Knockout: A Hell’s Belles Novel

When Imogen woke, the fire had died and the room was still, a barely-there light burning at the bedside. A candle that had not been lit when she’d fallen asleep. The first thing she noticed was how warm she was, as though she were in full sun.

Memory came fast and impossible and delicious and startling. She was in Tommy’s bed. In Tommy’s arms, wrapped in the heady scent of him, her face pressed to his warm, bare skin.

She stiffened with surprise, unaccustomed to this particular scenario, but before she could sit up, one of his enormous hands stroked over her shoulder—also bare!—and down her side, slow and sure.

“It’s alright,” he said, the words a low rumble at her ear. “I’ve got you.”

For a moment, she believed him. She gave herself up to the words and to his touch and to the dim light and let herself imagine, just for a moment, just for this night, that he did have her, and that this was her life. That they lived in these rented rooms at the top of the stairs in Holborn, filled with perfectly ordered stacks of books and tables full of her work and a bed large enough for them to sleep tangled in each other.

She moved against him, stretching, reveling in the little changes in her body, the tension and twinges, the evidence that what had happened between them had actually happened. Like an explosion.

In this case, however, she had witnessed it. She’d heard the sounds—the sighs and groans and whispers, the gasps of pleasure and the slide of sheets and the press of his kiss against her temple.

She’d felt this explosion, too. Continued to.

Wanted to experience another.

But first, she wanted the aftermath.

“Did I wake you?” she asked, feeling like she should apologize if she had. Not that she was sorry. If they only ever had these hours, pulled from time by the storm that continued outside, if the wind against the window was any indication, she wanted him awake.

Tommy made a little noise of denial. “You were so still,” he said, the words impossibly soft and perfectly clear in the darkness. “I couldn’t stop watching you.” She turned her face into his warm skin, embarrassed, and he caught her before she could protest. “It was magnificent—so different from how I have experienced you in the past.”

She slid her gaze to him. “You don’t care for my chaos?”

“On the contrary, I have spent fourteen months undeniably drawn to your chaos,” he said, a low laugh in his quiet words. “Resisting your chaos because of what it might reveal. What you might see.”

She lifted her head and looked at him. “And what is it that I might see?”

He looked to the ceiling above the bed, suddenly fascinated by the dark inlaid wood there. “The way I look at you.”

Her heart threatened to beat from her chest. “And what way is that?”

He turned to her, then, meeting her eyes, fire in his own. “Like I’ve never seen anything like you. Nothing so bright. Nothing so blazing. Nothing so tempting, like I would follow you into hell if it meant being able to watch you. I am beginning to think it’s not chaos, though,” he added. “I’m beginning to think chaos is the way you hide in plain sight.”

The words stuttered through her and she looked away from him. “I don’t know what that means.”

“I think you do, though,” he said. “I think you play this role—the wild Lady Imogen, who might set off a bomb or put a knife into a villain to save the day—”

“I’ve never knifed a villain,” she interjected. “It is not my preferred method of handling them.”

“No. You prefer putting them to sleep with your latest concoction.”

“In my experience they are more likely to stay out of my business if I do that.”

“You see? That’s not chaos,” he said. “That’s something else entirely. You hide your competence in chaos. You hide your keen sense of justice there. You hide the heroine you are there.”

It was almost too much, the way the observation threatened to unravel her. The way it cut. “I am not a heroine. Heroines are bold and beautiful and brave. Captains of their own fate.” She paused, and then, “You forget, I am surrounded by them.”

“Tell me about your Belles.”

She stilled against him.

“The Hell’s Belles,” she said softly. “When you gave us that name, you could not have imagined how we would delight in it.”

“I’m happy to have been of some use,” Tommy replied, hand stroking over her back. “Considering that night also provided me with less serious mentions in the News.”

She giggled. “If only the ladies of London could have a Peek of Peck now.”

He growled and rolled her to her back, leaning down and setting his teeth to her shoulder, nipping playfully at the skin there until she gave a little squeak and he lifted his head. “Tell me about them. I will keep your secrets, Imogen. I swear it.”

