Wicked and the Wallflower

Chapter Six

Two nights later, as the last rays of the sun faded into darkness, the Bareknuckle Bastards picked through the dirty streets of the farthest reaches of Covent Garden, where the neighborhood known for taverns and theaters gave way to one known for crime and cruelty.

Covent Garden was a maze of narrow, labyrinthine streets, twisting and turning in upon themselves until an ignorant visitor was trapped in its spider’s web. A single wrong turn after leaving the theater could see a toff liberated of his purse and tossed into the gutter, or worse. The streets leading deep into the Garden’s rookery were not kind to visitors—especially proper gentlemen dressed in even more proper finery—but Devil and Whit weren’t proper and they weren’t gentlemen, and everyone there knew better than to cross the Bareknuckle Bastards, no matter what finery they wore.

What’s more, the brothers were revered in the neighborhood, having come up from the slums themselves, fighting and thieving and sleeping in filth with the best of them, and no one likes a rich man like a poor man with the same beginnings. It didn’t hurt that much of the Bastards’ business ran through this particular rookery—where strong men and smart women worked for them and good boys and clever girls kept watchful eye for anything out of sorts, reporting their findings for a fine gold crown.

A crown could feed a family for a month here, and the Bastards spent money in the muck like it was water, which made them—and their businesses—untouchable.

“Mr. Beast.” A little girl tugged on Whit’s trouser leg, using the name he used with all but his siblings. “It’s ’ere! When are we ’avin’ lemon ice ’gain?”

Whit stopped and crouched down, his voice rough from disuse and deep with the accent of their youth, which only ever came back here. “Listen ’ere, moppet. We don’ talk ’bout ice in the streets.”

The girl’s bright blue eyes went wide.

Whit ruffled her hair. “You keep our secrets, and you’ll get your lemon treats, don’t you worry.” A gap in the child’s smile showed that she’d lost a tooth recently. Whit directed her away. “Go find your mum. Tell ’er I’m comin’ for my wash after I finish at the warehouse.”

The girl was gone like a shot.

The brothers resumed their walk. “It’s good of you to give Mary your wash,” Devil said.

Whit grunted.

Theirs was one of the few rookeries in London that had fresh, communal water—because the Bareknuckle Bastards had made sure of it. They’d also made sure it had a surgeon and a priest, and a school where little ones could learn their letters before they had to take to the streets and find work. But the Bastards couldn’t give everything, and the poor who lived here were too proud to take it, anyway.

So the Bastards employed as many of them as they could—a collection of old and young, strong and smart, men and women from all over the world—Londoners and North Countrymen, Scots and Welsh, African, Indian, Spanish, American. If they made their way to Covent Garden and were able to work, the Bastards would provide it at one of their numerous businesses. Taverns and fight rings, butchers and pie shops, tanneries and dye shops and a half-dozen other jaunts, spread throughout the neighborhood.

If it wasn’t enough that Devil and Whit had come up in the muck of the place, the work they provided—for decent wages and under safe conditions—bought the loyalty of the rookery’s residents. That was something that other business owners had never understood about the slums, thinking they could hire in work while bellies in spitting distance starved. The warehouse on the far edge of the neighborhood now owned by the brothers had once been used to produce pitch, but had long been abandoned when the company that had built it discovered that the residents had no loyalty to them, and would steal anything that was left unguarded.

Not so when the business employed two hundred local men. Entering the building that now acted as the centralized warehouse for any number of the Bastards’ businesses, Devil nodded to a half-dozen men staggered throughout the dark interior, guarding crates of liquors and sweets, leathers and wool—if it was taxed by the Crown, the Bareknuckle Bastards sold it, and cheap.

And no one stole from them, for fear of the punishment promised by their name—one they’d been given decades earlier and stones lighter, when they’d fought with fists faster and stronger than they should have been to claim turf and show enemies no mercy.

Devil went to greet the strapping man who led the watch. “All right, John?”

“All right, sir.”

“Has the babe come?”

Bright white teeth flashed proudly against dark brown skin. “Last week. A boy. Strong as his da.”

The new father’s satisfied smile was sunlight in the dimly lit room, and Devil clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve no doubt about that. And your wife?”

“Healthy, thanks to God. Too good for me by half.”

Devil nodded and lowered his voice. “They all are, man. Better than the lot of us combined.”

He turned from the sound of John’s laughter to find Whit, now standing with Nik, the foreman of the warehouse, young—barely twenty—and with a head for organization that Devil had never met in another. Nik’s heavy coat, hat, and gloves hid most of her skin, and the dim light hid the rest, but she reached out a hand to greet Devil as he arrived.

