Knockout: A Hell’s Belles Novel

She thought she couldn’t find trouble on Bond Street?

In the past two weeks, he’d met Imogen Loveless in the shell of a building that had been exploded, in a burning warehouse, and outside one of the most raucous pubs in Covent Garden—where a carriage had nearly run her down—and somehow, the most trouble she’d been in was in the back room of a Mayfair dressmaker’s.

Because if there was one thing that was trouble, it was Imogen Loveless, smart-mouthed, fresh-faced, and half-dressed.

Just asking to be mussed.

In all his thirty years, Tommy had faced any number of temptations. In his youth, he’d been offered easy paths to money—fixing fights, running contraband, stealing. As he’d aged, there’d been others: women, cards, food, drink. But every single temptation he’d faced paled in comparison to the temptation of Imogen standing before him in a stunning silk in a color so decadent he knew, instinctively, that he couldn’t name it. A stunning silk that was obviously held up by nothing more than the woman’s soft hands and softer breasts.

And then, as if that weren’t enough—as if he didn’t deserve a damn sainthood for not looking, for not touching—she’d turned around. And the back . . .

He swallowed, mouth dry.

It had been open.

And he’d looked away.

Aristocrats called themselves noble? There was nothing nobler than looking away from the beautiful skin of Imogen Loveless’s back, smooth and silky and lush enough to make a man wonder what his fingers would look like pressed against it.

Tommy deserved a goddamn title.

He’d waited in the front room of the modiste’s shop while she dressed, holding her carpetbag, telling himself he was not straining to listen to her soft instructions as she ordered the dress she’d barely been wearing. Holding back his suggestion that she order eight to twelve additional versions of it, and hang the back fastening.

Telling himself that he was simply waiting for her to finish and join him. Making sure she didn’t sneak out a rear exit and go on the run with the help of her gang.

Telling himself it was all in service to his job, even when she pushed through the curtain and into the front room smelling like pears and sunshine. She was wearing a bright yellow day dress and matching coat the color of the summer sun.

“You did not have to come inside,” she said to him, as she headed for the door, eyeing the carpetbag in his hand.

“Considering the fact that every place you go is more than it seems and, too often, the location of something nefarious,” he said, coming off the wall and pretending not to be called to her like a dog on a lead, “I think I did need to come inside.”

“The most nefarious thing that happens at Hebert’s is an unwieldy amount of aristocratic gossip.”

“Who danced with whom at the Trevescan ball?”

“Come now, Mr. Peck,” Sesily said from behind him. “We all know that’s not the best gossip to come from the Trevescan ball.”

He looked to Sesily, unable to keep his surprise at bay.

She grinned. “I’m still here.”

“Is there a name for a group of you? Like a murder of crows?”

“A murder would be delightful, come to think of it,” Imogen said, turning back to him. “I assume you’ve a carriage somewhere?”

“We’ll have to make do with a hack.” He pointed down Bond, to Bruton Street. “You’re too brightly colored for murder.”

Her lips curved in a knowing smile. “You underestimate the value of distraction.”

He wanted to kiss her again. Surely his memory from the night before was incorrect. Surely her lips weren’t so soft. The taste of her wasn’t so sweet. The feel of her against him wasn’t so good.

What had she said?

“Distraction,” she repeated. “A Distraction of Belles.”

Sesily laughed delightedly. “Perfect.”

It was perfect. There had never been a collective noun better suited to these women. To this woman. Imogen, ever the distraction.

He looked to the brightly colored carpetbag in his hand, willing himself to focus on what was inside. On the information she had that would help his investigation. That would bring the culprits to justice. That would cement the reputation of the Detective Branch, and of Tommy himself, in the minds of the Home Office.

He hailed a hack and reached up to open the door.

Keeping the lady safe, getting her to share the information she had. That was the job. Not falling for . . . whatever this was.

Imogen held firm on the street.

“Inside, if you please,” he said.

“Are you mad? It’s broad daylight,” she argued. “Half of London is watching. I can’t go anywhere without a chaperone.”

Sesily snorted. “Since when are you worried about chaperones?”

“Since right now,” she said, scowling at Tommy. “Since Scotland Yard has taken an interest in my personal effects.”

“For what it’s worth, I think Mr. Peck has been interested in your personal effects for quite a while, Imogen.” Sesily pressed a kiss to her friend’s cheek and whispered, “Have fun.”

