Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards #2)(31)

He took a step toward her. “For someone who claims not to know anything about how I came to be unconscious in her carriage last evening, you know a great deal.”

Those sinful lips curved into a smile, the expression like a blow. “You think I would not ask questions after our encounter?”

He should have scowled. Should have pounced on the evidence that she had a close relationship with the enemy that had shot his man and stolen his shipments and knocked him out. Should have held her family and its business to the fire and promised to set it aflame if she did not give him the information he desired.

He should have. But instead, he said, “And what else did you discover about me?”

What the fuck was he doing talking to her?

Her smile turned to secrets. “I am told that once you come for someone, you don’t stop until you find them.”

That much was true.

“But I wasn’t certain you would come for me.”

Of course he would have. He would have come for her in her Mayfair tower even if she didn’t have the information he desired.

No. Whit resisted the thought—an impressive feat until she added, that punishing dimple flashing in her cheek, “So I came for you.”

He would never admit the pleasure that coursed through him at that confession. Nor would he admit to the pleasure that came when she reached for his hand, lifting it in one of hers.

“What happened to your hand?” The kidskin gloves she wore did not stop the sting of her heat as she stroked her fingers over his knuckles, red and stinging from the blow he’d put to the wall earlier. “You’re hurt.”

He sucked in a breath and removed his hand from her grasp, shaking it out. Wanting to erase her touch. “It’s nothing.”

She watched him for a moment, and he imagined her seeing more than he wished. And then, softly, she said, “No one would tell me about you.”

He grunted. “That didn’t stop you asking. Which returns us to the issue of your chaperone. Any number of toffs could have seen you. And I imagine any number of toffs would have questioned your lack of subtlety in asking for me.”

Her lips twisted in a wry smile. “I am not known for subtlety.” There was something more in her tone than humor, though—something he found he did not like.

He refused to show it. “I can’t imagine why. I’ve known you for less than a day and during the time I was not unconscious, you were frequenting a brothel and threatening to knife a pair of Garden criminals.”

“It’s not as though you’re a Mayfair gentleman yourself.” She smiled. “Or did you forget the bit where I made an improper arrangement with you yesterday?”

Arrangement. The word sizzled through him with the memory of the night before. Of the taste of her. Of the feel of her in his arms. Of the damn look of her—like a banquet.

“Why not make one with one of your toffs?”

She seemed to consider the option. Don’t consider it, he willed silently before she replied, “Well, first, I don’t have a single toff, let alone more than one.” Because toffs were fucking imbeciles.

He grunted. “No choice but to slum it.”

Her eyes widened. “I don’t consider it . . .” She couldn’t repeat the words. Christ, she was soft. “. . . that.”

“What, then?”

She tilted her head. “I don’t care if you’re not a gentleman. I don’t require someone who knows their way around Mayfair. I see no reason why our arrangement should have anything to do with your ability to waltz or your knowledge of the hierarchy of the peerage.”

But he did know all those things. He’d been trained to be a peer. He’d spent two years learning the intricacies of the aristocracy. Of their shit world. And but for a single moment two decades ago, he might have been a different man. He might have met her under a different circumstance. If Ewan had lost and Whit had won—he would have been a duke.

And he could have come for her in another way entirely.

Not that he wished to. All he wanted was to get her out of Covent Garden.

What was it they’d been talking about? “The chaperone.”

She lifted a shoulder and let it drop beneath that finely knitted shawl that he imagined would never be white again after an afternoon in the muck. “I don’t require one.”

His exhale might have been shock if he were a different sort of man. “Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t. I am not a child. I am twenty-nine years old today, which, by the way, would usually merit some kind of felicitation.”

He blinked. “Happy birthday.” Why in hell had he said that?

She smiled, bright as the damn sun, as though they were in a ballroom somewhere, instead of a back alley. “Thank you.”

“You don’t need a chaperone. You need a jailer.”

“Literally no one cares a bit about where I go.”

“I do.”

“Excellent,” she said smartly, “as I came for you.”

It was the second time she said it, and the second time he liked it, and he did not wish to repeat the experience. “Why?”

She extended the knife to him then, opening her palm to reveal the hilt, dark against the pale glove she wore—a glove he wished wasn’t there, so he might see the ink stains on her wrists and read the story they told on her palm. “This belongs to you,” she said simply. “I promised you I would return it.”