It couldn’t be.
There were a million reasons she was wrong and only one disconcerting reason she might be correct.
Fighting the tremble to her fingers, she tightened them upon the page in her hands, not seeing the words there, hearing only those that Connor had casually supplied.
Oi ain’t scared of ’im . . . ’e’s just a man . . . An’ Oi’m a man marked by the Devil.
Except Diggory’s mark had been left on many Ophelia knew, and it had always come in the form of a D or his name. Letters carved into a person’s skin to remind them who their liege was and what their role was in serving him.
Her heart thumped an erratic rhythm. Of course, that single scar Connor spoke of that might not even be a scar all these years later served as no definitive proof of anything. She reached for the rendering of the missing babe. Briefly closing her eyes, she counted to five, not wanting to look closer, with the information Connor had supplied whispering around the back of her brain.
She didn’t want to question the world as she knew it and the implications for all if what Connor supposed was truth.
Forcing her eyes open, Ophelia looked.
The smiling child, more babe than boy, stared back. Innocence in his eyes, trust in his smile, he was unlike any child she’d ever known in St. Giles. All those boys and girls had been born with a frown and hadn’t an extra ounce to spare for the food sparingly provided.
A little whispery sigh of relief sailed past her lips.
So why did she not put the page down? Why did she retain her white-knuckled grip upon it, staring at a child who as she’d claimed earlier could truly be any English child? A nurtured and beloved nobleman’s babe, that was.
Ophelia forced her gaze back over it once more.
He was a cheerful babe, always smiling. Each year, however . . .
Those words she’d casually confided to Connor not even two days ago slammed into her with all the weight of a fast-moving carriage. She ceased breathing; all the air remained trapped in her lungs.
It was impossible . . . it couldn’t be.
Just because of mention made to a possibly scarred knee . . . and . . .
August Rudolph Thadeus Stephen Warren, the Earl of Greyley.
Even as her mind screeched in protest to the improbability of what she’d unwittingly pulled forth, bile climbed up her throat.
She stole a frantic look in Connor’s direction.
His head remained bent, fixed on the pages in his hand.
How? How?
How could he not see she sat before him in tumult, questioning everything she’d known to be fact? Questioning her existence and the existence of a sibling she would have traded her life over to the Devil ten times to Sunday to prevent his suffering.
Think, Ophelia . . . think. Just because Stephen had once been a smiling child, plump, cheerful, with a mark upon his right knee . . . those details did not a nobleman’s lost son make.
It was a fantastical leap that defied logic and reason when that had been the only tenet of life that guided her.
Before now.
Now . . . she could focus on nothing more than a scar, a lengthy name, and memories of Stephen as he’d been.
Again, she clenched her eyes shut, willing the memories of her past forward. Forcing herself back to the days when a new Diggory bastard had been thrust into their care.
’e’s my roightful ’eir . . . a boy . . . if a single ’air on ’is ’ead is even combed wrong, I’ll carve out yar innards. Are we clear?
Ophelia’s stomach pitched. She and her sisters had assumed the boy was another Diggory bastard brought into their midst. As long as she could remember, he’d railed at the whores who’d given him daughters while lamenting their whore’s blood. But what did she really know about Stephen’s origins?
Think . . . think . . . when did Stephen join the fold?
They’d pegged him as nine, nearly ten. But none had known for sure. What if he were in fact a year older? Her heart stumbled, and ignoring that similarity in her mind, she inventoried the years.
The year would have been . . . 1819?
She jumped up.
Connor looked over with a question in his eyes.
“Water,” she managed in even tones. Ophelia made a show of searching his offices. “Do you have water? A glass.”
“Of course.” He shoved to his feet with languid movements. Cupping her cheek, he placed a kiss on her lips.
When he broke that too-brief meeting, he tweaked her nose. “Don’t go running off on me, Miss Killoran.”
She forced a laugh. As soon as he’d gone, she bolted over and retrieved one boot. Heart racing, she yanked it on. Where was the other? Where was it?
Falling to her knees, she crawled around the room and found her missing boot peeking out from under the crimson-velvet sofa.
Where Connor had made love to her.
On a lie.
So many lies.
Had there ever been any truths between them?
A sob catching in her throat, she yanked on her other boot. Not bothering with laces, she slipped from the room, down the hall, and out into the night once more.
