Her neck ached.
Having sneaked off to Connor’s offices and picked the lock to let herself in, she’d been since shut away, poring through his files.
Consulting details he’d written, she leaned over and made several notes on parchment she’d commandeered from his middle desk drawer.
Until, at last, she finished.
Stretching her arms above her head, she assessed her work. Each page was marked with the year at the top and neat columns; each row contained names and information Connor had desperately sought.
Ophelia silently mouthed the names of each child, searching her mind for any boy or girl she might have forgotten. She paused on the last sheet and stared down at those names there.
Twenty of them, now gone, existed as nothing more than a mark upon her page. Capturing her lower lip between her teeth, she trailed her fingertips over each one. There had been so little time to mourn. The only time permitted was that which one stole. Any expressions of grief or weakness were met with sound beatings and a lesson on just how much tears cost a person.
A single, solitary drop rolled down her cheek and slapped noisily upon the page; the tiny bit of moisture blurred that name.
The door exploded open with such force it hit the wall and then bounced back.
Gasping, she grabbed for her knife.
Her breath came hard and fast. “Ya scared the bloody ’ell out of me, Connor.” Her own panic reflected back in his eyes. Tossing aside her blade, she pressed a palm against her chest in a bid to still her galloping heart.
“Ophelia?” His voice emerged hoarse. He swiftly lowered his weapon. “My God, I nearly shot you.” Terror riddled that realization.
Praying he couldn’t see her tears in the darkened room, she discreetly swiped at her damp cheeks. “Ya wouldn’t ’ave shot me. Ya’ave more control than that.”
Cursing, he shoved the door closed with the heel of his boot and stalked over. “I had a gun pointed at you.” He alternated a horrified stare between the weapon in his hands and Ophelia. He blanched. “I pointed it at your head.”
At the evidence of his worrying after her, her heart did a little somersault in her chest. “For what it’s worth, O’Roarke, if I were forced to choose, I’d rather take a shot to the head than the belly.”
He opened his mouth and then closed it.
Connor tried again.
Ophelia winked.
“Are you bloody mad?” he growled. He tossed his weapon down on a nearby side table. “Are you making light of me nearly killing you?”
Her confidence wavered as a memory intruded . . . of another charging forward.
“There is nothing at all humorous in that,” he barked.
She blinked, finding him a mere desk length away.
Connor. It is just Connor.
He froze, and his gaze dropped to his files laid out. “What is this?” he blurted.
With shaking fingers, Ophelia stacked the scattered pages lying about. “Oi was going to clean it,” she said under her breath. “Didn’t expect ya to be here.”
Connor folded his arms. “You invaded my office, broke into my desk, and examined my files.”
Not long ago he would have been accusatory and suspicious. Deservedly so. So much had changed between them.
And yet . . . given your birthright, it is sure to be fleeting. A sheen blurred her vision. Dratted office. Tears for a second time this night. He really needed to dust his mahogany furniture.
“Nothing to say?”
“You really need better locks, Connor,” she said with forced lightness. “As one who’s lived on the streets, you know that flimsy locks are useless if someone wants in.”
“There were three locks,” he drawled.
She paused in her task to raise three fingers. “Three useless ones.”
“Not everyone is as skilled at lock-picking as you.”
She picked her head up and beamed.
Smiling, Connor reached across the desk and brushed his knuckles along her jaw. “You’re the only woman I know who’d take that as a compliment, Ophelia.”
Unlike his duchess. The girl he’d called friend, the young lady he’d hoped to marry, and the woman deserving of him.
Her smile froze in place, straining her cheek muscles until she feared her face might shatter.
Connor spoke, all teasing gone. “Why are you here?”
“Why . . . ?”
She followed his stare to the neat pile. Forcing back a searing jealousy, she gripped the pages in her hands, wrinkling the corners. Turn them over . . . explain what you’ve provided, answer any questions he has, and be on your way, so you can begin living a life without him in it.
Instead, she brought the stack close to her chest, retaining a death grip on the sheets she’d meticulously compiled. “I hated the nobility,” she confided. “I resented them for having so much when I wanted so little. I hated them for not seeing me or, worse, for not caring about me or my siblings.” Ophelia glanced briefly at the stack she clutched. “It was always there . . . the hatred.” She drew in a shuddery breath. “Just varying degrees of it. I use to read palms,” she whispered.
