Tucked in the corner of her dank cell in Newgate, with the date of her execution already set, Ophelia came to a realization: she hated satin.
It was a rather silly, nonsensical detail to note, given that the only thing between her and drawing no more breath was two more sunsets. And yet there it was. She despised the bloody fabric, and if she believed in miracles and the possibility of escape, she’d vow to never again don a blasted garment made of the damned stuff.
Oh, she hadn’t always hated the whispery-soft, fine fabric. As much as her brother’s obsession with the nobility had grated, she’d celebrated the day she’d shed her tattered, coarse wool garments for the fine satins and silks Broderick insisted they don.
Now, she appreciated how useless those expertly sewn dresses were. The heavy chill and dampness of the cell permeated her fabric, stinging her skin and freezing her from the inside out. Ophelia hugged her arms close to her chest and rubbed in a futile attempt to restore warmth.
How much easier it was to focus on one’s clothing than the stench of death and decay all around. Pungent odors hung heavy in the air, clogging one’s nostrils and threatening to choke off the last clean breath in one’s lungs.
A bold rat scampered close to her slippers, and she shot out a foot, kicking him back.
He darted into the tiny crack in the wall he continually slipped in and out of.
Dragging her knees to her chest once more, Ophelia wrapped her arms about them. She rested her cheek atop the smooth fabric and eyed that rat’s nest.
The irony of this moment was not lost on her. Her life with Connor O’Roarke had come full circle.
Since she was a girl, stealing the coin purse from a nobleman, and Connor had stepped in to spare her, she had been destined for this place.
Yet living a life of crime and sin on the streets, and dancing on the edge of discovery, nothing could have prepared her for the hell that was Newgate.
A vicious itching at her scalp threatened to drive her mad, and she dragged her ragged nails through the uneven tufts that had been left by the guards. She scratched furiously, until she registered the whisper of warmth on her fingers.
Yanking her hands down to her lap, she stared at the crimson stain left by her efforts. Absently, she wiped the blood onto the front of her tattered skirts.
“My God, no . . . please . . . Oi . . . no . . .” The incoherent, muffled cries of another poor soul reverberated around the prison until Ophelia wanted to clamp her hands over her ears and blot out all sounds: the squeal of rodents who’d feast on flesh, the moaning and weeping of prisoners who’d not yet accepted the truth: there was no absolution or salvation coming.
All that awaited was that iron-cased half door and the iron-bound, lattice-oak Debtor’s door that led to the scaffold and one’s public execution.
Ophelia slid her eyes closed as every nerve in her body twitched with fear, straining with her need to batter herself against the doorway in a useless bid to break down the barrier between her and freedom.
She knocked the back of her head against the stone wall, dislodging a small piece of plaster.
How close she’d been to having everything she’d ever wanted—everything she’d never known she wanted—until it had been too late.
Not even one month ago, she’d have cynically believed she’d stepped into a well-laid trap perfectly executed by Connor and his father.
How effortlessly he’d knocked down the guards she’d erected to keep herself safe. No longer the bitter, snapping young woman she’d once been, she had seen with clarity the shock, disbelief, and horror in Connor’s eyes for the truth they were.
By God, you will not take her.
A shuddery sob started in her chest and climbed up her throat. She clamped her hand over her lips, blotting out the sound of misery that would alert the guards stationed nearby.
For once again, even knowing what her father had done, Connor had stepped between her and the path to Newgate. He’d brandished a weapon, threatening the constables, his father, the powerful peers in that room, when it would only shatter the reputation he’d earned as an honorable, respectable investigator.
A tear slipped from her eyes. She rubbed her cheek over her skirts, hiding that lone drop. He’d always deserved his Lady Bethany. Ophelia had hated the woman on sight for what she represented. Now, she could accept the truth—Lady Bethany was right for Connor in all the ways she had always been wrong.
Another tear fell. Followed by another. And another.
“Another one’s making the march,” one of the guards outside her cell called. The sound of spit landing on stone followed. “Wot’s our wager on this one?”
“Ask the bitch. Fancy gaming hell owners, her sort know sumfin of it.”
That mocking retort was met with a series of guffaws from the other brutes; their laughter echoed through the corridors and carried through the manacled cell.
Lisp, as she’d named one of them for the reptilian quality to his voice and the rasp of his tongue when he spoke, pressed his face against the bars. “Want in on the wager, fancy piece? An extra plate an’ water . . . We get a piece of ya if ya lose.”
Ophelia sat there, stone-faced, looking through him.
You want it, bitch.
Do not think of him. Do not think of them. Think of Connor. Think of the fleeting wonder you knew in his arms and with him.
“Wot?” one of the guards demanded. “Ya think yarself too good to part yar legs for us. Playing at lady. Not so pretty without yar ’air, are ya?”
