Knockout: A Hell’s Belles Novel

“To freedom!” Imogen announced happily that evening, lifting a pint of ale with gusto and toasting her friends.

“To freedom!” The women around her—Sesily, Adelaide, and Duchess—matched the toast . . . and Imogen’s excitement.

In the three days since she’d left her brother’s home, Imogen had made herself comfortable in her friend’s enormous and mostly empty town house on South Audley Street. Duchess had suggested that Imogen select one of the dozen guest rooms in the house for herself, as well as providing her free rein of the cellars for a new laboratory should she desire. Which of course she did.

Truly, there were benefits to being dear friends with someone rich, powerful, beautiful, and married to a long absent husband who paid his wife’s bills and never came to town.

That night, the quartet of women, along with Sesily and Adelaide’s husbands, were ensconced around the large table in the rear corner of the large central room of The Place, a tavern for women and others for whom the rest of the world could be a danger, tucked away in Covent Garden—difficult to find if one wasn’t searching for it in the tangled web of streets between Bedford Street and St. Martin’s Lane.

Over the years, The Place had become their place—a safe haven from the wide world where they could meet beyond the censorious gaze of society . . . without worry of discovery or disdain. They’d begun meeting there several years earlier, when Duchess had gathered them together for a common purpose—to help those whom society ignored, or worse, injured.

It had begun simply—helping women who came to them with a wish to change their fate. Wives looking to escape abusive husbands. Daughters and sisters seeking a way out from cruel fathers and brothers looking to trade them for power and money. Women looking to marry as they wished, to stand up to their employers, to escape their lot, to live their lives on their own terms.

Women from all walks. The daughter of a duke who’d found herself with child. The wife of a butcher who was a violent drunk. A shopgirl who’d witnessed a crime and needed protection. A rich merchant’s daughter looking to escape a loveless aristocratic marriage.

But soon, word was out. And their work became more complicated. Assisting a brothel full of girls out from under the thumb of their vicious employer. Rescuing children from workhouses. Providing safe havens for powerless workers. Sending aristocrats to prison for embezzling funds from orphanages. Sending others to prison for murder. Sending still more to . . . well, to other places entirely. In only a handful of years, the Hell’s Belles had become legendary.

They did their best to help as many who needed them as could find them . . . and they did it more often than not from the corner table at The Place, where people went not to be seen, but to live. There, those who were rarely welcomed in the rest of London could drink and dance and laugh and be welcomed freely, and no one cared that Sesily Calhoun had once been Mayfair’s brightest scandal, or that Adelaide was daughter to one of London’s greatest crime lords, or that Duchess spent her absent husband’s money like it was water. Nor did they care that Imogen was odd . . . or in hiding from her brother.

In short, The Place was perfect.

And it was one of Imogen’s favorite spots in all the world.

She set her glass down on the scarred table with a thunk and pronounced, “I refuse to be governed! Can you imagine! He actually thought he could marry me off to some . . .”

“Toff!” Sesily helped.

Imogen pointed at her friend. “Yes!”

“Good for you!” Adelaide said.

“I beg your pardon!” The Duke of Clayborn feigned offense. “You married a toff!”

“Yes, my love, but there is hope of your reformation,” his wife retorted. Everyone laughed and she leaned into his kiss—a public display of affection that would have shocked the House of Lords down to their well-heeled shoes.

“How long do you intend to keep your location from your brother?” Sesily asked.

“My brother,” Imogen spat, “has absolutely no reason to care about my whereabouts as long as I remain undetected.”

Adelaide adjusted her spectacles and said, dryly, “Well, considering how meek and biddable you are . . . that should not be difficult.”

Everyone laughed, and Imogen tossed her friend a look. “Well. Let’s say I shall do what I can to steer clear of him,” she said before looking at Duchess. “If Duchess does not mind a tenant . . . at least until I find my own footing.”

Brows raised around the table. “Find your own footing—” Sesily said, disbelief in her voice.

“Imogen—” Adelaide began.

They both stopped, and Duchess finished their thoughts. “I think this is finding your own footing, my friend. Leaving your brother’s house. Deciding to captain your own fate.”

“Oh,” Imogen said, feeling rather emotional in the wake of her friends’ responses. “That’s a terribly nice thing to say.”

“Speaking of your footing,” Adelaide began. “How was your trip to Scotland Yard this morning?”

Unsettling.

“Productive,” she said, meeting the eyes of the women around the table. “No one stopped me on my way to the uniform room—and I was able to take four samples of fabric that I believe match the same stuff that has been used as a fuse in two of the three explosions. Between that and the common blast patterns and the type of blasting oil, I no longer have any doubts—Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, and Spitalfields were set by the same people.”

