Chapter 17
Having had most of the Marquess and Marchioness of Beaufort’s male guests as patrons at his club through the years, Adair knew firsthand with their vices and pomposity, the lot of them were fools.
Never before had he appreciated just how much, until this night. With Cleopatra seated on the fringe of yet another ballroom, and gentlemen stepping past her like she carried the damned plague, those noblemen proved the depth of their vanity.
Was it a wonder she hadn’t wanted to suffer through another infernal affair? Or . . . waltz with a single gent here.
Shuddering in horror, he eyed Lady Beaufort’s guests as they completed the intricate steps of some dance or another. His brother Niall and sister-in-law shifted into his line of vision, momentarily diverting his attention.
Well, I’ll be the Devil in church on Sunday . . .
He didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or compose a list of insults to eventually heap upon his brother’s head. For Niall Marksman, one of the most ruthless kingpins of London’s underbelly, a man who as a child had killed at command, now performed those mincing steps. Where the other guests, Niall’s wife, Diana, included, moved with an effortless grace, the partial owner of the Hell and Sin’s dancing was at best lively, and at worst, horrifyingly awkward.
Only . . . as Adair studied the pairing, he saw how the two were lost in only each other; there may as well not have been another soul present. With his flushed cheeks and the smile on his scarred visage, Niall exuded a softness Adair had believed him incapable of. He’d never been a man to waste time with inane pursuits, and yet, here he stood . . . dancing with his wife.
Adair himself had never given much thought to marriage. Since he’d contributed all his stolen and then saved coins for the purchase of a share in the Hell and Sin, that club had been his everything. It had represented security and safety, and the time that went into the running of it hadn’t allowed for a wife. But for the first time, he allowed himself for a brief instance the possibility of what that would be if he were married to a woman who was a partner in life.
Unbidden, his gaze traveled to the bespectacled miss glowering about the crowded ballroom. He’d never known a woman like her. Her clever mind and endless skill set in the overall running of a club had held him enthralled these past weeks . . . and God help him, if he didn’t hunger for her still.
He froze as the full ramifications of his ponderings gripped him.
A servant sailed past with a tray in hand, and Adair instantly plucked a desperately needed flute of champagne from the unsuspecting footman. Nay, I need something far stronger. Mooning over Killoran’s sister. He finished the drink in several long gulps.
Over the rim of the delicate glass, his gaze collided with Cleopatra’s.
She tipped her head in the direction of the dance floor and pointed her eyes skyward. He’d come to know her well . . . too well. So much so that he could identify when she was putting on a false show about ton functions. He also knew her enough to have found she was even more proud than any of the people Adair called family.
“Bored?” he mouthed.
Cleopatra feigned a wide yawn, patting her lips with her palm.
That public display earned several censorious looks from ladies seated nearby. Again, Adair was reminded of just how different Cleopatra was from all the women he’d witnessed, known, or been forced to brush shoulders with because of his siblings’ spouses. Raw in her every reaction and response, she earned the condemnation of the same people whose approval she sought, but he appreciated her all the more for it.
Adair shook his head. “Don’t believe you,” he slowly mouthed.
Cleopatra flared her eyes through the crystal lenses of her spectacles to reveal a look of mock outrage, and with a furtive movement, she lifted a finger in a crude gesture that would have escaped most of the fancy toffs present.
A sharp bark of laughter escaped him.
“Never thought I’d see the day you were enjoying yourself at an event thrown by a peer.”
Adair cursed, and he spun about. Bloody hell. Caught unawares not for the first time since she’d entered his household.
Calum stared, triumphantly grinning. “And I especially never expected you’d find such pleasure at one of them that you’d fail to hear a person’s approach,” his brother goaded.
“Go to hell,” he groused, reluctantly shifting his attention away from Cleopatra. Damn. Couldn’t it have been Niall or Ryker to stumble upon him? Always laconic, they, too, never spoke about personal matters . . . unless it related to the Hell and Sin. Calum, on the other hand . . .
