The stilted, careful question came as though she’d wanted to ask a thousand of them, and that one had been the one that had fought its way out. It was an odd question, one Whit hadn’t expected. He’d always thought of his life as being split in two—before the day his father arrived and after. But it hadn’t simply been the day he’d met his father. And he didn’t think of the time before. He didn’t want to remember it.
So he would never understand why he told Hattie the truth. “Holborn.”
Another nod. As though it were enough. But suddenly, it didn’t seem that it could ever be enough. He reached a hand into his pocket, extracting one of his watches, the gold warm at his palm as he added, “My mother was a seamstress. She mended the clothes of sailors coming off the ships.” When there were clothes to be mended.
“And your . . .” She hesitated, and he knew the dilemma. She did not want to say father. “Was he a sailor?”
What Whit would have done for his father to have been a sailor. How many times had he dreamed it—that he’d been born of his mother and a man who’d left to make his fortune, with a miniature of his wife and infant son sewn into the lining of his coat—a reminder of the home to which he would return when he’d grown rich on the other side of the world.
How many times had he lay abed, watching his mother hunched over a pile of dirty clothes delivered by men who’d always asked for more than mending, barely able to see her work for the scant light of the candle beside her, and dreamed that the next knock on the door would be his father, returned to save them?
And then came the day when the knock had been his father, tall and handsome, with a face that had been baked in a heat of aristocratic disdain, and eyes like colored glass. A man cloaked in a fortune he hadn’t had to make, because he’d been born with it, all there on his face and in the weave of his clothes and the shine of his boots.
Twenty years, and Whit could still remember the awe he’d felt at those boots—gleaming like sunlight, the clearest looking glass in Holborn. He’d never seen anything like them, nary a scuff on them, more proof of wealth and power than if the man had leaned down and announced his name and title.
And then he had. The Duke of Marwick. A name that had opened every door, from birth. A name that bore privilege beyond reason. A name that could secure him everything.
Everything but the one thing he wanted more than all the rest—everything but an heir.
For that, he required Whit.
“He was not a sailor,” Whit said, finally. “He was nothing, until he turned up at the door to our room in Holborn and promised us the world, if only I’d go with him.”
“And your mother?” There was fear in the question, as though she already knew the answer.
He didn’t reply, his fist clenching around the watch. Instead, Whit turned his face to the gilded room beyond—the one rife with the privilege that had tempted him all those years before, and said, “They shall be talking of you tonight, Lady Henrietta. Leading a man into the darkness.”
Magnificently, she didn’t hesitate at the change of topic. Instead, she followed his gaze and smiled, the expression filled with the wry knowledge of women in the world. “You do not worry they shall be talking of you for being led?” A pause, then, “I did say I wished to be ruined, did I not?” The question might have been coquettish on the lips of another, but not on Hattie’s. On Hattie’s, it was honest and forthright. A clear step in the direction in which she’d decided to walk.
Admiration flared. “You should have done this years ago.”
She turned to him. “There was no one who would have helped me years ago.”
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.”