“Are we not going to speak of it?”
It had been inevitable.
Striding through the halls of the Eve Dabney Foundling Hospital, Connor cast his father a sideways glance.
“I hardly trust this is the place for a discussion.”
There had already been display enough with Ophelia and her brother and a host of guests . . . and Bethany. Connor would not delude himself into believing the tension spilling from his father’s frame came from anywhere but Bethany’s response.
Exiting the establishment, they fell into step and made for his father’s waiting carriage. “Join me.”
Connor spared a look across the street to where a small boy held the reins of his mount. He firmed his jaw. “My mount—”
The earl lifted a hand, and one of his footmen leapt from his perch beside the driver. “See my son’s horse returned to his residence.”
Oh, bloody, bloody hell.
Connor fought the urge to tug at his collar, feeling a good deal like the boy he’d once been, caught stashing the earl’s fine silver under his bed in preparation for his eventual ejection from the household.
His father motioned him in and then pulled himself in behind.
The earl gave a firm command. Having always excelled in his studies and having succeeded in every endeavor he’d undertaken since he’d been adopted, Connor had only ever striven for his father’s approval.
Taut, he steeled himself for something wholly foreign and unfamiliar—the earl’s displeasure.
“Bethany is in dire straits.”
Connor rocked back in his seat. Of everything and anything he’d expected from his father, that had certainly not been it.
“Her . . . husband wagered it all away. Mistresses, whores, drinking.”
As a young man he’d been hurt by her betrayal, and yet he’d still not wished, nor ever would wish, ill will upon her. For she had been a friend to him . . . and still was. “What of her dowry? The viscount?”
His father grimaced, giving his head a slight shake. Connor’s mind raced, trying to keep up with the revelations. “It does not make sense,” he said to himself. He’d based his career and his cases on logic and reason, and nothing in what his father revealed made any sense. Both Bethany and her father were in deep, and yet . . . “It doesn’t fit with the viscount.” Through the years he’d proven himself measured and proper. The pieces did not fall into place.
“It was why he made the match between Bethany and Argyll, Connor. Poor investments, bad crops. The duke was willing to overlook a penniless bride.” A penniless and stunning beauty deemed a Diamond of the First Water, she’d taken the ton by storm.
At that point Connor had been recent to London, just beginning to establish a career with funds given him by the earl. He’d have never made a sufficient match for the viscount. Not when he’d had a penniless daughter and a mountain of debt.
I would say you’re better off than being trapped with a wife who, one, didn’t have the courage to choose you over her father’s wishes, and two, lied to you, making you believe she would marry you.
“She needs a husband,” he said somberly. It explained why the young widow had made such pointed attempts at reestablishing their previous relationship.
His father frowned. “Do not make her out for a fortune hunter.”
“Isn’t that what she is?” he asked without inflection. “Twice now.” At his father’s silence, he winged an eyebrow. Granted, she was a woman with little choice in a world that restricted nearly all opportunities for women. However, she’d been driven more by the need for funds than by her feelings for him. At the very least, his father could acknowledge as much.
A vein bulged at the corner of his father’s right eye. “Is that what you’d like? For the lady to suffer now because she chose another?” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “By God, she is my goddaughter, Connor. Stanley’s daughter.”
Now, both the viscount and Connor’s father expected him to rescue the lady and her family.
How much his father had worried about the viscount’s daughter, and yet, as Ophelia had pointed out, where had been Bethany’s faithfulness to Connor? Where had been her courage and conviction to throw over expectations and marry the street rat he’d once been? “It is odd you should speak solely of the lady being hurt when she made the choice long ago to marry another.”
An impatient sound left his father. “At last it makes sense.”
Connor creased his brow.
“Your interest in that woman.”
That woman. It was a snobbishly dismissive reference to the young woman that marked her as more object than person. Connor thinned his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“With the attention you’ve shown that woman, you’ve done nothing but hurt Bethany.”