“Where are we, Nik?” Devil asked.

The fair-haired Norwegian looked about and then waved them toward the far corner of the warehouse, where a guard reached down to open a door leading into the ground, revealing a great, black abyss below.

A thread of unease coursed through Devil, and he turned to his brother. “After you.”

Whit’s hand signal spoke more than words could, but he crouched low and dropped into the darkness without hesitation.

Devil went in next, reaching back up to accept an unlit lantern from Nik as she followed them in, looking up to the guard only to say, “Close it up.”

The guard did as he was instructed without hesitation, and Devil was certain that the blackness of the cavernous hole was rivaled only by that of death. He worked to keep his breath even. To not remember.

“Fuck.” Whit growled in the darkness. “Light.”

“You have it, Devil.” This, in Nik’s thick Scandinavian accent.

Christ. He’d forgotten he was holding it. He fumbled for the door of the lantern, the dark and his own unsettling emotions making it take longer than usual. But finally, he worked the flint and light came, blessed.

“Quickly, then.” Nik took the lantern from him and led the way. “We don’t want to make any more heat than necessary.”

The pitch-black holding area led to a long, narrow passageway. Devil followed Nik, and halfway down the corridor, the air began to grow crisp and cold. She turned and said, “Hats and coats, if you please.”

Devil closed his coat, buttoning it thoroughly as Whit did the same, pulling his hat low over his brow.

At the end of the corridor, Nik extracted a ring of iron keys and began to work on a long line of locks set against a heavy metal door. When they were all unlocked, she swung open the door and set to work on a second batch of locks—twelve in total. She turned back before opening the door. “We go in quickly. The longer we leave the door—”

Whit cut her off with a grunt.

“What my brother means to say,” Devil said, “is that we’ve been filling this hold for longer than you’ve been alive, Annika.” Her gaze narrowed in the lamplight at the use of her full name, but she opened the door. “Go on, then.”

Once inside, Nik slammed the door shut, and they were in darkness again, until she turned, lifting the light high to reveal the great, cavernous room, filled with blocks of ice.

“How much survived?”

“One hundred tons.”

Devil let out a low whistle. “We lost thirty-five percent?”

“It’s May,” Nik explained, pulling the wool scarf off the lower half of her face so she could be heard. “The ocean warms.”

“And the rest of the cargo?”

“All accounted for.” She extracted a bill of lading from her pocket. “Sixty-eight barrels brandy, forty-three casks American bourbon, twenty-four crates silk, twenty-four crates playing cards, sixteen cases dice. Also, a box of face powder and three crates of French wigs, which are not on the list and I’m going to ignore, other than to assume you want them delivered to the usual location.”

“Precisely,” Devil said. “No damage from the melt?”

“None. It was packed well on the other end.”

Whit grunted his approval.

“Thanks to you, Nik,” Devil said.

She did not hide her smile. “Norwegians like Norwegians.” She paused. “There is one thing.” Two sets of dark eyes found her face. “There was a watch on the docks.”

The brothers looked to each other. While no one would dare steal from the Bastards’ in the rookery, the brothers’ overland caravans had been compromised twice in the last two months, robbed at gunpoint once they’d left the safety of Covent Garden. It was part of the business, but Devil didn’t like the uptick in thievery. “What kind of watch?”

Nik tilted her head. “Can’t say for sure.”

“Try,” Whit said.

“Clothes looked like dockside competition.”

It made sense. There were any number of smugglers working the French and American angles, though none had such an airtight method of import. “But?”

She pressed her lips into a thin line. “Boots awfully clean for a Cheapside boy.”

“Crown?” Always a risk for a smuggling operation.

“Possible,” Nik said, but she didn’t sound sure.

“The crates?” Whit asked.

“Out of view the whole time. Ice moved by flatbed wagon and horse, crates secure within. And none of our men have seen anything out of the ordinary.”

Devil nodded. “The product stays here for a week. No one comes in or out. Get it to the boys on the street to keep an eye out for anyone out of the ordinary.”

Nik nodded. “Done.”

Whit kicked at an ice block. “And the packaging?”

“Pure. Good enough to sell.”

“Make sure the offal shops in the rookery get some tonight. No one eats rancid meat when we’ve a hundred tons of ice to go around.” Devil paused. “And Beast promised the children lemon ice.”

Nik’s brows rose. “Kind of him.”