“Well? What held you so engrossed?”
“No one,” Adair said quickly.
Calum arched a dark brow. “I didn’t say who.”
He creased his brow. What in hell was he talking about?
“I asked what, not who.”
Bloody, bloody hell. Damning himself for that telling slip, Adair made a show of motioning over a servant, taking a diversionary tactic where he could. “No one, and nothing, has distracted me,” he said after he’d collected another glass and the servant had gone off. Liar.
“Ryker mentioned there was a . . . disagreement this afternoon between you.”
Adair continued to underestimate the changes that had overtaken Ryker—nay, all of his brothers, since their marriage. Gossiping had never been part of his way. Except where the Hell and Sin had been concerned, everything had always gone . . . “Oh?” he asked vaguely, swirling the contents of his drink. He’d called it a disagreement, had he? Neatly sidestepping what it, in fact, had been—a bloody fight, with everything except fists exchanged. “What did he say precisely?” That Adair was captivated by Cleopatra Killoran? He curled his fingers tight around his champagne glass with a force to snap the stem.
“You showed the gaming hell plans to Killoran.”
Cleopatra. I showed them to Cleopatra. “Miss Killoran isn’t her brother,” he said, finishing off his drink.
“You didn’t trust her a few weeks ago,” Calum accurately pointed out. “Now you do?” he asked with his usual Calum calm and stoicism.
Adair looked him squarely in the eyes. “Despite Ryker’s doubts, I do.” He anticipated a like battle from Calum. “Nothing to say?” he asked gruffly when Calum remained silent. After all, hadn’t he wanted to turn out the other man’s wife because of her birthright?
Calum did a sweep of the ballroom, always alert, as he’d always been. “The young woman helped Paisley and made some wise recommendations for the club. Given all that and the fact that she single-handedly saw Diana rescued from Diggory’s wife’s clutches, I venture she’s proven herself enough.”
Both humbled and ashamed by that magnanimity, when he’d been anything but supportive of the union between Calum and his wife, Adair stared blankly into his empty glass. The lone drop clinging to the side spiraled down and hit the bottom of the crystal. By God, what a small-minded bastard he’d been.
Calum slapped him on the back. “Trust your instincts where the young woman is concerned.”
It had been the rule Calum had set forth in the guidelines they’d all crafted in their bid to survive: trust your instincts.
“If you’ll excuse me?” Giving him another pat, his brother took his leave.
Trust his instincts. What Calum couldn’t see, didn’t know, was that Adair’s conflict didn’t stem from Cleopatra’s connection to Broderick Killoran. Rather it was her hold over Adair.
“You look as miserable as I feel,” Cleopatra observed on a hushed whisper.
He whipped his head about, searching for the diminutive but strong owner of that droll pronouncement.
“It’s a wonder you survived a day in the streets, Adair Thorne,” she said without inflection. “I’m here.”
He instantly located her behind a nearby pillar.
The bespectacled spitfire gave a jaunty wave but remained in her hiding place, out of view.
Adair folded his arms at his chest, letting the glass dangle from between his fingers.
“Are you also upset about the whole dancing business?” she teased.
The earlier restlessness his brother had left him with lifted. He fought back a grin. “I assure you not.”
“Boredom?”
Ennui was safer. “Need you ask?”
“Do you want to escape?”
Escape. With her . . . ? It was a dangerously tantalizing prospect suggested.
“What do you have in mind?” he asked from the corner of his mouth.
“Lord Beaufort’s office.”
He’d been part of any number of underhanded acts in the whole of his life. The moment he’d established a foothold in the world and secured his future, he’d reshaped himself from a common thief . . . into a man of honor. As such—“I don’t invade other men’s business space,” he said in hushed tones.
She let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re disappointingly staid. The roof.”
“No.” The last roof he’d climbed would remain his brother’s when he’d gone after this woman. “Lord Beaufort’s billiards room?”
“The billiards room,” she echoed on a husky whisper that stirred the wicked hungering she’d roused in him since their first meeting.
