The Lady's Guard (Sinful Brides Book 3)

by Christi Caldwell

  To the man’s credit, Smith straightened and then looked to Niall for his cue.

  Niall jerked his chin at the hovering servants. “What do you want?” he demanded as soon as the duke’s footmen and butler had hied themselves off.

  Miss Killoran pursed her mouth. “I heard of your foul temper, Marksman. It is indeed as ugly as your face.”

  Adair went slack-jawed.

  “What’s wrong with this one?” She motioned her knife in Adair’s direction. “Are you a lackwit?”

  At any other time, Niall would have been impressed and amused by the show of spirit that could effectively silence Adair. “I’ll not ask you again—”

  “And I’ll not have this meeting in the middle of a foyer.” She stole a glance around. “A fancy foyer. But a foyer, nonetheless.”

  When both men remained silent, she leveled Niall with a glare. “You want to take this meeting. Trust me.”

  “The word trust uttered from the mouth of a Killoran,” Adair muttered, earning a vicious kick.

  He grunted.

  “Ten minutes,” Niall conceded. He gestured for Cleo Killoran to precede him.

  Suspicion danced in her brown eyes, and she jerked her head. “I’m not allowing you to walk behind me.”

  “Oi’m certainly not going to let a bad-mannered Killoran with a knife in hand and a gun on her person to walk behind me.”

  They locked in a stalemate. A sound of disgust escaped her. “You both can go to Hell.” She jerked her hood back into place, concealing those drab brown curls. “I’ve not come to posture with one of Black’s hotheaded guards. Not even to discuss a certain lady you’ve done a dismal job of guarding.” Miss Killoran beat a quick path to the door.

  And just like that, all the energy and air was sucked from the room.

  Breath frozen in his lungs, Niall reached for the girl. She easily danced out of his reach and brandished a pistol. “Try that again, Marksman, and I’ll kill not only you but your brother.” She flicked a derisive glance up and down Adair’s frame. “Your equally ugly brother.”

  “What did you mean by that?” he rasped, as panic swirled around his belly.

  Adair caught him by the arm. “She’s a Killoran,” he reminded him. “Lady Diana is safe.”

  “Not here,” Killoran’s sister ordered, blatantly ignoring Adair.

  His pulse racing, Niall led the way through the corridors to the duke’s office. Adair’s reminder warred with the girl’s veiled threat.

  As soon as he closed the door behind them, Cleo Killoran spoke. “You came into my home and threatened my family.”

  He brought his shoulders back. “Is that what this is about? A like visit to the one I paid your brother?”

  “You’re not dealing with a child, Marksman,” she snapped. “I’m nearly eighteen and wield more power in my gaming hell than you ever will in yours.”

  He concealed his surprise. Eighteen? The waiflike creature with a mass of silly ringlets had the look of a lord’s pampered child and not a woman who’d been reared and raised inside a seedy establishment. Niall folded his arms at his chest.

  “I’m here to strike out new terms between our hells. I help you and yours . . .” She flicked a gaze over at Adair, who stood sentry by the door. “And you pledge to never harm a Killoran.”

  Niall met that demand with mutinous silence. A man’s word was his bond. When one made a pledge, he honored it . . . or his life was forfeit.

  “Is that why you’re here?” Adair ventured, without inflection. “To do your brother’s groveling?”

  The young woman stitched her eyebrows into a line. “We don’t grovel.” Dismissing him, she looked back to Niall. “We do, however, stay true to our word and honor it. I have information about a lady in your care.” She scoffed. “Or who’s supposed to be. You aren’t much of a guard, Niall Marksman.”

  All Niall’s senses thrummed to life, and he snapped erect.

  “Ah, I see I have your attention.” Taking apparent relish in his disquiet, Cleo Killoran turned the knife over in her hands.

  “I’m listening,” he said brusquely. All the while he fought the volatile energy running amok inside him.

  “Someone wishes the lady dead. It isn’t one of ours,” she said hurriedly, backing away from him when he surged forward. “And as a testament of our pledge and a promise we seek from you . . . I’ll give you names.”

  Niall’s chest rose and fell heavily. “Who?”

  “I want your word,” she demanded. “And I want a favor.”

