The night had been bloody miserable.
Until he’d arrived.
Which was surely a hint of her own desperation in being thrust into Polite Society that Connor’s presence alone had managed to chase off the tension that had dogged her since her gown had been pulled into place and her hair arranged.
Following their brief, silent exchange from across the room, she’d been certain he’d been coming to join her. After suffering through the company of the wastrels in debt to her family’s gaming clubs, she’d welcomed rescue where she could take it.
Then he’d gone and joined his fancy piece in the corner. With her fan, and wicked eyes, and ruthless jibes last evening, she could be a match for any ruthless sinner of the streets. “Nasty tart.”
“Uh . . . I beg your pardon?”
Dragging her attention away from Connor, she forced her gaze back to Society’s leading rogue. Lord Landon, the tenacious gentleman who’d positioned himself at her side since her arrival, blinked slowly. In dire financial straits and in desperate need of a fortune, the miserable blighter had gone from courting Cleo . . . to now Ophelia. She shoved to her feet. “I said, this is where we must part.” She might be willing to make a match to save Gertrude, but she drew the proverbial line at a bastard who’d shift his attention from sister to sister.
A flurry of protests went up.
Lord Landon stepped into her path. “But our waltz is coming shortly,” he purred.
“Step aside, Landon.” Lifting her skirts slightly, she revealed the dagger positioned at her ankle. “I see my sister motioning.” She pointed to the couples whirring across the duke’s Italian marble floor.
The collection of gents gathered all looked in unison to the lone sibling in question. The very same one now being elegantly turned about the dance floor by her husband, both with matching besotted expressions. Expressions that indicated neither Thorne sought the company of anyone beyond their own.
Lord Landon smiled wolfishly. “She looks otherwise engaged,” he persisted.
Betrayed by a second Killoran.
Ophelia sighed. She’d always looked after herself. Certainly she’d never required saving from anyone. “Look again,” she growled, and this time when Lord Landon and the other nobs looked off, she ducked around the group and lost herself in the crowd.
With careful steps, she clung to the fringe of the room, dogging the footsteps of unsuspecting servants. The din of guests blurred with the whine of the orchestra’s instruments in a cacophony of sound.
Her fingers twitched with her need to clap her palms over her bleeding ears. How she ached for the familiar sounds of St. Giles. The clink of coins striking coins. The—
A tall figure stepped into her path. “Miss Killoran, we meet again.”
Ophelia shrieked, that soft cry muted by the din of the ballroom. She shot out her arm reflexively.
Connor easily caught it, deflecting the blow.
Heart racing, she forced her breath into an even cadence. “Bloody hell, O’Roarke, you know better than to go sneaking up on a person.”
First her sister had managed the feat, now Connor O’Roarke? She groaned. Bloody hell, she was going soft.
He grinned, still retaining his hold on her arm.
She braced for the usual fear and horror that came from any such grip.
Little shivers of warmth radiated from his touch, foreign and so unexpected she was secretly loath for him to relinquish her.
Inevitably, Connor had never done as she’d asked or expected. He let her arm go, and she swiftly drew it close to her chest.
“I trust you are enjoying yourself.”
She snorted. “Hiding in the shadows? I gather we have a like appreciation for the event.”
He grinned again, flashing his even white teeth. “You would be correct on that score.”
Her heart tripped a silly little beat.
Over Connor O’Roarke? Nonsense. It was merely the familiarity of suffering through ton events with someone who’d lived on the streets of St. Giles—even if it had never truly been with her.
He propped a hip against the wall and folded his arms at his chest. “Given we’d both sooner steal again in the streets of St. Giles than take part in the festivities, perhaps I can instead convince you to answer some questions.”
Her smile froze in place.
That was all her every exchange with him came down to. Given what Gertrude and Stephen had shared about Connor’s reputation as the Hunter, coupled with his own insistence since their reunion, she should expect nothing more.
So how to account for the disappointment that settled in her stomach?
He lifted an eyebrow. “Am I to hope that is a yes?”
She tried to pull forth her usual flippant “Go to hell” but couldn’t manage it. For the truth she could at least admit to herself in her silent musings, was that after his defense last evening, she’d expected . . . more.
What she’d hoped for she could not say, and her mind shied away from any answers as to what it could possibly be.
“Miss Killoran!” They glanced off to that loud shout.
Whisperings went up loud enough to rival the whine of the orchestra as the crowd looked to Lord Landon. One arm up, he moved at a determined clip across the dance floor.
“Oh, bloody hell,” she muttered.
“Lord Landon?”
