Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards #2)(111)

“Of course they’re not my sins!” she shouted. “You think I don’t know that? But this is my world, too! This is my turf, too! If you are worried, I am worried. If you are there, I am there. And let Ewan come. We shall face him together. Together.”

He turned away from her, raising a hand to flag down a hack. “We will do no such thing. I don’t want you near him. He’ll come for you to punish me. And I can’t have that.”

“Why?”

“Because I took the only thing he ever cared about from him.”

“What? What could possibly be more valuable than his brothers?” She thought back to the docks. “Than the lives of the men and women who work for them?”

“Not what. Who.”

Understanding came swift and certain. “Grace.”

“Clever girl,” he said softly.

The hack pulled to a stop nearby, its horses huffing in the night. The driver looked to the orange light flickering over the rooftops, then to the knives strapped to Whit’s chest, nervously. “All right, milord?”

“Better when you get her far from here,” Whit growled as he pulled the door open.

“No,” she said, fury raging. “I am not leaving you here to face an inferno and a madman and whatever else is down there.”

He met her eyes, a small smile on his lips. “You plan to fight my battles for me, love?”

She shook her head. “Never for you. Alongside you.”

He smiled, sad. “Ever my warrior.”

He wasn’t going to let her. He was going to put her into this carriage and be off to a fight that could leave him destroyed. Worse. “Don’t do this. Believe in me.”

Believe in us.

“You don’t have to protect me.”

The words seemed to unlock him, filling him with determination. Lengthening him. Broadening him. Steeling him. “I do, though. It’s all I must do. You’ve asked me why I carry two watches,” he said, quick and stern, as though he was giving her directions to an impossibly difficult location. And perhaps he was. “I am never late. I am never late, because I was too late to save my mother. She was dead when I arrived, of whatever plague had ripped through the rooming house that week. Dead and alone. And I couldn’t protect her.”

“Oh, no . . .” Hattie said softly, reaching for him, her fingertips brushing the leather straps of the holster that caged him. The weapons he kept close.

“But I can protect you,” he went on. “I can protect you forever. I can keep you away from my brother. And I can keep you away from all of this.”

“This is part of it!” she said. “It’s part of the world I wish. Part of the life I wish. With you.” She shook her head. “Don’t you see? I’d rather have a night with you than a lifetime without you.”

He shook his head. “No. I’ll never see you into danger.”

Tears sprang, frustrated and angry. “You don’t get to decide. I do.”

“Goddammit, this isn’t the Year of Hattie anymore, this is your life! This is my sanity!” He closed his eyes. “Please. Get in the fucking hack. Now.”

She narrowed her gaze. “Make me.”

And he did, the wretched man, lifting her from her feet like she was a sack of grain and tossing her into the conveyance. Making sure she was unbalanced enough that she wouldn’t be able to stop him from closing the door.

She heard the thump of his fist on the side of the hack, barely sounded before the wheels were in motion. Outrage and fury flared as Hattie sat up, looking out the window, barely able to make out the shape of him, running back to the docks. Back to danger.

She banged on the roof of the hack. “Stop this carriage right now!”

“Can’t help!” came the muffled reply from the driver. “The man gave me a quid to take you to Mayfair!”

“A quid to abduct me, you mean!”

“If I was abductin’ you, lady, I wouldn’t be takin’ ye to Berkeley Square!”

She didn’t even live in Berkeley Square, but that was a moot point. “I’ll pay you to stop!”

Hesitation. “Seems like whatever was going on at the docks wasn’t for you, luv!”

So now the hack driver had decided to find his sense of right and wrong. “Argh! Men!” Hattie pounded on the roof of the carriage. She didn’t need protection from this stranger or from the man who’d just tossed her into his carriage. Dammit, hadn’t it been Hattie who’d tossed Whit out of a carriage all those nights ago?

“Dammit, dammit,” she screamed, moving to the door, watching the buildings sail past. She’d never felt as useless as in those moments as the carriage raced from the docks, where Whit and his men raced against water and flame.

She belonged there. With him. Alongside him.

Marry me. Join me.

Had he honestly believed that if she agreed to his offer, she wouldn’t stand with him? Did he not see that being a wife meant being a partner? Being an equal? Did he not know that if he was going to share his life with her, she wanted all of it? Even this bit?

Especially this bit.

The carriage decelerated, and she looked out the window. They were coming up on a collection of taverns where people flooded the streets, making high speed impossible . . . now was her chance.