Brazen and the Beast EPB

by MacLean, Sarah

  Whit used the momentum to turn them both, propelling Ewan into a tree trunk with a heavy thud. “I’m not the runt anymore, Duke.” He raised the knife and pressed it to his brother’s throat, hard enough for Ewan to feel the sharp bite of the blade. “You took the lives of three others. Innocent, working men. To what, toy with us? They had names. Niall. Marco. David. They were strong boys with bright futures and you snuffed them out.”

  Ewan struggled, but decades in the Rookery had made Whit stronger and faster. “Tell me why I shouldn’t fucking destroy you.”

  He could. He could slice the bastard’s neck right there. Ewan deserved it. For the betrayal years earlier and the attacks now.

  Ewan raised his chin. “Go on then. Saviour.” He spat the name. “Do it.”

  They stood in wicked tableau for a heartbeat. A minute. An hour, their breaths coming harsh and furious in the dark, in the shadow of the world they’d wanted so keenly that the promise of it had pitted them against each other.

  Ewan’s amber eyes narrowed in the dim light from the ballroom beyond, the only outward manifestation of their brotherhood. Where Whit was dark-haired and olive-skinned—the product of his Spanish mother—Ewan was a near copy of their father, tall and fair-haired, with a broad shoulder and a broad chin.

  Whit stepped back. Released Ewan. Delivered a different blow. A worse one. “You look like him.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” A pause. “What would you have done to kill him then?”

  The truth came instantly. “Anything.”

  “Why not me, now?” Ewan said.

  A dozen answers, none of them enough. Grace, begging them not to hurt him as a girl and then, as a woman, threatening them if they did. The threat of prison for killing a peer. The threat to Devil and Whit. To Grace. To the Rookery.

  Whit watched his half brother for a long moment, taking in the hollows of his cheeks, the dark circles under his frenzied eyes. “It would be a gift,” he said. “If I took it from you. The life. The memories. The guilt.” Ewan’s gaze grew haunted. And then, from nowhere, Whit added, “Do you remember the night in the snow?” The other man flinched. “It began with that massive dinner—yeah? Meat pies and game and potatoes and beets drizzled with honey and cheese and brown bread.”

  Ewan looked away. “That was the first clue. Nothing good ever came of comfort at Burghsey House.”

  After the meal, the three boys had been marched outside with nothing more than their regular clothing—no coats or hats, scarves or gloves. It was January and bitter cold. It had been snowing for days, and the three of them had shivered together, as their father had meted out their punishment for sins unknown.

  No. The sin had been clear. They’d banded together. Allied against him. And the Duke of Marwick feared it.

  You aren’t here to be brothers, he’d spat, his gaze full of unwavering fury. You’re here to be Marwick.

  It wasn’t new. He’d tried to break them apart a dozen times before. A hundred. Enough that they’d tried to run on more than one occasion, until they’d discovered that being caught was inevitable, and their father’s punishments grew worse with each infraction. After that, they’d stopped running, but they’d remained together, knowing they were stronger together.

  After he’d railed about loyalty to title above all else—above even God—he’d left them trembling in the cold with clear instructions. There was a bed inside for one of them. But only one. The first to betray the others would get it. And the others—they spent the night in the snow. No shelter. No fire. If death came, so be it.

  Whit watched his once-ally’s face. “When he left us in the cold, you turned to me, and do you remember what you said?”

  Of course he remembered. Ewan might have stayed, but he was broken by the place just like they had been. And now he was duke, wearing their father’s face and his title and his shameful legacy. “We shouldn’t be here.”

  With the duke. At the estate. They shouldn’t have followed their father’s pretty promises—health and wealth and a future without care. Without worry. With privilege and power and everything that came with aristocratic benevolence.

  In the wake of the pronouncement, the boys had sprung into action, knowing from experience that they lived or died that night, together. They went for anything they could find that was dry in the snow—anything that might be warmth.

  Whit could still remember the cold. The fear. The darkness as they’d huddled together. The keen knowledge that he was going to die, and his brothers with him. The desperate, futile attempts to stay alive. A child’s aching need for his mother.

  “But it wasn’t true, was it, Duke? I shouldn’t have been there. Neither should Devil. But you—you did right there, yeah? Because you’re a storybook character. The boy born in the muck of Covent Garden, who landed himself a dukedom. The fucking hero of the play.”

  Ewan revealed no shame in the wake of the words, and that alone was enough to keep Whit going. “But that’s a lie, too. You were never a hero. And you never will be. Not with your thieved name and your shit dukedom, built on the backs of your brothers.” He paused, drove the point home. “And the girl you claim to have loved. Who saved us all that night.”

  They would have died. If not for Grace.

  Grace, who had found them in the cold and rescued them, risking her own skin. And that night, a band of three had become four. “Which you seem not to remember.”

  “I remember,” Ewan said, the words ragged and broken. “I remember every fucking breath she took in my presence.”

  “Even the one she took to scream when you tried to kill her?” What was left of Ewan’s composure shattered, and Whit let loathing edge into his voice, along with the Garden. “Nah. Killin’ is too good for you, bruv. No matter how much you deserve it. You don’t get your fight.”

  Fury returned to Ewan’s face, fury and something strangely like betrayal. “I can’t kill you,” Ewan said, the words coming in a frenzy. “I can’t come for you.” Why? Whit didn’t say it. He didn’t have to. “You two—you’re what’s left of her.”

  Grace. The dead girl who wasn’t dead.

  Whit met that wild gaze—so like his own. “She was never for you.”

  The words weren’t meant as a blow, but they froze Ewan in his tracks. And then they set him on fire. “I can’t kill you,” he repeated, full of wild rage. “But I can end you.”