“Fine. First one to find it is most resourceful in St. Giles. Last one there . . . You all right, Thorne? You look queer.”
“I’m fine,” he said hoarsely.
“’ow’s about a competition, then? Between you and I.”
Did the young woman work at piquing a person’s curiosity? Or was it a skill that came natural to her?
“What manner of competition?” he asked with far too much enthusiasm. He, along with his siblings, had always been practical. Jests, joking, and games had been an even greater rarity than finding food for their bellies. Despite her jaded exterior, Cleopatra had retained a lightheartedness that was infectious.
“Oi find the billiard’s room, you let me teach you the steps of a waltz.”
Adair covered a laugh behind his hand. “And what do I get when I win?”
She snorted. “You need me to make all decisions for you, Thorne?” She paused. “And it’s if you win.”
“We shall certainly . . .” He glanced over to the spot she’d occupied moments ago.
Gone.
And with far more enthusiasm than he’d felt the whole damned evening, Adair grinned and started for Lord Beaufort’s billiards room.
Cleopatra stole through the halls of Lord Beaufort’s sprawling townhouse. The winding halls, covered in plush carpets, were a house thief’s greatest dream. No loose floorboards or uneven slates to give a person’s movements away. It made her task of locating the marquess’s billiards room all the easier.
Cleopatra had been determined to never be dependent upon any man . . . in any way. As such, it was so very odd to find one’s happiness so closely linked with one.
Not just any one—Adair Thorne, Black’s brother. Though, in the time she’d lived among family, she’d been reared to hate, their names had mattered far less. Rather, they’d not mattered very much at all.
If your brother could hear you, he’d strip you of a say in all business dealings at the Devil’s Den.
Cleopatra reached the end of the corridor and stopped. She considered each direction and then continued along the intersecting hall until she’d reached the last door. Briefly pausing, she stole a glance about and then let herself inside her host’s billiards room.
The moon filtered through a crack in the brocade curtains, that faint shaft the only light to break the darkness. She blinked several times to adjust her eyes.
A soft whistle pierced the quiet. “When will I learn it’s folly to doubt you, Cleopatra Killoran?” Adair drawled from his position at the velvet billiards table. “But how in hell did you find Beaufort’s billiards room?”
Another time, she wagered he would have made some insulting crack about her having no doubt committed a theft in this very home. No longer. “Fancy toffs like to keep their gaming rooms farthest from all the respectable ones.” With a laugh, she drifted over to the opposite end of the billiards table. “They’re all the same.” And I’ll be married to one. Fighting back that depressing thought, she lifted her chin. “And what about you, Thorne? How’d you know about Beaufort’s layout? Rubbing elbows with the nobs now?”
“In a way,” he demurred.
Cleopatra tipped her head.
“Lady Beaufort is, in fact, Penelope’s sister.”
With a snort, she hitched herself up onto the edge of the table. “You already knew your way about. Oi’d say that’s cheating.”
He rolled a black ball back and forth between his hands. “You set the terms,” he reminded her.
There’d be no dancing, then. It was silly to feel a keen disappointment, but as she’d put forward the competition, there had been a thrill of excitement at teaching Adair those sweeping movements . . . and of being in his arms. He rolled the ball toward her, and she put her palm up, preventing it from colliding with the edge of the table. “What do you want, then?” she asked, shoving the ball back.
He grinned. “I haven’t decided.”
Her belly fluttered wildly. She followed his languid movements as he quit his spot and fetched two sticks from the wall. “Here,” he called, lightly tossing one at her.
Squinting in the dark, Cleopatra caught it to her chest.
Adair gathered the balls into the proper place at the center of the table. “The best two out of three competitions, wins?”
Her lips twitched. “You’re assuming I play.”
He glanced up from his task, and that slight movement sent a dark lock tumbling over his brow, lending him a boyish look. “Cleopatra Killoran, I’d wager there isn’t a thing you don’t know how to do.”