She tensed her jaw. “The same.” He hadn’t left her alone this whole night. Nor by the determined glint in his eyes did he intend to. Under the thin leather gloves, her palms moistened. Another fancy lord determined to put his hands on her . . . “Dance with me.” Hers was a harsh order.
Connor blinked slowly. “I don’t . . . I . . .” He held up his palms.
She grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the dance floor. “Consider this the second debt paid,” she muttered, yanking her reluctant partner along.
“The debt was paid when I stepped between you and a constable.”
“There were others.” Must he be difficult in this? She peered toward the resolute swain.
Lord Landon skidded to a stop in the midst of the ballroom and held a hand to his furrowed brow. Nearly trampled a moment later by a waltzing couple, he hurried from the floors.
“Put your hand on my waist, O’Roarke,” she clipped out. When Connor tossed a desperate look over his shoulder, she muttered, “Oh, blast, I’ll do it myself.” She guided his hand to the point just above the small of her back and rested her other palm on his left shoulder.
With a sea of dancers whizzing past, Ophelia waited.
And waited.
Ophelia squeezed his fingers. “Well?” Even as the question left her, a slow, horrified understanding dawned. “You cannot dance.”
The Duke and Duchess of Somerset knocked into them. Connor righted Ophelia. That graceful couple made their swift apologies and wisely adjusted their steps away from the still-motionless couple.
“I received lessons,” he said grudgingly.
“The earl,” she remembered. His adoption. How greatly their lives had diverged after that night when he’d been escorted off.
“Very well,” she conceded. “You dance with me, and I’ll answer three questions from you.”
He froze.
“But we complete the set,” she warned.
Without hesitation, he guided her slowly through the steps of the waltz, his large hand heavy at her back, reassuringly strong and warm.
She beamed. “You were being modest. You aren’t nearly the—” His heel came down hard on her foot. Ophelia winced. “I cannot determine if that was on purpose.”
“It wasn’t,” he mumbled, silently mouthing the one-two-three of the gliding dance.
“Yes, I see that now.” Or he was determined to punish her feet for commandeering the set.
Connor’s firm lips counted off the movements.
Ophelia shook her head. “Don’t think of it in terms of numbers. Think of picking pockets.” He stepped on her foot one more time. They stumbled, and with a curse, Connor tightened his hold on her, steadying them.
“Picking pockets?” he repeated incredulously, still counting that one-two-three pattern.
“Well, thievery we understand.” Numbers, like words, had been irrelevant to them as children of the street. When Broderick had entered their fold and insisted she and her sisters be schooled in more than those dark acts, her only points of reference had remained her street experiences.
“You’re mad.”
“And you’re going to find yourself counting a useless pattern, not having asked a single question before we’re through.”
He fell promptly silent.
“Do you see Lord Rothesay?”
Looking to where the dandy stood on the fringes, arms planted on his hips, a glower on his face, Connor nodded. “Left and center.” His expression darkened, and were he any other man holding her so, with the harsh glint frosting his eyes, she’d have been riddled with terror.
But this was Connor O’Roarke.
“He shall be our constable,” she explained as they slowly ambled through the movements. “The doorway in the far-right corner of the duke’s ballroom shall be our escape.”
His lips twitched.
She brightened. “See, you are enjoying yourself.”
Connor scowled. “I am decidedly not.”
Wrinkling her nose, Ophelia gave a toss of her head. “Very well. Forward-side-close. That’s what you follow. Not your useless—”
“Ophelia—”
“Yes, yes. Of course. We move forward toward escape, slip sideways, and then close.” While they drifted through the motions of the waltz, Connor instead repeated back her pattern.
“Is our constable staring?”
He stole a quick peek. “Indeed.”
“So then we retreat: back-side-close.”
They continued through the motions slowly, and with every repeat movement, she felt an increasing confidence in Connor’s hold and steps. “I’m right,” she said with a grin.
“You might be,” he conceded, glowering over her shoulder at their improvised constable.
They settled into a companionable silence, and while she allowed Connor to concentrate on the new rhythm, her mind wandered back to his previous revelation. His earlier admission should not come entirely as a surprise. From her earliest memories of Connor, he’d always spoken in cultured tones that hinted at more than the street rat she herself had always been. “You’ve had dancing lessons.”
He gave a slight nod. “I have.”
That was it. Nothing more. For the rules of the streets that dictated a person not pry, questions hovered on her lips. Questions about not only what had become of him after his capture but also who he had been . . . before. Before he’d found himself in Diggory’s clutches.