“Truly, Lady Imogen,” the Duke of Clayborn said, “your understanding of explosives would be terrifying if I were not on your side.”

She flashed him a bright smile. “And who said I was on your side, toff?”

Everyone around the table laughed, and Imogen finished articulating her plan. “I’m going to take them to O’Dwyer and Leafe’s, and see if someone there can match the weave of the fabric. I’ve a dozen tests to run, but I’d wager the contents of my carpetbag that we’re dealing with skill, means, access, and information.”

“If you’re right, that sounds like power, and a lot of it,” the Duke of Clayborn interjected, looking to his wife. “I assume you’ve spoken to your father?”

Adelaide nodded, eyes wide behind her spectacles. “As suspected, it’s not his crew.”

“Who then?” Clayborn asked.

The women around the table shared a look, and the duke sat back. “Ah. As usual, the Hell’s Belles are one step ahead.”

Caleb Calhoun, Sesily’s husband, tipped his ale in salute and said in his dry, American accent, “You get used to it, Duke.” He looked to the table. “Who?”

“We don’t know,” Imogen said. “Not with certainty.”

“But Imogen has a hunch,” Adelaide said.

“I have a hunch.” She looked at Duchess. “But none of the evidence I have is proof. Not yet. And even if it were, we don’t have the important bit.”

Sesily chimed in. “We don’t know who’s paying them.”

Someone was absolutely paying them. There was no coincidence involved in three businesses hiding secret, revolutionary activities going up in flames. And even if Scotland Yard was doing the exploding, it was at the behest of others. Far more powerful others.

“That’s where I come in,” Duchess said, extracting a piece of paper from her pocket and setting it on the table. Everyone leaned in to read the three names on the paper. A marquess and two earls.

Clayborn shook his head. “Three of the most powerful men in Lords.” He looked up at Duchess. “Can you prove it?”

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

“If it’s true,” Imogen said, looking at her friend, “it’s more dangerous than anything we’ve done before.”

Duchess nodded. “And we can’t use your man.”

Her man.

Tommy.

Duchess’s meaning was not lost. As helpful as he’d been in the past—arresting a handful of aristocrats after the Belles had provided him with unimpeachable proof of their crimes—Tommy Peck was first and foremost a detective inspector at Scotland Yard. And as such, he could not be trusted to help should they produce proof of corruption at Whitehall.

Which made Imogen’s already inconvenient fascination with him all the more bothersome.

“So if we cannot go to Scotland Yard . . .” Adelaide began.

“. . . then we shall have no choice but to go higher,” Duchess replied. “But we’ll need as much proof as we can find.”

“We need to get into their houses,” Sesily said simply, as though it were a perfectly normal course of action. “If they’re making payments to Scotland Yard . . . there will be proof. Who can get us invitations to dinner?” Her husband groaned beside her, and she patted his leg. “Don’t worry, Caleb darling. You won’t have to dine with aristocrats.”

“No one is dining with aristocrats in January,” Duchess said. “Parliament isn’t back in session until March. No Parliament, no season. No season, no balls, no dinners, no teas, none of it.”

“We can’t wait until March,” Adelaide said. “These places—the people who use them—who need them—they are in danger tonight. Right now.”

Duchess nodded. “But not even I can manufacture a social season.”

“You can’t,” Imogen said, staring down at the list of names—names she knew from six years in society, and twenty-four as Charles Loveless, Earl Dorring’s sister. “But my brother can.”

Everyone looked at her, a collection of confusion and curiosity on their faces. She looked to Duchess and set her finger on the first name. “Unmarried.” The second. “Youngest son, unmarried.” The third. “Brother, unmarried.”

She pointed to herself. “Are we not lucky that my brother has an unmarried sister and is willing to call in virtually every chit he has to cure her of the affliction? And quickly?”

Understanding dawned around the table. “Imogen Loveless,” Sesily said. “Are you suggesting that you fabricate a search for a groom?”

She looked to Sesily. “I’m certainly not suggesting I search for a groom in earnest. But I can tolerate a few balls if it means we can get to the bottom of whatever is happening in the East End.”

“And so?” Duchess asked.

Imogen met her friend’s expectant gaze. “And so . . . I think you should throw me a ball.”

“Wonderful,” Duchess said, as though she’d lived her whole life dreaming of just that. “Let’s get you married, Imogen Loveless.”

“Or at least let’s get the unmarried men of London panting after you,” Sesily retorted. “That’s the fun part!”

“Hang on,” Adelaide interjected. “What of captaining your own fate? What of charting a new course?”