Once inside, the carriage clattering away from Mayfair, Imogen looked to Tommy. “Where are we going?”

“I thought you might enjoy a drive.”

“With a policeman looking to rifle through my personal effects?”

He leaned down and moved her carpetbag from his feet to hers. “There,” he said. “An olive branch.”

She narrowed her gaze on him and moved to prop her feet on the bag. “An olive branch that already belonged to me.”

“That dress you were wearing,” he said. “In the shop.”

Her eyes flew to his.

“You look beautiful in that color.”

Her cheeks went pink and he felt like a goddamn prince. “Thank you.”

He resisted the urge to say more. He shouldn’t be talking about that dress. He shouldn’t even be thinking about that dress, which likely cost more than a month of his pay. That was the point of this drive, was it not? To prove that their lives were so different, they might as well be from different continents?

Imogen was titled and beautiful, born into a future filled with dresses that cost more than a month of his salary and balls in Mayfair filled with people he’d never do anything but work for. And he was Tommy Peck, who’d come up on the streets of the East End and hadn’t even seen Hyde Park until he was seventeen.

Looking out the window, Imogen noticed that they were on a straight shot east. “Am I being kidnapped?”

“I know better than to think that you would be a well-behaved captive.”

She tossed him a smile. “Oh, Tommy, you know better than to think that I would be a captive at all.”

He looked to the bag at her feet. “With whatever you keep in that bag, I would believe it.”

“You’ll never know,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere. We’re just taking a drive.”

She looked out the window. “To Holborn?”

“Shoreditch.”

Her brows rose, but she did not speak, and he found himself marveling once again at the way this woman who so often brought chaos around him could simply . . . be. Like calm in a storm. When she asked, simply, “Why?” it was with that same calm, like the sea on a cloudless day.

There were a dozen reasons, he knew—and most of them impossible to confess. Impossible to consider. So he settled on the one that felt the safest. “You don’t like the police.”

She cut him a dry look. “You’ve noticed.”

“And yet, you’ve provided me with plenty of evidence relating to criminals you wished brought to justice.” A half-dozen blue files, the outside of which were inked with an indigo bell, filled with evidence that would send some of the most powerful men in Britain to prison.

She tilted her head as if to acknowledge the strange balance of truth. “There are times when the punishment must come from within.”

“Aristocrats.”

“A man murders his wife. Another murders his peers. One steals from an orphanage. Still another stands by while workers die in his factory.” She paused. “Heinous crimes at which the aristocracy can turn up their noses—at least in public. Whatever punishment your arrest and their subsequent trial metes out . . . it is acceptable to the House of Lords.”

“Then why not let me play a part in this one?”

After a pause, she said, “Because this one is more complicated. When we pull on this thread, it may well summon us to a place you do not wish to go.”

“I will find my way there, eventually,” he said. “It is my job.”

A little smile. “And therein lies the rub.”

His brow furrowed. “You think my loyalties lie elsewhere from justice?”

She watched him for a long moment, the only sound the clattering of carriage wheels on the rough streets of the East End. Crafting her reply carefully, she said, “You are exactly what I think of you, Tommy Peck. Noble and good, and with a sense of justice that I have seen in too few people, and only a handful of men.”

He shouldn’t care that she thought it. Praise should not feel different when it came from her. It shouldn’t make him flushed. Shouldn’t make him want to ask her for more of it. But somehow, inexplicably, it did.

Somehow, inexplicably, Imogen Loveless’s approval had become more meaningful than all the rest.

“Then let me in. Tell me what you know. Let me work with you.”

She chewed the side of her full bottom lip for a moment, and he was transfixed by the movement—wanting simultaneously to watch her do it forever and also pull her to him and take over the task.

When she stopped, she said, “Punishment from within. You understand what I mean.”

“Men of power, brought before their peers. Punished by them.”

“And what if the punishment cannot come from within? What if it must come from . . . without?”

He shook his head. “You’re talking about vigilante justice.”

“Another good option,” she said. “A Vigilante of Belles.”

Anger flared. “No. Dammit.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am here. Because I can be—”

“The long arm of justice? Is that what they call it?” She looked out the window at the buildings flying by—the driver was moving at a clip, eager to drop them at their destination and get back to safer parts of the city. “And what does that look like in Spitalfields? What does it look like on the docks? Or here? The arm of justice seems only long enough to reach the borders of Covent Garden. It does not extend so far when those who require it live too far south or east.”