She wanted to believe it. “Duchess would say you are the last man in Christendom I should trust.”

“I’ll worry about winning Duchess tomorrow.”

Imogen smiled, ignoring the tiny explosion in her chest at the words. Pow. At the wild idea that he might one day stand by her side the way Caleb stood by Sesily. The way Clayborn did with Adelaide.

At the wild idea that he would, indeed, win Duchess.

As if it were possible.

Imogen answered more easily than she should have, but knowing, instinctively, that whatever happened beyond the walls of these quiet rooms in Holborn, what was said here was theirs alone. “They are the heroines.”

“I am not so sure.”

He was wrong, of course. “That night you named us . . . that was the night Sesily walked through fire to save Caleb.”

“Blew up my jail, you mean,” he said dryly, no doubt thinking back to the rubble Sesily and Imogen had left in the basement of Whitehall when they had broken Caleb Calhoun out of one of the cells there.

“As I recall,” she said, “that particular explosion was simultaneous to the arrest of a viscount who’d murdered several former wives and committed any number of other crimes. A damaged cell door is a small price to pay if you think of it.”

“Less damaged and more blown to bits, but I’ll allow it.” A pause. “But yes, it coincided with the delivery of a now familiar blue dossier, inked with an indigo bell, and containing an unimpeachable amount of evidence against the viscount.”

She smiled and ran her fingers through the hair on his chest. “That’s very lucky.”

“Mmm,” he said. “Well, considering your penchant for explosions, I have a theory about that particular crime. Namely, it was not Mrs. Calhoun who committed it.”

“I cannot say,” she said breezily.

“You won’t say, you mean,” he said. “I’d appreciate you telling me how you did it someday.”

The fact that she made her own gunpowder was for another time.

“You’re wrong. It was Sesily who was the heroine that night. Coming in like an avenging queen, planning an absolute coup, and looking like she would burn London to the ground if that was what it took to save Caleb.”

It had been a magnificent job they’d done. And Sesily wildly in love, the kind that came from a storybook. The kind that made Imogen wonder dangerous things in the dark of night, when she let her quietest thoughts run wild . . . things like whether she might have a similar love for herself someday.

“And then there is Adelaide, born a solitary princess to the king of the South Bank,” she said. “Never hesitating to leap into the fray—to take down a villain. To stand for justice. And never once worrying that she might not have the strength for it.”

“She went up against her father?” Everyone knew Adelaide’s father. Alfie Trumbull, the head of The Bully Boys—the most dangerous gang in the South Bank.

“And it worked,” Imogen said, matching his admiration. “He stopped offering muscle to the highest bidders north of the river.” She did not add the rest—that when Alfie had stopped, others had stepped in. More powerful than before. Instead, she said, “And to think, I can’t get out from under the yoke of my brother, who wouldn’t know how to run a crime ring if he were offered all the money in Britain.”

Tommy gave a little laugh at that. “Some of us don’t find that to be a bad quality, you know.”

“You miss the point,” she said. “Adelaide’s strength. It is no wonder Clayborn tumbled into love and would not let her go.”

She resisted the urge to meet Tommy’s gaze. To beg him to do the same.

“I do not miss the point,” he said. “In fact, I think you do.”

She did lift her head then, feeling something close to affront. “I beg your pardon?”

Tommy caught her face in his big, warm hand, urging her to look at him. “What did you call them? Bold and beautiful and brave? Captains of their own fate? You forget I have watched you, Imogen Loveless. I have witnessed your boldness. I have been laid out by your beauty.” They were pretty words, but they were not for her. She blushed and tried to look away. “Wait,” he stopped her. “As for bravery . . . there are few who would run into burning buildings to save the day. Even fewer who would run into collapsing ones to save me.”

“You cannot be trusted to save yourself, Thomas Peck. You are too noble.”

“Only when it comes to saving you,” he whispered.

She kissed him then, rewarding him for the words and the way they warmed her even as she knew it wasn’t true. She knew that his nobility ran to his core. Had recognized it in him from the start—which was why he was the only man at Scotland Yard the Belles came close to trusting.