As the set continued, Connor relaxed the death grip he had upon her. With a gentler touch, he whirled her in neat, sweeping circles.
“They were my favorite lessons,” she softly confided.
Connor tripped and quickly caught himself. He held her eyes, and in that instant all words and thoughts fled.
In the glow of the candles, and no more than a handbreadth between them, Ophelia appreciated the harshness of his heavy features. Had she truly believed him ugly? The pugilistic jaw of a fighter and the small bend in the middle of his nose from one too many breaks marked him as a warrior, unafraid of the battle.
“Which were?”
She studied his lips as they moved, hearing those words and slowly attempting to make sense of them past her muddled thoughts. “M-my dance ones. My lessons, that is,” she elucidated. Her instructor had been five inches shorter than she’d been and hopelessly in love with the head guard at the Devil’s Den. She’d never felt safer with another man . . .
Until Connor.
Ophelia stumbled, and Connor righted her. “It appears my own inadequacies are having a dangerous effect upon your own talents,” he murmured. The hint of mint that clung to his breath caressed her face.
“Hardly.” Unrecognizable. Did that breathy utterance belong to her?
“You enjoyed dancing?” he asked with a deserved incredulity.
There’d never been a thing fanciful about her, and yet . . . “There was something so thrilling in it,” she said softly. A smile pulled at her lips. “After I’d mastered my lessons and my instructor, Monsieur La Frange, had gone, I would on occasion lock my chamber doors and waltz myself about my rooms.” She’d forgotten about that detail until now. She glanced up, braced for his mockery.
Instead, he stared back with a tenderness that caused her heart to quicken. “Sometimes,” she confided, when she’d shared no parts of herself with even her siblings, “I would pretend if I twirled fast enough, I might . . . disappear.” From the dank apartments she’d called home, from the streets of St. Giles, from Diggory’s gang. From all of it.
Feeling his piercing eyes on her face, she cleared her throat. “Yes, well, they were my favorite because those lessons were the closest I could get to scaling buildings and weaving between constables.” Because of it, she’d felt less inadequate than she had for her failings where words and numbers had been concerned.
The orchestra concluded their playing, and as Connor and Ophelia stopped, the couples around them politely clapped.
They remained frozen as they were, hands upon each other.
She didn’t care.
Didn’t care because there’d never been a thing proper about her and never had, and never would she make apologies for it.
Didn’t care because his touch burned through her gown and didn’t inspire the fear and horror that had followed her these past thirteen years.
His gaze dipped to her mouth, and reflexively she wetted her lips. He is going to kiss me here, with a room watching on, and help me for the whore another insisted I was, I want this man to do it.
Connor’s thick black lashes swept low, proving little shield for the heat within the grey depths of his eyes.
His expression grew shuttered.
Puzzling her brow, Ophelia followed his stare, and the intimate moment shared was broken.
Lord Landon strode purposefully through the crowd, his gaze trained on Ophelia.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered. He was unrelenting.
“Determined suitor?” Did she imagine the steely thread to that query?
“Wastrel indebted to my family’s club,” she clarified. How easily Landon had shifted his attentions. But then, did it truly matter which Killoran he wed? Their fortune was all the same, and his purpose single-minded.
“Make your escape now,” Connor whispered. “I’ll meet you shortly.”
“Where . . . ?”
“Go,” he urged. “Unless you care to take the next set with Landon.”
Needing no further urging, she rushed off.
With the same steps that had saved her as a girl, she wound her way through the throng of guests, hiding behind pillars, ducking behind servants, until she managed to sneak from the hall.
The din of the crowded ballroom emerged muffled behind her as she crept through the Duke of Somerset’s corridors. Footsteps sounded down the hall. “Miss Killoran.”
She stiffened and briefly contemplated the path forward before reluctantly turning to face the owner of that voice.
The Duchess of Argyll sailed over with great, graceful gliding steps. The smile on her perfectly bow-shaped lips dimpled both plump cheeks. She reached Ophelia slightly breathless, a mark of her privileged lifestyle. “I do hope you do not mind me following after you. I have desperately been seeking a word with you since we first met.”
“You’re desperately seeking a word with me?” she said gruffly. She may not have been born to the same world as this regal creature before her, but she knew enough that polite meetings didn’t happen in empty corridors, away from Society’s eyes.
The young widow beamed, collecting Ophelia’s hands between her own gloved palms. “I could not help noticing your . . . familiarity with Connor.” She paused, her cheeks reddening. “Mr. Steele, that is.”
Ophelia hooded her eyes. So this was the reason.