As she rushed alone through the London streets, the night wind tugged at her loose hair, whipping those strands about her face. Hers was no longer a veiled disguise. If she were seen running as she was without a chaperone, she’d be called out for the Killoran she was and ruined. There would be no match . . . a match she’d never wanted and still didn’t.
But one made even more impossible given everything she’d learned in Connor’s offices.
Ophelia continued walking and didn’t stop until she’d reached the point where Finchley Road intersected with Hendon Way.
Stephen is not my brother.
Her heart squeezed.
Oh, he was and would forever be her brother in every way that mattered. But his life had been a lie.
All of it.
As soon as that thought slid in, she sucked in a shuddering breath. Mayhap she was wrong. There could simply be a collection of oddly connecting details that made it seem to be one thing, when it was really another.
She knew.
Knew in her heart.
Stephen’s unhealthy fascination with fires. Diggory using him to set blazes, even when Broderick had gone toe-to-toe with their liege to end Stephen’s role as an arsonist.
Ophelia hugged herself, rubbing at her arms.
’e’s a boy of fire . . . ’e’ll set my fires.
A boy of fire.
She’d not given much thought to that statement. Any thought. They’d all, after all, filled respective roles within the Diggory gang. That had been Stephen’s. Now, with the files she’d read and the suspicions settling around her brain as more than suspicions, she heard the twisted, sinister relish in that long-ago pronouncement.
What now?
For Stephen? For their family?
Yet, for her and her siblings, the Devil’s Den mattered more than anything for what it represented. Now she was proven so very wrong. All of them.
Another cold night wind stole across the silent London streets.
Her neck prickled, and she glanced about.
Someone is watching me.
It was an innate knowing that could come only from a lifetime of creeping through the darkest corners of England and living to tell of it.
Springing into motion, Ophelia quickened her steps until the sensation grew. Silently cursing, she glanced back and forth, heart knocking painfully against her rib cage as she lengthened her strides.
She broke into a full run, sprinting onward until the safe, familiar sights of the Devil’s Den loomed ahead.
Not breaking stride, gasping from her run, sweating for her efforts, she bolted for the only home she’d ever known.
“Ya there, stop,” a guard barked.
The barrel of his pistol gleamed bright in the otherwise dark. The faint click.
“Ellis,” she managed to pant. Dropping her hands on her knees, she bent forward and drew in slow, steadying breaths. “It’s me.”
“Miss Killoran?” The burly bearded guard instantly lowered his weapon.
“The same.” Offering him a weak smile, she looked down the alley, hesitating.
Do not think of it . . . do not think of it.
Connor had helped her to see the absolute control she had over her demons. She’d reclaimed her heart, body, and soul this night.
Lifting her head, she waved to the warrior who’d served with their family since Broderick had joined the Diggory gang.
“Killoran coming,” he thundered behind her.
The guards stationed at the end of the alley dropped their pistols.
“Coleman. Aubert.”
“Miss,” they replied in unison from their positions flanking the doorway. As though it were entirely commonplace to find the head proprietor’s sister down this particular alley. As though they were familiar friends exchanging pleasantries about the weather.
Ophelia fiddled with the handle and let herself in. The soothing scents of freshly baked breads and cinnamon permeated the air, filling her nostrils, bucolic scents better suited to a country kitchen. She closed the door behind her and made quick work of the three locks and special top bolt Broderick had installed years earlier.
She leaned back against the wood, taking comfort in the solid, reassuring weight at her back.
Several shadows whispered forward, breaking the brief moment of peace she’d allowed herself. Unsheathing her dagger in one fluid motion, Ophelia brought her arm back—and froze.
Her sisters glared back.
“Cleo?” she whispered, shocked. “Gertrude?” Then a sense of doom filled her.
An always clever Gertrude, who’d seen too much, examined Ophelia’s garments, her flyaway hair. “Where in blazes have you been?” she exploded, and it was a sign of Gertrude’s panic that her ever-in-control sister both cursed and raised her voice.
She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She wasn’t ready for a lecture from her sisters on propriety.
“You don’t want to talk about it?” Cleo barked.
