“I’m only arguing in favor of equality!” Nora spread her hands wide with a laugh. “All right, then, where do we go from here?”
“I really can’t imagine how he knew I’d be here tonight. I’m never—” She stilled. Turned to Nora, who appeared transfixed by the starry sky above them. “You.”
Nora looked to her. “Hmm?”
“You said we should come here. You pushed it. I wanted to stay home and look over the books.”
“I like balls,” Nora said.
“You loathe balls.”
“Fine! The Duchess of Warnick sent a special note asking for me to attend and to bring you and your father. I don’t like disappointing duchesses.”
“You don’t care a bit about disappointing duchesses.”
“That’s true. But I quite like this one, and she did promise a wonderful time.”
Hattie pointed an accusatory finger. “You are a traitor.”
Nora gasped. “I am not!”
“You are! You should have told me it was a trap!”
“I thought it was going to be another man in need of a dowry! I didn’t know it was going to be a trap laden with your partner in erotic escapades!”
It was Hattie’s turn to gasp.
“Not that I don’t fully support said escapades,” Nora qualified with a grin.
“He is not my partner in—” She paused. “Nora. This man is all that stands between me and my lifelong dream.”
“And the escapades?”
Hattie gave a little sigh. “Obviously, those were quite nice.” Before Nora could speak, Hattie added, “But he isn’t here for that tonight. Which makes it very disconcerting to think that he’s here for something else.”
“You mean, like another woman?”
She hadn’t, but that idea sent her stomach sinking, if she were honest. “No. I mean, here for something that would impact our negotiation. I don’t know . . . information on Augie or . . . meeting my father. That cannot happen. I must convince him to leave immediately.”
“Hmm,” Nora said, the perfunctory sound drawing Hattie’s attention.
“What?”
“Well, I’m not sure that’s a reasonable plan.”
“Why not?” Hattie said. “I’ll just head back in there and . . . find him first.”
“That might be difficult,” Nora said.
A gust of cold air tore across the balcony. Hattie narrowed her gaze on her friend. “Why?”
Nora pointed past her shoulder, to the bright ballroom framed by the open doorway beyond. “Because he’s speaking to your father right now.”
Hattie spun in the direction of the other woman’s finger.
Of course he was.
She’d had such wild, wonderful plans for the Year of Hattie when it had begun. And now, here she was, prepared to take the world by storm—to spend her twenty-ninth year sorting out the past so she might begin the future. And it seemed no one had told the Year of Hattie that it should cooperate with those plans.
Certainly no one had told Mr. Saviour Whittington that he should cooperate with those plans. “Damn,” she whispered.
“Whoever he is,” Nora said softly, “he’s very good at this.”
Her fingers tightened around the silly dance card Nora had insisted she take. It was the kind of thing that women who did not worry about business, or money, or retribution, or whether the man who’d put a knife in their (albeit deserving) brothers several days earlier might recount the entire thing to their fathers, cared about. It was the kind of thing Hattie had never cared about. And still, for some reason, in that moment, all she could do was stare at Beast’s beautiful face and revel in the bite of the parchment in her palm.
Not that it would do her any good at all in the battle that was to come. Hattie might as well have been holding a violin for all the value it did her. Indeed, a violin might have been more useful, as she could have cracked him over the head with it, which would have made a scene, yes, but also would have resulted in the two men not speaking.
As though he sensed the threat in her thoughts, he lifted his head from where he’d dipped low to speak to her father over the din of the ballroom, his strange amber gaze instantly finding hers. And then, as though he’d spent his entire life in Mayfair ballrooms, he winked at her.
“Interesting . . .” Nora drawled.
“No. It’s not interesting at all. What game is he playing?” And why wasn’t she more angry at him for playing it here, in front of all the world? She should be terrified. She should be furious. But instead . . . she was excited.
Warrior.
“We should go to more balls.”
“We’re never going to another ball again,” Hattie tossed over her shoulder as she began to move, her heart pounding.
And then something gleamed in his eyes, and she recognized the emotion as the one rioting through her.
Anticipation.
He returned to speaking to her father as she pushed through the door. Under other circumstances, it would have been a comic scene: the enormous young man leaning down into the ear of the aging earl, notoriously diminutive. Her father liked to claim that it was his short stature that made him the perfect sailor, which was partially true—he barely had to duck to move about below deck on his ships. But this man—the one she no longer thought of as Beast, the one she could not help but think of as Whit despite that being entirely inappropriate—eclipsed him like the sun.
No. Not like the sun. Like a storm, come upon a ship out at sea, thieving blue skies and replacing it with silent, dark clouds.
A storm, big and beautiful and unpredictable.
What was he telling her father?
It could be anything, as it was just the two of them, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the room. Hattie quickly calculated the probability that they were discussing the mundane—weather, refreshments, the temperature of the room, or the number of footmen present.
Was it possible for something to have a negative probability?
It was far more probable that they were talking about her.
Hattie increased her speed, nearly knocking over the Marchioness of Eversley, tossing back a quick apology. If it were anyone else, she might have—might have—stopped to apologize, but the marchioness came from one of the most scandalous families in Britain, so if anyone would understand the need to quash whatever conversation was taking place between her father and a man who knew far too much about her dealings of the last few days, it was she.