Fury spilled through him. “That is what you believe? That I am using Miss Killoran as a pawn to incite the jealousy of another?” Did his father think so little of him?
“She made a mistake, Connor,” he said, confirming that ill opinion.
He whistled. “By God, it is what you think.” He held his father’s gaze. “Is it so unfathomable to you that I enjoy Miss Killoran’s company?”
The earl winced; it was a slight, nearly indistinguishable twitching of the muscles in his face and body, and yet Connor saw it.
“I understand you must . . . relate to the young woman.”
Still, his father could not bring himself to utter her name. Frustration knotted in his gut. “In what ways, Father? The fact that we were both thieves?”
“Stop it, Connor Steele.”
“Oh, come,” Connor spat out. “You know I speak the truth. It’s why you”—despite Connor’s protestations—“insisted I change my name and garments.”
High color flooded the earl’s cheeks. His silence served as a mark of the truth, further fueling Connor.
“It’s why you provided me a fine education.”
His father slammed his fist against his palm. “I wanted you to have an education because you were intelligent and deserving of a new beginning.”
Connor scoffed. “You wanted to erase all hint of the streets from me.”
“You are being difficult,” his father gritted out.
“Tell me, do you hate her because she reminds you of what I am?” He put the somber question to him. “Not only a thief . . . but also a murderer.”
His father clamped gloved hands over his ears. “It is because when you are with her, you can remember only what you’ve done, and I don’t want you to think of the past,” his father cried out, his chest heaving. The fight went out of him; his shoulders slumped. “I don’t want you to remember your demons,” he whispered, stretching out a hand. “I want them buried . . . for you.”
Connor sank back in his seat. That was what this was about. “And you believe that in my having”—what . . . what was it he had with Ophelia?—“any connections with Miss Killoran, it will remind me of my past?” A past he could never truly forget. One that had been indelibly burned into his mind, heart, and soul?
“I remember you as you once were, Connor,” his father whispered, his voice ragged, his eyes overfilling with anguish. “The day you first came home with me, I intended to feed you, clothe you, and send you on your way with a sizable purse. You were a scared, wounded animal, and I could not let you go back out into that world with those people.”
He’d been four and ten. Already jaded in more ways than the Earl of Mar could have even fathomed.
Yet, despite his father’s fears, with Ophelia—because of Ophelia—Connor had realized there was a world outside of his work. She’d made him dream of a life that included a family—with her. I want that with Ophelia. “Don’t you see, Father?” He searched the harsh plains of a face showing signs of age. “All of that . . . it will always be with me.”
“I know that.”
Except there was nothing convincing in those three words, more rote reply than anything.
“Do you?” he quietly asked. Where his father had urged him to bury his previous life, including the parents who’d given him life and loved him, Ophelia had reminded him that Connor had known a fleeting time of happiness with them. It had been wrong to set aside memories of a mother and father who’d died protecting him. “You never asked about my parents.”
His father frowned. “I know what happened to them.” Again, “them,” not “your parents,” but rather an informal, aloof acknowledgment of those who’d mattered most to Connor. “That Diggory fellow killed them before you.”
Yet he could drag forth that hated name.
“You’ve never asked what my life was like before that night. Who my mother and father were. What our life was like as a family.”
“Because I wanted you to forget,” his father exploded. “What good could come in talking about parents who were murdered before you, Connor?”
Yes, murder was ugly and messy and vicious. Certainly not fit for polite or impolite circles, and yet . . . no good had come to Connor in trying to forget, either.
“Do you know who she is?”
The earl shook his head once.
“You do not recognize her?”
His father frowned.
Dropping his palms on his trousers, Connor leaned forward. “The day you rescued me, she was the girl with me.”
The earl went slack-jawed.
“I stepped in that day,” Connor went on, “and intervened on her behalf. It should have been her you saved.” His father groaned, a wounded sound of protest. “It should have been Ophelia who was educated and cared for and protected.” Not me.