Before Ophelia could formulate another reply, Gertrude whipped over and took her so quickly by the shoulders, the blade slipped from Ophelia’s fingers. The dagger clattered noisily upon the hardwood floor. “Oh, we are going to speak on it,” her eldest sister rasped. “My God, do you know how worried we’ve been? I received word from Cleo two hours ago asking if you’d returned home. We’ve been tearing up London in search of you, thinking . . . believing . . .” Gertrude buried a sob in her fist. “Will you say something to her?” she ordered Cleo.
Cleo, however, just studied Ophelia with a quiet contemplativeness, far more unnerving than Gertrude’s show of temper.
“Very well, then, I’ll say something. You don’t just disappear and not . . .”
While Gertrude continued her tirade, Ophelia glanced away.
She wasn’t ready to talk to her sisters or anyone about anything. She needed to slink off, find her rooms, and make sense of what she’d uncovered. “I needed a walk,” she said after Gertrude finally stopped with her lecture.
Cleo’s dark eyebrows formed a hard line. “Do ya think I believe that yarn?” she demanded.
Tucking her knife back in her boot, Ophelia sighed. “Was it too much to hope that you would?”
“Ya were with Steele.”
Ophelia’s entire body jolted. Had Cleo announced that she’d discovered Ophelia was, in fact, born to the king and queen themselves, she couldn’t have been more shocked by her sister’s accurate supposition. “What?” she blurted. “How? Why?”
“How did Oi know?” Cleo drawled with some of her earlier outrage gone. “Oi’m yar damned sister, Ophelia. I know ya.”
Gertrude rocked back on her heels. “What?” Sputtering incoherently, she looked to Ophelia. “You were with . . . Mr. Steele? You lied to me?”
For everything Cleo did know and was keen enough to gather, there was also so much she didn’t. Horrible, ugly stories of a time long ago that Ophelia had only ever shared with Connor.
A man whom she could never, ever be with.
I’m the daughter of a murderer and kidnapper.
She briefly considered the path beyond her sisters to her rooms, and privacy, wanting nothing more than to shut herself away.
Except . . .
“Though that isn’t the only reason I suspected where you might be,” Cleo confessed, drawing her attention back. Behind her spectacles, a twinkle lit her brown eyes. “Given the fact you were making eyes at him the moment he entered Eve and Calum’s parlor, I trust there’s at least some grounds for suspicion.”
Ophelia choked on her swallow. She’d seen that?
Cleo went on. “Surely you didn’t believe I of all people would fail to see how you were looking at the man?” A frown lingered on her sister’s lips. “I wasn’t one of those fancy ladies in attendance.”
Gertrude glanced back and forth between them.
Ophelia gave the doorway serious consideration. These were her sisters . . . but she didn’t want to have this discussion with them. Nay, she didn’t want to have it with anyone.
“Were you . . . watching him?” their eldest sister asked softly. She switched her gaze between Ophelia and Cleo.
Cleo didn’t allow Ophelia an answer. “You were making moon eyes, and Oi also despised Adair Thorne and drew a knife on him. Things change,” she said matter-of-factly. “Sit,” she ordered, motioning to the long wood table.
As she briefly considered retreat once more, Gertrude stepped into her path.
Ophelia slid onto one of the benches.
Yes, as her sister correctly pointed out . . . things changed.
Only Ophelia had never truly hated Connor. She’d admired him . . . marveled at his strength and courage, even as she’d resented him—unfairly.
She’d been wrong about so much. Ophelia scraped a hand over tired eyes.
Her younger sister, the one Broderick had always had such faith in, and for so many rightful reasons, wandered over to the stone counters. She gathered a dish of sponge biscuits and carried it back, then set it down between them. Cleo sat. “You were with him tonight.” She’d slipped back into her smooth, measured tones. Ones that hinted at her steadying control.
Why had her sister always been so blasted perceptive?
She studied the long, narrow treats, made for those equally narrow wineglasses. She desperately wanted liquid fortitude now. For there was little point in lying to one as perceptive as Cleo.
What was more . . . Ophelia had tired of lying. To her siblings . . . to Connor.
Her gut clenched; her mind shied away from all the truths she knew she needed to reveal to him.
“He seems like a nice enough gent,” Cleo observed, dogged in her pursuit of information from Ophelia.
“Cleopatra,” Gertrude snapped.
Their youngest sister shifted back and forth on the bench. “For an investigator, that is,” she mumbled.