And just like that, Cleopatra fell in love. Hopelessly, helplessly, she lost her heart to Adair Thorne.
She froze, and his gentle teasing came as muffled as the time she’d dived into the Thames to escape capture by the constable. But God help her, this was all the worse. I love him. I’ve gone and fallen in love with him. When the last possibility of a match could be with this man. Her breath came in quick, shallow spurts, and the cue slipped from her fingers, clattering to the table.
“. . . and . . . Cleopatra?” Adair’s easy smile slipped as concern wreathed his features.
“Two out of three,” she said sharply, quickly retrieving her cue. “I cut.” Through the panic swamping her senses, she bent over and launched her stick at her cue ball. It jumped and sailed past her intended mark.
“Now, that I did not expect,” he murmured to himself as he attended his shot.
She pressed her eyes closed. No, it wasn’t what she’d expected, either.
He valued her opinion and saw her worth, but what was more, he treated her as an equal. And beautiful. Even with your scars and spectacles and figureless form, he’d also made you feel in ways you never believed possible. And there could never, ever be anything more with him. Not if she were to care for her sisters so that they didn’t have to marry pompous peers.
Numb, she stared emptily on as he made quick work of the billiards table.
Adair paused, his cue properly positioned. “Nervous yet?”
Terrified out of my bloody everlasting mind. “Of you? Hardly.” Did he hear the faint, threadbare quality of her voice?
He deepened his smile and let his stick fly . . . at last missing a shot.
“Moi turn,” she said sharply. It was vastly easier focusing on the red velvet table and her intended cue ball than the danger in loving Adair Thorne. Taking support from the familiar weight of the stick, she concentrated her energies on the white cue ball. She released her shot, and the loud thwack echoed around the room.
“It appears we are tied,” he observed after she’d connected with her sixth and final shot. He strolled around the table, taking up position beside her. They stood, their bodies so close the heat of him scorched her arms. “Were you swindling me?”
“Wouldn’t be hard to do.” Clearing her throat, she fiddled with her cue. “What’s the third competition to be, then?” she asked quietly, needing a diversion from the madness of her own yearnings.
Adair slipped the stick from her fingers and set it aside. “We could always split, and each claim a victory and expect a payment,” he whispered, lowering his head. “I’ll give you your London waltz.”
The lingering hint of champagne on his breath, more intoxicating than the bubbling brew itself, brought her lashes fluttering closed. “Wot koind of payment are ya thinking in return?” she rejoined, tilting her neck so she could meet his stare squarely.
Hooding his thick lashes, he moved his heat-filled gaze from her lips, back to her eyes, and then back again. With a groan, he cupped her about the nape and devoured her mouth.
Desire exploded within as she parted her lips, tangling her tongue with his in a violent, primitive mating. Adair sank his fingertips into her hips and guided her up onto the table, and then his questing hands continued their search from her buttocks to the curve of her breasts, leaving no part of her untouched. Under the fabric of her gown, her nipples sprang hard from his attentions. She moaned and parted her legs in invitation.
He stepped between them and, breaking contact with her mouth, dragged a trail of kisses down her neck. Then, lowering her décolletage and shift, he exposed her breasts. The cool night air combined with the conflagration burning through her and tore a keening moan from her. Bending his head, he captured the peak of one breast between his lips.
Cleopatra hissed. “Adair.” She arched her back, opening herself to his attentions as a throbbing ache settled at her center.
“What hold do you have over me?” he breathed against her skin, his hoarse words an echo of her very thoughts.
She tangled her fingers in his hair and dragged his mouth close for another violent kiss.
Suddenly, he stiffened. His breath coming hard and fast, he straightened.
Cleopatra collapsed on the edge of the table as he swiftly drew her gown back into place.
“I don’t . . .”
He touched a silencing finger to her lips and jerked his head toward the door.
A faint muttering, followed by the periodic open and closing of doors, pierced the dense wood. Taking her by the hand, Adair all but dragged her to the window and tossed it open.
“You’ll be ruined if we’re caught here.”
