit found himself willing to do nearly anything to have that sentence finished. When she waved a hand in his direction, he couldn’t stop himself. “Less . . . ?”

  She scowled. “Precisely. Less.”

  Something suspiciously like pride burst in his chest, and Whit pushed it away, letting silence fall.

  “You’re not less,” she said. “You’re more. You’re much. Which is why I tossed you from the carriage earlier—I apologize for that, by the way. I hope you were not too bruised in the tumble.”

  He ignored the last. “Much what?”

  That hand wave again. “Much everything.” She reached into the voluminous fabric of her skirts and extracted a piece of paper, consulting it. “Medium height. Medium build.” She looked up, assessing him frankly. “You are neither of those.”

  She didn’t have to sound disappointed about it. What else was on the paper?

  “I did not realize how large you were when we met earlier.”

  “Is that what we are calling it? A meeting?”

  She tilted her head in consideration. “Have you a better term?”

  “An attack.”

  Her eyes went wide behind her mask and she came to her feet, revealing a height he had not imagined in the carriage. “I didn’t attack you!”

  She was wrong, of course. Everything about her was an assault, from her lush curves to the brightness of her eyes to the shimmer of her gown to the scent of almonds on her—as though she’d just come from a kitchen full of cakes.

  The woman had felt like an attack from the moment he’d opened his eyes in that carriage and found her there, talking up a storm about birthdays and plans and the Year of Hattie.

  “Hattie.” He hadn’t meant to say it. Definitely hadn’t meant to enjoy saying it.

  Her eyes went impossibly larger behind the mask. “How did you know my name?” she asked, coming to her feet, panic and outrage pouring from her. “I thought this place was the height of discretion?”

  “What is the Year of Hattie?”

  Realization flashed, memory of revealing her name earlier. A pause, and then she said, “Why do you care?”

  He wasn’t sure of the answer, so he did not offer it.

  She filled the silence, as he was discovering she was wont to do. “I suppose you’re not going to tell me your name? I know it’s not Nelson.”

  “Because I’m too much to be Nelson.”

  “Because you do not match my qualifications. You are altogether too broad in the shoulder and too long in the leg and not charming, and certainly not at all affable.”

  “You’ve made a list of qualifications for a hound, not a fuck.”

  She did not take the bait. “And all that before we even consider your face.”

  What the hell was wrong with his face? In thirty-one years, he’d never had a complaint, and this wild woman was going to change that? “My face.”

  “Quite,” she said, the word coming like a speeding carriage. “I requested a face that wasn’t so . . .”

  Whit hung on the pause. Now the woman decided to stop talking?

  She shook her head and he resisted the urge to curse. “Never mind. The point is, I didn’t request you and I didn’t attack you. I had nothing to do with you turning up unconscious in my carriage. Though, to be honest, you are beginning to strike me as the kind of man who might well deserve a whack to the head.”

  “I don’t believe you were a part of the assault.”

  “Good. Because I wasn’t.”

  “Who was?”

  Beat. “I don’t know.”

  Lie.

  She was protecting someone. The carriage belonged to someone she trusted, or she wouldn’t have used it to bring her here. Father? No. Impossible. Even this madwoman wouldn’t use her father’s coachman to ferry her to a brothel in the middle of Covent Garden. Coachmen talked.

  Lover? For a fleeting moment he considered the possibility that she was not simply working with his enemy, but sleeping with him. Whit didn’t like the distaste that came with the idea before reason arrived.

  No. Not a lover. She wouldn’t be in a brothel if she had a lover. She wouldn’t have kissed Whit if she had a lover.

  And she had kissed him, soft and sweet and inexperienced.

  There was no lover.

  But still, she was loyal to the enemy.

  “I think you do know who tied me up in that carriage, Hattie,” he said softly, approaching her, a thrum of awareness coursing through him as he realized she was nearly his height, her chest rising and falling in staccato rhythm above the line of her dress, the muscles of her throat working as she listened. “And I think you know I intend to have a name.”r />
  Her eyes narrowed on him in the dim light. “Is that a threat?” He didn’t reply, and in the silence, she seemed to calm, her breath evening out as her shoulders straightened. “I don’t take kindly to threats. This is the second time you have interrupted my evening, sir. You would do well to remember that it was I who saved your hide earlier.”

  The change in her was remarkable. “You nearly killed me.”

  She scoffed. “Please. You were perfectly agile. I saw you tumble your way from the carriage like it wasn’t the first time you’d been tossed from one.” She paused. “It wasn’t, was it?”

  “That doesn’t mean I am looking to make a habit of it.”

  “The point is, without me, you could be dead in a ditch. A reasonable gentleman would thank me kindly and take himself elsewhere at this point.”

  “You are unlucky, then, that I am not that.”

  “Reasonable?”

  “A gentleman.”

  She gave a little surprised chuckle at that. “Well, as we are currently in a brothel, I think neither of us can claim much gentility.”

  “That wasn’t on your list of qualifications?”

  “Oh, it was,” she said, “But I expected more the approximation of gentility rather than the actuality of it. But there’s the rub; I have plans, approximations be damned, and I’m not letting you ruin them.”

  “The plans you spoke of before tossing me out of a carriage.”

  “I didn’t toss you.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “All right, I tossed you. But you fared perfectly well.”

  “No thanks to you.”

  “I don’t have the information you want.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She opened her mouth. Closed it. “How very rude.”

  “Take your mask off.”

  “No.”

  His lips twitched at the unyielding reply. “What is the Year of Hattie?”

  She lifted her chin in defiance, but stayed silent. Whit gave a little grunt and moved across the room to the champagne, returning to fill her glass. When the task was done, he returned the bottle to its place and leaned back against the windowsill, watching her fidget.

  She was always in motion, smoothing skirts or playing at her sleeve—he drank in the long line of the dress, the way it wrapped her unruly curves and made promises that a man wished she would keep. The candlelight teased over her skin, gilding her. This was not a woman who took tea. This was a woman who took the sun.