“That’s what everyone says,” Devil said, dry as sand. “Oh, that Beast, he’s so very kind.”

“Are you going to mix the lemon syrup, too, Beast?” she asked with a grin.

Whit growled.

Devil laughed and slapped a hand on a block of ice. “Send one of these round to the office, will you?”

Nik nodded. “Already done. And a case of the bourbon from the Colonies.”

“You know me well. I’ve got to get back.” After a wander through the rookery, he was going to need a wash. He had business on Bond Street.

And then he had business with Felicity Faircloth.

Felicity Faircloth, with skin that turned gold in the light of a candle, brown eyes wide and clever, full of fear and fire and fury. And able to spar like none he’d met in recent memory.

He wanted another spar.

He cleared his throat at the thought, turning to look at Whit, who was watching him, a knowing look in his eye.

Devil ignored it, pulling his coat tight around him. “What? It’s fucking freezing in here.”

“You’re the ones who chose to deal in ice,” Nik said.

“It’s a bad plan,” Whit said, looking directly at him.

“Well, it’s a bit late to change it. The ship, one might say,” Nik added with a smirk, “has sailed.”

Devil and Whit did not smile at the silly jest. She didn’t realize that Whit wasn’t talking about the ice; he was talking about the girl.

Devil turned on his heel and headed for the door to the hold. “Come on then, Nik,” he said. “Bring the light.”

She did, and the three exited, Devil refusing to meet Whit’s knowing gaze as they waited for Nik to lock the double steel doors and return them through darkness to the warehouse.

He continued to evade his brother’s watch as they collected Whit’s wash and picked their way back to the heart of Covent Garden, weaving their way through the cobblestone streets to their offices and apartments in the large building on Arne Street.

After a quarter of an hour of silent walking, Whit said, “You lay your trap for the girl.”

Devil didn’t like the insinuation in the words. “I lay my trap for them both.”

“You still intend to seduce the girl out from under him.”

“Her, and every one that comes after, if need be,” Devil replied. “He’s as arrogant as ever, Beast. He thinks to have his heir.”

Whit shook his head. “No, he thinks to have Grace. He thinks we’ll give her up to keep him from whelping a new duke on this girl.”

“He’s wrong. He gets neither Grace, nor the girl.”

“Two carriages, careening toward each other,” Whit growled.

“He shall turn.”

His brother’s eyes found his. “He never has before.”

Memory flashed. Ewan, tall and lean, fists raised, eyes swollen, lip split, and refusing to yield. Unwilling to back down. Desperate to win. “It’s not the same. We have hungered longer. Worked harder. Dukedom has made the man soft.”

Whit grunted. “And Grace?”

“He doesn’t find her. He never finds her.”

“We should have killed him.”

Killing him would have brought London crashing down around them. “Too much risk. You know that.”

“That, and we made Grace a promise.”

Devil nodded. “And that.”

“His return threatens us all, and Grace more than anyone.”

“No,” Devil said. “His return threatens him the most. Remember—if anyone discovers what he did . . . how he got his title . . . he swings from a noose. A traitor to the Crown.”

Whit shook his head. “And what if he’s willing to risk it for a chance at her?” At Grace, the girl he’d once loved. The girl whose future he’d thieved. The girl whom he would have destroyed if not for Devil and Whit.

“Then he sacrifices it all,” Devil said. “He gets nothing.”

Whit nodded. “Not even heirs.”

“Never heirs.”

Then, “There’s always the original plan. We rough the duke up. Send him home.”

“It won’t stop the marriage. Not now. Not when he thinks he’s close to finding Grace.”

Whit flexed one hand, the black leather of his glove creaking with the movement. “It would be glorious fun, though.” They walked in silence for several minutes, before Whit added, “Poor girl, she couldn’t have predicted how her innocent lie would land her in bed with you.”

It was a figure of speech, of course. But the vision came nonetheless—and Devil couldn’t resist it, Felicity Faircloth, dark hair and pink skirts spread wide before him. Clever and beautiful and with a mouth like sin.

The girl’s ruination would be a pleasure.

He ignored the thin thread of guilt that teased through him. There was no room for guilt here. “She shan’t be the first girl ruined. I’ll throw the father money. The brother, too. They’ll get down on their knees and weep with gratitude for their salvation.”

“Kind of you,” Whit said, dryly. “But what of the girl’s salvation? It’s impossible. She won’t be ruined. She’ll be exiled.”

I want them to want me back.

All Felicity Faircloth wanted was back into that world. And she’d never get it. Not even after he promised it to her. “She’s free to choose her next husband.”