“I was ruined before I ever came,” she said softly.
He tightened his jaw, glancing once again to the commotion growing closer in the halls outside. “Not like this,” he muttered. “This would see that you never . . . marry a fancy toff.” Did she imagine the spasm that contorted his features? Surely that paroxysm of grief was no more than a play of the shadows upon his rugged features?
He cared about her reputation. How was it possible for his hushed words to both touch her heart and wrench like a knife?
Another click of a closing door brought her back from her melancholy. She glanced between the door and the mews below. For a long, dangerous moment, she contemplated remaining precisely where she was, at Adair Thorne’s side . . . and shredding her reputation and all hopes for a match. Because then there could be a them, together.
You fool . . . there could never be that. Not when your father tortured him and his brothers.
“I’ll catch you,” he whispered against her mouth.
“You think I need rescuing, Adair?”
Hefting himself over the ledge, he lowered himself by the arms until his feet dangled the ten feet below. “Everyone needs rescuing,” he mouthed.
She leaned out. “Even you?”
He winked and then let go. Her heart pounded painfully against her ribs and then resumed a normal cadence as his boots hit with a solid thump. She’d jumped from higher heights scores of times, and yet the endless moment of his fall had torn a year off her life.
Silently, Adair stretched his arms up, urging her to jump.
Cleopatra lifted herself onto the ledge.
The door flew open, freezing her.
Oh, bloody hell. Her heart sank a slow, agonizing path to her soles.
Lord Landon, one of the Devil’s Den’s best patrons, stared back with shock stamped on his features.
A slow grin curled his lips in a roguish grin he’d worn too many times inside her club. “Miss Killoran?” he greeted, dropping a deep, formal bow.
She briefly contemplated the grounds below, finding Adair. Even with the distance separating them, worry flickered in his eyes.
Cleopatra was giving her head an imperceptible shake when the faint click of the door closing registered. She spun about.
“I must confess,” Lord Landon murmured, “this is all rather unexpected.”
She stiffened as he strolled over, but he avoided her altogether and cut a path over to the well-stocked sideboard. “And what is that?” she asked, the blade strapped against her lower left leg reassuring in its weight and presence. Though they’d never exchanged so much as a passing word at the Devil’s Den, they’d both moved around the gaming hell floors at the same time. Lord Landon had never put a hand upon the whores and was oftentimes sought out by the women inside the Devil’s Den, but she knew better than to trust a lord.
The young marquess glanced briefly away from his task of drink selection. “Why, it is not every day a young lady considers jumping from a townhouse window to escape my company.”
Despite herself, a wry smile pulled at her lips. “You’re a pompous one, then.” Then, was there another sort?
He flashed another wolfish smile, displaying perfect pearl-white teeth. “With good reason.”
A woman learned to survive in the streets by paying attention to every last detail about a man. The way a man carried oneself, the type of grin he affected, and the words he used and how he used them, told one all one needed to know.
This golden-haired nob, with his wiry frame accentuated perfectly by finely tailored dark garments, whose careless grin marked him a careless rogue to be avoided at all costs. That’s the precise type of gent Broderick would see you marry . . . and likely the only one who’d give a match with you any real thought. “I’m not a lady,” she said tightly, annoyed that she’d conceded so much as a smile for the arrogant lord. Hating Broderick all over again.
“No,” he said easily, not taking his gaze from the brandy he now poured. “Had you been, it would have been me contemplating a jump from the windows.” Setting the pilfered decanter down, he looked up, his enigmatic gaze searching.
Cleopatra shuttered her features.
“I’ve insulted you,” he said matter-of-factly, absent of an apology.
“I’d have to give a rat’s arse about you and what you said to be insulted,” she said evenly.
The marquess choked on his swallow, and those gulping gasps of air bore the traces of laughter. “Brava, Miss Killoran,” he managed to strangle out after he’d regained control of his breathing. He lifted his glass in salute.
