Chapter 13
Adair had found himself with a fist to the solar plexus too many times. A man never forgot the feel of having the breath sucked from his body.
The moment Cleopatra Killoran had appeared at the top of the stairs would forever be a like moment in his life.
It was a horrifying truth he’d fought back the moment it slid forward. But nearly an hour into the ball, hovering on the side of the floor, a guard watching over the young woman, he accepted the truth of it.
From where he stood in the corner, Adair used his cover and overall invisibility to the crowd to study her.
Be it the ton, or the underworld, Cleopatra Killoran would never be a beauty by any standards, and the silly yellow gown she donned could never be considered anything but hideous. But as she’d come toward him, her expressive eyes glittering through her always smudged lenses, her effervescent spirit had shone brighter than her dress, and he’d been trying to muddle through ever since. She was . . . she was . . .
He silently cursed.
Where in blazes was she? Springing forward on the balls of his feet, he did a quick sweep over the heads of the shorter guests, searching for a glittering tiara he would have mocked a week ago. Where was she . . . ? Where was she . . . ?
A small figure stepped into his direct line of vision.
“She’s being introduced to Diana’s family,” Penelope drawled, taking up a place beside him.
Adair searched and at last found Cleopatra, conversing with the duke. Shoulders back, her delicate features an expressionless mask, she’d a bearing the queen herself would admire. Then Penelope’s earlier words registered . . .
Had he been that obvious? He shifted his attention back from the minx who commanded his notice, over to his sister-in-law.
“Yes, you were,” Penelope answered his silent question. “That obvious,” she elucidated on a whisper. “Here.” She proffered one of the two glasses in her hand.
Reluctantly, he accepted the fragile cup. He eyed it dubiously and then took a sip. Adair immediately choked on his swallow. “What is that?”
“Lemonade. My mother would argue that tepid lemonade makes any ball complete.”
The ton would all be better off sipping from flasks of whiskey and snifters of brandy before drinking this rotted stuff. With a grimace, he downed the contents in a long swallow. “And you’re suddenly one who does as Society expects,” he drawled. That certainly went against everything he knew of the lady who’d maneuvered Ryker into marriage and then single-handedly converted the rooms and roles inside the Hell and Sin. The only woman he knew to rival her in spirit and spunk was Cleopatra.
“Hardly,” she assured.
Unbidden, Adair’s gaze went back to the ballroom floor where Cleopatra remained conversing with the sad-eyed duke.
“You don’t have to watch her as though she intends to make off with the silver,” Penelope said in a hushed whisper.
He whipped his head sideways.
“Despite her rough exterior, Cleopatra really is quite lovely and I’m certain incapable of cruelty.”
So that is what his sister-in-law believed. That he’d been watching over the young woman the same way a constable would track a street urchin. Content to leave her to her opinion, Adair remained stoically silent. Nor would he point out that it was, in fact, the lady’s husband who’d asked Adair to watch after Cleopatra.
“I know my husband expects you to dog her steps.” Goodness, the woman had an uncanny ability to follow a person’s unspoken thoughts. “But I’m telling you that she doesn’t mean us harm.”
“No,” he concurred, ignoring the surprise in her eyes. Originally, he’d believed Cleopatra could have very well been the one who’d issued the orders to burn his club down. No longer. Capable of subterfuge as she clearly was, he’d gathered in the handful of days he’d known her that she would have proudly taunted him for her role in it, before she denied taking part.
“I rather think she is lonely,” Penelope said softly, those quietly spoken words nearly lost to the hum of the orchestra and the ballroom revelry. But they weren’t, and Adair heard them. “It is hard to leave behind one’s family and make a new life with strangers.”
Having joined their ranks not very long ago, after her hasty marriage, Penelope spoke as one who knew.
Staring out at Cleopatra still in discussion with Diana and her father, Adair clenched his fingers so tightly he nearly snapped the handle of his silly glass. The same way he didn’t want to find her clever with a keen wit, was the same way he didn’t want to contemplate Cleopatra as a forlorn, dejected woman alone in an unfamiliar world. It was far safer when she’d only been an amorphous enemy of the Killoran gang that he’d no dealings with.
The orchestra’s lively reel came to a halt, and Penelope handed over her untouched glass, filling both his hands. “If you’ll excuse me? I would see to Cleopatra. I . . .” She went up on tiptoe. “I . . .” Her brow wrinkled. “Drat. Where is she?”
The previously occupied duke and his daughter had been joined by Niall, but sometime after the point at which Adair had blinked, his quarry had gone. He silently cursed, looking about. “I thought you trusted her,” he muttered drily.
