Life—more specifically, men—had given Ophelia countless reasons not to trust their motives.
He’d agreed to her demand.
Oh, when she’d bit out the vow to remain through his interview, she’d thought hers was a futile bid.
Commanding, self-possessed, he was an investigator who’d never willingly relinquish so much as an inch of his investigation.
But he had.
At her demand.
She didn’t trust that too-easy capitulation for a bloody instant.
As they returned to the main rooms where Ned sat, his bread gone and half the pitcher of water empty, the child looked up.
Ned whipped a terror-filled gaze in her direction.
Hers. Not Connor’s. The boy’s earlier mention of Diggory and the antipathy etched in his weary features said he trusted her less than he would the Devil. It hit her like a kick to the stomach.
Everything she’d done had been to spare the innocents on the street from suffering at the hands of ruthless lords, and yet she’d never before seen that which was before her—until now. They fear me. They feared Ophelia and her family because of the ruthless reputation they’d earned for their rank and role in the late Diggory’s gang. A boulder was weighing on her chest, restricting airflow.
This is what the Killorans had become?
Nay, this is what they’d always been.
“Miss Killoran?”
Connor’s murmur cut across her horrified musings. She started and, averting her stare, seated herself on the cane and gilt-wood chair in the corner.
Connor pulled out another chair, the legs scraping along the oak floorboards. “Thank you for your patience, Ned,” he said in gentle tones . . . ones she’d expected a man such as him incapable of. Ones she’d expected any man incapable of.
Ned chewed at a fingernail. “Ya talk loike the fancy blokes.” He spat the nail on the floor. “Ya a nob?”
At that wise—and previously neglected—detail on her part, she started. For Connor did speak with the cultured English of the finest lords and not the tones of one born outside the peerage. He always had. Not for the first time, questions whirred about his past.
Connor leaned back and laid his arms on the sides of his chair. “Far from it. Miss Killoran saved me.” His gaze locked with Ophelia’s.
“And wot’s she doing here?” The boy turned around and jabbed a finger in her direction.
How very much like her this child was. Wary. Mistrustful. Direct. Only . . . as Connor had accurately pointed out, she’d emerged on the other side of evil to find wealth, security, and power.
“Miss Killoran?” Connor asked as if there was another present. “She wanted to sit in. Look after you.”
“Her? Look after me? Or kill me?” The child glared at Ophelia once more. “Does she have to be here?”
Those insults struck like a barb to the chest, with well-placed arrows left there to burn. All these years she’d seen the good her family had done and yet had been blind to the fear her kin inspired because of their birthright . . . and the things they’d done to survive.
“Miss Killoran is not the Devil you fear,” Connor assured.
She sat motionless. For . . . she was. She’d killed and stolen and maimed men.
She was undeserving of that defense.
“I’ll get my coins when ya’re done with yar questions?” the boy groused, Ophelia seemingly forgotten.
Oi’ll get my coins when I’m done?
Her mouth went dry as memories tugged at her.
All you need to do, gel, is take my palms . . . read them.
Fighting back the always present demons, she focused on the boy.
A faint tremble racked his frame. The tips of his shoes barely brushed the floor, highlighting the great disparity between the two: Connor, an imposing wall of strength, power, and confidence; and Ned, scared, small, and uncertain.
“You’ll be richly rewarded for your time and answers,” Connor quietly assured. “In no way will you be punished for anything you reveal.”
From under a tangle of red curls, Ned peered at Connor. “This a trick? Ya gonna turn me over to the law?”
“There is no trick here. I’m simply looking to gather information to help my investigation.”
The boy puffed his chest. “And ya think Oi can ’elp?”
“I certainly hope you’re able to,” Connor said somberly, picking up the glass Ned had been drinking from. Instead of pouring another, he weighed the small tumbler in his left palm.
The boy watched Connor’s every movement. “Oi can’t stay long.” Ned wetted his lips. “Oi’ve . . . moi business to see to.”
No doubt a gang leader he answered to.
Her heart ached all the more.
“I suspect you’ve seen much in these streets,” Connor noted, passing that glass back and forth between his hands.