Presenting him her back, Cleopatra made a show of closing the crystal windows and searched for Adair’s familiar form in the shadows. Gone. She turned her attention to the stranger sipping his host’s brandy at the same table Adair had her upon a short while ago. Through the reflection in the glass, she studied Lord Landon’s every movement.
“You know, I really didn’t mean it as an insult,” the marquess went on, erasing the long stretch of silence. “I truly prefer the company of someone who has something to say about topics other than the weather.”
Abandoning her post at the window, she let the curtain flutter back into place and moved cautiously about the room. “You don’t know what topics I talk about,” she said derisively.
The marquess winged a golden eyebrow up. “Would you make mention of our fine London weather?”
She met his question with silence.
“I did not believe so.” He tossed back another long swallow. “Nor would you be in here even now with one slipper up on a windowsill if you were the same as the ladies inside that”—he pointed his glass to the doorway—“ballroom.”
Cleopatra slowed her steps, halting her exit. “And you find your worth greater than those women you disparage?”
“My worth greater?” he echoed. A mirthless chuckle left his hard lips. “Miss Killoran, I know precisely what I am, and it’s certainly not one who sees my worth greater than those around me.” There was an unexpected somberness underlying his melodious baritone that belied the affected air of rogue he’d mastered. “I’m merely a man as bored here as you yourself.”
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said tightly, “I should go.” As it was, in being discovered by this gentleman, she’d already been ruined, and that realization only proved her selfishness. For, help her, she couldn’t muster a single regret that she’d be ruined.
I’ll be free . . . and one of my sisters will make the ultimate sacrifice in my stead.
Feeling Lord Landon’s stare on her, she flattened her lips. “Do you intend to say anything?”
“About our being alone here together?” he countered, not even pretending to misunderstand. He finished his drink and discarded it on the side of the billiards table. Hitching his hip onto the edge, he swung his leg in a lazy back-and-forth rhythm. “That would depend, Miss Killoran.”
The blighter would bribe her. Cleopatra’s fingers twitched with the need to form a fist that she could bury in his face. “Oh?” She lifted her skirts slightly, exposing the vicious dagger strapped against her leg. “On what, my lord?”
For her wariness of the cocksure lord, it was hard to not approve of a fancy gent who merely eyed that jewel-crusted dagger with amusement. He swept his lashes lower, in a rakish leer that she’d wager he’d practiced since his university days. “A dance, Miss Killoran. I’d like a dance.”
She let her skirts fall back into place. “A dance?” she blurted. That is what he’d request.
“A waltz,” he clarified. “And then your secret is your own.”
Cleopatra scanned his sharp-planed features for a hint of mockery. “Foine,” she said finally. “One waltz.” Uneasy with the gent’s urbane charm, Cleopatra took a wide berth around him, making for the door. All the while she kept sight of him from the corner of her eye.
“Oh, and Miss Killoran?” he called out, as soon as her fingertips were on the handle. “Just to clarify, that set will be tonight. The next waltz.”
He’d gathered she intended to sneak off, then. So, he was more clever than she’d credited. “Why do you want to dance with me?” she put to him, curiosity making her bold. Was it on a wager, similar to the kind Penelope had spoken of? Did he revel in flouting society’s conventions?
“Truthfully?”
She nodded. “If you’re capable of it.”
“On occasion, I am.” Where they’d had desperate gents inside the Devil’s Den who stole or attempted to cheat, Lord Landon had never been that man. “I find you refreshing,” he confessed.
Cleopatra snorted. “Oi wasn’t born yesterday.”
He quirked his lips at the corner. “And that is why I do. It is just a waltz, no more, and your secret meeting with me here—”
“You invaded my space first.”
“—shall remain your secret still,” he said over her.
A dance was all he wanted. Lord Landon, though arrogant with a rogue’s smile and a rake’s eye, was offering her nothing more than what she’d wanted for the past three weeks. And yet, as she nodded and fled back to the ballroom, she found it hadn’t been just a waltz she’d wanted after all.
She’d wanted a set with Adair.