Chapter 16
Later that night, Cleopatra knelt at the edge of the cradle, contemplating the sleeping bundle resting there.
Even with the presence of the snarling Wilson, whom she’d the misfortune of being saddled with by Black, and a new, cheerful nursemaid happily bustling about the room, organizing the linens, Paisley Black’s nursery was the last place Cleopatra should wish to be.
The babe blinked her impossibly large blue eyes several times, and that cloudy gaze moved over Cleopatra’s face. Alas, there had always been something calming in being around babes. They represented the most unsullied part of a person’s soul. At this age and size, defenseless as one was, the evil one might carry hadn’t yet come out. There was nothing but an inherent need and willingness to trust.
Only this time, being here with this babe was not solely about lingering around innocence. It was about him.
Adair Thorne, whom she’d been moments away from kissing when Ryker Black interrupted. Given that untimely appearance and Adair’s absence for the remainder of the day, there was no doubt he’d been raked over the proverbial coals for his dealings with her.
She scrunched her mouth up. Of course, her own brother would have been as vigilant if one of Adair’s kin was forced into the Devil’s Den. It was not, however, Black’s wariness that grated—it was Adair’s. She smiled sadly at the dark-haired babe.
Penelope’s daughter let out a loud whine, and Cleopatra instantly slipped her finger into the tiny palm, which curled reflexively around it. She closed her eyes, finding and selfishly taking the solace offered by the small child. For if she was being truthful with herself, at least in this instance, she’d admit that she was terrified out of her bloody mind.
“I don’t trust for a moment that you wouldn’t snuff the life out of that babe,” Wilson called out from where he stood at the window. Arms folded, his left heel propped against the wall, his was nothing more than a feigned insouciance.
The nursemaid, Beth, faltered. Stifling a gasp behind her fingertips, she looked between Cleopatra and Wilson.
Where Adair’s doubts had oddly cut like a knife, this man’s rolled as easily off her back as every other insult he periodically hurled her way.
“With your lousy judgments, it’s a fortunate thing for you that you’ll never be more than a second-shift guard,” she said, directing that insult to the babe.
Wilson’s leg slid back to the floor, the plush carpet muting the thump of his heel. “Ain’t you have a fancy nob to try and catch,” he jeered. “Ah, that’s right. You might have a queen’s fortune, but not a respectable lord would ever marry a guttersnipe such as you.”
Having been brutalized and bullied by Diggory, Cleopatra knew that to engage was to feed and perpetuate the viciousness. She sang a slightly off-key tavern song that had always soothed her sisters.
As I was a walking down Paradise Street
A pretty young damsel I chanced for to meet.
She was round in the counter and bluff in the bow,
So I took in all sail and cried, “Way enough now.”
I hailed her in English, she answered me clear,
“I’m from the Black Arrow bound to the Shakespeare.”
So I tailed her my flipper and took her in tow
And yardarm to yardarm away we did go.
But as we were going she said unto me
There’s a spanking full-rigger just ready for sea.
“You need to be gone now,” the nursemaid chided, clapping her hands once. That slight sound brought the slumbering babe’s eyes open.
“You heard the maid,” Wilson called over. “Get out of the room and away from the babe.”
Beth dropped her hands on her hips. “Not her. You.”
“I’ve been instructed that this one”—he angled his head toward Cleopatra—“isn’t ever to be alone with the babe.”
“I’ve”—the young woman colored—“nursemaid business to be seeing to.”
“Then you can see to it after she’s gone.”
“Mr. Wilson, the business I have to see to requires assistance, and given as I’ve no intention of asking for your help with this, I’d advise you to go. Now.”
No more than an inch taller than Cleopatra, and nearly as slender, she’d the look of a waif. Cleopatra, however, had learned long ago that courage and strength came in all shapes and forms. She suppressed a smile as the nursemaid sent the muttering guard packing.
“Well, he’s a miserable blighter,” the young woman muttered as soon as she’d closed the door. “Making all that noise about a babe, and insulting you, no less.”
“You didn’t have anything you required assistance with, did you?” Cleopatra asked the nursemaid with a dawning understanding.
“That’s not entirely true.” Beth offered a devious grin. “I have been trying to determine just how to be rid of that nasty brute since the moment he followed you in here.”