“Do you know each other from the streets?” the duchess asked with the same wide-eyed innocence she’d shown while putting questions to Ophelia at their last exchange.
Was the woman Connor’s lover? Her stomach muscles clenched. Why should you care anyway? “Mayhap you should put your questions to Mr. Steele.” She made to go.
“Please, do not!” the duchess entreated. She held up a staying hand. “It was not my intention to . . . offend you.”
“I don’t offend,” she said bluntly.
Dropping her arm to her side, the duchess’s smile was firmly back in place. “Splendid.” Looping her arm through Ophelia’s, she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper and urged them farther down the hall. “I must confess, all the stilted exchanges and measured words are a bit cumbersome. It is just . . .” The woman scrunched her brow, and had she been anything other than the blatantly transparent young woman before her, Ophelia would have taken that contemplativeness as a show. The young woman brought them to a stop and turned to face her. “It is just . . .” Would she get on with it? “It seemed you and Connor . . . Mr. Steele, that is, know each other, and as he is someone very special to me, Miss Killoran”—Ophelia’s muscles tightened all the more—“then that would mean you, too, would be special.” The duchess’s cream-white cheeks fired red. “To me, that is. Not that you aren’t special.” The woman continued her ramblings and then stopped. She released Ophelia and fiddled with her flawless satin skirts. “You see . . . Connor and I have been friends for a lifetime.”
Odd. Ophelia had known Connor when he was a boy, scared shite-less by the same demons Ophelia herself had battled when this princess was no doubt fed with a golden spoon. “I . . . see,” she said, when in actuality she saw nothing.
“As you’re not of our station, you might not know that since we were children, it’s been expected we’ll wed.”
Taken aback, Ophelia hurriedly masked her surprise. Connor O’Roarke wedded to this woman? A lady of the peerage? Each revelation from the duchess only deepened the riddle of what had become of Connor after a constable had hauled him off. And yet . . . “Though I’m not of your station”—she took care to use her flawless, cultured speech ingrained by a determined governess—“I can still say how odd it is that given those expectations, you now carry a different name than his, as well as the title of duchess.”
The other woman lowered stricken eyes to the floor. “It has . . . complicated the history between us.” She raised her head. “Do you have feelings for each other?” she finally blurted, the most direct and concise bit she’d managed since cornering Ophelia.
Ophelia opened and closed her mouth, and then a great big belly laugh burst from her lips. “You think that I . . . that Connor Steele and me . . . ?” Unable to get the words out, she dissolved into another fit. “Ya people of the ton may ’ave money and power, but ya don’t ’ave two thoughts to rub together to form a scrap of common sense.”
The duchess cocked her head. “So you do not have any . . . feelings for Mr. Steele?” she asked. Relief flooded her eyes.
Dusting back the signs of her amusement, Ophelia looked down the empty hall, eager to be rid of the young duchess. “You are welcome to the gentleman.”
A relieved little smile curled the duchess’s lips. “I am very glad to have had this . . . talk, Miss Killoran. And will be happy to call you friend.” As if registering the impropriety of their meeting, the duchess cleared her throat. “I shall leave you to your . . . uh . . . yes. Well, it was a pleasure.” With a jaunty little wave, the woman sashayed off.
Ophelia stared after her. The ladies of the ton were as possessive as the gents they set their marital caps on, the way a pickpocket staked out a corner. Both were ruthless, but one wore a smile through it. “A pleasure, indeed,” she muttered with a wry shake of her head after the lady had gone.
“Was that reserved for me or your most recent company?” a voice drawled over her shoulder.
She gasped and whipped around.
Connor lounged against a wall with a negligent ease.
“Both,” she muttered, even as her heart did a little leap at the sight of him. Attired in a double-breasted black jacket and matching midnight trousers, there was a devastatingly handsome appeal to Connor O’Roarke. Her belly fluttered.
And here, all these years she’d believed herself incapable of feeling anything but fear where a man was concerned.
“Is that the manner of people you’ve been keeping company with since you climbed out of the gutters?” she asked, jerking her chin in the direction of her recent visitor. Her words came as more a reminder for her than a question for him.
“Amongst them.”
How vague and veiled. Two words that revealed everything and nothing, all at the same time.
“Should you be here? Not sure it’s safe with your lady if we’re caught talking.”
Connor grinned wryly. “My lady? I don’t have any lady.”
He hadn’t gathered the duchess had designs upon him? Or was it that he did not care?
Either way, Ophelia released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Then, wot would ya call her?” Ophelia bit down on the tip of her tongue. Where in blazes had that question come from? And why did his answer matter so much?