Hattie was nearly upon them when the earl nodded, a shadow on his brow. Hattie caught her breath—she couldn’t identify the emotion, but she didn’t like it. And then she was there, and the words were coming before she could stop them. “That’s quite enough of that.”
The earl’s eyes went wide and he turned to Hattie as Whit straightened and . . .
Oh, dear.
“That’s trouble,” Nora said softly from somewhere behind Hattie’s right shoulder.
No one should have a smile that stunning. Hattie had a mad urge to throw up her hands and block the full force of it. To resist its foreign pull. Keep your head, Hattie.
She swallowed. “What are you doing here?”
He took the rude question in stride, extending a hand. “Lady Henrietta.” The words were cultured and soft, missing their usual coarse darkness.
Hattie’s brows snapped together and she tilted her head, confusion and something startlingly close to disappointment teasing through her. Was this the same man? It couldn’t be. Where was the growl? The accent, grown in the Garden?
A flame lit in his amber eyes—the one that set off a twin flame deep in her.
No. He couldn’t simply tempt her into docility. Her gaze slid to his outstretched hand, wary. She did not reach for it. “Answer my question, please.” When he didn’t—of course that characteristic remained—she turned to her father, registering the censure in them. “What were you discussing?”
The earl’s lips flattened. “Reconsider your tone, gel.”
She swallowed her distaste at the words, barely able to consider her response before Whit spoke. “Cheadle.”
There was the darkness. Warning, too, rougher and harsher than the warning that had come from her father. She turned surprised eyes on Whit, perfectly turned out and beautiful as a Greek statue, suddenly rugged as a cobbled street.
The transformation should have unsettled her, but it didn’t.
Instead, it comforted her.
Which almost made everything worse. She came to her full height and lifted her chin. “You don’t talk to him.”
Nora barked in surprise as conversations quieted around them, a collection of London’s most revered aristocrats doing their very best not to look, but absolutely to listen. She cleared her throat under the weight of her parent’s curiosity, and said, “That is to say, Mr. Whittington”—his lips quirked in amusement at the use of his name—“I require you . . .” One black eyebrow rose in the pause that followed the trail of the words, and Hattie leapt to add, “For a dance.”
She lifted the crumpled dance card in her hand. “You’re on my dance card.” She turned to her father. “He’s on my dance card.”
An interminable silence fell. Months long. Years.
Hattie turned to Nora. “He’s on my dance card.”
Nora, blessed Nora, took up the thread. “Yes. That’s why we’re here. Clearly!”
Hattie could have done without the clearly, but she’d take what she could get.
“You’re to dance . . . with him,” her father said.
Hattie waved the card attached to her wrist. “That’s what it says!”
“Does it, then.” The earl seemed less convinced.
“Quite!” she said, the pitch of her voice somewhere in the realm of a squeaky hinge as she turned to the man in question. “Doesn’t it?”
He was silent, the strains of the waltz beginning behind them the only sound, a starting pistol for Hattie’s worry. Perhaps he couldn’t dance. No, not perhaps. He most definitely couldn’t dance. This was the kind of man who wore holsters full of throwing knives and landed himself unconscious in carriages. He frequented brothels and Covent Garden taverns and threatened street criminals . . . he was a criminal himself. He might dress the part, but he did not waltz.
Which was why she lost her breath when he dipped his head like a practiced, polished aristocrat and said, all calm, “Indeed, it does, my lady.”
It was just the surprise that he was willing to dance. It had nothing to do with the honorific. Nothing at all to do with the fact that he’d never called her his lady before. Not even a bit to do with the fact that suddenly those two little words—the ones that she’d heard her whole life—took on an entirely new meaning on his lips.
And then her hand was in his, and he was leading her into the crush of dancers, pulling her into his arms, her hands settling on the muscles beneath his coat, hard as steel. Of course he couldn’t dance, the thought whispered through her. He is made for stronger stuff than that.
She leaned in, just enough to speak softly at his ear—ensuring no one else would hear—“If you would like, I can twist an ankle.”
He pulled back, surprise and something like humor in his eyes. “I would not like that, as a matter of fact.”
“But it would save you from having to dance.”
His brows rose. “Are you sure it wouldn’t save you from having to dance?”
“Of course not. I dance perfectly well,” she said. “I was simply helping you, as you do not.”
“And you know this because . . .”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Because of course you don’t.”
He nodded, his hands tightening against her, strong and firm and safe and wonderfully warm, making her wish that they were not here, in front of all the world. Her breath caught, desire pooling deep and distracting—distracting enough that she didn’t notice they were moving until he said, at her ear, “I think I shall do just fine.”
And he did do just fine. He did more than fine. He moved with practiced grace, as though he’d been waltzing every evening of his life, deftly avoiding the other couples as he wound her through the room. Hattie had danced hundreds of dances in her time out—in those early years her dowry had made her vaguely appealing to the men of the ton—but she’d never once felt like this, the way she did in mere seconds in his arms. As though she, too, had practiced grace.