  Whit turned away, knowing a man lost to reason when he saw one.

  And then, “You’d best watch your lady, Saviour.”

  Whit froze at the words, at the way they dropped like stone into the darkness between them, as though spoken by another man entirely. No longer full of explosive anger; but instead all cold menace, more unsettling than the rant that had come earlier.

  More threatening.

  Whit turned, heart in his throat and knife in his hand, resisting the urge to send it flying—deep into the chest of the man he’d once thought his brother. Instead, he pinned Ewan with an icy stare and said, “What did you say?”

  “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.”

  Hattie peeked inside the open box, considering the packets of sweets within. She met the gaze of the man holding it. “There should be a dozen of these.”

  He nodded. “Thirteen.”

  She ticked the item off her list and nodded. “To the warehouse.” She reached in and extracted a pack of raspberry sweets. “You’ve girls at home, Miles?”

  The boy—no more than three and twenty—smiled. “Aye. Twins. Isla and Clare.”

  She pulled out two more packs and tucked them into the loose pocket in his coat. “They’ll be proper happy to see their papa tonight.”

  The smile widened. “Thank you, Lady Henrietta.”

  When he passed Nora with a little nod, her friend turned to her. “Well, that was darling. And a winning strategy for the new head of the business.”

  “Stop calling me that. You’ll curse it.”

  Nora waved away the caution. Of course. This was Nora, after all. “How many times do you think Augie distributed sweets on the deck?”

  “I don’t think Augie has ever even realized that the boats have to be unloaded,” Hattie said, dryly, turning away from Nora’s bark of laughter to consider a cask of Belgian ale coming up from the hold. “That can be delivered straight to the Jack and Jill,” she told the man who had hooked the load. She pointed down the dock to the pub in question, past four empty ships, huge haulers that had been emptied over the last few days, their contents delivered to the Sedley warehouses.

  The quiet ships were odd—owners tended not to allow boats to sit empty in harbor—especially something as in demand as a hauler—able to go long distances and with massive holds waiting to be filled. Hattie made a note to speak to the owners about the disuse. Perhaps it was time for Sedley Shipping to increase its export business.

  “If I may?” Nora summoned Hattie’s attention again. “I’ve never seen you looking so sorted.” She lowered her voice. “Mr. Whittington certainly knows the way to a lady’s heart.”

  Hattie couldn’t stop the smile that came at the words, embarrassed and gleeful and full of anticipation. “My father has a meeting with him today.”

  Nora smirked. “How very patriarchal. Is he to ask for your hand?”

  For a heartbeat, Hattie let the jest play out—imagining what would happen if the man all London called Beast marched into her father’s offices and asked for permission to marry his daughter.

  Though she quickly recalled that marriage meant she would never be able to own the business outright, Hattie would be lying if her first response to the fantasy hadn’t been a speeding heart and a fleeting image of standing on the docks with him by her side.

  “I assure you, he is not,” she said, pushing the image to the side. “I haven’t seen him since the night he promised to help me.”

  “Since the night he called you a warrior and told you that you were smarter than all the men in London, you mean.”

  Heat washed over Hattie’s face. “Most of the men,” she qualified.

  “I’m sure he meant all.”

  “The point is,” Hattie said, looking down at the packet of sweets in her hand, running a thumb over the pretty French lettering. “He promised to find me. And he hasn’t.”

  Nora blinked. “It’s been three days. It takes time to cross off the business bit of the Year of Hattie.”

  Hattie huffed a barely agreeable sigh. Three days felt an eternity away from him. And it didn’t take time to cross off the other bit. The body bit.

  But he’d given her a taste. And that had been the most wonderful torture she could imagine. What would the rest be like? And once it was over, what would she do when she had no reason to see him?

  Perhaps he’d
keep seeing her.

  The thought rioted through her, with a memory of his kisses, his touches, the magnificent things he did to her in that dark room at the back of The Singing Sparrow. Perhaps he’d be willing to continue their lessons.

  Three weeks earlier, Hattie had been planning one night at a brothel and now she was considering how she might tempt a man into taking her as mistress. Into letting her take him as mistress.

  “Well. That blush is very telling and I should like very much to hear more about what caused it,” Nora said, dry and quiet. “But we’re about to be ambushed.”

  Before Hattie could follow the direction of Nora’s gaze, she heard her father from a distance. “Hattie-girl!”

  She waved to the earl, approaching with Augie at his shoulder. The sight of her brother, looking worse for the wear of whatever he’d done the night before, rumpled and unshaven, had Hattie steeling herself for the confrontation that was no doubt to come. She prepared for Earl Cheadle to read his youngest child the full riot act and insist on a report on how Augie had entered into criminal activity on behalf of Sedley Shipping.

  She prepared for him to insist on Augie’s full cooperation with Whit.

  And, heart pounding, she prepared for him to announce that he was, in fact, transferring control of Sedley Shipping to Hattie.

  “This is it,” she whispered.

  The Year of Hattie was about to begin.

  “I shall be here to toast you when it’s over,” Nora said. “Courage.”

  Hattie made her way from the boat to the docks to meet her father, his silver hair shining in the brilliant afternoon sun. She willed herself calm—and failed—unable to keep herself from whispering again, this time to herself, “This is it.”

  This was it.

  She was ready.

  Except she wasn’t ready for what her father said, before Hattie had even come to a complete stop. “Finish up that shipment and then come back to the office. I’ve sold the business.”

  It did not matter that Hattie was looking directly at her father when he spoke. It did not matter that her hearing was perfectly sound, as was her grasp of the English language.