Knockout: A Hell’s Belles Novel

Tommy was furious.

He’d realized his mistake less than a minute after she’d left him alone in the library, and he’d headed immediately for the door, fairly ripping it from its hinges to reveal the empty hallway beyond. He’d gone for the ballroom first, full of the misguided hope that he was wrong, and that he’d find Imogen starry-eyed, in the arms of some toff with dreams of squiring her straight out of Trevescan House and directly to the nearest altar.

God knew that scenario would make everything easier.

Even if it made Tommy want to put a fist into something.

She wasn’t in the ballroom. A quick glance around the crowded space revealed that she was not alone in her disappearance. The Duke and Duchess of Clayborn were gone as well. Tommy had no doubt they were all together, and that they were headed toward trouble.

Like followed like, did it not?

Goddammit, she was headed into trouble without him, and he had to navigate a roomful of aristocrats to find her.

Fucking hell.

Through his frustration, Tommy saw a flash of silver blue at the far end of the room, near the hidden door he’d catalogued earlier in the evening. He knew that color—had noticed it on the Duchess of Trevescan not an hour earlier, before everything had changed. Before he’d manhandled Imogen Loveless in the darkness, in absolute defiance of his responsibility toward her safety and his investigation.

Responsibilities he continued to fail now that she was out of his sight.

He was already headed for the door, ignoring a half-dozen calls for his attention, eyes trained on the place the Duchess had disappeared. The woman couldn’t leave her own ball in full swing, could she?

Apparently she could. By the time he’d made his way down the dark servants’ stairs to the rear door leading to the Trevescan House mews, he was moving at a clip, having gained enough ground to catch a glimpse of the ice blue hem of the Duchess’s gown as she disappeared into her carriage.

Her unmarked carriage.

Tommy cursed in the darkness and ran for the street, flagging down a hack and shocking the driver when he climbed up on the box to offer the man half his monthly rent to relinquish the reins.

“’S madness,” the older white man said before passing him the leather straps and blowing into his hands, chapped red and raw with the cold. “But I’ll take your money.”

The Duchess’s carriage turned out of the Trevescan mews and Tommy followed at a distance, growing more and more enraged as they traveled farther and farther from the lights of Mayfair.

“If we get robbed,” the driver said as they crossed through Seven Dials, “I’ll be chargin’ more.”

Where were they headed?

Thirty minutes later, Duchess’s carriage turned into the Docklands and Tommy swore and stopped. This was no place for a lady. Even less of a place for three of them—a husband with them or not.

Imogen didn’t have a husband.

She didn’t have Tommy, either.

He tossed the reins to the driver and leapt down from the hack. He’d be quicker and undetected on foot. “Thank you.”

The driver didn’t say anything as Tommy counted out the coin he’d promised. Only once the money had exchanged hands did the older man tip his chin toward the river and say, “In there . . . friend or foe?”

Tommy looked over his shoulder at the looming dark warehouses of the Docklands. “A bit of both, I expect.”

“You know what you’re in for?”

Tommy told the truth. “I expect it’s trouble.”

The driver looked down the dark alley toward the water. “Worth it?”

A vision of Imogen came, unbidden, head back, dark curls gleaming, eyes half closed as she took her pleasure. Perfection. He pushed it aside and it was replaced with another. The carriage bearing down on her outside The Place, along with the fear that had consumed him at the possibility that he might not reach her.

“Yes.”

The old man nodded sagely. “Must be a fair bit of money . . . or a fair bit of woman.”

Tommy didn’t respond, already moving toward the labyrinthine streets of the Docklands, telling himself that hack drivers knew next to nothing about the world.

Tucking himself into the shadows of the warehouses along the river, he listened for carriage wheels—and heard something else entirely. Shouting.

He followed the sound—the noise becoming louder and more cacophonous as he drew closer, a handful of bellows melding into a symphony of sound. The Docklands were a maze of dark, narrow alleys and cobblestone streets that bounced against the looming warehouses, making direction impossible to discern.

It took Tommy several moments to find the path—feeling his way toward the noise in the pitch black—finally arriving at a wide street connecting the docks and the high land of Whitechapel. And there, with a straight shot to the river, he found what he was looking for . . . though he felt no triumph in the discovery.

Something was on fire.

The river gleamed with the reflection of the flames on the slick surface of high tide, and a dozen men rushed back and forth, their faces gilded in the light. At the end of the street, Tommy stopped to take stock of the damage, flames licking out of a high window on the upper floors of a riverfront warehouse.

Where was she?