Penelope shoved an elbow into his side. He grunted. The unexpectedness of her jab sent liquid sloshing over the sides of Penelope’s glass, now in his hand, so that his fingers were coated with the sticky beverage. “Hush,” his sister-in-law chided unapologetically. “I’m not watching after her. Well, I am. In a way,” she prattled.
“Penelope,” he said exasperatedly.
“Right. Right. I promised to introduce her to several . . . people.” In short, suitors. It was the ideal plan carried out by Penelope. The sooner Cleopatra was wed, the sooner Adair—and all of his family—would be done with her and the whole of the Killoran gang.
Cursing, Penelope sank back on her heels, and without a backward glance, she started forward. Adair stared after her as her smaller form was swallowed by the crush of guests. He followed her movements, searching all the while for Cleopatra. For his assurances about Cleopatra Killoran and his own gut feeling about the young woman, all the age-old reservations trickled forward. After all, he’d known her but a handful of days. What if she even now waited for his family to be occupied and—
“Drinking lemonade, Thorne?” Cleopatra’s droll whisper sounded from over his shoulder. “If anyone on the street saw you, you’d be finished.”
He whipped his head about, looking for the owner of that husky contralto. Bloody hell. Where in blazes was . . . ?
A long, beleaguered sigh cut across his thoughts. “Oy, getting snuck up on and not being able to find the person?” Cleopatra stepped out of the shadows, a small grin on her face. That unjaded, real expression did funny things to his chest. “You certain you were born to the streets?”
Actually, he hadn’t been. He’d been born to a baker, but when one was orphaned and lived alone in St. Giles, one didn’t counter the idea that one had sprung from those dangerous cobbles. “Go to hell,” he said without inflection, holding out the untouched glass of lemonade Penelope had saddled him with.
Cleopatra snorted. “You think to fob that off on me?”
“I think if you don’t want me to steer you directly back to Lady Chatham, then I’d begin drinking.”
She scowled and, with a go-to-hell look in her eyes, took the cup. Quickly finishing the lemonade, Cleopatra set the glass down on the floor beside the pillar and brushed the back of her hand over her mouth. “Stuff is rot,” she muttered.
He grinned. Having spent the better part of the evening in the corners of the stuffy ballroom, alongside the equally stuffy lords and ladies present, he found Cleopatra’s reaction very refreshing.
“Not enjoying yourself, I take it?”
“Enjoying myself?” she whispered from beside the pillar. “Do I look like I’m enjoying myself?”
That demand invited him to look. Several strands had fallen free of her chignon and hung over her modest décolletage. Unbidden, he lingered his gaze upon the soft cream swells of her breasts. He’d always preferred the women he took to his bed bountiful, with curves that overflowed in his hands. Now he had to admit there was a dangerous appeal to Cleopatra’s lithe frame.
“No, I’m not enjoying myself,” she muttered under her breath, blessedly unaware that he even now took time to appreciate her form. Having kissed her senseless once was enough, a damning weakness he’d be wise not show again toward this woman. “And what are you doing here in the corner?”
His neck went hot.
“Guarding me?” She narrowed her eyes. “Still don’t trust me?”
Do not be fooled by the faint wounded undertone there.
“But for our first meeting last year, I’ve known you less than a week,” he said from the side of his mouth. “Am I to expect that if I took up with your family that I should forget a lifetime feud between us?”
She flattened her lips into a mutinous line.
“And there’s still the matter of your brother burning down my bloody club,” he said tightly. It might not have been Cleopatra herself, but it was still people she called family and blindly defended, and gave her loyalty to. And he’d be wise to remind himself of that—and often.
It was a sad day indeed when Cleopatra sought out the company of Adair Thorne.
It was one thing to have hungered for his kiss days earlier. After all, that had been merely her body’s response, something that could be explained without feelings or emotions involved. Actually, enjoying a person’s presence was altogether different—and a Black, no less.
Yet, she continued to seek him out, even though he believed her family the devils responsible for his misfortune.
“My family did not set your club ablaze,” she gritted out. For him to suggest that would mean the Killorans reneged on truces.
A muscle ticked at the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t say you did,” he said flatly, not removing his focus from the ballroom floor.
“You’re calling me a liar and arsonist.”
And say what one would of the evil acts they’d committed, neither Broderick nor Cleopatra nor any of her siblings and staff would ever dare play with fire, as Diggory had.
“You come from a family of one,” he said simply.
