Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards #2)(93)

Anger and shock warred in his narrow gaze. “I completed the task, Lady Henrietta. Three times, by my count.”

“But I didn’t!” she cried, feeling like a proper failure. Dear God—all that pleasure he’d delivered her and she couldn’t do the same for him? Was she that undesirable that he could simply ignore the pleasure that had nearly destroyed her?

She’d never been so humiliated.

He didn’t respond, and Hattie used the silence to transform her frustration into anger. Fury coursed through her and she reveled in the way it incinerated her embarrassment. “You know, I wish I’d known it would be this way. I would have returned to the brothel.”

He growled. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“At least there, I would have known precisely what the arrangement entailed.” She paused. “At least there, I could have paid for the privilege of not being made to feel like a chore.”

The muscle in his jaw ticked again and again as he watched her. “Nothing about tonight was a chore.”

She’d never wanted to believe anything more in her life.

Her lips began to tremble. No. She would be damned if she’d show him how hurt he’d made her. She reached into the pocket of her coat and extracted the packet of sweets she’d taken from the shipment earlier that day. “Well, it’s over now.” She tossed the pouch to the settee. “I thought you might like those.”

He did not look at it.

“Right then,” she said, betrayal running through her once more. Hotter. Angrier. “Rivals it is.”

Silence.

She nodded, and headed for the door.





Chapter Twenty-One


“Beast.”

Whit looked up from his quiet sentry on the rooftops high above the offices of Sedley Shipping to find Devil standing several feet away. His brother had clearly said more than his name, and was waiting for acknowledgment, but Whit had been too focused on the street below, where a steady stream of dockworkers entered and exited the building—no doubt to receive their final payment from the business—all while a dozen Sedley employees hurried in and out of the warehouse, boxes and bins and paperwork in hand, preparing it for its new owner.

Not knowing that he stood high above, observing his recent acquisition.

Loathing himself for acquiring it.

“How did you find me?”

“You’ve put every available lookout we have to work searching for signs of Ewan. You think I would not know you would be here? Watching over her?”

Hattie.

It had been three days since she’d left him alone in his home, having destroyed it with the specter of her presence. He couldn’t do anything in the house—not eat or bathe or light a fucking candle—without thinking of her. Without reliving her, smelling like almond cakes and looking like sin.

So, he hadn’t gone home in three days.

Instead, he kept watch over her. He’d followed her at a distance from the moment she’d left him three nights earlier—to her home in Mayfair, to the Docklands, to the warehouse, in Nora’s curricle.

He watched as she kept her shoulders straight and her head high, as though he hadn’t hurt her. As though he hadn’t destroyed the Year of Hattie unequivocally, for no reason she could divine, but because he was a monster.

Because he couldn’t tell her the truth. If he did, Whit had no doubt his brazen warrior would seek Ewan out herself. And he couldn’t have that.

So, he watched without her knowing—ensuring her safety. Ensuring that Ewan couldn’t make good on his threat.

And it was devastating punishment, because he knew he’d hurt her. And that was worse than the loss of her. Almost worse than the memory of her smooth skin and her low laugh and the taste of her, and the feel of her coming apart beneath him, and the enormous feat of strength required not to stay inside her and share in her pleasure and take his own.

And somehow, in that act—an act that had ensured that he gave her only what she wished and nothing more—the act that ensured that she obtain ruination, but not regret, Whit had been the one pummeled with regret.

Because the moment he’d had Hattie Sedley naked before him, all he’d wanted was to keep her there forever.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t protect her.

Devil came to his side at the roof’s edge. “Is she in there?”

Whit didn’t reply.

“The boys tell me you’ve been here all day.”

“So has she.” She’d come early this morning, looking like sunshine. She’d entered the building and not exited, and so he’d waited, stillness and uncertainty a wicked test, like Orpheus walking out of hell. “Have we found him?”

Devil shook his head, sadness in his eyes. “No. But the rooftops are watching. If he turns up here or at the docks, they’ll get him.” He straightened. “And you’ve got eyes on your lady.” Not mine. “He shan’t hurt her.”

It was an empty promise. Ewan was wild with grief and anger, and every movement he made was out of passion, not sense. Whit was beginning to understand. “Not once we find him,” he said. “I’ll kill him myself.”

“And claim your lady?”

No. He would destroy Ewan for threatening Hattie. But it wouldn’t change anything—there would always be an enemy. Always a threat. And he would never be able to keep her safe. He looked back to the street, watching as a pair of dockworkers left the warehouse, hooks on their shoulders and smiles on their faces.