Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards #2)(100)

“My father was a duke.”

Hattie’s jaw dropped at the words, spoken like they were taking a turn about a Mayfair ballroom. She shook her head as though to clear it. “Did you say . . .”

Another humorless laugh. “Twenty years since I’ve said my mother’s name, and I’ve never said that. But yes, my father was a duke.”

“And you were born at St. Thomas’s.”

“My mother’s parents came from Spain to work the estate of my father’s father.” He paused, as though, for the first time, it occurred to him—“My grandfather.” After a moment, he continued. “My mother’s father was a great horseman. He was brought from Madrid to keep the stables on the estate. My mother was born there, raised a stone’s throw from glory.”

Raised on a ducal estate in England, daughter to the stable master, she would have been happy and content—destined for a life as a wife and mother, married well. Whit would have been born into a life that was nothing like the rookeries of Covent Garden.

“What happened?”

“Her parents died young and she was given a place in the main house.”

Dread pooled deep in Hattie. She’d heard the story a thousand times. Men of means, and the way they destroyed the young women around them. “Whit—” She reached for him, but he stepped away.

“She never said a bad word about him. Used to make excuses for what he did. He was duke, after all, and she a servant, and one did not marry the other. But she was beautiful, and he was charming . . . and men were men . . .” He trailed off, and Hattie mapped the high cheekbones and full lips that had robbed her of speech when she’d first met him. She had no difficulty believing that his mother was a great beauty.

When he looked at her, there was something in those beautiful amber eyes—the ones he shared with his brother and so must have come from his father. “In my life, I have done many things. Things that shall send me straight to hell. But I have never repeated the sins of my father.”

“I know that.” Without question, she knew that.

He took a deep breath. “I was young, and I did not understand. I believed her—I believed that we’d left the estate because that was what was done, and that we should be grateful for our flea-infested mattress in Holborn and for the money we had that was not even enough to light candles for her to see properly. But now . . .” He trailed off, and she waited. Hating the story. Desperate for it.

“I know now that she ran from that hospital. That she ran so they wouldn’t take her from me.” Hattie’s chest tightened at the anguish in his voice. “They would have called it taking me from her. But it wouldn’t have been that. That would have been good for her. That would have saved her. And instead, she sacrificed herself for me.”

It wasn’t true. “She didn’t.”

“She did,” he said, lost in the memories of a woman who must have loved him desperately. “When he found us, he didn’t even look at her. He came for me.”

“He took her from you,” she said softly.

He met her eyes, something like gratitude in them, before he turned away. Hattie followed, like she was on a string. When he got to the center mast of the ship, he reached up to touch the scarred wood there, where over a lifetime, a thousand things had been nailed to the wood.

He spoke to the mast. “You left my note here.”

She did not hesitate at the change of topic. “I have a flair for the dramatic.”

He looked over his shoulder at her. “The Year of Hattie.”

“It’s going absolutely terribly.”

“Things take time,” he said.

“I’ve waited quite a bit of time already.”

He nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning back against the mast, his hat low over his brow, his greatcoat blowing about his legs, making him look the very portrait of a roguish sailor, and for a moment, Hattie wondered what it would be like if she were his. If she didn’t have to battle him. If he would simply wrap her in his coat and let her revel in his warmth and put her arms about his neck and . . .

Love him.

What if this remarkable man let her love him?

“I want to tell you the rest.”

“I want to hear it.” His gaze flew to hers, narrow and assessing, as though she’d surprised him. “It is going to be awful, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said.

She nodded. “And you’ve never told anyone else.”

“No.” He wouldn’t have.

“Let me bear some of it.”

He looked up to the mast, where the sails were tightly wrapped and tied. “Why would you want that?”

Because I love you.

She couldn’t say that. So, instead, she took a step closer, coming near enough that her skirts billowed around his legs, and said, “Because I can.”

And that seemed to be enough.

“There were four of us.”

She nodded. “All born on the same day.” He’d told her that much.

“Devil’s mother was a sailor’s wife. Mine a servant. Ewan’s was a courtesan. And Grace’s—she was a duchess.”

Hattie’s eyes went wide. “She is legitimate? But I thought you said—”