Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards #2)(57)

What in hell did that mean?

“Imagine always being the one who never wins. For my entire life, I’ve been a poor approximation of what I was supposed to be. No one longs for Hattie Sedley in their ballrooms.” It wasn’t true. He couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting her everywhere, all the time. “I am invited by virtue of being a daughter to a rich man. A friend to a beautiful woman. Hattie, good for a laugh but too loud, don’t you think? Too tall, don’t you think? Can’t be ignored, but needn’t be considered. Good old Hattie. Clever enough, I suppose, but no one wants to make a home with clever . . . And Hattie, tacked on at the end. Like someone’s dog.”

Whit’s teeth clenched at the words. At the hurt in them, at the madness of them from this woman he’d been unable to forget from the moment she’d touched his cheek in that dark carriage. “Who’s made you feel this way?”

The question came like a threat, and it was one. Whit wanted a name. And she gave one, as though he were a child and she were explaining something as simple as sunrise. “Everyone.”

There had been many times in Whit’s life when he’d wanted to decimate Mayfair, but never more than that moment, when he found himself riddled with the incandescent desire to destroy the entire world that had made this woman feel somehow less than perfect. He swallowed. “They’re wrong.”

She blinked, and something like disappointment flashed in her eyes. “Don’t. If there’s anything worse than knowing you’re out of place, it’s being told you fit in.” She gave a little laugh, one that belied the words. “And besides, when you’re born the antithesis of everything the world values, you learn to adjust. You learn to be the dog. Everyone likes dogs.”

He shook his head. Opened his mouth to tell her how wrong she was.

But she was still talking, this woman who never seemed to stop talking. And he forgot to speak, because he so liked hearing her. “I cannot win the game inside that ballroom. But I thought I could win another. I could win the business.”

Her father had said as much, but now, on her lips, the words held him rapt, even more so when she stepped toward him, one finger brandished like a saber. “I am good at it.”

He did not hesitate. “I believe it.”

She ignored him. “And not just the books. Not just the customers. All of it. The men on the docks need Sedley Shipping to keep their hooks working and pay them well. The men who load the warehouse. The drivers who deliver the cargo. We employ a small army and I know them. To a man. I know their wives. Their children. I—” She hesitated. “I care for them. All of them. All of it.”

She was growing more frustrated, and he understood it—the anger and the worry and the pride that threaded through her. He felt it himself when he stood in the Rookery, where he and Devil and Grace had built a world for people whose loyalty repaid them in spades. This woman loved her business, just as Whit loved his. She loved the Docklands just as Whit loved the Garden.

They were a match.

“You are better at it than most of the men in London.” He didn’t have to see it to know it.

“I can tie a sail in a high wind,” she added, “and bandage a knife wound—thank you very much for nearly killing my brother, by the way—and fix any problem that possibly arises—including the one where my idiot brother went up against two of the most powerful men in London. But it isn’t good enough.”

Now that she had started, she couldn’t stop, and Whit found he didn’t want her to; he wanted her to go on. He’d listen to her rage forever, even as his mind was already working to change it. To fix it. To give her what she wanted.

Impossible, if he was to do what was necessary.

She was still talking. “It’s supposed to be mine. It’s supposed to be mine and not simply because I want it. God knows I do—all of it. I want the inkpot and the ancient balance sheets and the rigging and the resin in the hold and the sails. I want the freedom. But more than all that . . . I earned it.” She paused for breath and a vision flashed, ink stains on her wrists in the brothel. Proof of her passion, as though the way she fairly vibrated before him now was not enough. “And do you know what my father said?”

“He said you are a woman, so you cannot have it.” It was bollocks.

“He said I am a woman, so I cannot have it,” she repeated, narrowing her gaze on him. “My being a woman shouldn’t stop any of it.”

“No. It shouldn’t.”

She was ramping up again. “I’m so damn tired of being told it should. Being told I don’t know my own mind. Being told I’m not strong enough. Not clever enough. I am.”

“You are.” Christ. She was.

“I’m strong,” she insisted.

“Yes.” Stronger than any muscle in the Garden.

“I’m exceedingly clever. I know a woman shouldn’t say such a thing but, dammit, I am.”

He was mad for the fact she’d said it. “I know.”

“The fact that I’ve different”—she waved a hand over her body—“bits . . . shouldn’t matter. Especially since these bits . . .” She trailed off. Shook her head. “Anyway.”

He wouldn’t trade her bits for anything. “I agree.”

She blinked. “You do?”