Stunned silent by that gesture of kindness, she stared on as Beth gathered Penelope’s babe in her arms. Cleopatra had always believed one could learn much about another person by how one treated a babe. Diggory and his men had often railed at and insulted those tender souls. Most of their drunken wives had worried more about obtaining another pint than nursing their offspring. This unexpected champion handled the babe the way one might care for the king’s crown. The fussing child instantly quieted. Rocking her in silence for another moment, Beth returned her to the cradle.
A faint click echoed around the room, and Cleopatra looked to the entrance.
Her heart flipped around as Adair stepped inside the nursery. With his dark-green Rannoch tweed waistcoat, black jacket, and the absence of a cravat, none at the evening’s festivities would mistake him for one of the noblemen in attendance. And yet—she raked her gaze over his lightly scarred face—how very much more she preferred Adair Thorne’s ruggedness to the pompous lords of the ton who couldn’t be bothered with so much as a dance. Realizing too late that she remained kneeling beside Paisley’s crib, ogling Adair, she burned hot.
He favored the nursemaid with a single glance that instantly sent the bold woman scurrying from the room.
Adair made his way to the side of Paisley’s crib, and Cleopatra immediately restored all her attentions to the babe.
“You’re late,” he said in hushed tones, wholly considerate ones of a man mindful of a slumbering babe.
Cleopatra bit the inside of her lower lip. Damn him. Must he even be thoughtful in this regard, too? Couldn’t he be obnoxious and loud as the latest guard he and Black had sicced on her? Because Adair didn’t want to be with you . . . that taunting voice reminded at the back of her mind. To him, she’d always be linked to the thankfully dead Diggory and his former gang.
Ignoring his outstretched hand, Cleopatra shoved to her feet. “Been sent for me?” she asked quietly so as not to wake the babe. “Your turn now that Wilson’s been relieved for the night?”
Adair homed his keen gaze on her face. “Did he offend you?” he demanded.
She immediately masked her features, going tight-lipped.
In a touch that was an unlikely blend of tenderness and strength, Adair collected her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “What did he say?”
Was this another damned test of her character? Cleopatra edged away from his hold. “Oi ain’t a snitch.”
Silent for a long moment, Adair swept his probing stare over her. “He insulted you, and yet you’d say nothing?”
She lifted her shoulders in a defiant shrug. “’e’s no different than you and your kind. Thinks Oi’ll kill the babe while ya all sleep.”
Adair snapped his eyebrows together in a tense, angry line. “He said that?”
Cleopatra let her silence stand for her answer.
Adair unleashed a black curse. “I am sorry he treated you that way. I will speak to him.”
Damn him for caring, and damn her for the warmth that his defense roused within her. She’d not allow herself any further weakening where Adair Thorne was concerned. “You’ll speak to him?” She scoffed. “You’ve already doubted me ten times to Sunday.”
A dull flush stained his cheeks.
“And you’ll continue to do so.” And he’d no doubt toss you out on your arse if he discovered the truth. “So, feel free to go back to avoiding me.” Cleopatra took a step to get past him, desperately needing space between them. But he matched her movements. She made another move, and he swiftly placed himself in her path, blocking her retreat.
A frown formed on his hard lips. “Is that what you believe, Cleopatra Killoran? That I spent the day avoiding you?”
“No.”
Some of the tension left his shoulders.
“That is precisely what I know you’ve been doing. You had your meeting with Black, and that was the end of ours.”
His back immediately went up. “I had an appointment with my builder.”
Cleopatra pursed her lips. “It ain’t my business.” She again made to leave, and he gripped her by the upper arm, staying her.
“Would you have the truth?”
“Are you capable of it?” she sneered, spoiling for a fight with this man. Wanting the safe, familiar comfort of the antipathy that had always existed between them. Hating him for not even relenting in this.
“Ryker still doesn’t trust you,” he said candidly. “He believes you wouldn’t hesitate to betray our family to benefit your own.”
And she wouldn’t. Would she? Only everything had become so very blurred these past three weeks. She itched to dig her fingertips into her temples and drive the confusion from her muddled mind.
“You didn’t ask me what I believe.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said tiredly, her voice heavy to her own ears.
He dropped his hip against a brocade armchair. “It doesn’t?” A frosty glint iced his eyes.
Moving closer, she spoke quietly, mindful of the sleeping child. “You might speak freely about your damned club and your plans, but ultimately, you can’t see past the fact that I’m . . . Killoran’s sister.”