Ned pumped his legs, a childlike movement at odds with the hardened glitter in his eyes. “Oi ’ave.” Planting his hands on the table, he leaned forward. “Oi ain’t snitchin’ on anyone, if that’s wot ya’re lookin’ for.”
That fierce devotion to one’s gang leader came not from love or any true loyalty; rather, it was inspired by fear.
Connor fished inside his jacket, and as he pulled out his hand, a flash of metal glinted.
“Have you held a gold full guinea in your hands?” From between his ink-stained fingertips, Connor offered the coin for the boy’s inspection.
Ophelia studied the exchange with an intensifying wariness. Where in blazes was he going with his questioning?
Ned didn’t spare the coin in question a second glance. “Plenty o’ toimes when Oi’m . . .” Stealing. Flushing all the way to the roots of his hair, Ned abruptly closed his mouth. His waiflike frame shook wildly under what he’d nearly revealed.
“Then you know a real one versus a fake that someone tries to foist off on you,” Connor went on, giving no indication he’d noted the boy’s fear. He flicked the coin through the air.
Ned shot a palm open and easily caught the piece.
“Well?” Connor encouraged.
Reticently, the boy forced himself to examine the coin.
“Is it real?”
At Connor’s probing, Ned turned the King George III guinea back and forth, assessing it. “Yes,” he acknowledged and returned the shining coin. “If ya can’t tell a fake coin from a real one, ya ain’t know nothin’ in the streets.”
His attention reserved for the boy, Connor’s lips formed a smile, and the amusement there colored his voice. “Aye, you would be correct on that score.”
It was that lone lilting word that sang as he spoke, hinting at the faintest of brogues.
Who was Connor Steele? Refined Englishman who spoke like a noble? An Irishman? A Scot? After all, how very easily Ophelia had shed her own street speech for the proper sort.
“I am skilled enough to identify a real coin.” That modest statement didn’t fit with one who’d earned a reputation as a ruthless Runner who’d never failed a mission. “However, I wanted to see if you were able to.” Again picking up the empty glass, Connor held it aloft in one hand and the coin in other. He tapped the bottom three times, the guinea clanging loudly, and then it emerged from the bottom of the crystal tumbler.
Both Ned’s and her gasps filled the offices. Why . . . why Connor’s was a skilled trick suited for the circus act her brother had sneaked Ophelia and her sisters into years earlier when he’d joined their gang.
“How . . . what . . . ?” the little boy stammered.
Grin widening, Connor wordlessly turned both over, and where before there had been a guardedness to Ned, now he eagerly grasped the glass.
The boy dumped out the coin and, squinting, held the tumbler close to his eyes. “How’d ya do that?” he demanded. From the inside and then out, Ned poked the bottom of the glass. “Ya’re a wizard,” he answered before Connor could speak.
“If I were, I’d certainly have a good deal more of those gold guineas.” Connor again winked, and that subtle gesture softened him, made him real and approachable and a figure not to be feared.
Ned chuckled and turned the coin back over.
Her heart did a little somersault in her chest.
Or mayhap that gentle teasing made Connor a figure to be feared for altogether different reasons.
A grinning Ned settled back in his chair, all his earlier worry washed away.
The truth slammed into her. Why, that is precisely what he’d sought to do . . . put Ned at ease. Was it merely an investigator’s strategy to lower a person’s defenses, to wheedle information? And yet Ned had been a stammering, frightened child moments ago. Had Connor wished, his ruthlessly cold demeanor could have as easily managed that feat.
Struggling to make sense of his efforts, she scrutinized the nuances of the exchange unfolding before her.
The pair spoke as more a casual dialogue between equals than the most formidable Runner in England and a slip of a child.
“You were familiar with Mac Diggory?” Connor was asking. That hated name raised the gooseflesh on her arms and doused the room in cold.
Ned hesitated, glancing briefly at Ophelia before continuing. “Aye.”
“Were you a member of his gang?”
“Was, until he died.” He spat on the floor. With the hatred that burned in the boy’s words, they might have been spoken by Ophelia herself.
