Dedication
For my father,
who was the first to hear about my Covent Garden crime lords,
and who never got to meet them.
Grazie mille, Papà.
Ti voglio tanto bene.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Announcement to Brazen and the Beast
An Excerpt from Brazen and the Beast
About the Author
Also by Sarah MacLean
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
The Past
The three were woven together long before they were aware, strands of spun, silken steel that could not be separated—not even when their fate insisted upon it.
Brothers, born on the same day, in the same hour, at the same minute to different women. The high-priced courtesan. The seamstress. The soldier’s widow. Born on the same day, in the same hour, at the same minute to the same man.
The duke, their father, whose arrogance and cruelty fate would punish without hesitation, stealing from him the only thing he wanted that his money and power could not buy—an heir.
It is the Ides of March the seers warn of, with its promise of betrayal and vengeance, of shifting fortune and inalienable providence. But for this sire—who was never more than that, never close to father—it was the Ides of June that would be his ruin.
Because on that same day, in that same hour, at that same minute, there was a fourth child, born to a fourth woman. To a duchess. And it was this birth—the birth all the world thought legitimate—that the duke attended, even as he knew the son who was to be his heir in name and fortune and future was not his own and still, somehow, was his only hope.
Except she was a daughter.
And with her first breath, she thieved future from them all, as powerful in her infancy as she would become in her womanhood. But hers is a story for another time.
This story begins with the boys.
Chapter One
The Present
May 1837
The Devil stood outside Marwick House, under the black shadow of an ancient elm, watching his bastard brother within.
Flickering candles and mottled glass distorted the revelers in the ballroom beyond, turning the throngs of people within—aristocrats and moneyed gentry—into a mass of indiscernible movement, reminding Devil of the tide of the Thames, ebbing and flowing and slick with color and stink.
Faceless bodies—men dark with formal dress and women gleaming light in their silks and satins—ran together, barely able to move for the craning necks and flapping fans waving gossip and speculation through the stagnant ballroom air.
And at their center, the man they were desperate to see—the hermit Duke of Marwick, shining bright and new, despite having held the title since his father had died. Since their father had died.
No. Not father. Sire.
And the new duke, young and handsome, returned like London’s prodigal son—a head taller than the rest of the assembly, fair-haired and stone-faced, with the amber eyes the Dukes of Marwick had boasted for generations. Able-bodied and unwed and everything the aristocracy wished him to be.
And nothing the aristocracy believed him to be.
Devil could imagine the ignorant whispers running riot through the ballroom.
Why should a man of such prominence play the hermit?
Who cares, as long as he’s a duke?
Do you think the rumors are true?
Who cares, as long as he’s a duke?
Why hasn’t he ever come to town?
Who cares, as long as he’s a duke?
What if he’s as mad as they say?
Who cares, as long as he’s a duke?
I hear he is in the market for an heir.
It was the last that had summoned Devil from the darkness.
There had been a deal, made twenty years earlier, when they were three brothers in arms. And though much had happened since that deal had been forged, one thing remained sacrosanct: no one reneged on a deal with Devil.
Not without punishment.
And so, Devil waited with infinite patience in the gardens of the London residence of generations of Dukes of Marwick for the third in the deal to arrive. It had been decades since he and his brother, Whit—together known in London’s nefarious corners as the Bareknuckle Bastards—had seen the duke. Decades since they’d escaped the country seat of the dukedom in the dead of night, leaving secrets and sins behind, to build their own kingdom of secrets and sins of a different sort.
But, a fortnight earlier, invitations had arrived at the most extravagant homes in London—the ones with the most venerable names—even as servants had arrived at Marwick House, armed to the teeth with dusters and wax, with irons and airing lines. One week earlier, crates had been delivered—candles and cloth, potatoes and port, and a half-dozen settees for the massive Marwick ballroom, each now festooned with the skirts of London’s most eligible ladies.
Three days ago, the News of London arrived at the Bastards’ Covent Garden headquarters and there, on the fourth page, a headline in smudged ink pronounced “Mysterious Marwick to Marry?”
Devil had carefully folded the paper and left it on Whit’s desk. When he’d returned to his workspace the next morning, a throwing knife speared the newsprint to the oak.
And so it was decided.
Their brother, the duke, had returned, appearing without warning in this place designed for better men and filled with the worst of them, on land that he had inherited the moment he’d claimed his title, in a city they had made theirs, and in doing so, he revealed his greed.
But greed, in this place, on this land, was not permitted.
So, Devil waited and watched.
After long minutes, the air shifted and Whit appeared at his elbow, silent and deadly as a military reinforcement, which was appropriate, as this was nothing short of war.
“Just on time,” Devil said, softly.
A grunt.
“The Duke seeks a bride?”