  “Anything.” She could have asked for his share of the Hell and Sin and he would have granted it.

  “Niall,” Adair barked, a veiled warning there.

  Yes, any other time, matters of truces and deals with Killoran were ones discussed by the whole of their group. The moment Cleo Killoran had waltzed in and breathed mention of Diana’s safety, all those old rules had crumbled.

  “I have sisters. We don’t have noble connections like your kind.” That sneer on her lips conveyed an antipathy that matched Niall’s onetime feelings for all those of the peerage. “I want invitations and introductions for my sisters. Are we clear?”

  It wasn’t a promise he had any place making. It was one that required Helena and Penelope and their families to form a connection with some of London’s most ruthless dwellers. But he’d sell the last unblackened sliver of his soul for Diana’s well-being. “We’re clear.”

  Cleo Killoran assessed him through jaded eyes and then nodded slowly. She spat into her gloveless palm and held it out.

  Niall automatically took it in a firm shake that sealed their agreement. “I want names.”

  Adair’s black curse darkened the office. “How would she even come by that information, Niall?”

  “Because I have ears,” she rejoined, fire flashing in her eyes. “And there are more men like you”—she jerked her chin at Adair—“who fail to see a woman has a brain in her head and speak around us as though we’re invisible.” The young woman pulled her hand back and gave him that name. “Diggory.”

  The beating of the clock thundered around the room. This is the name she’d give. “Diggory’s dead,” he said, annoyance making his tone sharp.

  “Bah.” Miss Killoran slashed her blade at the air, and he stepped away from that gleaming dagger. “The problem with Black, and all of his men, is he’s only ever seen a man as deserving of power, and those same men as threats.”

  What was she on about?

  “It is Diggory’s wife.” She spoke as one conversing with the village lackwit.

  Diggory’s—he froze. Amelie Diggory. She’d been not many years older than Niall himself when he’d lived in that hovel with her. After Diggory had set her aside for Ryker’s mother, she’d become a sharp-mouthed shrew. And by the rumors that had circulated in the streets, had found herself imprisoned and shipped to Australia.

  “Impossible,” Adair said for him. “She’s been gone for years.”

  “Gone and returned.” Cleo Killoran pursed her mouth. “And she was as happy to see my brother in control of Diggory’s empire as she was to find Diggory dead doing the Duchess of Wilkinson’s dirty work.”

  At last it made sense as this girl neatly slipped all the confused-until-now pieces of a puzzle into their proper place. The person who’d been seeking revenge for Diggory’s death was none other than his wife.

  “He deserved to die,” Adair said, filling the void.

  “I never said he didn’t,” Killoran’s sister retorted. “Regardless, the duchess earned a powerful enemy.” She held Niall’s eye. “An eye for an eye.”

  Niall rocked back on his heels, feeling as though he’d had a fist plowed into his solar plexus. “Diana,” he whispered.

  As casually as if they spoke of the weather, the young woman nodded. “She has her.”

  For a long moment, those three words hung in the air. Niall blinked, trying to make sense of them. A loud buzzing like a swarm of flies on a hot London day filled his ea
rs.

  “Impossible.”

  Did that denial belong to him or Adair?

  “You questioned the loyalty of our people,” Miss Killoran chided. “You need to look closer at those in your fold. Your man Oswyn is even now escorting her to Lady Diggory.”

  The earth dipped, swayed, and faltered, and Niall shot his hands out, searching for purchase and finding it at the edge of a sofa. Oh, God. “Impossible,” he repeated, his tongue heavy in his mouth. It couldn’t be. She was at Ryker and Penny’s for a formal dinner party.

  “Here.” Matter-of-factly, Miss Killoran reached inside her cloak and fished out a small scrap. “This contains their whereabouts.”

  He accepted the piece with numb fingers and frantically scanned the page.

  Adair reached past him and tugged the ivory vellum free. “It’s a goddamned trap,” he bit out, favoring Killoran’s sister with a glare. “Oz would never betray us.”

  The young woman glowered in return. “Someone’s been betraying you since my brother came to power.”