Connor stuffed his hands in his pockets, contemplating her query and the path the Duchess of Argyll had strode a short while ago. “A friend,” he finally said.
Ophelia snorted. “Men and women can’t be friends.”
He bristled. “Of course they can.” As he and his young widow were.
“No, they can’t.” The Duchess of Argyll was proof enough. She bit her lip to keep from mentioning the lady’s barely concealed interest.
“You speak as someone who knows.”
She shrugged. “Because I do. My brother appointed a friend as his right hand within the club.”
Connor eyed her like she’d sprung another limb. “And?”
“And the servants or prostitutes at the club strike a friendship with the guards or other servants, and . . . it isn’t possible.” Were men truly so obtuse? But then, hadn’t her brother, Broderick, proven equally thick on the matter of men and women? She sighed, trying to make him see reason. “It always becomes . . . complicated. Someone ultimately confuses friendship, and everything becomes jumbled, and . . .” She gave her head a decisive shake. “It just doesn’t work.”
“What does that mean for us, then?”
She started. “What?” she blurted.
“Well, we aren’t lovers.”
She sputtered, heat burning up her cheeks. “C-certainly not.” Only, the unfamiliar stirring low in her belly made her question whether it would be so horrifying to know more than Connor O’Roarke’s kiss.
“And you’ve already pointed out numerous times that you’ve no intention of helping me in my investigation.”
“For a nobleman? No.” He’d been taken in by a kindly gent. The actions of that one nobleman didn’t erase the countless horrors Ophelia and her kin had known at the hands of other lords.
“Very well,” he murmured, drifting closer. “What does that make us?”
Her mind came to a jarring halt. She stood there attempting to make sense of his question and to come up with a suitable answer. What was Connor to her? He was certainly someone she felt comfortable around. A person whose presence she enjoyed. But friends? She scoffed. They would never be anything more than childhood nemeses. As it was, his desire for respectability and his appreciation for the peerage made anything else between them not only unlikely—but also madness. Unlike his fancy duchess. “The duchess didn’t talk about ya like ya were just friends,” she said instead, deliberately reminding herself that Connor had, and always would have, an undeserved appreciation for people Ophelia despised.
Even in the darkened corridors, she detected the flush on his high cheekbones. Drifting closer, Ophelia studied him, awaiting his reply, and still when it came, it knocked her off balance.
“I’d intended to make the lady my wife.”
She missed a step.
That somber pronouncement killed her jesting. “Oh,” she blurted. For what did one truly say to that revelation? An intimate part of one’s life when those pieces were never freely handed out. And yet . . . Connor had. She studied the same empty hall a moment. “That woman?” Cheerful as the summer sun, with words tripping off too fast from her tongue, she couldn’t be more different from Ophelia and the other women born to St. Giles.
But then, mayhap that was the appeal of her.
Why did that leave her oddly bereft?
“She was a friend when I escaped St. Giles.” There it was again: friendship. “And then . . . I’d hoped there would be even more.” He grimaced. “Expected it.” More.
“You believed she was going to marry you,” she finished for him, her heart tugging with regret for him.
“She promised to marry me. We’d spoken of it.” He flashed a wry smile. “Then along came her duke, and a street rat with no title and few funds was no match for a viscount’s daughter.”
Something vicious slithered around inside, a sentiment nasty and vicious and wholly foreign.
Jealousy.
She scoffed. Of course you aren’t jealous. This is Connor O’Roarke. Her childhood nemesis . . . Who you also secretly admired for accomplishing what few outside Black’s gang had managed. “That was your first mistake.” How could he have forgotten? “Never trust a nob,” she said softly, this time without her previous levity.
Connor waved his hand. “Bethany wasn’t . . . isn’t like the lords we once feared.” Bethany. His use of that woman’s name deepened the level of intimacy between Connor . . . and his duchess. “She gives her time to foundling hospitals.” As Cleo had pointed out. “She organizes events to raise awareness of the plight of the poor.”
In short, a virtual paragon.
At his defense of a woman who’d proven unfaithful to him, when loyalty was the most valuable currency those in St. Giles had to offer, that stinging, insidious poison continued to spread. “She thought herself too good to wed you? Chose another?” She gave her head a shake. “Doesn’t seem like she’s the angel you make her out to be.”
The look he gave her was faintly pitying. “The world doesn’t exist in absolutes of black and white, Ophelia.”