Connor stitched his eyebrows into a single line. “I know—I—”
She shook her head, and he immediately fell silent. Everything was jumbled together in her mind, forcing parts of her past out in an order that made no sense. Counting to three, she tried again. “Diggory realized he could earn far more coin in me reading the palms and telling the future of fancy lords and ladies than I could in snatching purses.” A brittle laugh bubbled past her lips, and her body shook with the force of that empty mirth. “Imagine that? More coin was to be had from a street rat making up fake fortunes for people who already had more than that guttersnipe could have ever dreamed.” Awkwardly angling her palms, she studied the ink-stained, callused flesh. “The ladies yearned for love, and the men, fortune. It didn’t take me long to gather as much from my clients. The grander the vision, the more exorbitant the prize.” Coins she’d had to turn over without so much as a pence for her efforts. “Cleo still had to steal. It was learned I’d . . . seen you, and as repayment for crossing Diggory, he punched Gertrude.” Ophelia sucked in an uneven breath. “She lost vision in one of her eyes.”
Grief contorted his features. “Because you spared my life,” he finished for her, regret heavy in that understanding.
“After I helped you, Connor. I didn’t spare you. You were always a survivor. You were destined to survive whether or not I intervened those days.”
“I don’t believe that,” he murmured, taking a slow path around the desk.
She held up her overflowing hands, and he instantly stopped.
“Then there was me . . . the gypsy.” Ophelia chuckled. “A gypsy with white hair. It merely added to the illusion. Just like that, a shift in role, and my life was safe in ways Cleo’s and Gertrude’s were not.” Tears flooded her eyes, and she blinked them back, but the misty sheen remained until she let them fall. “I even had a dress,” she whispered. “It was so soft and pure white. It was laundered”—a task that had fallen to Gertrude—“every night until it frayed, and then I had another. And do you know what, Connor? Selfishly, I was g-grateful.” Her voice broke. He reached for her, but she stepped back, needing space between them. “I was grateful that I didn’t face the dangers that my sisters did and relished the small comforts I had. I accused you of looking after only yourself, and yet I was even guiltier of that charge.” Her voice dissolved into a faint whisper. “Because I had sisters who relied on me.”
“Hmm,” he protested, closing the space between them. He cupped her cheek in a firm but gentle grip. “You are only human, Ophelia. You were just a girl, and even if you hadn’t been, there is nothing wrong in wanting to be safe.”
“But . . . there was shame in it, and I was rightfully punished for those sins.”
He stiffened; his arm fell to his side. Had he prodded . . . had he asked a single question or made a hint of a sound, she’d not have gone on. Mayhap it was his skill as an investigator. Or mayhap he’d been the only true friend she’d had and innately knew that she wouldn’t continue. But he met her silent tumult with an equal quiet.
“I had handlers. Two of them. Diggory knew my worth.”
Ya’re worth more than both yar sisters combined, girl. Don’t ya dare get yarself ’urt.
Words from a father that hadn’t been issued out of any concern but for the monetary value she represented to him.
“Oi ’ad a place down an alley in the Dials. ’ad to walk hours to get there because Diggory didn’t want to risk that someone in St. Giles remembered Oi was just a pickpocket turned gypsy. A fancy lord came. Foine garments. ’ad a daughter loike me, ’e said. ’is wife ’ad just died, an’ he wanted to know the future that awaited him.” Another tear streaked down her cheek.
Unable to meet Connor’s unnerving gaze, a gaze that saw too much, she turned away and wandered off several steps.
“It was going to be so easy. Oi knew precisely wot ’e hoped to ’ear. A new love, a new mother for his girl. Oi let my guard down. Oi didn’t allow myself to see the hardness in his eyes, the way he looked at moi chest and not my eyes as he spoke.” She forced her feet back around, forced herself to meet this man’s eyes, needing him to understand why she’d spent so many years fearful of that lot he so trusted. “When I went down that alley, Oi learned real fast that Oi’d never been the lucky one.”
When he was just a boy, he’d nicked his first pocket. His nerves had made him sloppy and careless. One clumsy grab had alerted the gent to his intentions. The shout had gone up, followed by a cry as hands shot out and a sea of strangers made to grab him. Until the day he drew his last breath, he’d recall the thundering of his heart, the absolute absence of sufficient air for his lungs.
Standing there, with Ophelia huddled within herself, her story unfinished, he felt very much the way he had then.
His pulse raced, and coward as he’d always been, he wanted to retreat once more, wanted to halt a telling, for he knew. Knew before she even continued what happened to girls who wandered down those alleys.
“What happened?” he forced himself to ask.
She lifted her slender shoulders in a stiff shrug. “He told me ’ow pretty Oi was. Told me moi ’air was beautiful. Then he touched it.”
Oh, God. His stomach pitched as those imaginings slapped at his mind. Of Ophelia, a small girl, and some bloody nobleman collecting those silken strands in his fingers.
“’e wasn’t the first,” she said, her voice faint. “All the lords and ladies wanted to touch my ’air. They thought it was magic. Sometimes Oi even sold them an extra touch for a pence.” Her throat moved rhythmically. “Oi sold him a touch that day. Oi thought Oi was so c-clever. He said Oi invited it. That Oi wanted it.”
He moaned. “It wasn’t your fault. He had no right . . . to any of it.” He ached to take her in his arms but knew if he did, she’d cease her telling, and so he stood there, his arms hanging tense at his sides.