“He is,” Ophelia said softly. To give her fingers something to do, she picked up a biscuit and took a bite. The flaky morsel sat like clay upon her tongue, and she forced herself to choke down that swallow. “He’s not like the other investigators or constables we’ve dealt with,” she defended, needing her sisters to know that about Connor. “Connor is a man who has known the same strife as us but who, with his career, seeks to make life better for others.” Her voice grew impassioned. “He’s fair and kind and good to children and . . .” At her sisters’ piercing stares on her, Ophelia let her words trail off.
“Why do I take it you’ve known your Mr. Steele before?” Gertrude asked.
“Because I did.” Her voice emerged faint. She set down her unfinished biscuit with hands that trembled. “I was a girl. He was . . . the one who got away.”
Her sisters’ mouths fell open. Cleo shook her head. Was it shock? Disbelief?
Ophelia nodded. “Connor O’Roarke. I found him . . . several times.” Three. She kept her eyes trained on the nicked wood table, unable to meet Gertrude’s gaze for the familiar guilt sweeping through her.
“You came across him and you didn’t turn him over.” An undeserved pride coated Gertrude’s pronouncement, and Ophelia wanted to blot her hands over her ears to push back those misplaced sentiments.
Would she still be so proud when she learned what Ophelia’s decision had cost her? Nonetheless, she’d been a coward too long. Her eldest sister had been deserving of the truth long ago. “The last time I saw him, I let him go. Went on my way to steal a purse.” She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “I was s-sloppy.” Ophelia paused a fraction of a heartbeat. “I was caught by a constable and the nob.” Even years later, shame in admitting that misstep filled her.
So much shame. It was a stinging, burning, unwelcome sentiment that had grown increasingly familiar.
Cleo’s gasp filled the kitchens. “But how . . . ?”
“How did I escape?” Toying with the plate, Ophelia searched for the strength to tell her sisters everything. “That night, Connor came forward. He took ownership of my crime and went in my stead.”
“He sacrificed himself for you,” Gertrude said softly.
“He did,” she whispered. It was the greatest, most generous gift one had to give in St. Giles—that of one’s life. And Connor had offered his over to her. It hadn’t mattered the end result had found him safe and secure in a nobleman’s home as a beloved adopted son; it mattered that he’d taken her place and marched on to what would have been any other person’s grim fate of Newgate and a hanging. “He was adopted by that same lord. Given a home and a new beginning.”
“The Earl of Mar.” Cleo slid that detail into place.
What a life Connor had made for himself. He hadn’t become the indolent, roguish, privileged child of a nob. Rather, he’d embraced a chance to begin anew, establishing a career as one of the most respected, successful investigators in England. He worked when the peerage looked down at those who made a living with their hands.
What did my family do? We operate the most wicked, scandalous den of sin in London. Coins a’plenty, respectability for none. Ophelia dropped an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand.
“You love him.”
You love him.
There they were: three words that ripped through the heart of why Ophelia lay ravaged inside. I do. I always did. Tears pricked at her eyes. “Does it matter?” she asked, her tone sharper than she intended. “Oi ’ave to marry—”
“To satisfy Broderick’s wishes.”
“To save me,” Gertrude quietly put forward.
“Yes. No.” Because of both.
A thick pall fell over the kitchens. The revelries from deep within the establishment filled the rooms, the sounds muffled.
Gertrude was the first to again speak. “All these years you’ve all sought to look after me. Broderick, Stephen, Cleo, and you, Ophelia.”
They had. When Ophelia had stumbled into their hovel, bruised under her tattered garments and riddled with terror, she’d hated Cleo. Hated both her sisters for failing to look after her. Hated herself with an equal ferocity for being unable to look after herself.
“Neither of you have ever realized . . .” A sad smile played on her lips. “I do not need you to look after me. I never did.” The narrow lines of Gertrude’s face contorted into a paroxysm of hurt. “And certainly not at the expense of your own happiness.”
Ophelia swiped a hand over her face. “It has never been because I’ve doubted you,” she said hoarsely. Even with her sister’s dubious look, she still struggled to utter those words aloud.
Tell her.