Her gaze flew to find his, liquid amber, focused on her. “You know how to dance.”
He grunted his reply, and Hattie took comfort in the noise—finally, something unsurprising from him. She spread her fingers over his coat sleeve, the heat of him passing through the fabric, and sighed, closing her eyes and letting herself fall into the simple sway of the dance.
Letting herself forget for a moment. Forget Augie and the business and why she was so worried—forget the deal they’d made and her dreams for her future, and the Year of Hattie. The world distilled itself in that place, in the arms of that man, his heat and his movement and his strength wrapping around her on a thread of lemon sugar.
And, for just a moment, Hattie forgot herself, too.
But a moment doesn’t last. Soon, she opened her eyes to find his gaze rapt on her, and she stiffened beneath his attention, keenly aware of the things he could see—the ruddy pink of her skin—nothing like a ripe peach, nothing even close to berries and cream—her too-wide nose, her too-round cheeks, her full chin—the all-too-visible reasons why she was on the shelf.
Silence was not a friend to the unattractive woman; it left far too much time for aesthetic analysis. When he took a deep breath, she couldn’t resist filling the silence. “You could have told me you knew how to dance,” she said, turning away from him for a moment before realizing that he was now looking at her ear, and weren’t ears the strangest parts of the human body? She’d rather he looked at her eyes. Her eyes were fairly uniform in size and of an uncommon color, and possibly her best feature. Not that she should care that he noticed her best feature.
Oh, who was she attempting to fool with that line of thinking? She absolutely wanted him to notice her best feature. She wanted him to acknowledge it as best. Not just in relation to all her other features, but in relation to everyone else’s features, as well. Which wasn’t possible, she knew, but she ought to acknowledge such a desire, shouldn’t she? Wasn’t that what the Year of Hattie was about? Acknowledging desire? Chasing it?
So there it was, she wanted him to think her eyes were pretty.
Had anyone ever used the word pretty to describe her?
“Why would I do that?”
She blinked at the reply, instantly thinking he was referring to her eyes and feeling oddly defensive about it before she remembered her earlier question about dancing. “Because—you must have been insulted by my insinuation that you didn’t know how to dance.”
He shook his head, the movement barely there. “I wasn’t.”
She didn’t believe him. “I thought you didn’t dance, which clearly you do; I thought you didn’t understand the peerage, and here you are with an invitation to a duke’s home, so that’s utterly false, too. I underestimated you.”
He was silent for a long time, the sway of the dance the only thing between them before he turned his amber gaze on her and said, “You said you didn’t care if I knew any of those things.”
Truth came instantly. “I didn’t.”
His throat worked as he considered his next words. “You didn’t put value on them.”
She shook her head. “I don’t.”
He nodded once. “Seemed you may have overestimated me, then.”
She exhaled in a little laugh, his meaning settling in. “It does, doesn’t it?” Another pause. Then, “How did you learn to dance so well?”
The tentative camaraderie that had come from their conversation disappeared, his gaze immediately shuttering. Regret flooded Hattie, along with no small amount of confusion—how had such a simple question caused such an immediat
e, unpleasant response?
Beneath her fingers, his muscles turned to iron, as though he were ready to do battle. She looked up at him, his eyes fixed at a point over her head, in the distance. She twisted, craning to see, expecting to find an enemy charging toward them. But there was nothing there. Nothing but silks and satins and laughter swirling like madness.
What had happened? What was wrong? She didn’t know this man well, but she knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t tell her if she asked. Nor would he answer the other questions immediately on her tongue.
She looked back at his face, now ashen beneath the warm olive she’d come to expect. Concern came, hot and unpleasant. She clutched his arm with the hand there, clasped the hand in her own tighter. Lowering her voice, she said, “Mr. Whittington?” He swallowed at the name. Shook his head once, as though throwing off a foul taste. “Whit?” she said, even softer. “Are you ill?”
His breath was coming harsher now, the rise and fall of his chest impossible to ignore for his nearness. Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead and a muscle in his jaw ticked as though he was clenching his teeth, resisting whatever was consuming him.
She squeezed the hand in hers tightly. Tight enough to hurt. His amber eyes found hers. Answered the question in them.
She nodded, and they stopped dancing, but she did not release his hand, instead clinging to him tightly. Without an ounce of hesitation, she turned, and walked to the edge of the ballroom—and kept going, past a half dozen of the ton’s finest gossips, straight through the doors and into the darkness beyond.
Chapter Thirteen
He couldn’t let go of her hand.
He’d been in complete control. He’d played the part, made the noises, nodded at the gentlemen, smiled at the ladies, and spoken with the earl, issuing threats on the enemy’s turf—an action designed to strike fear. He’d set the Bastards’ revenge in motion.
Without Hattie.
Hattie, who had run from him the moment she’d seen him enter the ballroom, as though he might not notice. As though her running from him would make him think of anything other than chasing her. He didn’t chase her. Not in the classic sense. Instead, Whit kept to his original plan and laid the groundwork for revenge.
Brazen and the Beast Page 15