The course could wait. Imogen looked to Duchess. “May I come and stay again, Your Grace? At a later date? When I’ve fully aggravated my brother into never wanting to eat lamb at the same table again?”

“Whenever you like, for as long as you like. You know that,” Duchess said, all certainty. “In the meantime, I believe you continue to require a place for your experiments? You are welcome to explode my cellars all you like, whenever you like.”

Imogen grinned. “Your husband might feel differently.”

“What my husband does not know, he cannot protest. What was it you said?” Duchess lifted her glass, fizzing with champagne. “To freedom!”

“To freedom!” the others cheered, turning heads nearby as Duchess downed her drink.

“As though it isn’t loud enough in here!” Maggie O’Tiernen arrived, a twinkle in her dark eyes as she settled a hand on Caleb’s shoulder and leaned in to top up Duchess’s champagne.

A Black woman who’d left Ireland for London the moment she was able, Maggie had arrived with the clothes on her back to build a new life, where she could live freely as a woman, embodying her true self. Knowing what the world could do to those who wished to live authentically, she’d built a safe haven here, on the edges of Covent Garden. The rules were simple: If you were looking for a place to live out loud, and you could find it, The Place would have you, however you came, whomever you loved.

“Alright, ladies?” Maggie asked, before turning to Clayborn and Caleb where they sat, looking bemused. “Lads?”

The duke and Mr. Calhoun were the rare exception to the rule that The Place was largely for women, but Caleb Calhoun had won Maggie’s heart when he’d taken down a handful of thugs who’d tried to burn it to the ground fourteen months earlier, and the duke and Adelaide paid handsome rent to keep the apartments abovestairs where she once lived, so Maggie looked the other way as long as they stayed quiet and didn’t upset the customers.

Imogen was also fairly certain Maggie had required the two men to take a blood vow that they’d enter the fray if anyone ever threatened The Place while they were there . . . so that helped as well. Though, truthfully, no blood vow was necessary, as there was no doubt that both men would happily put themselves in front of a bullet to keep their wives safe.

It was very sweet, really.

Sweet enough to make a woman wonder what it might be to have a man worried about her safety. Not that Imogen needed it. And definitely not that she ever dwelled on it. Late at night. When the world was quiet and thoughts were loud.

As she attempted to recall the exact feeling of being carried out of a building as it collapsed around her, cradled close to a broad, warm chest.

“Alright, Maggie.” Duchess’s response rose from the back corner of the table, where she was tucked into enough darkness that it would be difficult to identify her. “Packed to the gills tonight, I see.”

“Aye. Have been every night for the last two weeks. Had to ask The Bastards to loan me three of their bruisers—they’re on every door.” The Bareknuckle Bastards ran Covent Garden—protecting its people and keeping out anyone who wished them ill . . . all while running contraband beneath the eyes of the aristocracy and doing their best to fleece the worst of it. If Maggie’s security had come courtesy of them, it was the best there was.

Which was why Duchess asked, “Is there a worry?” It wouldn’t be the first time Maggie had required security—The Place had been knocked over several times since it had opened. Imogen thought of the explosion of O’Dwyer and Leafe’s. Men in power did not care for places beyond their control.

There was always a worry.

“Nothing specific,” Maggie agreed, sounding less than pleased. “The city appears to have discovered that the ale here at The Place is better than the ale anywhere else in town.”

“Mithra must be thrilled,” Duchess offered.

“So thrilled, she’s increasing her prices,” Maggie said, looking over her shoulder at the Punjabi brewmistress holding court at the bar, and shouted the next. “As though we haven’t been carrying her swill from the start!”

Mithra turned with a bright smile and shouted, “Don’t seem like swill now, does it, Mags?”

“You’ll have to make The Place members-only if this goes on, Maggie,” Caleb said.

“You’d best hope not, Calhoun,” the tavern mistress retorted. “I’m not sure you’ll make the list.”

“Ah, but my wife will,” he said. “And then you’ll have no choice but to have me.”

“You’re lucky to have married so high above your station,” Maggie replied, already returning to the bar.

“I am, indeed,” Calhoun said, now looking directly at Sesily. Imogen ignored the little twinge of envy that came with the portrait the two of them made.

“Before the two of you decide to rush home to bed,” Adelaide said dryly, “I’ve something I’d like to discuss.” Everyone turned attention to her as she held her newspaper up like a trophy. “Have we all seen today’s News?” Before anyone could answer, she set the paper on the table and pointed one long, slim finger at the illustration there. “It seems our friend is famous.”

