She scowled at him. “They took nothing from you. They built a kingdom from nothing—a world of good people who know your brothers’ kindness and generosity and loyalty. Loyalty of which you can only dream. And you . . .” she spat. “You have tried to strip them of it. And I won’t have it.”
Surprise flashed. “You won’t?”
The wind whipped her skirts about her legs as she came to her full height. “I won’t. Whit has spent a lifetime worrying about what might happen when you come for him. And here is the truth of it—you would do well to heed it—it is you who should worry. Because if you harm them, these good men with good hearts and strong minds, I will come for you. And there is no past between us to keep you safe.”
“Saviour always lived his life as though name was destiny,” he said with a little laugh. “And here you are, protecting him. Like a guardian angel.”
“I think you’ll find I’m far less angel than I am warrior.” She extracted her knife and took a step toward the awful man. “It is time for you to go, Ewan.”
His gaze fell to the blade, and he reached into his coat, extracting one of his own. No. Not his own. Whit’s. The missing blade she’d noticed earlier. She looked up at the duke, their enemy, fear rioting through her. And still, fury won out. “That doesn’t belong to you.”
“Does it belong to you?” He flipped it in his hand, offering her the hilt. She reached for it. Took it in hand, and he let it go. “Perhaps you are a gift to all of us.”
She heard hope in the words. A plea. Something else. “I can see why he loves you.”
In that moment, Hattie realized that Whit did love her. And she wasn’t leaving these docks until he told her. And this man was in the way of it. “Then you can see why I won’t let you take that from him.”
“Tonight”—he looked down the docks, past the empty boats to the massive cargo ship being unloaded—“this . . . none of it matters to them.”
She shook her head. “You taught them that. Money does not make power. Title does not make might. And none of it—none of it makes happiness.”
“Not like love.”
There was a truth in the words, clear and sad, and if it had been anyone else speaking them, Hattie would have ached with sympathy for him. But this man had spent a lifetime threatening the man she loved, and he could sod off. “Do you doubt my willingness to put a knife in you if you come for him again?”
“No.”
“My ability to do it?” She fairly itched to do it.
“I told him to give you up,” Ewan said. “Threatened to take you from him if he didn’t.”
The confession was unexpected and somehow utterly obvious. Of course Whit had pushed her away. He would have done anything to protect her. Her savior. Her gaze narrowed. “That was misjudgment.”
He nodded. “He wouldn’t do it.”
She shook her head. “No. I wouldn’t. You aren’t a specter to me. You aren’t my past. And you aren’t my future. I don’t fear you. And I will never give him up.”
Silence fell between them. And then, “You remind me of her.”
Grace. “From what I hear, that is a great compliment.”
“He told you about her?”
“Of course,” she said softly. “She is his sister.”
Something shifted in Ewan at that—something that Hattie could not explain except to say that he seemed to settle. “She was their sister,” he said. “But she was my heart.” His eyes flew to hers, and in the wild depths she saw his aching sadness. “He had a life with her, and now a life with you, and I had nothing.”
“You chose nothing.”
He looked to the docks, his gaze unfocused. “I chose her.”
Hattie did not reply. She didn’t have to. He was lost to thought. To memory. And after a long moment, he looked to her—his amber eyes so like Whit’s, and so empty of Whit’s passion—and said, “It’s over.”
Hattie let out a long breath. Relief coursing through her. “You won’t come for him again.”
“I thought I would know . . .” he said, trailing off. Then, again, the words rougher than before. More broken. “It’s over.”
The Duke of Marwick turned from her and walked away, as though he’d never been there at all. She watched him leave, tracking his movements until he was swallowed by the night and she could no longer see him.
She turned back to the docks, slipping the knife in her palm into her pockets, and made for the ship where men worked seamlessly to salvage what they could from the cargo of the ruined ship. Men she knew would stand shoulder to shoulder with Whit and Devil and the Bareknuckle Bastards any time.
She marveled at the long line of them, doing their backbreaking work, heaving ice and cargo, and there, silhouetted by the flames, and wielding a hook like he’d been born with it in hand, their leader. The man she loved, leading his troops.
A single word coursed through her as she traced his strong, broad form with her gaze.
Mine.
He disappeared, presumably down into the hold, to save more of the wreck, and Hattie made for him, crossing the long, barren dock to the ship, a hundred yards away, more resolute than ever.
She didn’t want the boats; she wanted him. She wanted him, and she wanted this life, next to him, on this burning dock. She wanted to be next to him on that burning boat. And if he refused to have her there, she would battle for him, reminding him every day that she did not need a protector. She only needed him.
She increased her pace, eager to close the distance between them and tell him just that.
Hattie had already crossed to the docks, walking close to the line of empty ships when she heard the shout behind her. Turning, she saw Ewan running toward her. She slid her hand into her pocket, palming Whit’s onyx blade, wondering what his enemy was going to do, prepared to sink it into his thigh, his shoulder, his chest—whatever was required.
He hadn’t reached her when the second explosion detonated—breaking the ship behind her into pieces, and sending them both flying.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The ship might be aflame topside, but below deck there were more than seventy tons of ice and cargo still salvageable in one way or another, assuming the men moved quickly.