Unwittingly, she slid her fingers through the sloppy tangle of short strands.
He laughed. “Ya and yar kind ain’t no different from the other whores ’ere.”
Refusing to give any of her taunting captors the satisfaction, she let her hand fall and met their questions and charges with a flinty silence.
“Too good to sit on ’er mattress,” another guard piped in. “She ain’t goin’ to be so proud when she’s making the march. Ya ’ear that, bitch?” He cupped himself through his wool trousers. “Maybe we should show ’er she ain’t no different.” He fiddled with the falls of his breeches.
Ophelia jumped up and held out her fists. “Try it, ya ugly, pox-ridden son of a whore,” she seethed. “Oi’ll rip the scrawny bit between yar legs off and feed it to ya for yar last meal.”
Cheeks mottled red, her jeerer surged forward. “Oi’ll give it to ya good, ya bloody bitch,” he shouted.
His more-restrained friends grabbed at him.
“Get control. Ya know we can’t touch ’er. She’s off-limits.”
Ophelia latched on to that.
“She’s as good as dead,” the toothless brute railed, bucking at them. “Ya got powerful enemies in the nobs ya put yar ’ands on.” Yes, Ophelia’s trial and sentencing had been swiftly pushed through with little effort on the part of Whitefield and Middlethorne. The guard eyed his friend hopefully. “Wot’s the ’arm if we fuck ’er? ’e won’t even know—”
“What won’t I know?”
The pair released her determined attacker, and the three immediately sprang to attention.
The rhythmic click-click-click of his cane silenced even the rats and raindrops that penetrated the ancient stone roof.
In the darkened space, Ophelia squinted, straining to see the owner of those cultured tones, struggling to bring him into focus . . . and then wished she hadn’t.
Attired in a garish brocade jacket with a diamond stickpin in an elaborate cravat, his garments were as out of place in this hell as his refined speech. It was not his fancy attire, however, that gave her pause.
She shrank back before catching herself in that reflexive response.
For the stranger before her, with his midnight hair drawn back at his nape, accentuating a face that didn’t know if it was beautiful or hideous, had the look of Satan himself. At last he stopped before the three men.
Lined shoulder to shoulder, the trio silenced; they each kept their gazes wisely on the floor. After giving them a dismissive once-over, he turned his attentions on Ophelia.
“You are Diggory’s daughter, then,” he murmured in smooth, melodic baritones, his words casual as if he inquired after the weather.
“Only in the sense he sired me,” she said evenly. Connor had helped her see that she was so much more than that vile, blackhearted bastard who’d roused terror in the hearts of all.
His lips quirked up. “It is not so simple to divorce one from one’s blood.” He spoke as one who knew.
Yet . . . with that admission, how very little he understood. She’d not debate the point with him. She studied him; his swarthy features, better suited to a gypsy, were carved in a cold, unfeeling mask. It was enough she knew the truth.
She realized that now.
Turning his shoulder dismissively, he glanced to his minions. “Who proposed violating terms of an agreement I struck?” he asked in lethal, ice-laden tones.
The men quaked; two of them looked to the one between them.
Lifting a hand that shook, he stepped forward.
“Tsk, tsk. What. Am. I. To. Do. With. You?” He clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth as he wandered a path around him. Contemplating him. Toying with him. The nameless Devil lifted the head of his cane, close to his mouth, so close his lips nearly touched the gleaming gold metal. “To my offices, until I decide what to do with you.”
The man swallowed loudly and dropped a bow. He tripped over himself as he ran away to an assured doom.
For there could be no doubting the man who stood before them was Wiley, known all through the Dials as the liege of this hell.
He lifted his spare, immaculate white glove.
The guards immediately faded into the shadows.
Wylie came closer to the bars. He raked a derisive eye over her person. “You don’t have the look of your bastard of a father, Miss Diggory.”
Inside, her body shook, and she battled down that fear, refusing to be cowed, refusing to spend the last days she had on earth pleading with a man incapable of mercy. She edged her chin up. “My name is Ophelia Killoran.”
He chuckled, but the deadened sound was absent of all amusement. “I see you are quite special to some people that they’d unblinkingly turn over a fortune to make your last days . . . comfortable.”
A tall figure stepped forward.
Her hopes immediately plummeted. “Broderick,” she said, her voice hoarse and raspy from ill use. Of course.
“Did you expect it was another?” the warden mocked.
Her brother took in every inch of her person before ultimately settling on her sheared tresses. His face contorted into a paroxysm which he instantly concealed as he cast a dark glower at the warden. Impervious to that icy rage, he removed a key from inside his jacket. “You have five minutes.”
“Ten.”