“Do aristocratic men line up for aging ruined spinsters?”

Something unpleasant coursed through him. “So she settles for someone not aristocratic.”

A beat. And then, “Someone like you?”

Christ. No. Men like him were so far beneath Felicity Faircloth the idea was laughable.

When he did not reply, Whit grunted again. “Grace can never know.”

“Of course she can’t,” Devil replied. “And she won’t.”

“She won’t be able to stay out of it.”

Devil had never been so happy to see the door to their offices. Approaching it, he reached for a key, but before he could unlock the door, a small window slid open, then closed. The door opened and they stepped inside.

“It’s about damn time.”

Devil’s gaze shot to the tall, red-haired woman who closed the door behind them, leaning back against the door, one hand on her hip, as though she’d been waiting for years. He immediately looked to Whit, stone-faced. Whit’s dark eyes met his calmly.

Grace can never know.

“What’s happened?” their sister said, looking from one to the other.

“What’s happened with what?” Devil asked, removing his hat.

“You look like you did when we were children and you decided to start fighting without telling me.”

“It was a good idea.”

“It was a shite idea, and you know it. You’re lucky you weren’t killed your first night out, you were so small. You’re both lucky I got in the ring.” She rocked back on her heels and crossed her arms over her chest. “Now what’s happened?”

Devil ignored the question. “You came back from your first night with a broken nose.”

She grinned. “I like to think the bump gives me character.”

“It gives you something, most definitely.”

Grace harrumphed and moved on. “I have three things to say, and then I have actual work to do, gentlemen. I cannot be left lazing about here, waiting for the two of you to return.”

“No one asked you to wait for us,” Devil said, pushing past his arrogant sister toward the dark, cavernous hallways beyond, and up the back stairs to their apartments.

She followed, nonetheless. “First is for you,” she told Whit, passing him a sheet of paper. “There are three fights set for tonight, each at a different place on the hour and half; two will be fair, the third, filthy. Addresses are here, and the boys are already out taking bets.”

Whit grunted his approval and Grace pressed on. “Second, Calhoun wants to know where his bourbon is. Says if we’re having too much trouble getting it in, he’ll find one of his countrymen to do the job—really, is there anyone more arrogant than an American?”

“Tell him it’s here, but not moving yet, so he can wait like the rest of us, or feel free to wait the two months it will take to get a new order to the States and back.”

She nodded. “I assume the same is true for the Fallen Angel’s delivery?”

“And everything else we’re set to deliver from this shipment.”

Grace’s gaze narrowed on him. “We’re being watched?”

“Nik thinks it’s possible.”

His sister pursed her lips for a moment, then said, “If Nik thinks it, it’s likely true. Which brings me to third: Did my wigs arrive?”

“Along with more face powder than you can ever use.”

She grinned. “A girl can try, though, can’t she?”

“Our shipments are not designed as your personal pack mule.”

“Ah, but my personal items are both legal and don’t require tax payment, bruv, so it’s not the worst thing in the world for you to receive three cases of wigs.” She reached out to rub Devil’s tightly shorn head. “Perhaps you’d like one . . . you could do with more hair.”

He swatted his sister’s hand away from his head. “If we weren’t blood—”

She grinned. “We’re not blood, as a matter of fact.”

They were where it counted. “And yet, for some reason, I put up with you.”

She leaned in. “Because I make money hand over fist for you louts.” Whit grunted, and Grace laughed. “See? Beast knows.”

Whit disappeared into his rooms across the hallway, and Devil extracted a key from his pocket, inserting it into the door to his own. “Anything else?”

“You could invite your sister for a drink, you know. If I know you, you’ve sorted out a way for your bourbon to arrive on time.”

“I thought you had work to do.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Clare can take care of things until I get there.”

“I stink of the rookery and I have somewhere to be.”

Her brows shot together. “Where?”

“You needn’t make it seem as though I’ve nothing to do in the evenings.”

“Between sundown and midnight? You don’t.”

“That’s not true.” It was vaguely true. He turned the key in the lock, looking back at his sister as he opened the door. “The point is, leave me now.”

Whatever retort Grace would have made—and Lord knew Grace always had a retort—was lost on her lips when her blue gaze flickered over his shoulder and into the room beyond, then widened enough for Devil to be concerned.

He turned to follow it, somehow, impossibly, knowing exactly what he was going to find.

Whom he was going to find.

Lady Felicity Faircloth, standing at the window at the far side of the room, as though she belonged there.