Title: Brazen and the Beast
Author:
Sarah MacLean
ISBN:
9780062692078
Price:
$7.99
On-Sale
Date: 7/30/19
New York
Times Bestselling
Author Sarah MacLean returns with the next book in the Bareknuckle
Bastards series about three brothers bound by a secret that they
cannot escape—and
the women who bring them to their knees.
The
Lady’s Plan
When Lady
Henrietta Sedley declares her twenty-ninth year her own, she has
plans to inherit her father’s business, to make her own fortune,
and to live her own life. But first, she intends to experience a
taste of the pleasure she’ll forgo as a confirmed spinster.
Everything is going perfectly…until she discovers the most
beautiful man she’s ever seen tied up in her carriage and
threatening to ruin the Year of Hattie before it’s even begun.
The
Bastard’s Proposal
When he
wakes in a carriage at Hattie’s feet, Whit, a king of Covent Garden
known to all the world as Beast, can’t help but wonder about the
strange woman who frees him—especially when he discovers she’s
headed for a night of pleasure . . . on his turf. He is more than
happy to offer Hattie all she desires…for a price.
An
Unexpected Passion
Soon,
Hattie and Whit find themselves rivals in business and pleasure. She
won’t give up her plans; he won’t give up his power . . . and
neither of them sees that if they’re not careful, they’ll have no
choice but to give up everything . . . including their hearts.
Chapter
One
September 1837
Mayfair
In twenty-eight
years and three hundred sixty-four days, Lady Henrietta Sedley liked
to think that she’d learned a few things.
She’d learned,
for example, that if a lady could not get away with wearing trousers
(an unfortunate reality for the daughter of an earl, even one who had
begun life without title or fortune), then she should absolutely
ensure that her skirts included pockets. A woman never knew when she
might require a bit of rope, or a knife to cut it, after all.
She’d also
learned that any decent escape from her Mayfair home required the
cover of darkness and a carriage driven by an ally. Coachmen tended
to talk a fine game when it came to keeping secrets, but were
ultimately beholden to those who paid their salaries. An important
addendum to that particular lesson was this: The best of allies was
often the best of friends.
And perhaps first
on the list of things she had learned in her lifetime was how to tie
a Bosun knot. She’d been able to do that for as long as she could
remember.
With such an
obscure and uncommon collection of knowledge, one might imagine that
Henrietta Sedley would have known precisely what to do in the
likelihood she discovered a human male bound and unconscious in her
carriage.
One would be
incorrect.
In point of fact,
Henrietta Sedley would never have described such a scenario as a
likelihood. After all, she might have been more comfortable on
London’s docks than in its ballrooms, but Hattie’s impressive
collection of life experience lacked anything close to a criminal
element.
And yet, here she
was, pockets full, dearest friend at her side, standing in the pitch
dark on the night before her twenty-ninth birthday, about to steal
away from Mayfair for a night of best-laid plans, and…
Lady Eleanora
Madewell whistled, low and unladylike at Hattie’s ear. Daughter of
a duke and the Irish actress he loved so much he’d made her a
duchess, Nora had the kind of brashness that was allowed in those
with impervious titles and scads of money. “There’s a bloke in
the gig, Hattie.”
Hattie did not
look away from the bloke in question. “Yes, I see that.”
“There wasn’t
a bloke in the gig when we hitched the horses.”
“No, there
wasn’t.” They’d left the hitched—and most definitely
empty—carriage in the dark rear drive of Sedley House not
three-quarters of an hour earlier, before hiking upstairs to exchange
carriage-hitching dresses for attire more appropriate for their
evening plans.
At some point
between corset and kohl, someone had left her an extraordinarily
unwelcome package.
“Seems we
would’ve noticed a bloke in the gig,”
“I should think
we would have,” came Hattie’s distracted reply. “This is really
just awful timing.”
Nora cut her a
look. “Is there a good time for a man to be bound in one’s
carriage?”
Hattie imagined
there wasn’t, but, “He could have selected a different evening.
What a terrible birthday gift.” She squinted into the dark interior
of the carriage. “Do you think he’s dead?”