Cleopatra recoiled, grateful that his attention was trained elsewhere so he couldn’t see that his words had struck like a well-placed barb. When he’d been living, Diggory’s love of fire had been a popular tool of torture. He’d burned countless boys and girls to instill fear, and he had set conflagrations that had destroyed establishments and businesses . . . and lives. “Fire is not a trick of my brother’s,” she said quietly, needing him to understand that about Broderick, the boy who’d saved her and named her.
At last, Adair looked over. “It was one of Diggory’s,” he returned. “One of his favorite ones. And Killoran learned at that Devil’s feet.”
“As did you,” she accurately pointed out. “As did all your siblings.”
Diggory had managed countless hovels, filling them with children. His reach had extended far throughout London. Only a handful had escaped his hold . . . Adair and his siblings had been some of the fortunate souls.
He searched her face, and she hungered for the fight to defend her kin.
Adair sighed. “Don’t you have gentlemen to dance with?” he asked, holding his glass up.
A nearby servant rushed over and claimed the delicate cup, then rushed off.
She searched Adair for a hint of mockery. “Not much of a dancer,” she said carefully. She’d sooner cut herself than admit that even with the fortune she brought to the proverbial table, she’d not a single interested gentleman.
“Silly activity, isn’t it?” he asked companionably.
“Suppose so,” she settled for, wading through this unfamiliar ground. She’d not point out that she’d always enjoyed the lessons she’d received in those fancy steps. It went against everything she was to find pleasure in any ladylike pursuit . . . but something in dancing had been like gliding through the air on a wood swing her brother had set out back of the Devil’s Den.
“You suppose so? And here I thought you’d be one cursing those fancy steps,” he said, far too clever for his own damned good.
What were she and Adair Thorne? Mortal enemies or uneasy friends? Friends? Pfft, we’d never be that. They were just people with shared backgrounds, who were both uneasy with the arrangements that saw her living here. But in this new solitary world, she’d take whatever she could, where she could. “You ever take part in that?” she countered, tipping her head toward the waltzing partners.
By the horror in his eyes, she may as well have asked him to turn over the keys to his club. “Dancing?” He snorted. “No. Nor will I ever.”
She secretly mourned the idea of a man who moved with his stealth and elegance, in possession of a tall, muscled frame to rival some of the finest fighters she’d ever witnessed in back-alley battles, never gracing a dance floor. “I hated it, too. Hated anything to do with the peerage. Seemed like a waste of good energy and steps.”
“But then?” he asked, with a genuine curiosity there to his query.
“Then I tried it.”
He chuckled. “Why do I find it hard to imagine you agreeing to any lessons on any ladylike activity?”
It was an accurate read on who she was as a person—and after just a short time together. As such, one would have expected Adair was right on that score.
Broderick had insisted she and her sisters all know those intricate steps. As a girl, she’d just been so damned happy whenever she’d escaped Diggory’s attentions that she would have walked a tightwire across London if that was the only way. “Sometimes dancing was safer,” she settled for.
A dark somberness fell across his face.
Not wanting his pity, she hurried to speak. “Oi was so certain it was a waste of valuable time. It was a frivolous activity that served no purpose.” She drifted closer. “But do ya know what, Adair?”
He gave his head a slight, nearly imperceptible shake that urged her on.
“Gambling is, as well, and we built a life on that. And when ya try something else . . . like dancing,” she said, discreetly motioning to the partners on the floor, “ya find for yourself what it’s really like.”
Adair’s gaze remained fixed on her face. “And what is it like?” he asked hoarsely.
She tilted her head back and met his eyes. “Loike floating,” she whispered. “When it’s with the roight partner.”
A charged heat passed between them as their chests moved quickly in a like rhythm, and he shifted his gaze ever so slightly, before ultimately settling on her mouth.
The column of his throat moved, and through the din of the crowded ballroom, she detected that audible swallow.
And shapeless, bespectacled Cleopatra, who’d never been looked upon as a person of beauty, in this instance, with Adair Thorne, felt . . . beautiful. Butterflies danced in her belly, and she fought to retain control of her thoughts.
“There you are.”
They jerked apart and looked to Penelope. The viscountess alternated a smile between them. “You should have indicated you’d found Cleopatra,” she gently chided. “I’ve several gentle”—Cleopatra’s stomach knotted—“guests,” Penelope substituted, “for you to meet.”
Gentlemen. Would-be suitors, who were no doubt fortune hunters, eager to meet the Queen of the Dials, for no other purpose than the wealth she brought to their empty coffers.
“Shall we?” Penelope took Cleopatra’s hand and tucked it in her elbow, forcing her to abandon her place beside Adair.