“He ripped moi dress.” A half laugh, half sob tore from her; the pained sound shredded his frantically pounding heart. “That was the first thing Oi thought. And then it all happened so fast. Touched me . . .” She squeezed the burden she clutched harder against her chest. “. . . here. Then jammed a knee between moi legs.”
Did that low groan better suited to a wounded animal belong to Connor? How was he even capable of a single utterance through her telling?
With trembling fingers, Ophelia set her papers down. “Said moi mouth was a whore’s mouth that he couldn’t kiss, that he ’ad other uses for it.” As she spoke, her telling took on a methodical quality where each word she spoke hit like a lance to his chest. “Oi knew wot the girls did with their mouths. Oi’d even seen it. Oi’d always been sick at the thought of . . . it. ’e stuck ’is fingers in me first.” A heartrending shame dripped from that whisper and cut him to the core. “It was real painful. Oi fought h-him.” Her voice broke on that imagery that conjured Ophelia as she’d been—alone, riddled with terror, desperately fighting off the attack of a treacherous nobleman. “’e enjoyed it. Urged me on.”
He concentrated on drawing in slow, even breaths, wanting to be strong, for she deserved that strength. She’d been strong when any other man, woman, or child would have cracked and crumbled.
“Then Oi let myself go limp.” A triumphant grin curved her quivering lips. “That was ’is misstep that day. Oi grabbed moi knife while he was loosening his falls, cut him.” She motioned to her thigh. “He screamed loike a stuck pig an’ Oi took off running. Oi burned that dress,” she added on a whispery afterthought. “Beat by Diggory for losing it. It was the first beating Oi actually wanted because Oi deserved it. Because Oi’d encouraged him.”
Groaning, Connor came forward and then stopped. Not knowing what to say . . . afraid to touch her.
“Don’t do that.” Her voice broke.
He shook his head.
She lifted ravaged eyes to his, and those shimmering crystalline pools of despair hit him like a kick to the gut. “Please don’t look at me loike ya don’t know ’ow to be with me.”
Taking the permission she granted, he folded her close as he’d ached to since she’d begun. She turned her head, layering it against his chest, and he continued to hold her. Resting his cheek against the silken crown of pale curls, he clung to her.
All the while a white-hot rage pulsed through his veins, a primal yearning to hunt down and find the stranger responsible for her nightmares and take him apart limb by limb.
Time melted away, ceasing to mean anything more than an irrelevant click on the mahogany wall clock, as Connor just held her. Since their first meeting, he’d touted the honor and goodness in the nobility, when every experience she’d ever had, every exchange, was tainted by ugliness. When one of those same gentlemen had attempted to rape her, and very nearly would have if it hadn’t been for her own resourcefulness. “I am an arrogant, unmitigated fool,” he said, hollow inside and out. “Taking you to task for not seeing the good.” A broken, cynical laugh rumbled in his chest. “All along I was the one who was so wrong.”
She pushed away, and he mourned the space she erected between them. “No,” she said, frustration lending her voice strength. She gave her head a shake. “That isn’t why I told you . . . about that day. I told you because you were right.”
He briefly closed his eyes. How in God’s earth could that horror she’d recounted show him anything of the sort? “I couldn’t have been further from the mark.”
Ophelia sighed. “Part of me, I fear, will always be wary of the nobility.”
How could she not? He wanted to toss his head back and rage at the world for what she’d endured.
“But you’ve taught me . . . you’ve shown me,” she amended. “There are lords and ladies who are good. Like Eve Dabney and the Duke and Duchess of Somerset. They are all people who have included me in their lives, despite their knowing precisely who I am . . . and what I’ve done. And your . . . father . . .” His father was undeserving in this instance of that honorable placement she gave him. “. . . and Lady Bethany.”
Connor palmed her cheek, and she leaned into his touch. “You are a remarkable woman, Ophelia Killoran.”
“I’m not,” she said simply. “I’m just a woman who realized you were correct.” Her eyes held his. “I have not helped you in your investigation because I feared the intentions of the gentleman you work for. I’m not afraid anymore. I trust you, Connor. I trust that these children”—she picked up the forgotten pages—“will not come to any harm.” Ophelia placed that burden in his arms.
Blinking, he looked at the stack. “What is this?”
“It is everything. All the children I’ve hired, the details I recall about their pasts. The boys and girls who belonged to Diggory’s gang, those who remained on with us, those who died . . .” Her words trailed off.
His heart started as the enormity of her faith and trust slammed into him. Connor skimmed through the sheets in his hands and all the information contained upon those pages. “Ophelia,” he said hoarsely.
She held up a staying hand. “A debt owed.”
Required a debt be paid. He stilled, braced for the demand she’d put to him.
Ophelia breathed deeply. “I want you to make love to me.”