He’d pity her? When it was Connor who had the wrong of it. “Yes, yes it can. And does.” She held up one palm. “People are good”—she held the other up—“or they’re bad. They aren’t like your angelic duchess. As such, I would say you’re better off than being trapped with a wife who”—she ticked off on her fingers—“one, couldn’t have the courage to choose you over her father’s wishes, and two, lied to you, making you believe she would.”
“And yet, with your brother’s intentions to land a noble connection, are you any different from Bethany?”
“What?” He was comparing her actions to that of a fancy lady of the ton? It was both preposterous and insulting. It was—
He lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “Your families both determined the course you should follow, and you’re both readily going along with their wishes.”
She sputtered. “I-it is not at all the same.” For it wasn’t. It—
He winged an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”
Ophelia wanted to spit all the reasons he was wrong back in his face. She wanted to protest that he knew nothing of it. Remind him that she would never be anything like Lady Bethany or any lady, for that matter.
But God help her . . . she couldn’t get the words out.
It is true.
In the end she was saved from forming a response in the unlikeliest way.
Connor held up a hand.
Then it met her ears, faint and distant: footfalls and an occasional giggle.
Connor grabbed her by the hand and pulled her into a room, then closed the door behind them.
She squinted, attempting to adjust her eyes to the unlit space.
Heavy gold frames hung throughout the room, with the only furniture a handful of King Louis XIV chairs scattered about the center. She tilted her head back, taking in the sweeping ceiling with a mural done in powder-blue and pale-pink shades.
The Duke of Somerset’s portrait room.
The tread of footsteps grew increasingly close, and shoulder to shoulder beside Connor, there was a thrilling danger to being alone here with him, one doorway between them and the world and discovery. It was the same thrill that had gripped her as she’d picked a wealthy lord’s pockets. Only this was an electrifying charge made more potent by the heat pouring from Connor’s muscled frame, threatening to burn her.
At last, those steps continued on, and there was only the hum of silence.
“I would say this is a good deal more conducive to our arrangement than the ballroom,” he whispered close to her ear. His breath stirred the sensitive flesh of her nape.
Her lashes fluttered closed. “O-our arrangement?”
Then she recalled the three questions.
The promise she’d made him if he danced with her.
“Of course, your three questions.” What accounted for the disappointment that stabbed at her breast?
“How do you find the children you employ at the Devil’s Den?” he asked, coming forward, a predator hunting its prey.
Unnerved for the first time since he’d entered, she backed up, continuing her retreat. “H-how do we find them?”
“Aye.” There it was again: a lilting brogue that revealed one of the few traces of his past. It highlighted all the more that despite a path that had brought them continual clashing, they were strangers still. Two people, raised as enemies, who’d be wise to be suspicious of each other.
Needing to reassert her strength before this man, she forced herself to stop.
“Ya want to know?” She leaned against one of the Corinthian pillars better suited for a museum than a townhouse. “Oi find the most desperate ones. The ones hungry and in need, who’ve given up on loife and ’ope, and I take them under my wing.”
Had she not been so intently studying him under hooded lids, she’d have missed the way his entire body jerked, like one who’d been run through with a serrated blade. When he spoke, his words came flat and emotionless. “Those are familiar words.”
“Is that a question? If so, that’d be your second.”
“It wasn’t.” He dipped his thick gypsy lashes lower. “I better than anyone know that vow.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him why he should believe himself one who’d know that more. Did he think he’d somehow suffered more than Ophelia or any other member of Mac Diggory’s gang?
Present yar back, girl . . . it’s toime far ya to feel the sting of moi rod.
Her gaze slid over to the Duchess of Somerset’s portrait, and she lingered on that jagged flesh forever marred by flame.
“And when you . . . find these desperate children,” he continued, and she stared on with something akin to horror as he pulled out that same damned leather notepad and devoted his attentions to that book, “what do you do with them?”
That second query hit her like a fist to the belly, and as she dragged her attention from the duchess and put it squarely on the person who’d always excelled in insulting her and her kin, she sneered, “What do ya think Oi do with them? Send ’em out as pickpockets? Have Cook turn them into mince pies? Make the girls whores?” Her gorge rose. She gave thanks for the dimly lit space that bathed them both in shadows, for shadows in all places offered a person protection.
At last he lifted his head. “That will hardly suffice the terms of the agreement we struck.”
She’d wager her very life he didn’t question the motives of his angelic duchess. Damn him to hell.
“I give them work,” she snapped. “A place to sleep and eat and wages, and in return they work the kitchens or serve as runners for our family.” She omitted Gertrude’s role in schooling those children, leaving him to his infernally low opinion, because to hell with him.
