gaze lit on the impressive knife cast aside on the oak. The blade was eight inches long, with a curved edge that would have shone in the darkness if it weren’t so doused in blood.
If it weren’t so doused in blood, it would have been beautiful.
She knew such a thought was not appropriate for the moment, but still, Hattie thought it, wanting to pick up the weapon and test its weight; she’d never seen something so wicked. So dangerous and powerful.
Except the man to whom it belonged.
Because she knew instantly, without question, this knife belonged to the man who called himself Beast.
“What happened?” she asked, coming to set the bowl on the table and inspect Augie’s still bleeding thigh. “You shouldn’t have taken the knife out.”
“Russell said—”
Hattie shook her head, cleaning the wound, enjoying her brother’s hissing curse more than she should. “I don’t care. Russell is a brute and you should have left the knife in.” She knocked twice on the worktable. “Lie back.”
Augie groaned. “I am bleeding.”
“Yes, I see that,” Hattie replied. “But as you are conscious, it would make my work a darn sight easier if you were lying flat.”
Augie lay back. “Be quick about it.”
“No one would blame you for taking your time,” Nora said, approaching with a biscuit tin in hand.
“Go home, Nora,” Augie snapped.
“Why would I do that when I am so enjoying myself here?” She extended the biscuit tin to Hattie. “Would you like one?”
She shook her head, focused on the injury, now clean. “You’re lucky the blade was so sharp. This should stitch well.” She extracted a needle and thread from the box. “Hold still.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Not more than the knife did.”
Nora snickered and Augie scowled. “That’s unkind.” He followed the words with a hiss as Hattie began the work of closing up the wound. “I can’t believe he hit his mark.”
Hattie’s breath caught in her throat. Beast. “Who?”
He shook his head. “No one.”
“Can’t be no one, Aug,” Nora pointed out, mouth full of biscuit. “You’ve a hole in you.”
“Yes. I noticed that.” Another hiss as Hattie continued stitching.
“What are you into, Augie?”
“Nothing.” She pressed the needle more firmly on the next stitch. “Dammit!”
She met her brother’s pale blue gaze. “What have you gotten us all into?”
His gaze slid away. Guilty. Because whatever he’d done, whatever had put him in danger that night—it put them all in danger. Not just Augie. Their father. The business.
Hattie. All the plans she’d made and everything she had set in motion for the Year of Hattie. Business. Home. Fortune. Future. And, if the man with whom she’d made a deal was involved, it threatened the rest—body.
Frustration thrummed through her, making her want to scream. To shake him until he told her the truth that had landed a knife in his thigh. That had landed an unconscious man in her carriage. And God knew what else.
Another stitch.
Another.
She stayed quiet, and seethed.
Not six months earlier, their father had summoned Augie and Hattie to him, informing them both that he was no longer able to manage the business he’d built into an empire. The earl had grown too old to work the ships, to manage the men. To keep watch over the ins and outs of the business. And so he offered them the only solution a man with a life peerage and a working business had—inheritance.
Both children had grown up in the rigging of the Sedley ships; both of them had spent their early years—those before their father had been offered a title—at their father’s heels, learning the business of shipping. Both had learned to heft a sail. To tie a knot.
But only one of them had learned well.
Unfortunately, that one was the girl.
So their father had given Augie the chance to prove himself, and for the last six months Hattie had worked the hardest she’d ever worked to do the same—to prove herself worthy of assuming control of the business, all while Augie rested on his laurels, biding his time until their father decided to hand the whole thing over to his son for no reason other than because Augie was male and that was how inheritance was done.
There was no other way to intuit the earl’s reasoning:
The men on the docks need a firm hand.
As though Hattie didn’t have the strength to manage them.
The shipments need an able body.
As though Hattie was too soft for the work.
You’re good, girl, and with a head for it to be sure . . .
A compliment, but never spoken as