“Justice looks the same everywhere,” he replied, hot with frustration.

She tilted her head and leveled him with a look. “It is blind, they say.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

A ghost of a smile flashed across her lips. “It rarely sees the East End, at least.” He didn’t misunderstand, but before he could reply—before he could find an argument against the point she was making so clearly, she said, “It’s alright, Tommy. We can do it without you.”

Goddammit, he hated that.

Hated that it hadn’t even occurred to her to turn to him for help. To bring him into whatever information she had. Whatever plan they’d concocted. Hated that she put herself at risk when he was here, and he could help keep her safe.

He could keep her safe.

“Imogen—” he began, but she stopped him from saying whatever it was he was going to say.

Which he would never be able to recall, because he was so flummoxed by her asking, “May I ask a question about intercourse?”

If the woman had set off a bomb in the carriage, she could not have shocked him more.

He coughed. “What?”

“That is the word used in polite society, is it not?”

“I don’t believe any word is used in polite society.”

“Hmm.” She considered the words. “Probably not, but in truth, we’re above polite society, wouldn’t you say?”

He honestly did not know what he would or would not say.

Imogen did not have the same problem. “I assume you have performed the act at one point or another.”

“Lady Imogen.”

“Yes, well, that is the problem with polite society. We too often prize what we mustn’t say over that which we absolutely must. No matter. There’s no need to be polite here.”

On the contrary, Peck could think of nothing needed more in this situation than politeness, as if he allowed himself to go down an impolite path with this woman, he might never wish to return.

He cleared his throat and stayed quiet.

“And so?” she asked. “Have you had intercourse?”

A peculiar sound was strangled from his throat. “Yes.”

“Yes, of course you have. You seem very skilled at all the bits leading up to it.”

The woman hadn’t witnessed his skill at even half of the bits leading up to it. Not that he was going to say that.

“Is it as delightful as it seems?”

Victoria herself ought to turn up at Whitehall complete with crown and scepter and knight him. Directly into the Order of the Magnificently Restrained.

“My lady.” He forced the words from his throat.

She looked out the window and said wistfully, “Back to polite society I see.”

When he did not reply, she said, “It’s just that I’ve never had it, and after last night . . . and some of this afternoon . . . I find myself . . . curious.”

It was possible the woman was trying to kill him. This was it. She had a plan to vanquish Scotland Yard by seeing those who worked for it directly to their demise. Starting with him.

He cast about for literally any reasonable explanation for her change of topic. And then, with a bolt of realization, said, “Hang on. Are you attempting to dissuade me from discussion about whatever you and your distraction of ladies are up to?”

She was silent for a moment, watching him carefully, and he would have done anything to know what she was thinking. And then she said with a big, bright smile, “Clever man.”

Except as he watched that smile that did not quite reach her eyes, he didn’t think he was very clever. “Imogen—”

She waved that small hand once more, as though she could brush it all away. “You needn’t worry about me, Tommy.”

“I needn’t worry about you?” Frustration turned to indignation and then anger in his chest. “You’ve nearly been killed three times in the last two weeks, Imogen. You put yourself in danger every day you don’t let me help you.”

“And you worry my brother won’t pay your fee?”

The question sent a sizzle of defiance through him—an urge to protest every thought she seemed to have about him—and he shot forward in his seat, coming closer to her than he intended. “Don’t. Don’t do that. I didn’t go to your brother for a fee, or because of his relationship with the home secretary, or because I had a yearning to dress myself like an idiot and march into Mayfair.”

She licked her lips, and it was like a blow to the gut. He looked. He couldn’t not look. They were pink and plump and wet, and Christ he wanted them. “Why did you go to him?”

It took a moment for the question to unscramble his thoughts, thoughts he would blame for why he answered truthfully. “Because I want you safe.”

He could have stopped at I want you.

She smiled, slow and sinful, as though she understood. “You don’t look like an idiot when you’re dressed for Mayfair.”

She’d taken notice of him the night before. She’d catalogued the trousers and waistcoat and cravat he’d worn . . . and liked them.

He shouldn’t care that she liked them. It didn’t matter.

Tommy Peck wasn’t made for Mayfair, and Imogen Loveless wasn’t made for Shoreditch, and neither of them should be in this carriage, and they shouldn’t be this close, and he definitely shouldn’t be thinking about hauling her into his lap and kissing her until they could no longer see straight.