“You indicated overseeing the hiring of children has only recently fallen to you.”
She watched him guardedly as he flipped through his journal. “Yes.”
“Yet I trust these are boys and girls not unfamiliar to you. Rather, they were former gang members of Mac Diggory who’ve either been kept on in your employ in a new capacity or absorbed into the hold of another kingpin.”
It was a detail only one of the streets could glean. A respectable runner or gent with a fancy background wouldn’t know the inner workings of East London the way Connor O’Roarke did, and that surely marked just one reason he’d become so successful in what he did.
“I want the history of the children in your employ.”
It was an expansive third question and yet a question all the same. Ophelia balled her hands. She’d be damned if she turned those boys and girls over to his questioning. “And have them lay bare their crimes before you?” she scoffed. “So you might threaten them and receive the information you seek?” She’d been jaded enough in life to know the only thing one could trust was the unreliability of others.
Ophelia turned to go.
“That is what you believe, then? That I’m some ruthless investigator who lives with the sole purpose of exacting misery on the masses?” Wasn’t his opinion of her as low?
“Aren’t you? Doing the bidding of a nob at the expense of anyone and everyone?” she spat. This was safe ground with Connor O’Roarke. A familiar one that steadied her. Reminded her of the great divide that had always existed, one that would always be there. “Look at you,” she said, scraping a gaze over him. He stiffened under her scrutiny. “You claiming to care about others when you only ever thought of yourself.”
A muscle jumped in his cheek. “You don’t know anything of it.”
“Don’t I? You were too good to join the boys and girls in the streets.” It had always stabbed at her.
A sound of disgust burst from him. “It was never about that.”
“Wasn’t it? Living in the shadows like a ghost, you’d take favors where you could get them.”
“As we all did,” he said quietly.
“Yes, you saved my life”—she jabbed a finger at him—“but I never pretended Oi was too good for others, either.”
They locked in a battle, and Ophelia stood facing him, energy humming in her veins, as she at last laid bare every resentment she’d carried over Connor.
“My father was an Irishman, skilled with horses.”
She cocked her head. What was he . . . ?
“My mother . . . she was a squire’s daughter and fell hopelessly in love with a man her father could have never approved of.”
Her jaw went slack. “You were born to the peerage.” It was why he spoke like a gentleman . . . because he’d been born one. As such, it hadn’t been outside the realm of reality that he might marry his Lady Bethany. Ophelia curled her toes hard in her slippers.
He shifted. “A squire isn’t of the nobility. They have a coat of arms and are usually related to someone in the peerage, but . . .” Connor silenced his ramblings. “My parents set off to London to make a life for themselves. They struggled . . . we struggled . . . but we were always happy.” His gaze grew distant, and a wistful smile pulled at his lips and filled his eyes, and she ached to see a glimpse of that happiness he spoke of. Because it was his. Because it was unfamiliar. Because she wanted to know that some children didn’t always know strife. That Connor’s life had once been filled with even a fleeting happiness.
He fished around the inside of his jacket and handed something over.
Head bent, she stared down at the rusty piece. A crimson jacket still marked the child’s toy, a soldier. She accepted it, turning it over in her hands. It was an aged version of a similar gift presented to Stephen when Broderick had taken over the Devil’s Den. Those toys had gone unplayed with and been packed away. Handling this token, so precious Connor kept it close to his own heart, opened further that window into his world.
“It did not matter how dire our circumstances were, they sacrificed for my happiness. There were child’s games and books and lessons and food for me . . . even while my parents went without.” The column of his throat moved. “Even as they insisted they weren’t hungry and watched me eat my meals.”
She braced for the familiar envy that came for children who’d known those precious gifts she herself had never had.
Only this time . . . it didn’t come.
Ophelia looked up as Connor continued his telling. “My da and ma would make every and any sacrifice for me, and one day they did.”
A chill shuddered along her spine, ushering in a cold. Because even though she didn’t know the telling, she knew where life had ultimately found him—in the streets, on the run. Knew that the happiness had been snuffed out and, coward that she was, wanted him to freeze his story with the most joyous moments he’d known. Despite that, a question came tripping off her tongue anyway. “What did they do?”
“My da borrowed funds to feed our family through the winter.”
She slid her eyes closed. Reflexively, her palm wrapped around his metal soldier, the metal cool against her hand, his tiny bayonet digging sharp into her skin. The moment one opened the door to the gangs in St. Giles, there was no forcing them out. They were in, and in they remained until one was gone from the earth. Only the most evil survived. “What happened?” she asked with a knot forming low in her belly.