Only . . .
Her heart squeezed sharply.
It had been her father who’d terrorized this boy.
“How did you come to be in his gang?”
“Me da sold me to ’im.”
Sold him.
He was just another one of so many boys and girls who’d been bartered, used, and traded as slaves . . . but her stomach pitched anyway, as it always did at the evidence of that suffering.
To keep from giving in to that nausea, she focused on the exchange between investigator and street waif. Through the course of the relaxed interview, she hung on Connor’s every word. By God, he was bloody good at what he did. Far more impressive than she wanted to credit . . . and certainly more than she wanted him to be. Ophelia could handle coldhearted, sloppy Runners who didn’t give a jot about the unfortunates in St. Giles. She knew less what to do with a man who occasionally slipped in and out of a lyrical brogue and who sought to allay a child’s fear.
With his thumb, Connor artfully flipped that coin in a distracting turn. Perhaps this was what made him so skilled an investigator. This ability to ask questions and distract. Ophelia sat there a silent observer, desperately trying to find the path Connor was leading the boy on.
“Do you know many of the boys bought by Diggory?”
“Oi do, sir.”
Connor held up a palm. “I’m no gentleman. I’m from the same streets you are. I’d like to hire you as part of my staff, Ned.”
The boy jolted. “Beg pardon, sir—Mr. Steele?” Hope blazed to life in his eyes . . . dashed a moment later by mistrust. “You having a laugh at me, sir?”
“Not at all.” He proceeded to share minimal details, painting a portrait of a heartbroken father and a beloved child lost in St. Giles.
Ophelia pointed her eyes to the ceiling. As much as she could admire his assuaging the boy’s worries, she took exception with him presenting a ruthless lord as anything less than what he was.
Connor tossed the coin, and Ned caught it once more. “Those are all the questions I have for today, Ned.”
The child’s eyes formed round saucers, and as if he feared Connor would change his mind, he stuffed the gold King George III into the front pocket sewn on his shirt. “Sir, thank you,” he said, a smile dimpling his cheeks, highlighting the thread of innocence that still lived within the boy.
Connor reached inside his jacket, withdrew a card, and handed it over to the boy. “I need you to take this. Bring it to the Eve Dabney Foundling House.”
Furrowing his brow, Ned turned the small scrap back and forth.
“You will be given shelter there for as long as you shall need it. I’ll visit sometime this week to again speak with you.”
Ned hopped up. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.” With the same trust that had led Ophelia down an alley with a nobleman, the boy scampered off.
After he’d gone, Connor returned his attention to his notepad. His pencil struck the small leather book, filled the room, as Ophelia sat there—forgotten.
Nay, mayhap the word was invisible. It was an unfamiliar state . . . one she’d always craved but had never been afforded. Instead, she’d been pinched and fondled for the unsavory attentions shown her. Even with the safety afforded her as Broderick’s sister, there wasn’t a day she wasn’t leered at or whispered to less than carefully as she walked by patrons.
Until this man.
Surely that was all that accounted for this ease in his presence?
He briefly glanced up, a question in his nearly obsidian gaze.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, “for allowing me to remain.” Even the child had looked at her for the Devil she was.
Her throat felt tight.
Connor tossed his pencil atop his book and slowly stood. “Come, Ophelia,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “Do you take me for a monster? Did you expect me to harm the child? Threaten him to get the answers I seek?”
How was it possible for this man, a stranger, to know her thoughts? For that was precisely what she’d believed.
Disconcerted, she wandered over to the table and ran her fingers over the scalloped edge. “Oi don’t know ya enough to say if ya would or would not,” she said softly. Life in the streets killed the humanity in most of them. “If ya did ’urt ’im, ya would hardly be the first.” She winced, hating that she’d inadvertently slipped into that coarsened, vulgar Cockney. She’d long associated that speech with the ugliest time in her life, and it served only as an unnecessary reminder of Mac Diggory and his gang. Concealing it had also become a means of killing her bastard of a da’s memory. At the protracted silence, she stole a peek at him.
