Her eyes went wide. “How do you know Hawk did this?”
“I simply know.”
Hawk had known Gabe’s pattern of going to the warehouse every night. He’d surely intended to kill Gabe in that explosion. Georgette should have been home, asleep. But that damn cradle…
Gabe’s throat burned and tightened with her loss, the loss of her child, the knowledge that he’d failed to protect her just as he hadn’t protected his mother. He grasped his sister’s hand as she turned from him. She looked back at him sharply, eyebrows raised in question. “You’re all I have left,” he said. “I won’t fail you.”
Blythe’s eyes filled with tears that she brushed quickly away. Beckfords did not cry. Crying was a luxury they could ill afford. “Someday, Gabe…” Her words drifted to silence, but he knew what she’d intended to say.
Someday he’d meet someone else, love someone else. He’d never found someone like that in the first place, and he didn’t want to. “Have one of the men see you home,” was all he said in response.
Gabe didn’t know how long he sat there staring out the window after Blythe had left, but when the door behind him creaked open, he blinked, realizing the sun was fully in the sky.
Standing just in the doorway was Hawk, his face twisted in loathing and covered in soot. So he’d been at the fire, just as Gabe had suspected. Fury filled him as he rose from his seat.
“You killed her,” Hawk said.
Gabe’s mind registered the wretchedness, the brokenness in Hawk’s voice, but ice filled his heart, freezing any sparks of sympathy, even as the burning desire to kill Hawk heated his blood. But he’d made a vow, and he would only break it if Hawk tried to kill him. He moved toward Hawk and came to stop in front of him, nothing but a sliver of air between them. “Youkilled her,” Gabe said. “You blew up my warehouse, thinking to kill me.”
Hawk grabbed Gabe by the shirt, twisting the material into his fists. “I loved her. I loved her, and you took her from me.” The veins in his forehead protruded, and his voice shook.
Gabe shoved Hawk away, sending him reeling backward toward the door and slamming him into it. Hawk slid to the ground in a half-crouched position, holding his head in his hands as if it might fall from his neck. “I loved her,” he said, looking down.
Gabe stared at his old friend, rejecting the compassion that tried to come. “Youkilledher,” he said. “She loved you, but you drove her away with the blackness in you. She came to me for help. I didn’t take her from you; she ran from you.”
Hawk jerked his head up, rose, and bellowed, “No! No! You killed her!” He kicked over the chair in front of him as he strode toward Gabe and stopped when they were a hairsbreadth apart. “I could have worked things out with her, made her understand I had to kill that man, but you,youintervened.” His nostrils flared, and Gabe could hear the man grinding his teeth. “You took her from me and now she’s dead.” He stared at Gabe misery etched on his face. “She wasn’t supposed to be there.You were.”
Hawk’s jaw flexed and released, flexed and released. Gabe curled his hands into fists to keep from putting them around Hawk’s neck and squeezing the life out of him. “You killed her, and you killed whatever love she held for you the day you murdered someone in front of her and then ravished her when she no longer wanted anything to do with you.”
“She loved me still,” Hawk insisted. “She would have come back around. But you couldn’t just let us be. You always have had to be the damned savior, the hero, the one we were all supposed to count on. You took her from me, and it’s your fault she’s dead.”
“You’re out of your head.” Gabe turned away, the desire to kill Hawk so strong that he was shaking from it. He needed distance, but Hawk grabbed Gabe by the forearm. Gabe swung back toward him, their gazes clashing.
“Someday, Beck, you’ll meet a lady, and you’ll want to make her yours. And when you do, I’m going reappear in your life and take her from you, as you’ve taken Georgette from me. Then you’ll suffer the rest of your life as I’m suffering.” Hawk offered Gabe a twisted smile. “Brothers to the end, Beck. That’s what we are. Brothers to the bloody, bitter end.”
Chapter One
1839
London, England
It was a plain black curricle, some nondescript carriage with a pair of matching horses and two oil lamps hooked to the front to guide the way in the dark night. But the lady inside, sitting under the folding hood, let out a low whistle as she pulled the carriage close to the mews, giving it away for what it was—a curricle to a new life.
Lady Frederica Darlington sprang up from her hiding place by the trees that lined the side of her parent’s now quiet and dark townhome, and dashed through the moonlit shadows toward the carriage. Yellow-orange light illuminated Blythe Beckford’s face as Freddy drew near.
The woman cocked her eyebrows, swept her gaze over Freddy, and shook her head. “I should’ve realized a nob like you wouldn’t know the proper attire for danger unless it slapped you in the arse.”
A nob like her? As if she had ever been like other women of theton.
“If I fit in with theton, I wouldn’t be here,” Freddy said, taking in the men’s pantaloons Blythe was wearing, which molded to her curves like kid gloves. Freddy wished she could have gotten her hands on a pair of those.
“I suppose that’s true,” Blythe said. “Get in.” Blythe was a savvy survivor of the most dangerous streets in London, and Freddy had learned rather quickly that women of the rookeries, where Blythe was from, didn’t mince words, which suited Freddy perfectly. She was blunt herself, and no amount of being told she ought to temper her words, her tone, and her opinions by Mama, sisters, or governesses had ever changed her, much to everyone’s disappointment. She was a yellow duck in a pond where all ladies were supposed to be white geese.
Freddy scrambled into the curricle and ducked under the hood to sit on the narrow bench beside Blythe—a feat made difficult by her impractical gown with its layers of silk skirts.
“What ridiculousness drove you to choose a gown for tonight?”
“The ridiculousness known as practicality,” Freddy responded, not bothering to curb her sarcasm as she settled beside Blythe on the seat.
