Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards #2)(118)

Nora shook her head, tears in her eyes. “I’m not telling you.” She lifted her voice. “Wake up and tell him yourself, Hattie.”

He nodded. That was good. He wanted to hear it from her. He wanted to know everything about her, and he wanted it all to come direct from the source. He looked back to her, casting about for something else.

Striking on it.

“Devil,” he said, raising his voice so his brother could hear him.

“Aye?”

“There’s a house in Berkeley Square. Next to Warnick’s. It’s empty.”

“Yeah?”

“Buy it. Put it in her name.”

His brother did not hesitate over the request. He nodded. “Done.”

Whit brushed her hair from her face, ran his fingers over the impossibly soft skin of her cheeks. “You see, love? We’re buying your house. You’ll have to wake to live in it, though. And I’d like very much to live in it with you.” He reached to touch her, to brush the hair from her brow. “The Year of Hattie is shaping up.”

She moved.

It was barely there, the movement. A flicker behind her eyelids. He wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t so focused on her. He came up off his knees, leaning over her on the bed. “Hattie?” He moved closer, taking her hand in his again, trying not to squeeze too hard. “Hattie. Please, love.”

Another flicker. “Yes. That’s it, love.”

The air in the room shifted, everyone coming closer, the whole assembly on a knife’s point, except for Whit, who was talking again. “You have to open your eyes, Hattie. You have the most beautiful eyes. Have I told you that? I’ve never seen eyes like yours—so expressive. And when you told me you loved me earlier, you nearly put me to my knees. Wouldn’t you like a chance to do that again? Open your eyes, love.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Open your eyes so I can tell you how much I love you.”

And she did.

Her lids opened and her gaze focused on his, and—impossibly—she smiled, as though she hadn’t just been on death’s door. And she did put him to his knees, because he found he did not have the strength to hold himself up.

Nora gasped, and Nik was out the door for the doctor, and Hattie tightened her hand in his, and said, “That was a very tempting offer.”

He laughed at the words, unable to keep the tears from spilling down his cheeks. “I’m very happy to hear it.”

Her hand came to his head, her fingers tangling in his hair, weak, but there. “Tell me,” she whispered.

“I love you, Henrietta Sedley.”

Her smile broadened, dimple flashing. “I like that.”

He barked another laugh. “As do I, now that you’re awake enough to hear it.” He paused, then looked over his shoulder to the door. “Where’s the damn doctor?”

She shook her head, “No doctor. Not yet,” she said. “Not before I say this: I set out to claim myself—body, business, home, fortune, future. But you own it all.”

“We don’t have to marry,” he said. “You want the business. It’s yours. I’ll have the papers drawn up now. The fortune you’ll no doubt make with your sharp mind and your charm. Have all of it to yourself. But . . .” A plea edged into his words. “Let me share your future. Not as your husband. Not as your protector. As your partner. As your equal. However you like. I’ll take whatever you’ll give, as long as we’re together.”

She shook her head with a little wince that had him looking for the doctor again. “No, Whit. You misunderstand. You own it all. Every bit of me. And I give it, freely.”

He pressed a kiss to her knuckles and then to her lips, to her cheeks and forehead and then back to her mouth. “I own nothing. Everything of mine is yours, nothing if it is not shared. My business, my life, my world, my heart.”

She smiled, small, but there. “I am your protector.”

He closed his eyes at the words. At the pleasure that rioted through him with them. “Yes. Christ, yes.”

“Tell me again.”

And he did, low and sweet against her lips. “I love you.”

The doctor came and went, pronouncing her on the mend but requiring observation for several days in the infirmary. Their assembled guests left with proper introductions and relieved kisses and promises to visit daily, and moments later, a cacophonous cheer sounded from outside, shaking the windows in their seats.

Inside, Hattie’s eyes went wide, and she lifted her head from where it rested on Whit’s chest, as the moment they were alone, he’d climbed into bed with her and vowed not to leave the place until she did. “What was that?”

“The Rookery, cheering their lady on the mend.”

She smiled at that. “Their lady?”

“My lady.”

“My Beast.” A pause and then, “Kiss me again.”

He did, first gently, and then, when she pulled him closer, deeper. When he finally lifted his head, she sighed. “Tell me again.”

“I love you.”

Pink washed over her cheeks—a mark of her pleasure, and of her health. And then she closed her eyes and said, “Now tell me all the other things. All the things you said when I couldn’t hear them.”

And Beast settled in, his lady in his arms, content to spend the rest of his life doing just that.