“My da had been charged an exorbitant amount. An amount he could have never fully paid back in the time frame he’d been given. Then the day the debt was to be collected . . . the leader of the gang . . .” Oh, God. No. Her mind screeched to a stop as a dawning horror rooted around her mind. She knew before he finished. Knew what he’d say. “Diggory came calling.”
No. Her mind screamed. Her heart stopped. And then resumed to beat an erratic, frenzied pattern.
“He had a . . . sick fascination with my mother. The moment he discovered she was a squire’s daughter, he wished to make her his wife.”
Ophelia hugged her arms close to her chest in a futile bid to keep warm. “He had an obsession with respectability,” she whispered. Helena and Ryker Black’s mother. Connor’s.
“My father . . .” Connor stared vacantly through her, and she knew it was the precise moment he’d forgotten her presence. “He loved her enough to battle the Devil for her.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “And he did.”
“He lost,” Ophelia whispered. For in the end, everyone had always lost to Diggory. Even after he’d gone, his vile hold remained, haunting one’s days and sleepless nights.
“We all did that day. He slit my father’s throat.” She squeezed her eyes shut, willing him to silence, but the methodical, deadened words continued coming. “He raped my mother and then broke her neck.” Did that tortured keening come from Ophelia? She bit her lower lip and tasted the metallic tinge of blood flooding her mouth. “I saw it all.”
No. No. No.
It was a litany. A mantra that could never, would never, take away the evil Connor spoke of. He hadn’t been an orphaned bastard or an unwanted child sold off by a whore mother and nameless father. This had been a child who’d laughed and loved and known the gifts of true parents.
He lost it all . . . because of my father. Here she’d believed herself incapable of loathing him more, only to be proven so very wrong.
“Oh, Connor.” She stretched her spare palm out for him. Except . . . what did one say? There were no words to drive back his suffering. And certainly no words from the child of his parents’ murderer. Ophelia let her quavering arm fall to her side.
He palmed her cheek, and she leaned into it, selfishly taking comfort from the last man who should be offering that gift. “You always presumed to know who I was and what drove me.” A sad smile formed on his lips. “But just as I don’t truly know anything about you, Ophelia, you don’t know anything about me.” No, they’d not truly known anything of each other. “On that day, Ophelia, I vowed to rid the streets of men like Diggory. Instead, I was forced to join him . . . and when I broke free, I could not understand how other boys and girls made orphans by that Devil, children like . . .”
“Me,” she finished for him on a whisper.
He gave a small nod. “Why should he have any person’s loyalty? When for me the thought of bringing the Diggorys of the world to justice sustained me. It is why, despite the wealth given and promised me by my adoptive father, I still do the work that I do.”
The moment she’d found him in Broderick’s offices, she’d mocked him and taunted him for the role he’d taken on. Shame gnawed at her. Palm shaking, she handed over the last link he had to his family. “No wonder you hate me.”
Connor curled her fingers around that piece. “I could never hate you.”
Tears flooded her eyes, blurring his visage before her. “How can you not?”
“Oh, Ophelia,” he said with a tenderness that threatened to shatter her. “You are not like him.”
“But I am,” she cried, spinning out of his reach. She didn’t want his undeserved defense. “I’ve killed and robbed and—”
“And you freed me.”
“That debt was paid.”
“You never sought to collect,” he insisted. She hadn’t. It had been a fundamental rule of Diggory’s she had always broken for Connor O’Roarke. “You followed Ned and me in the streets. Why did you do that?”
Ophelia looked away.
Large, comforting hands settled on her shoulders, forcing her gaze back. “Why did you do that?” he repeated with a quiet insistence.
“You’re making more of it than it was, Connor,” she whispered, overcome by the depth of his magnanimity.
When he spoke, he did so in hushed tones, gentle ones far more difficult to take than had they been filled with a rightful contempt. “You’re still so stuck in the acts you were forced to carry out, you still blame yourself for the work you did for”—she wrenched away—“Diggory.”
Ophelia clamped her hands over her ears, wanting to blot out that hated name. It was futile. Not a single one of them could fully purge his memory from their thoughts. Tears slid down her cheeks, and he caught them with his callused thumb. “But you do. You question my motives, believing I’ve some sinister man bent to hurt a child and help a nobleman because that is all you’ve ever known. Because of it, you cannot even acknowledge that in trying to reunite a father and son, there is good in what I do. Just as there is good in many peers.”
Her throat tightened.
He couldn’t be right.
Because if he was . . . what did that mean about everything else she’d taken as fact over the course of her life?