“Why are we here, Tommy?” she said quietly, her gaze flickering to his lips. “Headed to Shoreditch as the sun sets?”

“I was born there,” he confessed, the words heavy in the quiet carriage, weighed down by her surprise. “You think I don’t know what it’s like. To be outside the view of those in power. And I was born there, to a street sweep and his wife, who took in washing to make ends meet. So when you say I cannot be expected to stand on the side of those who have no access to title or privilege . . .” He looked out the window, the late afternoon light setting the buildings aflame with the promise of sunset. It would come early and cold tonight. “When you say I cannot be trusted . . .”

She nodded. “It doesn’t sit right.”

“No.”

“I did not know. Your file—” She stopped herself from finishing the sentence.

“My file?”

She waved a hand in the air. “You’re a detective inspector at Scotland Yard, Tommy. In all the time the Hell’s Belles have delivered evidence to help you bring a man to justice, it never occurred to you that we might have done a bit of inspecting you?”

“What is in my file?”

She smiled and teased. “It will take more than an outing to Shoreditch for me to reveal that, Mr. Peck.”

God, that smile. It wrecked him every damn time. “Name your price.”

Her lids lowered, those sooty black lashes hiding everything as she looked to his lips, as her own lips parted on a little breath that he couldn’t hear but knew was perfect. “I don’t know if you’d pay it,” she whispered.

He would pay it. He would pauper himself to pay it.

“Tommy,” she whispered, and the tiny, desperate plea in the word made him instantly, impossibly hard. He shouldn’t respond to it. He’d just collected her from Mayfair’s most popular dressmaker, surrounded by her titled friends in her gilded world. Any way he touched her would be less than what she deserved. He couldn’t give her what she deserved.

But then her hand was on his beard, soft and sweet and pulling him across the barely-there distance between them. And she was whispering his name again, and opening to him, and meeting his kiss with her own.

And he might not be able to give her what she deserved.

But he was willing to do anything to give her what she wanted.

He growled into her mouth and she sighed into his, and he was stroking deep, and reaching to pull her to him, atop him, thinking of nothing but pulling her dress down . . . or up . . . or both . . . and giving them both what they wanted. Again and again.

The carriage began to slow, ready to make its turn and bring them back to Mayfair. Away from this place that he’d wanted to show her, and he knew he should be grateful for it. Instead, he pulled away from her and swore, thick and harsh in the dim light. And Imogen—perfect, wonderful Imogen laughed low and smoky, like sex, and said, “I could not agree more.”

He could make love to her right there. He could spread her across the seat and go to his knees and bring her pleasure with fingers and tongue, and leave her feeling soft and lush and loved.

But not here. Not in this place that should remind him every moment why Imogen Loveless was not for him.

He knocked on the roof, indicating that the driver should stop.

Imogen sat forward, confused. “We’re stopping?”

“I’m going to ride up top,” he mumbled. “We can’t—”

“Tommy, we can—”

He was out of the carriage before it was even stopped, leaping down into the street, already calling up to the driver. “I’m joining you. Back to Mayfair.”

He snapped the door shut, closing Imogen in.

Steeping himself in this place that had raised him. That still housed his family. Steeping himself in the reminder he should not have needed.

And then, as though he’d summoned it, he heard the little, excited cry. “Uncle Tommy! Gran! It’s Uncle Tommy!”

And there, not ten yards away, were his niece and his mother, the latter calling out, “Tommy!”

He stopped, one foot on the block, and the driver looked down at him. “Oy! I ain’t lingerin’. If you’re doin’ callin’ hours, the gel’s got to get out.”

“I won’t be a moment,” Tommy said. He was here for a heartbeat. Just long enough to—

“Tommy!” his mother called again.

The door to the carriage opened, and he turned back to tell Imogen to stay inside—the last thing he needed was her asking questions—but before he could save himself from the mess that was about to get made, his mother took charge. “Thomas David Peck, did you think you could bring a woman to Shoreditch and not introduce her to your family?”

Tommy froze, a mask of horror falling over his face.

It was a terrible miscalculation.

One made worse when he caught a glimpse of Imogen’s broad, bright smile, impossibly visible in the fast-fading light. And then she spoke and he was doomed.

“Hello! You must be Tommy’s mother.”