“The last time I freed Connor, Diggory promised I’d s-suffer.” Her voice cracked. “And I did. Just not in the ways I believed. In the ways we’d come to expect.” Tears flooded Ophelia’s eyes, blurring Gertrude’s visage. “He beat you that day. Clubbed you in the head as a lesson to me. I—I am the reason you are partially blind.” Her shoulders shook with the force of her silent tears. Remorse and heartache brought teardrop after teardrop.
Soft, tender hands collected Ophelia’s coarser ones.
Gertrude squeezed her palms. “Do you truly believe I would hold you responsible for a single act that monster committed?” Hurt wreathed that question.
Another sob ripped from Ophelia. “I chose Connor.” Unwittingly at the time. And God help her, then or now, she could not say she’d ever have done anything different. She wept all the harder.
“No,” Gertrude said, vehement. “You chose goodness. Despite fear . . . despite knowing Diggory would undoubtedly beat you or worse . . . you defied him.” Her voice caught. “There is only good in that, Ophelia.”
She released her hands, came around, and took Ophelia in her arms. Just held her. In Gertrude’s embrace, with Cleo silently watching on, there was at last a warm, healing peace. It slipped into Ophelia’s heart, freeing and strengthening. Until her tears dissolved into a watery hiccup.
She rubbed her eyes against her sister’s shoulder. “I am so—”
“Do not,” Gertrude clipped out. “Your apologies imply there is something so very wrong with me.” Yet that is how they’d each, in their quest to help Gertrude, inadvertently treated her. “Now, what of your Mr. Steele? And your nighttime disappearance?” her eldest sibling urged after she’d broken their embrace.
Tears welled anew. What in blazes was becoming of her? She angrily brushed them away. “He is not mine. He can never be mine.”
Cleo frowned. “Because of Broderick?”
Worse. Because if it were only their brother and his grasping attempts at noble connections, she’d have thrown them over, just to have Connor in her life.
Restless, she jumped up. “Because of who I am.” She owed him the same explanations and truths she’d given her sisters this night. Even when she did . . . which invariably she would, the divide between them was insurmountable.
Gertrude bristled. “What is wrong with who you are?”
Ophelia stopped, her back presented to her sisters. She stared at the unlit fireplace. “Diggory made him an orphan.”
The air slipped past the lips of one of her sisters on a noisy hiss.
“Precisely that,” she whispered, gripping her arms about her waist.
And there was the matter of Stephen, and Connor’s investigation.
How was it possible for one person’s entire life to crumple so very quickly?
“It is not to be.”
“Alas, it is.”
At that peculiar reply, she turned back.
Cleo brandished a thick sheet of velum. “This arrived earlier this evening. An invitation to an intimate dinner party . . .” She paused. “With the Earl of Mar and his family.”
Oh, God. Ophelia’s stomach muscles clenched. She was being invited to his father’s household.
Happiness glowed in Gertrude’s pale-green eye. “He is presenting you before his father.”
“You simply need to tell him,” Cleo said with such a matter-of-factness that the thin thread of control Ophelia had on her emotions splintered.
“You speak as though it will not matter to him. As though the fact that our father killed his father and raped his mother, before killing her, too, are minor infractions.”
All the color drained from her sisters’ faces. Good. Airing those words aloud should ground them in reality. “This is not make-believe. This is not ‘pretend,’ like the Gothic novels Gertrude reads.”
“Adair forgave,” Cleo intoned.
“Did Diggory make Adair an orphan?”
That effectively silenced both sisters.
“Ya’re ’ere!”
They spun to the entranceway.
“All of ya!” Stephen stood framed there, a joyful glimmer in his gaze and a smile on his lips—an honest, unrestrained one that was such a marked copy of the one in Connor’s sketch that tears flooded her eyes all over again.
In three long strides, Ophelia was at his side and had him in her arms.
His little arms folded around her, tearing a silent sob from her throat.
Just like that, he transformed into his usual belligerent self. “Wot now?” he groused, shoving against her. “None o’ that. The crying nonsense or the hugs.”
Ophelia only held him all the tighter. She ignored the confused glances exchanged by her sisters.
“Wot’s the matter with ’er?” Stephen begged their sisters.
“I’m just so happy to see you,” she whispered, at last allowing him the space he craved.
Eyeing her carefully, he retreated a step. “Wot’s going on ’ere?”
No one said anything for a long moment.
“We just missed you and wished to see you,” Cleo supplied for them.