Confused, Imogen leaned in along with everyone else, tilting her head to make sense of the drawing. The enormous man. The woman in his arms. Their clothing’s mutual state of disarray. And the building behind, reduced to rubble. Was that—

Her face was instantly hot. “Oh . . .”

“Oh, my!” Sesily turned the paper on the table to get a better look. She burst out laughing and repeated, “Oh, my!”

“Really, Sesily,” Duchess admonished, snatching the paper from its place, looking down at it for a long moment before saying, “This clearly isn’t you, Imogen. The woman the detective inspector is carrying from the building is unconscious.”

“Someone was unconscious?” Caleb looked to his wife. “Sesily—”

She waved a hand. “No one was unconscious, Caleb. That’s the point.”

“But someone did carry Imogen from the building?” the Duke of Clayborn prompted.

“Detective Inspector Peck,” Adelaide said. “But it wasn’t really a carry. More of a . . .” She paused, considering. “. . . running lift. He had no choice really.”

“Oh?” asked the duke. “And why not?”

“Well, it was falling down.”

“The building.” This from Calhoun.

“Yes,” Sesily said.

“Fucking hell, Sesily—”

“Dammit, Adelaide—” The curses came in unison.

“It wasn’t me in the building!” Sesily.

“I was in the carriage! It was Imogen!” Adelaide.

The two men turned on her, looking simultaneously concerned and outraged. “Fucking hell, Imogen!”

“Dammit, Imogen!”

Imogen looked to her friends. “Traitors!”

Sesily and Adelaide had the grace to look chagrined.

Imogen extended her hands to the two men who, very sweetly, had claimed her as one of their own after marrying into the crew. “For what it’s worth, you two . . . this is why we don’t tell you everything.”

“What in hell—” Caleb.

“I would like to bring this conversation back to what is important,” Duchess interjected, summoning everyone’s attention to where she was holding the paper in their direction. “Leaving aside the fact that Imogen is unconscious here—an absolute insult, if you ask me—”

“Thank you,” Imogen replied. She’d been perfectly conscious. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for her, it was the inspector who would have been knocked out by the falling staircase.

“You’re welcome,” Duchess said, a twinkle in her blue eyes. “I will say this: I am quite impressed with how well they portrayed the detective inspector’s muscles.”

A chorus of feminine laughter was met with masculine groans, and Imogen wondered if she would be missed if she crawled beneath the table.

She covered her face. “Do you think he’s seen it?”

If he’d seen it, what did he think?

Did he remember the feel of her in his arms as well as she remembered the feel of his arms around her?

No doubt he was not remembering anything of the sort. Instead, he was likely imagining how much easier his life might be without Imogen skulking about in burned out buildings and Scotland Yard uniform rooms. He was probably furious about the caricature and, by extension, with her.

She really couldn’t blame him.

Though, she didn’t want him furious with her.

She wanted him, full stop.

Of course, she would never admit it. Never in a million years would she tell anyone—not even her friends—how, late at night, when she lay awake in her bed, thinking about all that might be and all that she might have, she sometimes allowed herself to imagine the very ridiculous and absolutely impossible possibility that she might, one day, have Detective Inspector Thomas Peck.

Thighs and all.

“Maybe the sketch isn’t the worst thing to have happened,” Duchess said.

“It isn’t?” Imogen looked up.

“Maybe . . . if we are correct about the explosions . . . about who is setting them . . .”

Detective Inspector, Scotland Yard.

Adelaide understood at the same time. “Enemies closer.”

The words ran through Imogen, a little blast. A tiny whooom.

Tommy Peck . . . close. Tommy Peck, in the dark, his beard against her cheek, his broad chest warm at her hand, his voice low and dark at her ear. Coming for her. Claiming her.

Kissing her.

“Imogen?” She looked up to find Duchess’s icy blue gaze on hers.

“Yes?”

“You said no one stopped you on the way into Scotland Yard.”

Imogen held back her wince. “Yes.”

“How did things go on the way out?”

She cleared her throat. She’d been too much.

I didn’t attempt to kiss you.

She’d been so sure he was going to kiss her. It was all so embarrassing.

Sesily leaned forward. “Lady Imogen! What are you hiding from us?”

Imogen shook her head, her heart beating a tapatap in her chest. “Nothing happened.”

It was the truth. And also a lie.

Adelaide’s brows rose. “In my experience that is precisely the kind of thing people say when something absolutely happened, Imogen.”

“Nothing happened,” she said again, trying to make it sound as insistent as possible. “It’s just that I . . . ran into . . . Tommy.”

The ladies around the table shared knowing looks.

“You needn’t look so amused,” Imogen grumbled.

