“If they worry I’ve gone soft, they can come find me.” He looked back to the Sedley warehouse. “I diversified our business.”
“For business? Or personal?”
“Both,” Whit said, knowing the words were a lie. “It keeps her safe. And now we can ship . . .”
Devil raised a brow. “What?”
“I don’t know. Tinned salmon. Or tulip bulbs.”
“What horseshit. What in hell do you know about tulip bulbs?”
Whit’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I’m getting a bit tired of being told I’m talking horseshit.”
Devil’s brows shot up. “Oh? Who besides me is speaking truth to you?” His eyes lit, and a smile split his long face. “I’ll tell you what, bruv, I do like her.”
Whit shot him a look. “Don’t like her. She’s not for liking.”
“Is she for loving?”
Memory flashed, unpleasant. I can’t love you, he’d said to her, as she’d dressed with all possible speed, desperate to leave his house after he’d ruined the night they’d had. What kind of an imbecile of a man said such a thing to a woman after making love to her?
Surely, there’d been another way to keep her safe. Something other than insulting her. Christ. He should run himself through as punishment.
It didn’t matter that it was the truth. “Another man would be lucky to love her.”
“Why not you?”
He leveled Devil with a look. “Ewan threatened her, Devil. Outright.”
Devil watched him for a long minute, tapping that infernal walking stick against the toe of his outstretched boot. Then, “If we’re diversifying, we’re going to have to have a conversation about the ships.”
“Why?”
“Well, first, we’d better learn a bit about tinned salmon and tulips, but besides that, they’re sitting empty in the berths, which is bad for them.”
“What do you know about what’s bad for boats?”
“I don’t know a damn thing, but now that we own a fucking fleet of them, I think one of us ought to start, don’t you? Seems like we might need to seek out a boat expert.” A pause. Then, “Do you know anyone with a love of boats?”
Whit turned on his brother then. “What do you want from me?”
“You cocked it up,” Devil said.
“You think I don’t fucking know that?” Whit resisted the urge to put a fist in his brother’s face for no good reason. “He threatened to kill her.”
“And you stole her business out from under her. You punished her for the sins of men—it’s familiar.” It was the plan Devil had implemented before he fell in love with Felicity. “Christ, the things we do to women.”
“It’s bollocks,” Whit said. “But how else do I keep her safe?”
“You don’t,” Devil said. “Keeping her safe requires locking her up. And if I know one thing—it’s that women don’t care for locks.”
“She’s brilliant. And she should be running the business. She should have been running it from the start, but her father wouldn’t give it to her.”
Devil nodded once. “Then let her husband give it to her.” The meaning slammed through him, even before his brother added, “Marry her.”
There was an irony in the way the words came, as though marriage were a neat solution that Whit simply hadn’t considered. As though he hadn’t been consumed by the idea of marrying her. As though he hadn’t imagined that marriage would keep her close.
But it wouldn’t keep her safe. “I seem to recall recommending such a thing to you not long ago, and you taking the suggestion . . . poorly.”
Devil leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest with the calm certainty of a man well loved. “Once I came around to it, it worked out very well.”
Whit shook his head. “Marriage isn’t an option.”
“Why? You might as well marry her if you’re going to follow her around like a guard dog for the rest of your days. You want the girl, Whit. I saw you go for her at the fight the other night. I saw the way she strung you tight.”
Of course he wanted her. Christ. Any man in his right mind would want her. She was brilliant and bold and strong and beautiful, and when she came, she moved against a man like sin.
But how could he bring her into this world? Put her in danger?
Devil raised a black brow. “Do you wish to know what I think?”
“No.”
“Does she want you?”
There are a thousand reasons why I wouldn’t marry you, and where you were raised doesn’t even rank.