Well. Not Duchess. Duchess didn’t trust anyone until they’d proved themselves.

“And so you are heroines together,” he offered. “A team of women bent on serving justice in the dark corners where it is rarely found.”

“Are they dark corners?” she replied. “They do not feel dark to those of us who frequent them. They feel like bright worlds, ignored by the rich and powerful.”

“You mean Scotland Yard.”

She hesitated. Tell him.

No. It was too much. If he did not believe her, it would put them all in danger. “I mean men with money and power and privilege.”

“And so the four of you—all women with money and power and privilege—take up the fight.”

“As much as we can,” she said. “Alongside others, who often know the fight better. But money and power and privilege come with benefits—namely, resources for the battle.”

“Tell me about the battle.”

“There are too many to name. A tapestry of threads to be unraveled.” She paused. “So we do what we can to pull as many as possible, and unravel the whole thing.”

“How?”

“You know some of it,” she said. “Safe places for wives escaping husbands, daughters escaping fathers. Fair work in bawdy houses, in workhouses. Better work for servants with vicious employers. A dozen other things.”

“And now, O’Dwyer and Leafe, doctors in hiding.”

She nodded. “A moving clinic for women in trouble. And for women who aren’t in trouble, but have different plans.”

His serious, knowing gaze did not waver. “They’ve enemies.”

“More than they can count.”

His eyes turned to flint. “Which means you have enemies.”

She flashed him a smile. “Ah, but I also have a blade at my thigh and a keen understanding of explosives.”

“And me,” he said. “You have me.”

Not forever.

She looked away. “Perhaps I do hide in my chaos. In my movement. But more and more, I find there is no time for stillness.”

“Why not?”

“Because the fight is in the movement.”

“For justice.”

“It does not always feel like justice,” Imogen said, thinking of the girls who had lost their doctors. Of Mithra, without her ale. Of Maggie, with her added security. Of women meeting villains tumbling out of taverns, without Tommy Peck at their backs. Of those gold medallions, and what they represented. She spoke to the darkness. “Sometimes it feels like vengeance.”

Silence fell with the words, heavy and honest. And he took a deep breath, letting it out and leaving her wondering whether she had gone too far. Hoping she hadn’t. Willing him to understand.

“Sometimes, it feels like vengeance is the best choice.”

She lifted her head and met his gaze, the meaning of the words rioting through her. He understood. He understood. It wasn’t possible, though. He still woke every morning and went to Whitehall, and banged the drum of right and wrong. Legal and illegal. Did he not?

And then he added, “I told you I would keep you safe, Imogen. I claimed the role of your guard. I pledged you my blade. If it gets to be too much, you can always summon me.”

Even if it means fighting everything you are?

They lay in the silence, their thoughts like screams between them, until Imogen could no longer bear it. “When your father died,” she began, not wanting to ask but knowing she must, “you said you were lucky to have Adams. That he pulled you off the streets.”

“Mmm,” he agreed, shifting beneath her, and sighing.

She placed her palm flat on his chest. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“I do, though,” he said, and strangely, it seemed like he was talking to himself and not to her. “I have to tell you so you—”

She waited for him to go on. To finish the sentence.

He decided against it. Instead, he said, “My father was a street sweep.”

Imogen had not lied to him when she’d told him the Belles had a file on him—a file that revealed dozens of things about his current life. The location of this flat, the story of his rise through the Metropolitan Police and his accomplishments there—his enemies and friends. And of course, the myriad events relating to Mayfair ladies’ favorite pastime: a Peek of Peck (the last was entertainment more than anything else). But it did not include his childhood—a failure of the file Duchess had never hesitated to point out.

But Imogen had never been more grateful for a failing of the Belles in that moment, as she waited for him to tell her this story. To trust her with it.

“You’ve seen where we lived,” he said. “When we were growing up, it was a palace. Three rooms, think of it. My mother and father in one; Rose, Stanley, and me in another. A window out the back.”

“Not just any window,” she teased him. “One that held treasures.”

