Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards #2)(109)

He resisted the urge to tell her to stop. He hated how she qualified herself. Hated how she always made herself seem less, when she was so infinitely more.

But he understood those qualifications better than anyone.

Instead, he whispered, “Hattie,” her name coming soft on his lips as he ran a hand over his chest.

She ignored him, pressing on. “It wasn’t hard to convince myself I didn’t want it—the marriage, the companionship. After all, plenty of women age into spinsterhood. Plenty of men remain bachelors. And I had a plan.”

He nodded. “The Year of Hattie.”

She smiled at him. “That’s all a bit nonsense now, isn’t it?”

I’ll give you a year. I’ll give you a lifetime.

She seemed to hear the thoughts, as though he’d spoken them aloud. “I don’t want it from you.”

The words stung.

“I learned to adapt. I learned to want the business and to want to be captain of my own fate. I learned to accept that I could not have it all.”

But she could. He would make sure she had it all. She loved him, and he was willing to give her everything she wanted. The boats, the business . . . and all the bits she’d been told she could not have.

Before he could say it, she added, “And then you turned up.” She shook her head. “You turned up and you threatened all the things I wanted. You threatened the business I’d helped to build—the one I’d planned to sustain. You threatened the future I’d so carefully planned out.”

He shook his head. Not anymore. Had he not just offered it to her?

She looked at him and took a deep breath, then said, “But worse than all that, you made me want the rest. All the bits I told myself I had not wanted before. You made me want them. And not from just anyone. You made me want them from you.” She paused. “Not instead of. In addition to. All of it. Every bit of life that I might have. Vibrant and wild and full of mornings in the Covent Garden market and evenings on the docks and nights in your beautiful rooms, surrounded by candles and books and cushions in every color.”

She looked into the distance, where a lantern bobbed in the wind on the deck of the ship that held the Bastards’ most recent shipment, and she added, so soft that the words were lost on the wind, “I know it sounds mad. Like the wild dreams of a girl with no sense. But it’s not mad. I don’t need protection from it. I need a partner for it. I want it all.”

The words were not lost to Whit. He heard them. He heard them, and they rioted through him on a vision of her living that life. He could see Hattie’s skirts billowing in the riverfront breeze, as she watched over the men and their hooks—the men she’d already proven adored her by the way she’d plucked them from his reach that night. And they would adore her still—they would look to her for guidance and for direction and she would reign over them like a queen.

Like his queen. Because he would be by her side. He would be at her back, keeping the wind at bay. And perhaps, in time, there would be children, too, learning to climb on their mother’s boats and playing hide-and-seek in their father’s warehouse—little girls with violet eyes, shouting down at him from the rigging, and boys with bright smiles and a taste for raspberry sweets and lemon ice.

He reached for her, pulling her to him, loving the way she came without hesitation, even now, even as she denied him the thing he wanted most in the world. “Take it then. All of it. I give it, freely. Everything you want.”

Her eyes found his, the lantern light making them glitter. “I want love. And you cannot both love me and keep me locked away, precious and protected from the world. You cannot keep me safe and let me stand by your side.”

The words froze him. How many times had he told himself that he could save the world if only he did not love it? He couldn’t have another weakness. Not one that racked him with fear that he might one day not be able to protect her.

She was already enough of a weakness.

She’d already laid him low.

If he loved her—he’d never be free of his need for her.

Too late.

She shook her head and pulled away, out of his embrace. “I don’t want any of it in half measures. Not the business, not the fortune, not the future. And certainly not you.”

She stepped away, out of reach, wrapping her arms about her, and Whit’s heart began to pound, his mind resisting the movement, self-loathing filling him to his core. She was protecting herself.

From him.

And he wanted to scream at the realization. He wanted to scream, and go to her, and take her in his arms and promise her everything she wanted. The whole life. Himself included. He would love her.

And they would face the world—Ewan—all of it—together.

Perfectly matched.

And in the realization—something else.

He moved toward her, marveling at her strength, at the way she held her ground, his brave, brazen beauty. He could see so much in her eyes. Doubt, yes, and concern, no doubt out of fear that he’d been an ass before, and what was to stop him now? But there was something more there. Something that lit when he moved toward her. Something that he recognized, because he felt it so keenly himself.

Hope.

But before he could give voice to it, before he could make his case, before he could beg her to give him a chance, before he could tell her he could learn, before he could tempt her with all the things she’d wanted . . . all the things he wanted . . .