She gasped as he shot a hand out, and capturing hers, began to divest her of one of her gloves. Cleopatra briefly froze and then began to wrestle her arm back. “What are you doing, Thorne?” she demanded, her heart pounding hard against her rib cage as Adair stripped away the satin fabric. A heavy pall descended over the nursery, broken only by the faint snore that periodically escaped the babe.
Cleopatra stared dumbly at the D seared into her flesh, a brand that marked her origins.
Soundlessly, he trailed an index finger over it.
Oh, God, does he know the significance of it? It was an inventorying process that, given his abuse, she’d never wholly understood. Why mark a person when one couldn’t be bothered to so much as assign them a name?
“My brother doubted . . . doubts you,” he corrected. He continued to run his finger over her palm, sending delicious shivers from that distracted caress. “Given our families’ history over the years, I should also have those same reservations, Cleopatra. I continually remind myself of that.” He paused his tender ministrations. “And yet, I don’t. I don’t believe you’ll use the information I’ve shared against me or my club or my family. Nor do I believe you’re capable of hurting”—Adair trailed his gaze over to the cradle—“anyone.”
At that affirmation of his trust, her heart sang. It was a gift given in the streets, more valuable than the fleeting coin one pilfered for the permanency of it. He lightly squeezed her hand, and drawing it close to his mouth, he brushed a kiss over the inside of her palm.
A vise squeezed her chest at the intimacy of that kiss. It defied the emotionless, driven-by-need-only exchanges she’d witnessed whores and patrons at her club turn themselves over to. And the tenderness of it threatened to shatter her.
This is too much . . .
Clearing her throat, Cleopatra neatly disentangled her fingers and made a show of pushing her spectacles back into place. “Oi—I’m still not going,” she said, hurriedly shifting the discourse back to what had brought him here in the first place.
Before he’d been forthright with her, and he continued working a dangerous hold inside her heart. With every day, she found herself one day further away from freedom. There would be no husband to speak freely with about the plans and ideas of a gaming hell. Given all she’d gleaned about the nobility over the years, they wouldn’t even allow a wife an opinion. And she would be crushed by that in ways that Diggory had never managed to defeat her.
Adair shook his head slowly. “I don’t understand.”
“Not that difficult to follow. Lady B-Beaufort’s ball,” she expounded. “This evening,” she said lamely, promptly curling her toes into the soles of her boots. As though there was, in fact, another Beaufort ball they’d been expected to attend. “I’m not going.”
Adair scratched at his creased brow. “Isn’t that the sole reason you’re here, to attend Society events?”
No. The sole reason she was here was to make a match with a fancy nob. It was an altogether vital distinction that sent desolation sweeping through her. “I said I’m not going.” She swept away in a whir of satin skirts. “Wot’s the point of it?” she demanded on a loud whisper. “Oi go and sit through ball after ball, and the end is always the same.” Such a realization should have her sick with the implications of what her failure would mean for her sisters. She briefly closed her eyes. I am a selfish bastard. I don’t want to make a damned match with a bloody stranger. Least of all, a nob . . . She sprang forward on the balls of her feet to take flight.
Adair settled his palms on her shoulders, grounding her, bringing her sinking back to her heels. His touch was both calming and strengthening all at once, and she who’d forever scoffed at needing another, leaned back against his chest, taking the support he offered. “I still say you’re better off without all that silly dancing nonsense,” he whispered against her ear. Delicious shivers raced from the sensitive skin on her nape, down to her back. An involuntary laugh escaped her—that husky, breathless sound she’d heard from too many of the prostitutes inside the Devil’s Den.
So, he thought her desire to escape the festivities had to do with her frustration at her wallflower status. Content to let him keep to that erroneous belief, preferring it to the more dangerous truth that she, who’d prided herself on her strength, was terrified at the prospect of making a match. She angled her head, looking up at him. “One of these days, Adair Thorne, I’m going to prove how wrong you are about a waltz.”
He offered his usual cocksure half grin. “I’m not even sure you’d be able to convince me of that, love,” he said with a wink.
He stepped away, and she mourned the loss of his nearness, and just like that, reality intruded once more.
This time, however, there were no urgings or questions about her reservations. Rather, a companionable silence, a patience, and his meaning was clear. He’d wait until she was ready. And where his presence at those staid affairs had always been reassuring, now it only served to highlight the misery of her circumstances.
For she, who’d sworn to never turn her fate and future over to a husband, could see herself with a man like Adair Thorne.