The earl didn’t speak for a long moment, and then he touched a hand to his chest. “You didn’t steal my coin purse that day.” Connor stilled. “You sacrificed yourself to save her.”
With that undeserved defense that painted Connor in one light and Ophelia in another, his father opened his eyes to charges Ophelia had made about those of the nobility: the sense of entitlement and their disdain for people outside their station.
A watery smile turned his father’s lips. Leaning across the carriage, he patted Connor on the arm. “And that is why you are different from that . . . Miss Killoran.”
Connor shot up a hand and knocked hard on the roof.
The carriage jerked to a quick stop, and he planted his feet to keep from pitching forward.
Not waiting for the servant, Connor tossed the door open and jumped out.
“Connor?” his father shouted after him.
He paused. “Tell me, Father. When you say you wanted my past buried . . . was it for me? Or you?”
His father’s face crumpled. “Where . . . what are you . . . ?”
Not looking back, he continued walking, ignoring the calls fading behind him.
He walked through the same dank cobblestones he had as a boy, passing alleys he’d hidden within and establishments he’d stolen from.
He just continued on.
Connor had been blinded by the good his father had done in saving him, helping others, fighting in Parliament for laws that sought to curb vice and lessen the suffering. He’d accused Ophelia of unfairly judging others when he himself had been guilty of the same charge.
Only where she’d seen darkness and disdain all around, he’d retained an unfair and unrealistic view of those like his father and other members of the peerage. For all the members of Polite Society like Connor’s father and Bethany and the Viscount Middlethorne’s attempts to aid those less fortunate, they’d ultimately treated those people as somehow less. Beneath them. While Connor had been separated from the masses because of one chance twist of fate.
All the while his inclusion in the world hadn’t been unconditional. It had come at the expense of burying memories and hiding his past because that was far safer and cleaner than the truth of what he’d done.
Connor stopped outside the three-story limestone building. With its intricate mansard roof, dual redbrick chimneys, and black matte door, it was a sleek representation of elegance and wealth.
Two gentlemen rode up on equally expensive horseflesh, tossing those reins to diligent servants.
Instead of entering, the pair exchanged words, nodding periodically and motioning to the structure that when completed would be filled with patrons. An establishment to rival White’s and Brooke’s. They pointed at one of the gables.
From where he stood at the gas lamp across the way, Connor studied the two men engrossed in discussion. For despite the elegant cut to their cloaks and hats, they were not, by Society’s standards, gentlemen.
Ya always thought ya were better than the rest of us.
That condemnation Ophelia had leveled at him, which he’d vehemently denied, now pinged around his mind, accentuated by his father’s condemnations, muting sound, dulling all noise but that of his own breathing.
He took a step as a horse came galloping forward. Shaking a fist, the rider shouted, effectively jerking Connor from his tumult and attracting the attention of that pair.
They locked in on Connor, immediately training their pistols at his chest and head.
Recognition registered in Adair Thorne’s eyes. He quickly tucked away his weapon. “Steele,” Thorne called. His greeting came distant to Connor’s ears as he remained focused on the other, heavily scarred figure coming forward. Suspicion still darkened those familiar eyes.
More than two feet taller than when they’d last met and at least four and ten stone heavier, all muscle and power, he bore little resemblance to the boy Connor had left behind in the dead of night.
“Allow me to introduce you to my brother Niall Marksman. Niall, Connor Steele. Steele is overseeing the investigation into Lord Maddock’s lost son. He’s also a benefactor of Eve’s hospitals.”
Some of the wariness receded, but it didn’t leave the other man entirely. Yes, a man might leave St. Giles, but those dark deeds one had witnessed and taken part in would always remain. No matter how much a man tried to forget or a well-meaning parent willed it away.
His former thieving partner held out a hand. “Steele,” Niall said in his coarsened Cockney.
Connor stared blankly down at those digits as scarred as his own.