He chuckled and moved to put a hand beneath his head, making it impossible to ignore the thick biceps that appeared when he bent his arm. “You can’t blame me for that crime. Those stockings were the prettiest I’d ever seen.”

She placed her chin on her own hand, still on his chest, loving the warmth of him against her. Savoring it—this quiet, secret night, the two of them against the wide world. “Of that, I’ve no doubt.”

“Until I saw yours the other night,” he said, as his free hand stroked down her spine, lingering at the small of her back, tempting her with the possibility that he might stray lower. “Those ribbons the color of sunset will be the last memory I recall.”

She smiled. “I am happy to be of service.”

Another laugh died away, and he returned to his story. “My da hadn’t known his family—he’d been born in the gutter and raised in an orphanage, until he was old enough to be tossed into one of the rookeries to fend for himself.” He scoffed. “Old enough.”

Imogen understood. David Peck hadn’t been old enough. No one was old enough for those rookeries. They were virtually inescapable. “He must have been a remarkable man.”

“He met Adams in the rookery. They came up together, and Adams was caught picking the pocket of the right man—someone with connections to the Bow Street Runners.” A pause as he looked to the ceiling, choosing his next words in the flickering candlelight above. “My father didn’t have such good luck. He took work as a sweep.

“He met my mother in Covent Garden—he was sweeping outside a theater on the Strand and she’d been inside, watching the play. He used to say he knew the moment he saw her that there’d never be another woman.” He paused for a moment, lost in a memory, and Imogen hung on the next words. “He followed her back to Marylebone, where she lived in a big house owned by her merchant father.”

“Your grandfather,” she said. All the talk about the East End and Shoreditch, and his grandfather was a wealthy merchant?

Tommy shook his head. “I never met him. He disowned my mother when she married my father . . .”

Her throat went tight with understanding, and anger, and resentment for an old man who could have had a bright, beautiful family with daughters and sons and grandchildren . . . and a grandson like this—strong and noble and good—but instead chose upward mobility. The kind that she imagined left him bitter and alone.

Tommy looked down at her and huffed a little laugh. “You look like you’d like to take up a blade.”

“I’d like to give your grandfather a piece of my mind,” she said.

“Thank you.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “But you can’t. He’s dead.”

Good. That she didn’t say it aloud was surely a sign of great character.

“My parents married,” he said, returning to the story, sliding Imogen a look. “I was a five-month birth.”

“If your father looked anything like you, I am not surprised,” she said immediately.

He gave a little laugh. “That’s why I—”

“I understand.” And she did. She didn’t wish for a child. Not then, at least. Not yet. She pushed the thought aside.

“But what I didn’t know then, when I was stealing petticoats off the washing line, was that the flat was more than any street sweep could afford. I’m not sure my mother did, either. She took work as a laundress, but two jobs weren’t enough to make ends meet. I’m sure my father didn’t tell her that he was fighting in underground rings to make up the rent every week. Brutal work during the days, brutal bouts at night.”

Imogen was instantly cold. “What happened?”

“Some said it was a bad punch. Others said he’d thrown the fight, and his opponent didn’t let up. But it was a bad fight.” He paused, his fingertips stroking over her skin, distracted. “Better than dying of something he caught in the gutter.”

She didn’t move. Didn’t know what to do, except to whisper his name in the darkness. She knew the keen loss of a parent. Knew the ache that never seemed to leave, even years later. But this . . . no one deserved it. And the idea that this wonderful man had suffered it . . .

“I was nineteen,” he said.

Nineteen, and suddenly the man of the house. She wanted to gather him up and hold him. But she knew he wouldn’t have it. So she waited for him to finish.

“So that was to be my life. I would sweep streets and then fight in them. And care for my mother and Rose and Stanley, and pay for that flat that suddenly didn’t seem like a palace so much as a prison.” He gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “Of course, now I live in two rooms myself.”

“Don’t you disparage this place,” she said. “I’m very fond of it.”

“I don’t need more than it,” he said. “But if I had a wife . . . a family . . . I could afford more. I’d buy a house somewhere. With a garden. Not like Mayfair, but enough to keep a few little girls happy.”