At a distance, the Duchess of Trevescan—now out of her carriage—was deep in conversation with Sesily and Caleb Calhoun—who hadn’t been at her ball—and a young Black woman who wore a heavy leather satchel at one hip. As he watched, the woman extracted a thick stack of papers from her bag and passed them to Calhoun.

Tommy’s gaze narrowed. What were they? He should stop them. They might contain valuable information related to whatever had happened. But he didn’t. Calhoun was already headed in the opposite direction at a clip—Sesily at his side—and Tommy made a decision he knew he would not regret.

He went looking for Imogen.

Frustration and something close to panic in his throat, he scanned the assembled crowd—difficult, as everyone appeared to be in motion. A few dozen men were rushing to and from the river, enormous buckets in hand. To one side, several others wheeled a cart full of heavy casks away from the building, following the direction of a dark-haired, brown-skinned woman Tommy did not recognize.

All around him, dockworkers were arriving in groups, each one heading for a small group in front of the building. There, the Duke and Duchess of Clayborn stood with Saviour and Henrietta Whittington. Above the line, the couple were owners and operators of Sedley-Whittington, one of the largest shipping companies in Britain, with stake in more than half of the river berths. Below the line, Whittington was known as Beast, one third of The Bareknuckle Bastards, the most successful smuggling operation England had ever seen. Not that anyone could prove it.

Point was, nothing happened in the Docklands without the couple knowing. Apparently, that included fire.

Tommy headed for the quartet, vaguely thinking that it wasn’t every day dukes and known smugglers spent time together, though considering the Duchess of Clayborn’s father was widely believed to be the head of The Bully Boys, the biggest gang of thugs on the South Bank, maybe it wasn’t so impossible a friendship.

He didn’t care much about it then, however.

He wanted to know where Imogen was. Immediately.

“Detective Inspector!” He gritted his teeth at the bright words from the Duchess of Clayborn, who was the first in the group to notice him. She broke away from the others and approached him. “What brings you here?”

“I did not have a chance to thank my hostess for this evening’s ball,” he said dryly, summoning a little laugh from the lady as he looked past her to survey the crowd for Imogen. “That, and it looks like you may want Scotland Yard here soon enough.”

From a distance, Saviour Whittington let out a humorless snort. “Oh, yes, Scotland Yard is always a welcome presence in the East End.”

Tommy turned a stern gaze on the other man. “Do you have a reason for wishing me gone, Beast?”

The other man rocked back on his heels and said, “Besides the fact that every time Peelers turn up here, something goes sideways? Hear me, Peck—if any one of our men are harmed tonight, I’m coming for you personally.”

“I didn’t set the fire,” Tommy replied.

“Clearly not,” Beast said, rocking back on his heels. “Too busy playin’ at being a toff tonight, it seems.”

Tommy looked down at his clothes—made for dukes and not Docklands—and felt his face heat.

Mrs. Whittington took pity on him. “We haven’t time for the two of you to spar, boys. We’ve a blaze to prevent.” She looked to Tommy. “We can use your help, Inspector.”

His and that of every other able-bodied person in the Docklands. Fire in London was the hand of God, superseding every other concern, no matter how dire. If it was not caught at the start, it would consume every building and body it could—and no one would be able to stop it.

He looked to Beast. In this, at least, there was no line between them. “Set up a line from the river,” he said, shucking the coat that cost more than his entire wardrobe, tossing it aside as he moved to help. “We’ll need more men.”

“Oy!” Beast shouted to a boy running past. “Take the boys and get the bells ringin’ on all these ships. We’re going to need as many hands as possible to keep the whole thing from burnin’. And send word to my brothers. All free hands are needed here. Now.”

The boy was already running, and the rest were spurred into action, knowing time was running out, and if they did not get the fire in check soon, the whole of the Docklands was threatened. At the entrance to the building, the woman he did not recognize waved off the men who’d been ferrying casks, driving them in the direction of the line of dockworkers forming to pass water from the river—thankfully at high tide—to stop the fire.

The Duke and Duchess of Clayborn were headed in that direction as though they’d done this exact thing a dozen times before. Tommy knew the job. He joined them.

Adelaide threw him a look as he stepped into line next to her, taking a bucket of water and passing it to her. She took it, immediately passing it to her husband. “It isn’t every day you find a Peeler down here,” she offered. “Imogen is going to enjoy finding you on this particular line, Mr. Peck.”

Tommy took an empty bucket from her and sent it toward the river. “Where is she?”

She looked over her shoulder in the direction of the warehouse, squinting against the flames. “Not far. She went looking for . . .” She trailed off and looked back at him. “She’ll return presently.”