Once he’d been certain Hattie was being safely ferried away from the docks, Whit had returned to the ship. Nik had arrived with the promise that Devil was on his way, ostensibly to assess the damage, but Whit knew better than anyone that the damage to the ship was irreparable. The contents, however, were a different story.
After checking on the men who’d been sent to the Rookery infirmary, Whit had collected a heavy iron box hook and set to work on the line of men who were working in unison, heaving crates up and passing them from man to man, until they’d saved as much cargo as they could. The men had come quickly from the taverns along the docks, forgetting that Hattie had paid them not to work that night—knowing that there was a difference between a deal made for rivalry and a tragedy requiring assistance.
When he’d assessed the hold, finally, he’d acknowledged a bit of loss—several cases of brandy had been smashed in the reverberations of the explosion, but Whit had been impressed with the security of the cargo.
He’d heard a second explosion in the distance while below deck, the sound tearing a wicked curse from him. The report had come quickly. Another boat. An empty one. Nothing that required his attention. Tonight, this hold required his attention, and quickly—before the ice, which had been carefully packed and cared for on the Oslo end of the journey, melted enough to make it difficult to move the contraband.
The Bastards smuggled inside ice, so as not to risk discovery—not even on a night like tonight, when it seemed every alternate plan should have been in play.
Instead, Whit worked at the head of the line, slowly and methodically, deciding which blocks were moved, which stayed, and which cargo left the hold when. He’d be damned if he’d see their carefully imported, untaxed product suddenly compromised by too much
fear and the same amount of speed.
He hooked two crates of bourbon in quick succession, passing them along the line before collecting a block of ice, and then a second. The man working alongside him groaned under the weight of the heavy blocks.
“Those are clear enough to sell,” Whit said of the ice blocks, raising his voice to make sure Nik heard him from her place deep in the hold. “And there’s a half dozen here that are the same—untouched by the explosion.”
The Norwegian nodded, then smirked in his direction. “And would you like them to be sold?”
“No.”
She grinned. “You save them for raspberry ices. How sweet.”
The children of the Rookery got sweets when there was ice in port. Whit saw no reason why that should change because of the evening’s disaster.
“Tell me, Nik,” he intoned as he hefted another block. “Does the Lady Nora have a sweet tooth?”
The men on the line laughed at the question, especially when Nik threw Whit an insulting hand gesture. Whit smiled and returned to his work, letting the rhythm of the line lull him into calm. Into thoughts of Hattie. He wondered if she preferred lemon or raspberry ice; imagined the sounds she would make if he fed her the sugary treat. If he dropped a spoonful of it between her breasts. How long he’d be able to resist the urge to lick it from her skin.
He grunted as he moved a cask of ale, passing it down the line.
I want it all.
Hattie’s strong, sweet voice, demanding everything she desired. Everything she deserved. Insisting that he be her equal partner or nothing at all.
Christ, he wanted it, too.
But tonight this world had almost killed her, and he hadn’t been able to protect her. Ewan had come for them—Whit had no doubt his brother was behind the explosion—but even if the lookouts tracked him and found him, threats would keep coming. The threat was the wide world. And Whit knew, without question, that though he could barely conceive of a life without Hattie, he absolutely could not live without her safe.
He’d been right to push her away. To put her in the hack.
Don’t do this. Believe in me.
He resisted her words, still echoing through him.
You don’t have to protect me.
Of course he did. He had.
“Beast!”
The call came from a distance, from above the hold, and he didn’t reply, not wanting to leave his work, the strain of the casks and crates burning his muscles and keeping the pain of sending Hattie away at bay.
Devil dropped down into the hold behind him nevertheless, pushing his way through the line. “Beast,” he repeated, and that’s when Whit heard the strange tenor of his brother’s voice. Familiar. Unsettling.
Something had happened. Something had gone terribly wrong.
He turned to face Devil, the taller man’s lean face all angles in the lamplight, cheeks shadowed, eyes focused in the darkness. Devil was in shirtsleeves—as was Whit—but he was missing his cane sword. The loss of it was like the loss of a limb, and Whit noticed instantly. He stayed his movement, coming to his full height in the low-ceilinged space. “What’s happened?”
A moment, then Devil shook his head.
Whit cursed in the darkness. “Goddammit.” It could only be news of the men they’d sent to the infirmary earlier. “Abraham? Mark? Robert?” They’d all been conscious—none of them with wounds that had struck Whit as terminal. But things did not always work out the way they seemed. “Did someone not make it? Which one?” He stepped toward his brother. “I shall tear London apart by the bricks until we find Ewan. He dies.”
It never got easier. How many had they seen die? Dozens? A score? A hundred? When one grew up on the streets of Covent Garden, death was a part of life, like violence and illness, but it never got easier.
“Who is it?” he asked again.
Devil shook his head, his eyes filled with something awful. Something Whit didn’t understand. What then? What else could it—
“Whit.” Devil wasn’t angry. It wasn’t frustration in his words, thick with the accent of their past. Thick with sorrow. “Bruv. It’s Hattie.”