“Where did you run into Tommy?” Duchess asked.

“In the uniform room.” She paused. “It was dark. We were alone.”

“That sounds like the kind of place where something absolutely happened,” Sesily said.

“Nothing happened!” Imogen said for the third time. “He discovered one of the strips of fabric in my sleeve.”

“In your sleeve,” Duchess said. “How did he find it?”

“He tricked me.”

“How?” Adelaide said.

“The way men trick women, I imagine,” Imogen said, frustrated. “He leaned in and he was warm and big and broad and he smelled like sunshine and darkness altogether, and his beard was against my cheek, and the next thing I knew, he’d stolen my sewing scissors and a strip of the fabric I’d cut from a pair of trousers.”

There was a beat of silence as the words landed around the table, and Imogen decided that if she was in for a penny, she might as well be in for a pound. And then she said, “But he didn’t kiss me, the wretched man. In fact, he told me he had no intention of even attempting to kiss me.”

“Awful,” Adelaide replied.

“Monstrous,” Sesily agreed.

Their husbands shared a look of confusion. Caleb started. “Wait. He was to kiss her?”

“He made a tacit promise to,” Sesily said. “With the warmth and the delicious smells.”

“And the beard,” Adelaide said. “Once it touches you, there must be kissing. It’s a rule.”

“Perhaps he was attempting to remain a gentleman,” Clayborn offered.

The women around the table scoffed, and Sesily said, “Awful.”

Imogen had never felt more vindicated. “Thank you.”

“And what happened?” Adelaide said.

“I left,” she said.

“And he didn’t follow you?” Sesily asked, all affront.

“No!”

“Monstrous,” Sesily announced dramatically.

“Thank you,” Imogen said, immensely grateful for good friends.

“As much as all this is fascinating,” Duchess interjected, “may I point out, Imogen, that Thomas Peck is a high-ranking member of the Detective Branch at Scotland Yard and, as I understand it, the only viable name on a list of potential superintendents for that branch?”

Imogen’s gaze flew to Duchess’s. “Really?”

Duchess tilted her head, blond hair gleaming in the candlelight. “Really. If I had to wager, he’s looking for a way to secure that promotion.”

Imogen did not misunderstand. If the Belles were right—and they were right, she knew it—and the police were being paid by members of the House of Lords to lay waste to places in the East End that kept women and others who fought for power safe . . . every policeman in London was suspect.

Including Tommy Peck—especially him, if he was looking to a promotion.

No matter how noble he seemed.

Imogen’s gaze dropped to the sketch again. They really had drawn him beautifully—his sleek beard and his dark hair and his muscular arms . . . He’d been wearing an overcoat, but she could distinctly remember how easily he’d held her—and she was not exactly light as a feather. His arms were likely just as they were in the sketch. Bulging muscles the size of small linden trees.

She wouldn’t dwell on his thighs—despite the way they tempted her, even in an illustrated format.

“In that case,” Sesily said with a laugh, “I cannot imagine serious Mr. Peck enjoyed this illustration even half as much as we did.”

He must have loathed it.

Imogen met Duchess’s glacially blue gaze as she said, soft warning—soft understanding—in her tone, “Once a Peeler, always a Peeler, Imogen.”

She nodded. The police couldn’t be trusted. “I know.”

And besides, it didn’t matter. He hadn’t even kissed her.

“Imogen.” Maggie returned, a welcome interruption, blessedly plonking an ale in front of her. “Warm in here, don’t you think?”

Everyone around the table stiffened at the words. It was January in London, and the table where they sat was up against an outside wall. While it wasn’t cold, it also wasn’t warm. And even if it had been warm . . . Maggie wasn’t talking about the weather.

Caleb and Clayborn were out of their chairs, a wall of shoulders flanking Maggie, considering the room beyond.

“I shall never grow tired of that response,” Maggie said with a wink at Duchess. “Stand down, lads. My bruisers have someone outside; they say he’s been asking for Lady Imogen.” She met Imogen’s gaze. “There’s a back door.”

Charles had found her. And to add insult to injury . . . he’d found her here. In this place she loved. Disappointment flared. “Maggie—don’t let him in. His censure will turn the whole place cold. I’ll meet him outside.”

“Oh, I’m not letting him in,” Maggie replied. “His kind ain’t welcome here and he knows that. All they do is cause trouble.”

His kind? Charles was subtle. He had never caused trouble in his life. Suspicion threaded through Imogen. Suspicion, and something like excitement. “Who is it?”

“Well, he’s wearing more clothes.” Maggie tipped a chin in the direction of the paper on the table. “But I know that Peeler when I see ’im.”