And there was surely something wrong with her that as she let herself be pulled away, without even a parting greeting exchanged between her and Adair, she wanted to remain with him. It’s only a matter of him being from your world . . . and comfortable for it. He doesn’t care that you have a Cockney accent or treat you with disdain for having deposited a glass upon the floor. Cleopatra worried at her lip. He did, however, treat her as a Killoran to be wary of. What would he say if he knew you’re not just another woman who’d survived within Diggory’s gang . . . ?
With Penelope filling the silence, as she’d already revealed a tendency to do, they made their way through the ballroom. Even over the din of the crowd, the hushed whispers trailing after them punctuated the noise. Ladies yanked their skirts back and retreated, making a path.
“Smile. It confuses them,” Penelope advised through one of those patently false expressions.
“Oi don’t care wot they have to say about me.” Nor were her words for a brave show. It was hard to be anything but self-assured when presented with the gentlemen who tossed away family fortunes at Cleopatra’s family’s tables.
“There are some good gentlemen,” Penelope persisted.
She stopped, forcing her hostess to either continue on and drag her down or join her on the edge of the floor. “How long have you”—she paused, remembering the greatest source of contention between her and Adair—“did you, live inside the Hell and Sin? Nearly a year,” she accurately supplied before the other woman could. It had been her business for the past twenty years to know everything she could about her enemies, and this woman had been among them. “Oi moved into the Devil’s Den when Diggory took it over.”
An uncharacteristic ice frosted Penelope’s features. Black had shared some of Diggory’s evil with his wife, then. It was written in the hatred there.
“And I’ve been living in it ever since,” she said in hushed tones. “The men here—the young ones, the old ones, their reprobate sons and brothers who aren’t in attendance—they’ve all entered my club. I know how much they drink, how loose they are with their lips and their fortunes. Oi’d be hard-pressed to find a single fancy toff on your guest list who hasn’t at some time or another stepped inside my hell. So, please,” she urged, “do not sell me on imagined qualities of any of them. My brother wants me to make a match, and some gentleman surely needs a fortune.”
Penelope opened and closed her mouth several times. “What do you want?” she asked softly, that deeply intimate question, on the side of the ballroom, with a sea of guests intently scrutinizing their exchange.
Cleopatra gave her head a terse shake. “It doesn’t matter what I want.” It had never been about her. It had always been about the good of the group . . . specifically, Ophelia, Gertrude, and Stephen.
“Siblings?” Penelope said with that unerring accuracy.
Ophelia, Gertrude, and Stephen. Pain filled her at the mere thought of them. They’d been all she’d known since birth. They’d looked after one another, helped one another survive; now it was far easier to not think of them at all. Cleopatra looked away. She’d become a master of self-control, and as such, hadn’t truly dwelt on thoughts of them. Now Black’s wife here would drag forward their images. Mayhap the fancy lady was one of those cruel sorts.
The viscountess lightly squeezed her hand. “I married my husband in a bid to save my sister so she might make a future match. I recognize that level of sacrifice.”
“A person ’as to do what they ought,” she said gruffly. And for her that was saving her sisters.
“Yes,” Penelope agreed, a wistfulness to that one syllable. “But sometimes,” she went on, her eyes going soft, “you find love where you least expect it.”
Cleopatra followed her stare to where Ryker Black stood. Even across the ballroom, a powerful look passed between the couple. Feeling like an interloper, Cleopatra swiftly averted her gaze. Black’s wife spoke about Cleopatra forming a love match? The lady was either ten times a fool or cracked in the brain if she believed Cleopatra was going to end up in a love match with a fancy toff . . . or in love with any man.
“Come along,” Penelope coaxed. “Let me at least introduce you to some of the prospective gentlemen.”
Cleopatra’s gut clenched. Was this how the whores inside the Devil’s Den felt every night? Cleopatra formed a newfound appreciation for their sentiments and a regret for having failed to consider as much before now.
“That is Lord Darby,” Black’s wife whispered, discreetly pointing to a golden-haired gentleman sipping from a glass of champagne. “He has two sisters he’s rumored to care an inordinate amount for, refusing to force either of them into a match.”
An inelegant snort escaped Cleopatra. “And why should he? He’s the one who wagered away ten thousand pounds of his family’s fortune,” she said bluntly. Her family was the fortunate recipient of all those funds.
Mouth agape, Penelope shifted her attention elsewhere. “Very well, then mayhap Lord Corbett. He’s a young widower.”
“And rough with the whores he takes to his bed.”
Color suffused Penelope’s cheeks, and she pursed her mouth. “Certainly not Lord Corbett, then.” Chewing at the tip of her gloved finger, the hostess continued to survey the crowd. “I wager that you may, in fact, know more than I about the gentlemen present.”