Please, don’t
let him be dead.
Silence. Then, a
thoughtful, “Does one store dead men in carriages?” Nora reached
forward, her coachman’s coat pulling tight over her shoulders, and
poked the dead man in question. He did not move. “He’s not
moving,” she added. “Could be dead.”
Hattie sighed,
removing a glove and leaning into the carriage to place two fingers
to the man’s neck. “I’m sure he’s not dead.”
“What are you
doing?” Nora whispered, urgently. “If he’s not dead, you’ll
wake him!”
“That wouldn’t
be the worst thing in the world,” Hattie pointed out. “Then we
could ask him to kindly exit our conveyance and we could be on our
way.”
“Oh, yes. This
brute seems like precisely the kind of man who would immediately do
just that and not immediately take his revenge. He’d no doubt doff
his cap and wish us a fine good evening.”
“He’s not
wearing a cap,” Hattie pointed out, unable to refute any of the
rest of the assessment of the mysterious, possibly dead man. He was
very broad, and very solid, and even in the darkness she could tell
that this wasn’t a man with whom one took a turn about a ballroom.
This was the kind
of man who ransacked a ballroom.
“What do you
feel?” Nora pressed.
“No pulse.”
Though she wasn’t precisely certain of the location one would find
a pulse. “But he’s—”
Warm.
Dead men were not
warm, and this man was very warm. Like a fire in winter. The kind of
warm that made someone realize how cold she might be.
Ignoring the
silly thought, Hattie moved her fingers down the column of his neck,
to the place where it disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt,
where the curve of his shoulder and the slope of…the rest of him…
met in a fascinating indentation.
“Anything now?”
“Quiet.”
Hattie held her breath. Nothing. She shook her head.
“Christ.” It
wasn’t a prayer.
Hattie couldn’t
have agreed more. But then…
There.
A small flutter. She pressed a touch more firmly. The flutter
became firm. Slow. Even. “I feel it. She said. “He’s alive.”
She repeated herself. “He’s alive.” She exhaled, long and
relieved. “He’s not dead.”
“Excellent. But
it doesn’t change the fact that he’s unconscious in the carriage,
and you have somewhere to be.” She paused. “We should leave him
and take the curricle.”
Hattie had been
planning for this particular excursion on this particular night for a
full three months. This was the night that would begin her
twenty-ninth year. The year her life would become her own. The year
she would become her own. And she had a very specific plan for
a very specific location at a very specific hour, for which she had
donned a very specific frock. And yet, as she stared at the man in
her carriage, specifics seemed not at all important.
What seemed
important was seeing his face.
Clinging to the
handle at the edge of the door, Hattie collected the lantern from the
upper rear corner of the carriage before swinging back out to face
Nora, whose gaze flickered immediately to the unlit container.
Nora tilted her
head. “Hattie. Leave him. Let’s take the curricle.”
“Just a peek,”
Hattie replied.
The tilt became a
shake. “If you peek, you’ll regret it.”
“I have to
peek,” Hattie insisted, casting about for a decent reason—ignoring
the odd fact that she was unable to tell her friend the truth. “I
have to untie him.”
“Not
necessarily,” Nora pointed out. “Someone thought he was best left
tied up, and who are we to disagree?” Hattie was already reaching
into the pocket of the carriage door for a flint. “What of your
plans?”
There was plenty
of time for her plans. “Just a peek,” she repeated, the oil in
the lantern catching fire. She closed the door and turned to face the
carriage, lifting the light high, casting a lovely golden glow over—
“Oh, my,” she
said.
Nora choked back
a laugh. “Not such a bad gift after all, perhaps.”
The man had the
most beautiful face Hattie had ever seen. The most beautiful face
anyone had ever seen, she imagined. She leaned closer, taking
in his warm, bronze skin, the high cheekbones, the long, straight
nose, the dark slashes of his brows and the impossibly long lashes
that lay like feathers against his cheeks.
“What kind of
man…” she trailed off. Shook her head.
What kind of man looked like this and somehow landed in the carriage
of Hattie
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