He reached for her, pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. “I find that very difficult to believe.” This woman could lead a good man into the darkness, and Whit was very, very far from being a good man.
She smiled, stepping back once more, straightening her shoulders, and he sensed the change in her. The determination. He’d seen it before, and the memory, combined with the determined set of her jaw and the unwavering gleam in her eyes, sent excitement thrumming through him, knowing that they were about to spar again.
He held his breath.
“What were you discussing with my father?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, the straps of his knife holster tightening around his muscles, a reminder of his role in this play—of the work he’d come to do. “Who says we were discussing anything other than a perfectly enjoyable ball?”
She gave a little laugh at that. “First of all, my father has never in his life referred to a ball as perfectly enjoyable. And neither have you.”
He raised a brow. “Tonight might have changed my mind.”
“If it did, it was the part that came after my escorting you from the ballroom that changed your mind, sir.”
That much was true, and it was Whit’s turn to offer up a little laugh. Her gaze flew to his. He tilted his head. “What is it?”
“It’s just that . . . you don’t laugh.”
“I laugh,” he said.
She cut him a disbelieving look. “You barely speak.” She waved away any answer he might have found. “It’s no matter. I won’t be deterred. What did you tell him?”
Her father. “Nothing.”
It wasn’t true, and she knew it. “I told you,” she said. “He’s not behind the attacks on your business.”
Whit knew that, but he wanted the information from her. “And I am to believe you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it goes against all reason for me to lie to you.” His brows went up at the words; true, but not something to which most businessmen would admit. “I understand that you are in the position of power, Mr. Whittington.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I cannot call you Beast in front of all the world.”
Irritation flared. “It’s not all the world, Hattie. It’s an infinitesimal subset of the world. A weak subset. A useless subset. Nothing like the rest of us, who work for food and dance for joy and live our lives without fear of judgment.”
She watched him as he spoke, the whole time making him wish he wasn’t running his damn mouth in front of her. More so when she replied, “No one lives without fear of judgment.”
“I do.”
It was a lie and she heard it. “I think you live with more of it than most of us.” Whit resisted the instinct to flinch at the words as she spun the conversation back to where they’d begun. “You needn’t believe that I wouldn’t lie to you. Believe that history does not lie. My father has been at the helm of Sedley Shipping since he returned from the wars. He sailed with an incomparable skill—one that had every nefarious businessman in Britain after him, offering king’s fortunes to get him aboard their ships.
“He was approached by the worst of the world—men who wished to transport guns, opium, people.” She shook her head, as though she’d seen the face of evil and still couldn’t believe it existed. Whit knew that evil. He and Devil had received the same invitations as her father. Refused them without hesitation, just as the earl had. “Our company has had its highs and its lows, but he never would have authorized stealing from you. Never.”
Our company. Whit had spent enough time in the world to know that daughters were too often overwhelmed with filial loyalty when it came to their fathers—but there was something more than that in Hattie’s words. She did not merely defend the integrity of her father . . . she defended the integrity of a business about which she knew a great deal. Of herself.
And once Whit saw that, he did not hesitate. “I know.”
“Never,” she repeated, before realizing what he’d said. “You know?”
“I do. Shall I tell you what else I know?” She did not reply, and he added, “Someone made a mistake, didn’t they, Hattie?”
The briefest of hesitations. “Yes.”
“I believe it wasn’t him. And I believe it wasn’t you. And I believe you don’t want me to know who it was, because you are afraid of something else.”
Losing.
She shook her head. “No, because we had a deal.”
That deal, the one that would kill him if he let it—the one that ended with her naked in his bed. “We did have that. And still do. But I told you that I couldn’t just let it all go back to normal. There is too much on the line.”
“It won’t,” she said, all certainty. “You shall be repaid. My father would never risk crossing you. And I only want—”
He hated the way she stopped, the words she refused to entrust to him. Clever girl. You shouldn’t trust me. It was good that she didn’t finish the sentence. If she had, he might have decided to give it to her, whatever it was she wanted.
Instead, in the wake of her silence, he said, knowing he was about to change everything, “Your father wouldn’t risk it, Hattie. But your brother did.”
She froze for an instant, just long enough for him to see the words strike like a blow—one he had tried to deliver softly, even as he knew the sting it would bring. She hid her surprise almost instantly, and he could not ignore his admiration.
“How long have you known?”
He didn’t want her to know he’d known from the start. “Does it matter?”
“I suppose not,” she said. “You promised you would discover everything.”
“I did.”
“Do you plan to . . .” She hesitated, and he wondered at the question—the urgent panic in it, but somehow, devoid of fear. Why had she been protecting her brother so thoroughly?
My girl Hattie is smart as a whip, the earl had told him earlier, pride in the man’s rheumy eyes. Always fancied herself heir—which was my fault for enjoying her company. The boy was never so smart. But Hattie needs to find herself a good man and have herself a good son.
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 S
edley’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.”
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 t
he 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?”
Ah. She’d returned to him. “I do.”
The words thieved the winds from her sails, leaving her breathing heavily in the darkness. “Oh.”
He supposed he should have seen as much before. Should have understood it. She wanted Sedley Shipping. She wanted the boats and the docks and the world, and she should have it. “I have no difficulty believing that you can run that business better than them.”
“Certainly better than Augie.”
His lips twitched at her soft grumble. “From what I hear, there are some very intelligent cats on the docks that could do better than your brother. I was speaking of your father.”
“Well, he did it so well they gave him a peerage.”
“I am unimpressed by peerages.”
She met his gaze. “I shouldn’t have said what I said about you. I am sorry.”
He wasn’t about to allow that. “You called me handsome. You cannot take that back.”
“What would be the point? It’s empirical.”
He knew he was handsome; she wasn’t the first woman to say it to him, nor the hundredth, and yet, hearing it from her was different than hearing it from the others. As though he’d earned it from her in some way. Impossibly, heat spread across his cheeks again, and he was very grateful for the darkness. If the boys in the Garden knew that the unflappable Beast had blushed twice this evening, he’d never get another ounce of respect. He cleared his throat. “Thank you.”
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