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Pru craned to look in the box. “What are they? Hairpins?”
“Yes.”
“What a strange design.”
Felicity lifted one from the box, inspecting the jagged wave at one end. Setting it down on its black velvet cushion—the most beautiful tool chest in Christendom—she ran her finger over the L-shaped angle in another. The flat square end of a third. “They’re lockpicks.”
The money was one thing. But the lockpicks were everything.
You’ve got the future in your hands every time you hold a hairpin, he’d said all those days ago in the warehouse, when he’d told her she shouldn’t be ashamed of her talent.
These picks were proof he knew her. That he put her desires first. Her passion first. That he cared more for what she chose for herself than for his own guilt.
But more than all that, they were proof that he loved her.
He’d bought her freedom—she would never again have to make choices based on Arthur’s business or her mother’s home, or her own social standing. He’d freed her from Mayfair. From the world she no longer wanted. And he’d given her the future.
Just as he had on the roof, when he’d resisted her. When he’d told her that he wouldn’t take her. That he wouldn’t ruin her. That he wouldn’t rob her of the future he could see—like Janus. In the moment, he’d let her choose him, and she had, without for a moment feeling ruined. And now, he’d ensured that she’d never be ruined again; he’d replenished her family’s coffers and made her rich beyond measure. Rich in money and freedom.
Wherever and with whomever you wish.
She lifted the pins one after the other and inserted them into her hair.
She didn’t want the world of the aristocracy. She wanted the world.
And he was the man to give it to her.
Not that she wasn’t prepared to take it.
To no avail, Felicity banged on the great steel warehouse door a half hour later as the sun edged over the rookery’s rooftops. What good was the benefit to having been given the blessing of a Bareknuckle Bastard’s protection in Covent Garden if one could not enter their damn warehouse when one wished?
She was going to have to do it another way. She reached into her hair, pulling out one gleaming steel pin, and a second, each one beautifully shaped. Devil had found a skilled artisan who understood complex lockpicking, which seemed the kind of thing that should not exist . . . but he specialized in things that did not exist, and so she was unsurprised as she knelt in the dirt outside the warehouse door.
He’d better be within, or she was going to be very irritated that she’d stained her dress.
Also, he’d better be within, because she was ready to give him a firm set-down. One he richly deserved, the bastard.
After which, she intended to stay until he told her he loved her. More than once.
Before she could do the job, however, a man leapt to the ground behind her. “My lady.”
She turned to face John, the handsome, friendly man who had returned her to her home the last time she was here. “Hello, John,” she said, brazening through, a bright smile on her pretty face.
“Good morning, my lady,” John replied in his deep baritone. “I hope you understand that I cannot allow you to pick that lock.”
“Excellent,” she said. “Then you shall save me the trouble and let me in?”
John’s brows rose. “I’m afraid I can’t.”
“But I am welcome here. I am under his protection. He gave me free rein over Covent Garden.”
“Not any longer, my lady. Now we’re to return you to Mayfair if we find you. No hesitation. You ain’t even to see Devil.”
A tightness settled in her chest. He didn’t even wish to see her again.
Which of course was rubbish because obviously he wished to see her.
Obviously he loved her.
He simply had to be convinced to tell her to her face, the foolish man.
That said, this new turn of events was not ideal. Felicity tried a new tack. “I never thanked you for bringing me home that night.”
“If you’ll excuse me for saying so, my lady, you were too busy railing against Devil to thank me.”
She pursed her lips. “I was very angry with him.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“It had nothing to do with you.”
“No, my lady.”
“He left me that night.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Just like he’d left her again and again. She met John’s gaze. “He left me again last night.”
Something flickered in the man’s dark eyes. Something suspiciously like pity. No. Felicity wasn’t having anyone’s pity. “He thinks to tell me what is good for me. I don’t care for that.”
John smirked. “I don’t imagine you do.”
“You shouldn’t ever tell your wife what’s good for her. Not if you know what’s good for you, John.”
He laughed at that, deep and full. Felicity kept talking, as much to herself as to him. “He’s addlepated, of course, as he’s more than good enough for me. He’s the best of men.” She looked to John again. “He’s the best of men.”
“Only the Bastards and Nik have keys to this lock.” John watched the rooftops for a long time.
“May I convince you to at least patrol the back side of the building while I pick it, then?”
“That lock is unpickable.”
She smiled. “As we become more acquainted, John, I think you’ll find that I’m quite good with locks.”
“I’ve seen you with Devil, my lady. I have no trouble believing that.”
The words set her heart racing, and sadness filled his large brown eyes. He wasn’t going to do it. He was too loyal to Devil to allow her in, even when he could see that her intentions were good.
“Please, John,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
A nightingale sang, and Felicity looked up at the strange sound, so unexpected here, in the yard of a rookery warehouse. When she found nothing out of the ordinary, she turned back to John, who was . . . smiling.
Her brow furrowed. “John?”
“Lady Felicity.” A growl came from above and she looked up to see Whit coming down the side of the warehouse to land next to her.
“I am going to require trousers if I’m going to run with you lot, aren’t I?”
He inclined his head. “It’s not the worst of ideas.”
His tacit acceptance of her premise filled her with joy. “I was just telling John that I love your brother quite madly.” One of Whit’s black brows rose. “As a result, I fully intend to pick this unpickable lock and go in there and tell him he’s cabbage-brained for not loving me back. But that will take some time, and when one decides one would like to fight for the man one loves, one likes to do it as quickly as possible, you can imagine.”
“I can. But he isn’t here. He’s at home.”
She shook her head. “No, he isn’t; I went there first.”
He grunted disapprovingly.
“So you can see why I would appreciate it if you would let me in.”
His brow furrowed. “Did you knock?”
“I did.”
He raised a fist and pounded a thundering knock on the door. “And he didn’t answer?”
Felicity did not like the look on his face. “No.”
His key was in the lock instantly, the door opening to the cavernous warehouse in seconds. Silence and darkness greeted them. “Devil?” he called out.
No answer. Felicity’s heart dropped. Something was wrong. She turned back to John. “Light. We need light.”
The big man was already turning to fetch a lantern.
Whit called after him. “Did he leave?”
John’s reply was firm and clipped. “No one’s been in or out since you lot left.”
“Devil!” Whit called out.
Silence.
John passed Felicity a lantern, and she lifted it high. “Devil?”
/> “He must have left,” Whit said. “Goddammit, John, there’s a hundred thousand pounds worth of goods down there and you lot are sleeping at the watch enough that you didn’t see someone leave through the only damn door to the place.”
“He didn’t come through that door, Beast,” John protested. “My men know their work. And they do it well.”
Felicity stopped listening to the two men spar, heading deeper into the darkness to the far corner of the space. To where the door inset in the warehouse floor stood open, a yawning blackness below.
Devil had been adamant that that door never stand open. That it being open underscored that there was something below the warehouse itself.
“Devil?” She stood at the edge of the hole and called into the void for him. He wouldn’t be down there. He hated the hold. He hated the darkness.