He’d left. Without a word. Without asking Niall to accompany him so they might help each other survive in an uncertain world, and all because he’d been afraid. One boy could hide. A pair garnered notice. So he’d run. And he’d continued running—from his past, his existence . . . all of it.
Shame swamped his senses.
How much better off Niall had been with the new family he’d found.
The brothers of the streets exchanged looks, prompting Connor into movement.
He swiftly caught Niall’s hand in a firm grip, his fingers curling reflexively around them. “Niall . . .”
The other man’s eyebrows shot to his hairline.
Connor withdrew his hand.
Leave. Just turn on your heel, and do what you’ve always done best . . . hide. Remain the ghost you were. A person who’d relied on none and kept everyone out. Except he remained rooted there, unable to complete the steps to put this club, this family, this whole bloody day, behind him.
“We knew each other . . . once,” he said gruffly, his voice hoarsened with shame and regret.
He felt his onetime friend sweeping his gaze over his face, frantically trying to place him.
“I’m . . . my name . . . I am Connor. We . . .” Stole and killed together.
The air hissed through Niall’s teeth.
Adair Thorne looked between them and then quietly backed away.
“Connor.” His former friend spoke and looked as one who’d been visited by a ghost. In a way that is what he’d always been. Nay, that is what you made yourself. “My God. I thought . . . I believed . . .”
He’d been killed. “I wasn’t.” It was a fate too many boys in Diggory’s hold had met. Connor had left, putting himself before all.
While Ophelia had stayed.
All the breath in his body, lodged somewhere between his lungs and throat, stuck.
As long as he’d known Ophelia, he’d questioned her—nay, worse, he’d passed judgment upon her for remaining in Diggory’s gang. When all along she’d been the loyal one. She’d never left a person behind, not as Connor had. He’d not even remained true to his parents’ memory.
He was nearly crippled by the weight of his shame. “I left because I didn’t”—Connor inhaled slowly, forcing himself to say it—“I didn’t want to kill anymore. I thought of myself only. I was your friend, and you deserved more from me. You deserved better.” Unable to meet his former friend’s eyes, he bowed his head. “I wanted to say how sorry I am,” he said hoarsely in a useless apology that could never right a wrong.
Niall’s lips worked. He stuck a palm out. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he said gruffly. “We all did wot we ’ad to survive.”
Connor eyed that offering and then again shook Niall’s hand.
“’ow did ya survive?” There was curiosity there. After all, no one survived in the streets without help.
He chuckled. “Would you believe me if I told you a small girl saved my worthless hide more times than I deserved?”
“Oi would,” Niall laughed, the sound rusty. “Oi’ve come to appreciate the strength in people Oi once underestimated.”
The doors to the club were thrown open, and they both looked up. A pair of jovial builders stepped out, carrying a long beam between them. Their laughter and reverie stood out, a stark contrast to the solemnity of Connor’s exchange with Niall.
Connor inclined his head. “I’ll leave you to your business.”
He took a step to go just as Niall called out. “Connor?”
He looked back.
A grin pulled at Niall’s scarred mouth. “Oi’m glad ya didn’t find yarself dead.”
Connor returned that smile. “Me too.”
As he began the long, slow trek on foot through London, a weight lifted from him. Time rolled together until he reached his Bond Street offices. He fished the key from his jacket and let himself inside.
The faint bark of a dog, forlorn in its loneliness, filled the London streets. Connor lifted his head from the lock and looked around.
A chill scraped along his spine as all his nerves went on alert.
Carefully edging the door open, he slipped inside.
And knew.
The faint glow of the candle filtered from the crack under his office door, the only light in his darkened office.
Heart hammering, Connor slowly brought the door closed behind him. He reached into his boot and removed the pistol tucked there. His gun close to his chest, he crept the length of the narrow corridor, stepping over aged floorboards given to creaking.
He stopped.
The faint rustle of parchment echoed within his office, followed by the sound of drawers systematically opening and closing.
Drawing back the hammer, he waited.