Connor’s expression darkened. Was it her retort? The reminder of her birthright? Disgust? Loathing? Anger? What was it?
“I am not that man,” he said quietly, drifting closer, erasing the space between them. Heat rolled off his powerfully muscled frame. “I am not a bully, and I’m certainly not one to terrorize a child.”
Dangerous warmth stirred in her heart.
She’d been propositioned by lords in the street . . . and witless patrons in her family’s club—who’d had their memberships revoked by Broderick for those offenses. Not a single one of those material offers of diamonds, garments, or a fancy townhouse of her own had ever held the sway that Connor’s grave assurance did. “Oi don’t know that about ya, either.” Her voice emerged with a shameful throatiness that brought his thick black lashes sweeping down.
A gypsy’s lashes that most ladies would have sold their souls for.
She swiftly averted her eyes, taking in his room once more. “After all, ya’re the law now. Even less reason to trust ya than before.” As such, he could have her thrown in Newgate for having dared touch a nob . . . and stabbed one long ago.
She shuddered. Through the fabric of her cloak, she rubbed at her arms.
At his silence, she glanced over and abruptly stopped, letting her arms fall back to her sides.
A smile grazed his lips. “I’m hardly the law, Ophelia,” he assured, resting his hip on the table.
“So what are ya, then?” she asked, moving around the opposite end, touching her fingertips to the gleaming mahogany. “Ya’ave fine stuff like a nob.”
“As do you,” he pointed out, pivoting to face her while she continued her slow move.
“Not the same. Mine came from . . .”
“Theft?” He winged an eyebrow.
Murder. Mayhem.
“The boy was roight. Ya talk loike a fancy gent.” She chewed at her lip. “But you always did.” Ophelia suddenly stopped. “How did you do it?”
He shook his head.
She strode around the table to face him. “How did ya escape?”
“Without your help?”
“Oi didn’t say that.”
“What if I said a benevolent lord?”
She snorted. “No such thing.” She’d known a lifetime of suffering and disdain at their hands; she knew better than to believe that twaddle squat.
He bowed his head. “Then we shall call it luck, madam, and leave it at that.”
Leave it at that. Because there was no reason for their paths to again cross. Not when she’d declined to help him on his futile mission—one on behalf of a ruthless lord who’d offed his wife.
There was an air of finality to that decision that filled her with a peculiar melancholy. Perhaps it was because, ultimately, the sacrifice she’d made that had resulted in Gertrude’s partial blindness hadn’t been in vain: Connor O’Roarke’s life had been spared.
Ophelia fiddled with the strings of her bonnet. “Oi’m . . . ’appy ya didn’t ’ave yar neck stretched.”
He shoved away from the table and drifted closer. “Come now, Lagertha. I’m going to come to think you actually like me.”
His words called forth that long-ago exchange. He remembered, too. “Don’t be getting foolish thoughts in yar head.”
They shared a small smile.
I should go.
“Yes, you should.”
Ophelia started. She’d spoken aloud?
“You did,” he murmured, his baritone thick and warm and dangerously hypnotic.
He touched his hooded gaze upon her face, lingering that piercing stare on the slight tilt of her nose, then on the teardrop-shaped birthmark to the corner of her right eyebrow, and ultimately on the mouth she’d long lamented as too full.
Lips made for wickedness and sin.
How many times had that accusation been hurled at her by Diggory’s men, an invitation they’d made themselves to debase her with their taunts?
Connor dipped his head and then stopped. He lowered it a fraction more, so close his quick, ragged intakes of air stirred her cheeks. His lemon-and-coffee scent melded the bitterness of that brew with a delicate sweetness at odds with the liquor-soaked patrons inside this club.
A little fluttering unfurled in her belly, like a thousand butterflies set free.
How much more wonderful that sensation was than the fear . . .
Her chest moved in time to his own as their breaths mingled.
I want to explore it. She wanted to know if she was capable of feeling everything a woman should be capable of feeling: desire, hunger, and passion . . . without being consumed by shame and fear.
Ophelia darted her tongue out and trailed the seam of her lips.
Connor’s eyes darkened as he took in that subtle movement.