God, how she loved her brother for the fearless warrior he’d always been . . . on her and her siblings’ behalf.
“Ten,” the devil shockingly concurred. He let Broderick inside.
Her brother rushed forward and then stopped, again studying her.
At last, he opened his arms.
Ophelia hugged herself close. “I . . . You shouldn’t.” As if a reminder of all the reasons she wasn’t fit to be touched by anyone, the mites making a home in her scalp wrought havoc on the already rubbed-raw skin. She scratched again.
Groaning, Broderick came close and drew her against his chest.
She struggled against him.
“Do not . . . ,” he whispered against her lice-filled scalp.
This was the last she’d ever see of him. Never again would she see her sisters, or Stephen, or Connor. “Broderick . . .” Then she wept, crying great, big gasping tears and wetting his jacket front with the misery she’d fought these past days. Only there were no other words. What was there to say, after all? Every decision she’d made, as a girl of eight and then as a woman of two and twenty, she’d have made all over again.
“I know,” he said softly, cupping her cheek. He just held her, with the precious time they were allotted melting away. At last, she managed to gain control of her sorrow. She forced herself to back out of his arms.
“I wanted to come sooner,” her brother explained hoarsely. “I offered a fortune.” He cast a hate-filled look to the place Wylie had occupied a short while ago. “In the end, Steele made arrangements.”
Connor.
Ophelia fluttered her hands about her throat. “Connor.”
He’d done that. Despite knowing who her father was? Any other man would have let her rot alone for the secrets she’d kept. But then, that had never been the manner of person Connor was.
Broderick held her cheek, forcing her attention back to him.
“I cannot save you.”
The hoarsened words should have cleaved her in two for the finality there and the fact that her fate had been sealed.
Except . . .
It was what she’d been expecting. She’d known the truth before he’d even said it.
“I know,” she said softly.
“I am so sor—”
“Five minutes,” the warden called out.
She pressed her fingertips against Broderick’s lips, willing away his guilt. She was the owner of every decision she’d ever made. “You need to allow Gertrude a role in the club. She is intelligent. She sees so much. Do not underestimate her. Not anymore.” They all had. For so, so long. He gave an unsteady nod. “And Adair—be kind to him. He loves Cleo and has a heart that is so wonderful.” The column of Broderick’s throat moved rhythmically. “It is time for us to be at peace with the Blacks.” Why had it taken her so long to realize the good in them? Because you needed Connor in your life to make you at last see. “I’d have you make me a promise.”
He caught her hands and raised her fisted knuckles to his lips. “Anything,” he managed, his voice rough.
“I want you to end prostitution in the club.” Her brother’s pained laugh echoed around the stone walls, and she continued over it. “The women we hire, they’ve had no choice but to sell themselves to survive”—how narrow her views on survival had been—“but they possess skills and strengths as great or greater than any man we’ve hired.” Just as Ophelia had been overlooked, so, too, had the women employed by the Devil’s Den. “Speak to Black and his family about what they’ve done. They will guide you. Promise me.”
A glossy sheen filled Broderick’s eyes, nearly breaking her.
She bit her lower lip to keep from giving in to another fit of misery.
He offered another jerky nod.
“Promise me,” she urged, demanding that he say it. Needing to know there would be a new beginning for some women when there wouldn’t be for her. Oh, God. I do not want to die. Her heart crumpled. I thought I was so much stronger. “Promise,” she said. Her voice, tinged with panic, pitched to the ceiling.
“You have my p-promise.” His voice broke.
Ophelia patted his stubbled cheek. How many times had he taken on the role of soother, assuring her and her siblings that all would be fine? How those roles had been so transposed.
“Two minutes,” the warden announced, stirring the panic in her breast.
“There is one more thing.” Ophelia drew in a slow breath.
“Do not,” he begged, because of course he already knew. Ultimately, she believed that deep in her heart. Broderick would do what must be done.
“He is not ours, Broderick.”
Broderick squeezed his eyes shut and then covered his face with his hands.
She wrestled them back to his side.
“We cannot lose h—” His voice cracked. “I cannot lose you both.”
Her already broken heart ripped all over again, bleeding from the agony in her brother’s tone and ravaged eyes.
“Oh, Broderick,” she whispered, squeezing his hands in hers. “He was never ours.”
“Your time is up, Killoran.”
They both looked to the iron bars.
Nonetheless, her brother remained. “Until I draw my last breath, I will regret that I sent you away. You belonged with us. If there hadn’t been a Season . . .” His eyes slid shut.
“If there hadn’t been a Season, there would have been no Connor, and my life was incomplete before him,” she said with a surprising strength.
The door opened.
Her brother stretched out a hand, brushing his fingertips against hers, and then he was gone.
There was nothing more to do but wait until her walk to the gallows.