Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards #2)(43)

Instead, he watched her—taller than her father, her companion, and the others assembled outside the house. Bigger, yes, and more open. More honest. Too authentic for Mayfair. He remembered her in the Garden, teasing the broad-tosser, brandishing a throwing knife, cuddling a damn puppy, seeming to blend in with the world.

Here, though—she didn’t blend in. She stood out.

She was focused on her friend—he’d have laid money on them being the best of friends for the ease between them and the way the dark-haired woman smiled without artifice, listening as Hattie talked.

And, of course, Hattie was talking. Whit focused on her mouth, watching those beautiful lips move with fascinating speed. Wondering what she was saying, hating the distance between them and the way it kept him from hearing her.

Her friend laughed raucously, loud enough to carry, and Hattie relaxed into a broad grin of her own, the dimple in her right cheek flashing. Whit’s cock woke as he watched and he growled his irritation, a thread of jealousy coursing through him. He wanted those words. The full force of that smile. Those violet eyes on his.

He wanted her.

He stilled at the thought. Of course he wanted her. What man wouldn’t after time with her? What man wouldn’t want another sweet taste? Another lush touch? Another cry of her delicious pleasure?

But that was it. He wanted the woman’s body, and her father’s business.

Not her.

“She’s not my lady,” he said.

“Do you know what you are doing?”

No. “I have a plan.” He stiffened, straightening his coat. “And an invitation to the Duchess of Warnick’s ball.”

Devil cursed his surprise. “How in hell did you get that?”

“Warnick was happy to give us a favor.” The Duke of Warnick owned a distillery in Scotland that made a fortune aging whiskey in American bourbon barrels, provided to him at a premium by the Bareknuckle Bastards’ overland transport business. Of course, getting bourbon from the States into England beneath the usurious taxation of the Crown was not as easy as one might think, and moving empty barrels was an added risk for the smuggling operation—something Warnick knew.

The enormous Scotsman had provided Whit’s requested invitation immediately, with a single caution. If you embarrass my wife, I’ll end you.

Whit had refrained from pointing out that the Duchess of Warnick was one of the most scandalous figures in London society—the subject of a nude painting that was currently traveling Europe on exhibition—not that anyone in the ton spoke of it, for fear of upsetting her enormous husband and taking a beating for it.

Whit had no intention of embarrassing the duchess tonight. He had other plans. Other points to prove.

I don’t care if you’re not a gentleman.

In twenty years, Whit had never angled for the descriptor. He’d resisted it at every turn. He’d claimed Beast and built himself in the image, filling his days with the Rookery and his nights with the ring. He’d taken pride in his ability to move a hold full of smuggled goods in a seamless two hours, and even more in his ability to punish anyone who got in the way of the Bastards’ work, or their people.

There was no place for gentility in the Covent Garden filth, and that was the stuff from which he’d been made—built from the muck into what he was now, a Beast.

And that was why he stood in the darkness, watching her from a distance. Because everything he intended that evening ran counter to what he was. And still, he dressed in formalwear. A cravat. The trappings of gentlemen.

And he watched her, desire coursing through him, reminding him that she was right. That he was nothing like a gentleman. That he never would be.

But he could play the part.

“Not a favor for us,” Devil said, his smirk in his tone. “Walking into a pit of aristocratic vipers is not a thing I ever intend to do.”

“You married an aristocrat.”

“No,” Devil said. “I married a queen.”

Whit resisted the urge to roll his eyes at his brother’s reply. When Devil had met Lady Felicity Faircloth outside a ball very much like the one in the house across the street, she’d been queen of the outcasts—tossed to the edge of society where she was expected to fade into obscurity. But Devil hadn’t seen an outcast; he’d seen the woman he would love, marry, and worship for the rest of his life.

They’d married, shocking society, which hadn’t mattered in the slightest to Felicity, who’d happily eschewed the world into which she’d been born, becoming more and more a Covent Garden lass each day.

“How you landed her is beyond understanding,” Whit said.

Devil’s smile was nearly audible. “I wonder at it every day.” A gust of wind blew, and he dipped his head into the collar of his greatcoat, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I’d be lying if I didn’t wish for a warm bed with her instead of whatever this is.”

Whit offered a disapproving grunt. “I did not require such an image. Christ. Go home to her then.”

“And miss watching you enter society like a fucking mark?”

He looked to his brother. “You wanted vengeance. This is part of it.”

Except it wasn’t. It was a way for him to get to her. To show her that she was not the only one who could find a needle in a haystack. He imagined the surprise in her eyes when he approached her in the ballroom. Imagined the confusion when she found him on her turf. Imagined turning her world upside down, just as she threatened every time she arrived in Covent Garden.