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his thick neck.
“I want to kiss you.”
Now who did that whispered admission belong to? All sense and order had ceased to be, and Ophelia continued on in this nebulous state.
Fluttering her lashes closed, she tipped her head back.
His mouth touched hers, and there was an unexpected softness to his hard lips.
For an instant, panic slammed into her as this moment blended and melded with another long ago. The sound of her own screams, muffled against a punishing hand. The stench of brandy and turmeric, peppery and robust as it clogged her senses.
I wouldn’t kiss a street whore . . . I’ll have your mouth elsewhere.
God help her . . . Her breath came in frantic spurts. The keeper of her past, in all his infinite vileness, had proven correct in this—there was a searing intimacy in such a meeting.
Ophelia tangled her hands into the front of his jacket to push him back. Only it was not the satiny softness of French silk under her palms but rather a coarse wool—garments worn not by a gentleman or lord but a man unafraid to work with his hands.
“Connor,” she whispered against him, a reminder to herself that he was not a stranger of long ago but a stranger of a different sort.
He groaned and then palmed her gently about the nape, angling her head to better avail himself of her.
I am safe.
It was a foreign concept, surely steeped in madness to find a sense of safety in her childhood nemesis’s embrace.
Yet as Connor slanted his lips over hers in a masterful stroke, it blotted all fear and rekindled the earlier warmth in her belly. Heaven help her, she wanted more. She dimly registered her bonnet sailing to the floor and landing with a soft thump.
She wanted the burning heat of his mouth upon hers and the hot desire thickening her veins. She wanted all of it. To be a woman, capable of passion.
How much more glorious this heated connection was than the fear.
She closed her eyes and surrendered herself to simply feeling.
Ophelia climbed her fingers up the broad, muscled wall of Connor’s chest, questing higher to tangle in the unfashionably long strands of his hair. Going up on tiptoe, she pressed herself against him, meeting each increasingly hungry slant of his lips over hers.
Their chests rose and fell in a frantic rhythm, deepening their connection.
She panted, her lips slightly parting, and he swept the inside of her mouth with his tongue.
Her legs weakened under her, and she dimly registered him catching her about the waist and anchoring her close. He slid his palms lower, cupping her buttocks.
Dampness settled between her legs, and with it a throbbing, tingling ache.
A moan climbed up her throat, that wanton sound swallowed by Connor’s kiss. Since that long-ago day, no one had intimately touched her again. This embrace, however, was altogether different from that one stolen from her. This exchange was one she freely gave, and she wanted the moment to continue forever.
Their tongues met slowly at first, with a hesitancy, and then with increasing ardor. It was the feel of being branded, burned, and marked by him.
His breath rasping loudly in a tantalizing, erotic haze, Connor shifted his attentions lower, to her neck.
Ophelia’s head fell back, and an endless moan escaped her as he tenderly placed his lips to the place where her pulse beat wildly for him and his embrace and this moment.
This is what the other women in the club had spoken of . . . this was the splendor and bliss she’d mocked as a delusion or a harlot’s trick, and how gloriously wrong she’d been.
Connor brought a hand between them, and he filled it with the plump flesh of her right breast. Through the fabric of her satin day dress, the tip pebbled and puckered. “So beautiful,” he breathed against her neck, and delicious shivers danced down her spine.
Biting her lower lip, she tipped her head to allow him a better vantage to taste her. For when he uttered those words, they were a prayer of sorts, and not the empty, emotionless platitudes tossed at her by powerful lords.
For he wasn’t. He was . . . he was . . . Connor O’Roarke, the ruthless investigator threatening her family’s clubs.
A gasp exploded from her lungs. Ophelia stumbled back, tripping over herself in a bid to put space between them.
Connor’s ragged breath filled the offices, and as the thick haze of lust clouding his vision receded, only horror remained.
What have I done? Ophelia touched shaking fingertips to her tender mouth. I’m a traitor to my family . . . “My God,” she whispered. “I . . . I . . .”
But what was more, she’d wanted to continue in his arms.