That was a wager Cleopatra would readily accept and win. She, however, didn’t require information about the gentlemen present. She required introductions. So that she could pledge herself forevermore to a man. In her mind, she heard Diggory’s oft-repeated shout: You don’t ’ave any rights . . . you answer to me. While Penelope considered the other gentlemen present, Cleopatra’s eyes slid involuntarily closed. A cold sweat broke out on her skin. I will be turning myself over to a man. It was a reality made all the more real standing on the fringe of Polite Society with the viscountess playing matchmaker. As a part of Diggory’s family, she’d been beaten, tortured, and mocked with words that were often crueler than his meaty fists. Despite the silent vow she’d made with herself, after being saved by Broderick, to never find herself at the mercy of a man, she now found herself in that exact place she’d never intended to be—searching for a husband.
“What do you know of Lord—”
And with Penelope putting forward another possible candidate, Cleopatra did what she’d always done best when presented with danger—she fled.
“. . . Cleopatra?” Penelope’s concerned voice grew more distant as the other woman searched for her.
She could search and never find. Cleopatra had perfected the art of hiding as a mere babe toddling around one of Diggory’s hovels, and Black’s fancy-born wife would never be a match for her. She moved speedily through the ballroom, ducking around the helpful pillars and syncing her steps with liveried servants bearing trays. The laughter and discourse blended together in her ears, a cacophony of sound that fueled her panic.
Bypassing the main entrance to the ballroom, she found her way through a side door. As soon as she stepped out, Cleopatra broke out into a full sprint to rival her thievery days in the rookeries. Her hair tumbled free of the artful arrangement her lady’s maid had managed, leaving her drab brown strands falling about her shoulders. Breathless from her exertions, she brushed the hair back from her eyes and made for the servants’ staircase. Cleopatra skidded to a stop, damning the slippers that sent her sliding into the wall. She caught herself hard with a grunt and pushed her spectacles back into place. Then, taking the stairs two at a time, she climbed the dark, narrow stairwell higher and higher into the peak of Black’s townhouse, all the way to the servants’ quarters. The dark space was quiet, with all the staff otherwise attending the evening’s festivities, and provided a solemn calm.
Cleopatra crept along the wall and made for the window. Placing her palms on either side, she shoved it up slowly. The cool night air spilled into the room, and closing her eyes, she let the familiar London air fill her lungs.
Except this wasn’t the familiar London, as she knew it. This was a strange place, where she’d been taken in by the enemy, who’d come to treat her as an object of pity more than anything. People for whom there was really no loyalty or affection toward her, but rather a sense of obligation.
Cleopatra opened her eyes and stared out at the tops of fancy roofs of these Mayfair townhouses. Nor are these familiar roofs, she thought blankly. These were ones she’d climbed upon as a child and then as a girl on the cusp of womanhood. She eyed the ledge, and then, angling her head out the window, measured the distance and windows between her spot and the top. The roof had always beckoned. It had been the one place Diggory had never been able to reach her. As such, she’d reveled in the assignments that sent her high above the London homes. For risking capture and hanging for stealing from a nob was far preferable to the terror Diggory had inflicted with a routine frequency.
Cleopatra lifted her skirts and shucked her slippers off. She tossed them under the nearest bed, where they landed with a soft thump. Her stockings followed suit. Straightening, she let her dress fall back into place and settle around her ankles with a shimmery rustle. She perched her left foot atop the sill and slowly pulled herself upright. Cleopatra stole a peek at the grounds below.
Of course, roof climbing had always been vastly easier when she’d donned boy’s breeches and a tight-fitting shirt. One slight misstep, one foot snagging the hem of her gown, would see her crashing to the cobblestones as nothing more than a fond memory for her small family. The pull of the roof had always been greater, though.
Propelling herself up on her tiptoes, she reached for the sill directly overhead. Cleopatra’s fingers connected with the cool stone, and curling her fingers around it, she dragged herself slowly up to the next narrow ledge. Her spectacles slipped, and she froze. Damning her dratted vision, and her desperate need of those lenses, she paused to push them back into place and then resumed her climb. With every step that carried her farther and farther away, the terror receded, and it was replaced with a solitary quiet that she’d come to crave through the years.
She continued her slow, purposeful ascent until she’d reached the sloped metal roof. The jagged slats provided an easy foothold as she made for the chimney.
Borrowing support from the cold bricks, she looked out over London. Through the faint fog of night, stars peaked out, twinkling in their distant glory. This moment belonged to Cleopatra, not Broderick or Lady Chatham and her family, and up here, for a brief time, she was beholden to none. She smiled, accepting that triumph no matter how small it was.
For now—she was free.