The words, easy, like he’d thought of them before, made her chest tight. She imagined herself in that garden. Imagined those little girls with blue eyes like their father and black curls like . . . She swallowed around the knot in her throat and was grateful that they had to be quiet. “That sounds wonderful.”

He looked at her for a long moment and she would have given the entire contents of her carpetbag to know what he was thinking. Instead, he looked to the ceiling and said, “I used to dream of it back then. I’d come home aching from the work and I’d fall into bed and I’d think . . .” He took a deep breath and kept going, the next bit coming quickly, like if he didn’t let it out it might go wild within him. “Maybe, someday, I’d find a girl and she’d ignore my filthy boots and the calluses on my hands from the broom, and the raw knuckles from the fights, and she’d give me a child or two and we’d revisit the sins of my father.”

She did reach for him, then. She couldn’t stop herself, her fingers tracing the edge of his beard, the long line of his nose, the angle of his jaw. “But you didn’t revisit them.”

He shook his head. “My mother was terrified of the prospect. She summoned Adams, and he took me to Whitehall, where Peel was building the police. I resisted the job at first. I’d been roughed up on more than one occasion by Runners drunk on limitless power.” He paused. “But after a few weeks, I could see a path that my father hadn’t had. A way to change everything. A new destiny. Rewrite my future, and with it, have enough for my mother not to have to work any longer, for Rose to find a good man, for Stanley to have a different life. I thought I might be able to make a difference. I thought I might . . .”

He trailed off, and she recognized something in his expression. “You thought you might change the world.”

He looked to her, amusement in his eyes. “Changing the world isn’t a dream for a boy from Shoreditch. You start with changing yourself. Your path.”

“We unravel the thread we can.” She lifted her chin. “The world looks different for different people.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I’m beginning to see yours is much bigger than mine. And still, you work to change it.”

“It’s a more tempting goal than any other I’ve imagined.”

Tommy watched her for a long moment, his eyes searching hers before he said, soft and dark and wicked, “I’ve one closer to home.”

Could he mean her?

She blushed, unable to believe it. Too afraid to face the words in her reply.

Too eager for them to be true.

So she settled for “You know, there’s nothing wrong with filthy boots, Tommy.”

He stared at the ceiling, the candlelight flickering above them, his hand rough over the impossibly silk skin of her shoulder. “When was the last time you cleaned a pair of boots, my lady?”

I would learn. For you.

She didn’t say it. But he heard it anyway. “Imogen,” he said softly, urgently. “I told you all this because tonight . . . what we did . . . what I did . . . Christ. I was supposed to . . .”

No. She could hear his guilt in the words, and she hated it. He was going to apologize to her. He was going to make it all seem like a mistake. “Don’t,” she said. “Please.”

“Imogen—you are so far above me . . .”

“Stop,” she whispered. “It is my turn to talk. My turn to tell you that I have dreamed of this. Of being here, in your arms.”

He took a deep breath, his arm pulling her closer. “Imogen—”

“Don’t,” she repeated, knowing what was to come. Knowing he was going to dismiss her. Knowing that it was for the best. There were too many secrets between them. Secrets that, when brought to light, would change everything.

So she didn’t confess her feelings. She didn’t say what she wanted to say.

Didn’t tell him she wanted to be that wife. Or give him those children. Or live in that house with the garden that he’d built in her mind, so real that it felt like a memory.

She didn’t tell him she loved him.

Instead, she simply said, “Please, Tommy, let me hold tomorrow at bay. Just for a moment. Let me imagine, just for tonight, that this is real.”

He was silent for an age—long enough that she wondered if he’d fallen asleep, even as she could feel the tension in his body, at all the places where they touched.

And then, finally, finally, he stroked his big, warm hand over her skin once more. A decision. An agreement. A vow.

“Tonight,” he said. “I shall imagine it, too.”

They did imagine it, falling asleep once more, wrapped in each other’s arms, until dawn crept over the horizon, and Imogen slid from his bed before the rest of the house woke, slipping out into the snow, knowing everything had changed.

Loving him.

Seeing him clearly.

Believing him.

And hoping that he would believe her, too.