His own lips that he buried behind a steadier palm than hers were damp and swollen from their kiss and surely a mirror reflection of her own. “Miss Killoran—” he began hoarsely, shattering the brief illusion of closeness and recalling the madness in desiring, of all men, this one.
“D-do not,” she said tightly, the timbre of her voice trembling. She wanted neither his apologies nor his explanations. Not for what they implied: a mistake.
When everything about his embrace had felt—right. “Stay away from me,” she snapped, illogical in that command. Knowing she’d been the one to follow him. Knowing she was the one guilty of this embrace.
Proving herself an even greater coward, Ophelia grabbed her bonnet and fled.
A short while and a miserable hackney ride later, Ophelia hurried down the alley beside the Devil’s Den.
Oh, God. What would her brother and sisters say if they knew she’d chased after Connor O’Roarke and, worse, melted in his arms? Fingers shaking, she fiddled with the door to the kitchens. Only it wasn’t her fear of alleys that sent her into a panic.
She cringed. I kissed him.
And you enjoyed it.
At last, managing to let herself in, she stumbled into the kitchens.
And into the fire.
Broderick stood, arms folded, brow furrowed.
Her stomach sank. “B-Broderick.” Around them, the bustling kitchen staff scurried about, stealing sideways looks at brother and sister.
“Leave us,” he quietly ordered.
The men, women, and children all abandoned their tasks and filed from the room.
She forced herself to remain absolutely motionless as Broderick passed a probing gaze over her disheveled hair and rumpled cloak, damp from when she’d been knocked down. Which only conjured images of Connor covering her with his broad, powerful frame—her breath caught—and the feel of his mouth on hers. Which hadn’t been at all vile. It had been . . . magic. It had been . . .
Broderick lingered his eyes on her lips. Thoroughly kissed as she’d been, the heat of Connor still imprinted upon her person, surely her brother could see that brand left?
Heat scorched her entire body.
“You ran out of a shop.”
She bit down on the inside of her lower lip. “I’m not a child in need of lecturing.”
He went on. “The most celebrated modiste in London, and only after you threatened a lady.”
“It was two.” Her brother stitched his eyebrows into a single line. “Ladies,” she clarified. “Nor did I threaten them,” she said on a rush. “I merely”—she waved her hand—“revealed my knife.” Or rather the one she’d relieved one of the guards of. She took care to leave that detail out.
Broderick covered his face with his hands and inhaled loudly. He let his arms drop to his sides. “We had an agreement.” Her every muscle tensed. “You honored it . . .” Her brother yanked out his gleaming timepiece and consulted it. “Less than fifteen hours ago,” he confirmed, snapping the case closed. He tucked the fob back inside his jacket.
“Reggie is seeing to your things.”
Ophelia fluttered a hand to her throat. “Seeing to my things?” Her voice emerged faint.
“Your trunks. I’ve sent word to Cleo and . . . her husband that you’ll be arriving.”
A tortured little moan left her lips. “But . . .”
“Your word is your bond,” he reminded, killing her useless appeal.
She tried again. “But . . . but . . . my role here.” The control she’d wrested for herself could not be this fleeting. Bloody impetuous self. Why had she gone after him? Because you were worried about the child. A child who’d burned with his hatred of her and hadn’t even wanted her underfoot anyway.
“Your role will be overseen by another.”
Think . . . think . . . She inhaled slowly. He sought to protect . . . which had always been Broderick’s way. First Ophelia and her sisters in the streets, and Stephen, their brother . . . then the men, women, and children employed by the Devil’s Den. It was an inherent part of his character he could not divorce himself from. He sought to scuttle her away for her own protection. “I’ve done nothing wrong, Broderick,” she said with equanimity, meant to reassure. “I am safe.” She gave him those three words. That one he’d been single-mindedly fixed on since he’d entered their midst a scared but determined-to-survive orphan.
Broderick paused. “No one of our station is ever safe. Not truly.”
It explained his hungering for a connection to the nobility that he was determined to secure at the expense of her happiness and future.
“You leave tomorrow.” Without another word, her brother left.
And her fate was sealed.