Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards #2)(63)

“From what I hear, Henrietta Sedley spends a great deal of time free of the protections of Mayfair and chaperones.” A pause, then a low laugh. “Which explains how she landed here tonight, making eyes and arrangements with you.”

Whit’s entire body drew tight as a bowstring, prepared to let fly. “You don’t go near her.”

“Don’t make me have to.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Whit didn’t have to ask. He knew.

“I saw you together. I saw the way you promised her the world. The stars in her eyes. The stars in yours. Like she was your happiness. Like she was your hope.”

That word again. Like a weapon.

Like truth.

“But you’ll never be able to protect her. Not from me.”

Whit didn’t throw the knife. He’d lost the cool calculation necessary to do it, to seat it deep in Ewan’s left breast and stop his heart and this madness with a perfectly placed blow. Instead, he went for Ewan as he had when they were children, fear and fury propelling him into a fight that would have made their sire proud.

Only, this time, Whit was not the runt. He was the Beast.

He took the heir down in the darkness, rolling with him through the dirt and leaves, retaining his upper hand as he put the fist holding the knife directly into the other man’s face. Once. Twice. Blood spurted from Ewan’s nose. “Try it.” Another direct hit, Ewan squirming beneath him. “Test me. Twenty years have made me blade sharp. And I will protect her with my last breath, Your Grace.”

Everything shifted with the miscalculated honorific, meant to invoke another Grace, and doing just that—but making Ewan even more crazed. With madness came strength. In a rage, he fought back, coming for Whit like a runaway bull. “You don’t say her name!”

Within seconds, Whit’s back was to the ground, the hand holding his knife trapped in his brother’s impossible steel grip. They struggled, grappling for control, until Ewan caught a break, knocking Whit’s head back to the ground, where a large rock, unseen in the night, sent stars across his field of vision.

He lost his grip on the knife’s hilt.

And then the blade was at his throat. He froze, his eyes opening to find Ewan staring down at him, beyond reason. “Would you know if she were dead?”

Whit’s brow furrowed at the strange question. “What?”

“She’s gone,” Ewan said, nothing making sense. “I gave her into your keeping and she died and I didn’t—” He shook his head, lost to the thought. “I would know if she were dead. And it’s making me . . .” He trailed off.

Whit waited, beneath his own blade, seeing the truth.

They’d broken Ewan to protect Grace.

And now he threatened Hattie.

As though he heard the words, Ewan looked to him. “If I don’t get love, you don’t. If I don’t get happiness, you don’t. If I don’t have hope, you don’t.”

Heart pounding like thunder, Whit willed himself to sound calm. Unmoved. “Her destruction wins you nothing. If you come for someone, come for me.”

“You were so busy hating our father that you learned nothing from him,” Ewan said. “This is how I come for you. And she is the weapon I won’t hesitate to use. You care for her.”

No.

Yes.

“You care for her, and you’ll give her up. Like I did. Or I’ll take her from you. Like you did.”

There, in the words, was the echo of their past. Cold, calculating Ewan, who always knew the best way to fight. The best route to triumph. Now their father, who always knew the best path to pain.

Whit’s mind was already racing, unraveling the plans from earlier in the evening, restitching them to keep Hattie safe. To keep her far from him. From danger.

She’ll think you betrayed her.

She’ll be right.

It didn’t matter. Whit strained beneath the knife, furious for this moment, once again at Ewan’s absent mercy. But this time, it was not his life in the balance. It was something far more precious. “If you hurt her, I vow to you and God—duke be damned. Grace be damned. The past be damned—I’ll see you directly into hell.”

Ewan watched him for a moment, then said, “I am already there.”

And then he raised his hand, and knocked Whit out cold.





Chapter Fifteen


“Now, that’s a winning smile.”

Hattie finished checking a crate of silks that had come in on the ship from France—destined for Bond Street just as soon as the Sedley warehouse marked them arrived and unharmed. With a nod to the workman, she turned to find Nora coming up the gangway, the sun bright on her grass green walking dress.

Hattie’s smile widened. “What are you doing here?”

Nora stepped onto the deck. “A woman cannot see the new head of Sedley Shipping in her element?”

Hattie laughed, the description making her even lighter on her feet than she’d been earlier in the day. And the day before. And the day before that, the morning after she’d left Whit in the dark Warnick gardens with his promise of both body and business. She waved a young man holding a half-open crate of something forward. “Not head yet.”

Nora scoffed at the word. “If I’ve learned anything about that man, it’s that when he vows something, he does it.”