He snorted. “Do ya think Oi was born on Tuesday? Oi’ve ’eard Broderick ’as men out searching for ya.” He narrowed his eyes. “Where were ya?”
“I was coming here.”
“But before she did,” Cleo improvised, “she came to visit . . .” Her brow scrunched up.
“Eve and Calum Dabney,” Gertrude added to the lie.
Stephen scratched at his golden curls. Those same sun-kissed strands in the miniature painting.
Mayhap she was wrong. Mayhap a lifetime of having only the worst happen was responsible for the suspicions that had sent her into flight, seeking out the club and her youngest sibling.
Oh, God, I cannot take this.
Ophelia crossed over and grabbed the sides of his fine lawn shirt.
“Wot in ’ell are ya—?”
She yanked it up, scraping her gaze over his small chest and belly.
And finding it.
A birthmark to the right of his navel.
With numb fingers, Ophelia let the fabric fall back into place.
“Ophelia?” Cleo pressed.
“Forgive me . . . I . . .” She gave her head a shake. “Forgive me.” It was all she could manage. Stephen belonged to another family . . . sired by a man other than Diggory.
“Where in blazes have you been?”
Broderick.
The Killoran quartet looked to the entrance of the kitchens.
With matching glares, her siblings filed past him.
Cowards.
“My God, Ophelia,” he snapped. “I have had guards scouring the streets of London. Questions have circulated as to where you’ve been. If a single gentleman learned of your disappearance, your reputation would be ruined.”
“How important that is to you,” she said, sadly eyeing him. “Titles, connections, rank, and prestige. What of family?” What of Stephen?
A ruddy flush marred his cheeks. “Is that what you believe?” he snapped. “That I do not care about you?” A wounded edge underscored his question. “That you don’t matter?”
For a long moment, she studied him—the brother who’d entered her life, first a hated stranger who’d gone on to protect her and her siblings from Diggory’s cruel machinations. “I do not doubt your love.” His flush deepened. Because regardless of truth being valued, one didn’t speak of sentiments such as love . . . or any feelings or emotions. “And yet . . .” She took a step closer. “The first thing you spoke to was my reputation and how it affected a match.” Surely he saw that.
His mouth tightened. “I’ll not have us speak in the kitchens.”
Without waiting to see if she followed, Broderick spun and marched from the room. From the moment Diggory had learned Broderick’s value—one who could read, write, and speak like a gent—his rank had been elevated, and not a single soul—Ophelia and her sisters included—had dared question Broderick’s authority.
She followed at a sedate pace behind her brother, passing guards stationed throughout the corridors. Another time she’d have gone toe-to-toe with Broderick, and witnesses be damned. Her stomach, still queasy, threatened to revolt at the discovery she’d made. Minutes ago? Hours? A lifetime? Time had ceased to mean anything or matter in any way.
What her respectability-driven brother didn’t know . . . couldn’t know . . . was that soon, no match would be possible. Their club, and their reputations, would never survive the charges they’d be held responsible for. That it had been Diggory who’d captured a nobleman’s child, and that Ophelia and her siblings had been unknowing of his treachery, would be overlooked. They’d be held complicit.
As soon as they were shut away in Broderick’s office, he folded his arms. “Have you been hurt?”
She opened her mouth.
“If some gentleman has”—fire flared in his eyes, a lethal glitter that would have terrified a battle-hardened warrior—“hurt you in any way . . . I’ll have them taken care of.”
Killed. He’d have them killed.
“It is not that,” she demurred, rubbing at her arms.
“Steele?”
So he had been closely following the reports in the gossip columns speculating on Ophelia’s relationship with Connor. But then, should she really be surprised, given how enamored he’d always been with the ton?
“Not Connor,” she finally said, struggling to bring the admission forth. For once it was breathed into existence, everything would change. And they would lose a sibling. Tears filled her eyes. “Not in the ways you are worrying.”
Broderick stilled.
A black curse exploded from his lips. “I’ll kill him.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You used his Christian name and cried when I can’t think of a single day you’ve ever wept before me,” he said in lethal, hushed tones that spoke of a violence she’d not believed him capable of. “That is all you needed to say.”
“He’s been a friend to me, Broderick.” He’d allowed her to see she was so much more than that one night in an alley.
Her brother recoiled.
