Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards #2)(56)

Hattie was smart—keen and clever and would make a magnificent heir to her father’s business. Was it possible that that was tied up in her frustration that he’d sorted out her brother’s involvement in the attacks on the Bastards’ shipments?

Before he could follow the thought, her frustration flared, and she narrowed her eyes on Whit. “You negotiated in bad faith. You toyed with me. You’ve known all along.”

“It wasn’t difficult to put it all together, Hattie. I assume your brother thought he could make some quick money off us and impress your father.”

“It wasn’t quite so simple.”

He’d known she’d been hiding it, but the halfhearted defense of her brother drove the point home, and Whit found that the tacit admission in the words was more frustrating than expected.

“No, it wasn’t simple. Because he’s not working alone.” She stilled, surprise in her eyes. Surprise that Augie was working with someone else? Or surprise that Whit knew?

“Who is he working with?” she asked.

He didn’t want her anywhere near Ewan, who would hurt her without hesitation if he knew it would punish Whit. And it would.

“How do you know?” she pressed.

That was an easier question. “I went looking for information about your brother the moment I learned your name, and by all accounts, he isn’t very clever.”

She did not reply. He was right.

Whit pressed on. “From what I hear, Augie Sedley doesn’t have half the business sense of his father or a quarter of the brains of his sister.”

A little twitch at the corner of her lush mouth. He’d pleased her with that. And pleasing her pleased him. But now was not the time for pleasure. “From what I hear, he has a valet who is equally unintelligent, but bears a heavy fist and is willing to double as young Sedley’s personal gorilla.”

She grimaced. “Russell.”

He stiffened at the name. At the shudder of disgust she gave as she spoke it. Anger shot through him as he considered all the possible reasons for that disgust. Not anger. Fury. Rage. “Has he touched you?”

“No.” She shook her head quickly, and the truth made him light-headed with relief. “No. He’s just a brute.”

“That, I believe. He packs a hell of a wallop.” He lifted a hand to the back of his head, to the whisper of tenderness that remained from the night of the hijacking.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as though she were responsible for the blow.

He ignored the pleasure the soft words wrought. “If this were a year ago, I’d not be worried in the slightest, because the Bastards are smarter and savvier than your brother and his thug on their best day. But four shipments have been compromised in the last few months. On three different routes. I know who is behind it, and I intend to destroy him. But I need your brother in order to do it.”

There was a pause as the words fell between them, his logic clear and infallible. She nodded, seeming to understand that he wasn’t asking her for help. Understanding that he couldn’t allow another slight. That he wouldn’t allow the ones that had already been committed, not if they were from a real enemy. From one he had to worry about more than her brother and his muscle.

“So, you went to my father,” she said, softly. Of course he’d gone to her father. His business was in peril. The world he’d built. The people who lived in it. And Hattie didn’t know enough to keep it safe. “You told him about Augie.”

He heard the devastation in the words. The betrayal. And damned if it didn’t sting. “I did.”

She nodded, but did not look to him. “You should have told me you were going to do that.”

“Why?”

“Because that would have been fair.”

He wished he could see her eyes in the darkness. Was grateful that he couldn’t. Because he had no choice but to disappoint her. “Fairness does not win wars.”

A pause. “And this is war?”

“Of course it is. It has to be.”

“With me,” she said.

Not if you fight on our side. Where the hell had that thought come from? He pushed it aside. “With our enemies.”

“Augie is my brother.”

He didn’t reply. What could he say? He, too, had a brother. A sister. Hundreds of people who relied upon him. People he had vowed to keep safe. All threatened by Ewan. And by Hattie’s brother. This was his only path to meting out vengeance.

She spoke in his silence. “I thought we had a deal.”

He deliberately misunderstood. “You’ll get your deflowering.”

She exhaled, harsh in the dark night. “It’s not as though he’s going to hand Augie over, you know. You put a knife in his thigh—a fact my brother will happily divulge the moment my father confronts him.”

She didn’t know her father already knew.

On other lips, the words might have been combative. But here, on hers, they were something else. Angry, yes. But frustrated again. Fraught. Almost panicked.

He let silence fall around them—long enough for her to fidget beneath his attention. And then he said, “What are you afraid of, Hattie?”

“Nothing.”

He shook his head. “That’s a lie.”

“How would you know—you who have everything?” The words came like a shock. “You with your fiefdom and your world filled with people who adore you and your business an immense success, lining your pockets. You, the kind of man feared and revered by your competitors and not a single one of them doubting your skill. You’re a damn king. And as though that’s not enough, you’re also the handsomest man anyone has ever seen—which is ridiculous, by the way.” Any pleasure he might have felt at the words disappeared in their irritation, and then his own confusion when she added, “Imagine being me.”