“Where?” The question wasn’t soft. But neither was his temper at that moment. Every inch of him wanted to find her first, and join the line second, but he knew that the fire was the first and most important task.

Water sloshed over his hand, ice-cold from the river. Adelaide took the bucket and waved away the question. “It’s not important.”

“I think I’d just as well be the judge of that.”

Apparently his tone revealed how he did not care for the Duchess’s response, as Clayborn leaned around Adelaide’s figure to level Tommy with a glare. “Careful, Peck.”

Lord save him from love-struck men. Tommy took a deep breath, doing his best to swallow his frustration, not entirely believing that if the Duke of Clayborn decided to come for him, the entirety of the Docklands wouldn’t happily see Tommy into the river. He looked to the warehouse, where a dozen men were now carrying water inside. “What’s inside?”

“The entire stock of Mithra Singh’s new brewery.”

Ale. He looked to the woman at the entrance to the building. “Miss Singh, I imagine?”

“The finest brewmistress in London,” Clayborn said.

“Brewmaster, too,” his wife pointed out as she passed another empty bucket down the line.

Clayborn nodded and clarified. “Better than anyone making ale today.”

Men who’d made a fortune brewing and selling ale wouldn’t like a woman claiming that crown. “Rivals?” Tommy asked.

Neither responded.

“What else is inside? Besides the beer?”

More silence.

Goddammit, if these women would stop keeping secrets from him, he could help them. Did they not see it? Several buckets passed in silence before Tommy caught Adelaide’s eyes. “The fire isn’t an accident.”

When she did not reply, her husband spoke. “Do you think they’d be here if it was?”

Them. The women the papers called the Hell’s Belles. Tommy snapped his attention to the duke. “And you allow them to come?”

Clayborn offered a humorless laugh. “Allow them? You think for one moment these women ask permission for what they do?” He shook his head and looked down at his wife. “All I can do is be grateful she allows me to fight by her side.”

It was madness. If he’d known where Imogen was headed earlier in the evening, he would have tied her up with the ribbons of her own stockings to keep her safe.

Where was she?

The Duke and Duchess of Clayborn were now making eyes at each other, but Tommy couldn’t keep in his retort, quick and angry. “And so, what? She says she wants to walk into fire and you simply—”

“Oy!” The shout came from above, in the direction of the building, and Tommy recognized it instantly.

Except, of course, he couldn’t have.

Because it wasn’t possible that he was hearing correctly.

“How is it looking from out there?”

It wasn’t possible. There was no goddamn way that Imogen Loveless was inside a burning building, calling down to the street below, as though she were casually hailing a hack.

“What in hell?” The Duke of Clayborn’s words rang around them.

For her part, the Duchess of Clayborn turned calmly and looked up into the dark space that marked the second floor of the building, where Imogen’s face peered out like a little moon in a sky about to turn into an inferno, and said, “From out here it still seems like it’s confined to the upper floors, but it’s more important how it looks from in there, Imogen!”

“Right as rain! No fire at all where I am. I just require a bit longer!” Imogen said. “I’ve nearly sorted it!” Her gaze fell on him and her eyes lit up, as though they were meeting on a stroll through Hyde Park. “Tommy! I didn’t expect you to arrive so quickly!”

Tommy couldn’t find the words to reply. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to find words ever again.

Adelaide slid a nervous look at him. “Do be quick about it, Imogen; the detective inspector is . . . growling.”

“Sometimes he does that,” Imogen said. “Usually when he is irritated with me.”

“I think he might be irritated then, Im.”

Irritated was not even in the same universe as how Tommy was feeling. Tommy was feeling unhinged.

“I’m perfectly safe, Tommy!” Imogen said happily, as though two floors above her the whole building weren’t threatening to cave in. “No need to worry!”

He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t look at her.

Instead, he turned on Clayborn. “You let her walk into fire.”

“I didn’t know.” Clayborn’s eyes went wide, and he immediately pushed his wife behind him, keeping her from whatever Tommy had become. “Fucking hell—I didn’t know. Dammit, Adelaide!” he tossed over his shoulder. “What is Imogen doing inside? The whole place could—”

Adelaide didn’t let him finish, her voice clear and crisp and certain. Like she’d seen Imogen do this kind of thing a hundred times before. “She insisted. She didn’t want another building to—”

Tommy went cold when she caught herself from finishing the sentence.

“Another building to what, Adelaide?” her husband roared, passing water with more vigor.

Tommy finished for her. “To explode.”

Adelaide looked to him. “Exactly. She went in to—”

Tommy didn’t hear the rest. He was too busy running for the building.