Whit stilled, his brother’s face coming into sharp focus. Full of sadness. Fear, too. Fear of what might happen when Whit understood everything. And something else—fear that it might one day happen to him.
And that fear—tinged with the hot, panicked relief of a man who had dodged a bullet—brought the truth. Whit froze, understanding crashing through him. A third explosion. One that did more damage than the others.
Nik came toward him, horror on her pale face. “Beast,” she said softly. Entirely un-Nik-like.
He dropped the hook to the floor of the hold, his step toward Devil the only movement, no one working, everything stopped, like time. Like his heart. “No.”
Devil nodded. “The boys found her on the docks, a hundred yards from here.”
Whit looked over his shoulder to where Nik stood sentry, several feet away, her brow furrowed. He shook his head. “It’s not her. I put her in a hack.”
He’d paid the driver. Sent her to Mayfair.
Sent her away, not wanting her here. In danger.
Protecting her.
And she’d begged him to stay. Believe in me.
If he had—she would have been with him. Safe.
“She came back,” his brother said. “The second explosion must have—”
Whit slid a hand into his pocket, running a thumb over the pocket watch within. His warrior wouldn’t have waited half a block before finding a way back if she wanted to be here.
She’d found a way back. To stand beside him. His equal.
Would you know if she were dead?
Ewan’s question the night he’d threatened Hattie. The night he’d promised to take her from Whit if he didn’t give her up.
Would you know if she were dead?
He’d know. He’d know that the whole world was upended. He’d know the light had gone out. He’d know.
He shook his head. He’d know. “Where is she?”
“They’re bringing her to the surgeon.”
The surgeon.
“I have to get to her.” He couldn’t be late this time.
Devil nodded. “Yes. But—Whit . . .”
Fuck that. He wasn’t losing her. Not now. Not ever. “No.”
No. Whatever his brother was trying to say, Whit wasn’t hearing it. He was already tearing out of the hold to get to Hattie.
High on the rooftops above the docks, the third Bareknuckle Bastard crouched low, watching as her brother exited the hold of the burning ship, fresh with the news that his love was lost. She saw the fear in his gait, the determination, too, the way his expression flattened into stoic, strong resolve, as though he could go up against death.
As though he would, if it meant keeping her.
She watched as he landed on the firm ground, his mind fracturing just as his life would if Henrietta Sedley didn’t survive, into two halves—like a mast in a storm—before and after Hattie.
Grace watched, and she ached for Beast, and for his love.
She knew what it was to lose the most important person in the world.
She knew what it was to have him ripped from you.
And she knew what it was to survive it.
But she was through with mere survival. And she was through with the boy she’d lost—the boy they’d all lost—toying with them for sport.
She came to her full height, her long coat billowing out behind her, hat low over her brow. “This ends now,” she said to the pair of women who stood at her side. “As it should have ended years ago.”
Her lieutenants stood in silent sentry, watching the tableau below, blades at their belts. Grace pointed to the darkness, to the doorway where the wounded man had dragged himself into hiding after the blast. Where he’d watched as the Bastards’ lookouts had collected Hattie.
“Bring him to me.”
He’d waited for a ghost for twen
ty years.
Tonight, the Duke of Marwick got his wish.
She wouldn’t wake. So he kept vigil.
Whit didn’t remember how he got to the infirmary, didn’t remember the path he’d taken, whether he’d come via hack or on foot. Didn’t remember if he’d met anyone else along the way, nor how he got inside. Had he knocked on the door or kicked it in? Had he been led here? To this bed in a poorly lit corner of the main room of the Rookery hospital, where a single candle burned on a nearby table—the only thing that kept the darkness at bay?
It didn’t matter.
None of it mattered but her.
Hattie—still as stone in the bed, eyes closed, chest barely rising and falling, as life and death battled for her. Life and death . . . and Whit.
He didn’t remember seeing the doctor. Didn’t remember whatever useless words he’d offered—some explanation of her lack of consciousness. Some reference to a blow to the head. Something about ice and swelling and the mysteries of the human brain.
Something about trauma.
Trauma, Whit remembered, as it coursed through him, too, as he stared at her, as he came to his knees by her bedside and took her cool hand in his own, bringing it to his lips to kiss it, memorizing the weight of it. The feel of it, the softness of it.
Someone brought him a chair, but he didn’t use it. Whit had never thought much of God—but he knew what prayer looked like, and if staying on his knees would bring Hattie back, he’d stay there forever. And he did pray, in those moments, kissing her knuckles one by one, and willing her strong. Willing her fingers to tighten.
He prayed to God, yes, but mostly, he prayed to Hattie. And he prayed out loud, using all the words he could find, as though in giving them to her, he might keep her alive. It was a mad thought, but the only one in Whit’s head, and so for the first time in his life, he talked . . . without thought, without knowing when he would stop.
Because he would talk forever if it meant he could keep her there, with him.
Kneeling by her side, looking down at her perfect, beautiful face, made gold in the candlelight, he told her all his truths.
Brazen and the Beast Page 34