Despite the severity of their situation, a sliver of droll humor tugged at her. “Why do I believe you’d have preferred I say he hurt or offended me?”
“Do not be silly,” he muttered, his color deepening. “I’ve never wanted you hurt. I’ve only sought to make our family more powerful so we have the security you deserve.”
Her grin faded.
He worked his eyes over her face. “What is it?”
Ophelia drew in a breath. “You are aware of Connor’s investigation into the nobleman’s missing child.”
“I am,” he said succinctly.
“He’s allowed me to view his files. He’s spoken freely of his findings.”
When previously no other man, including the one before her, had allowed her true power: within the club, over decisions made, over any aspect of life.
“And?”
Of course, Broderick would hear more in her words.
Ophelia briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them, she spoke in quiet tones. “And I’ve determined the child’s identity.”
Broderick sharpened his gaze on her. “Well?”
“It is Stephen.”
That admission sucked the life, energy, and sound from the room, leaving in its place a tense silence.
Broderick shook his head.
She nodded.
He gave another shake.
“It is true, Broderick.” Ophelia proceeded to reveal everything to her brother. By the time she’d finished, he was silent once more, his face carved of granite, his chiseled cheeks a sickly ashen hue.
He stalked over to his sideboard and poured himself a brandy, and with his back to her, he downed it. He filled another glass. When he faced her once more, color had been restored to his cheeks, and he had his usual, fully composed, master-of-his-emotions facade in place. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m not. You know I’m not.”
“I know no such thing.” He slashed the air with his spare hand. “So Stephen has a mark on his belly—”
“And his knee.”
“It in no way confirms that he’s—” Broderick wisely cut himself off and eyed the doorway. Yes, one never knew when someone was lurking about. “It confirms nothing.”
He was seeing what he wished to see. Nor did she doubt his reason for doing so.
Ophelia joined him at the sideboard. “I love him, too, Broderick,” she whispered. “I don’t want him to leave, but—”
“He is not leaving,” he rasped.
“He belongs to another,” she continued over him.
He jerked, liquid droplets splashing over the rim of his glass. “This is because of your damned investigator.” He set his tumbler down, spraying more droplets onto that immaculate mahogany.
She balled her hands into fists. “Surely you are not blaming Connor for this?” Blame belonged to only one—the devil who’d sired her. She’d be damned if Broderick twisted his frustration and hurt to suit his suffering. “Connor has done nothing but help.” Once she’d so judged him, too. He’d shown her that not all were the ruthless lords she’d taken them for.
“You are to have no more dealings with him.”
Ophelia blinked slowly. Surely she’d misheard him. Surely . . .
“Your damned sister has allowed you to run about with the last person any of you should ever marry, let alone keep company with. You’re remaining here.”
Odd. There’d been a time, not so very long ago, when living inside the Devil’s Den had been the only request she’d put to Broderick.
Her brother moved to his desk, sat, and dragged a ledger over.
“Why . . . why . . . you are attempting to make me a prisoner.” The revelation escaped her on a breathy exhale.
“I’m protecting you, Gertrude, and Stephen,” he replied, directing his words to the books before him.
Ophelia stalked across the room and planted herself at the front of his desk. “This will not make the truth go away. It will not make—”
Broderick pounded the desk with such force his ledgers jumped. “Silence,” he boomed. He inhaled. Flicking an imagined speck of lint from his sleeve, he went on. “Every decision I ever made and every decision I will continue to make is with the best interests of each of you in mind. Where Stephen is concerned . . . you are mistaken,” he said simply. As if they spoke of some trivial detail. As if they didn’t speak of murder, arson, and a stolen child. “It is, however, even more imperative that you make a respectable match with a nobleman. No more entertaining Steele. No more waltzes with an untitled gentleman. If those rumors come to light—”
“Those rumors?” She shook her head. “Who are you?”
“We’re done here, Ophelia.”
They were done here. “Go to hell, Broderick.” Lest she do something like plant him a facer to break his perfect nose, she wheeled about and left him.
As soon as she had the door closed, and the panel between them, she stopped.
He was determined to let Stephen’s life remain a lie . . . and have the Killorans continue to perpetuate it.
No more.
For even as it would shatter her heart to give him up, and even with the implications of what it would mean for their club and family . . . there was only one recourse.
And only one person to now help her.