  As Adair and Miss Killoran traded insults, Niall’s mind raced back to a year prior. To the night Oswyn had abandoned his post. Helena’s now husband, the Duke of Somerset, had found his way abovestairs, and their sister and bookkeeper, Helena, had been sent away for it. The note placed inside Penny’s rooms informed her of Ryker’s previous relationship with Clara. Niall crushed the sheet in his hands and sought to pick his way around what was real and what was false in this remarkably unsteady world.

  “Surely you aren’t listening to her,” Adair snapped.

  Cleo Killoran gave a flick of her skirts and then drew her hood into place. “Do with that what you will. It’s her life.”

  Niall’s stomach pitched. Think . . . think . . .

  “Come with me to Ryker’s dinner party. We’ll find the lady there, and then you can put aside any worry roused by this one.”

  “This one?”

  While Cleo Killoran and Adair locked in battle yet again, a memory slid forward.

  Too bad ya only caught ’im in the shoulder . . .

  His mind slowed, then stalled, and then churned to life in a dizzying motion.

  “Oi didn’t mention his shoulder,” he whispered.

  “Niall?” He dimly registered Adair’s question.

  Lost in his own muddled thoughts, Niall worked back to the morning following Diana’s attack to the meeting with his brothers and Oswyn. Oswyn’s volatile charge and reminder about his capabilities and Niall’s unwillingness to kill. Never once had he mentioned where he’d shot the bastard inside Diana’s rooms. Which could only mean . . .

  “He knew,” he said hoarsely.

  The words slipped between his clenched teeth.

  Adair gripped his arm. “What are you—?”

  Niall spun and grabbed his brother by the forearms. “It is Oswyn,” he rasped, as panic swamped him. “He’s the insider. The one who has betrayed us.” He released Adair and stumbled back, feeling like a small ship tossed out to sea in a turbulent storm. He dragged his hands through his hair. “It was why he advised me against attending.” And Niall had sent her off alone. Emitting a piteous moan that belonged more to a wounded beast than himself, Niall bolted from the room, bellowing for his horse . . .

  “Surely you aren’t taking this girl at her word?” Adair called after him.

  “See her safely delivered home,” Niall ordered, never looking back.

  A short while later, he galloped through the quiet London streets, for the first time in his life praying that he’d indeed been duped and that even now he rode into a trap.

  For if he wasn’t, and Killoran’s sister proved correct, then tonight Niall had sent Diana off to the slaughter.

  And for the first time in the whole of his thirty-odd years on earth, Niall prayed.

  Chapter 22

  A sharp kick to the stomach brought Diana awake.

  Sucking in a painful breath, she struggled upright. It was as though she’d waded into a thick haze of fog, and she blinked slowly, trying to sort out where she was. And why her arms were wrenched painfully behind her and bound at the wrists.

  And then it all came rushing forward. Oswyn’s betrayal. And now it would seem—her abduction.

  “You’re awake.” Another kick followed that announcement, and Diana hissed, curling into herself. She fought through the haze of pain and desperately sought to bring into focus the tormentor with those boots of steel. But her head throbbed with a vicious pain from where she’d taken a blow to the head. “Ya ’aven’t made this easy for me, girl,” the woman went on in her coarse cockney. “Oi’ve ’ad an easier time fighting my way back from a penal colony than killing ya.”

  “Thank you,” she croaked. Hating that hoarseness that spoke of fear. Wanting to be strong when Niall would only have ever been intrepid and commanding.

  A startled laugh escaped the older woman. “You’re a mouthy one.” She followed that with a kick to Diana’s side, tearing a gasp from her lips.

  Agony exploded at the point of contact, and she pressed her eyes tightly, not wanting this woman to have the pleasure of her tears or terror.

  When the pain abated, Diana forced her eyes open and winced. She promptly caught her head in her bound hands and cradled it. All the while she skimmed her gaze quickly over her makeshift prison. About half the size of her studio, the room was filled with stained mattresses, a handful of broken chairs. A table. She narrowed her eyes. Two men. One of those guards a faithless cur. Rage filled her for the man who’d betrayed Niall and all his siblings.

  “Ya don’t approve of the accommodations,” the woman taunted, calling Diana’s attention away from the traitor Oswyn, who stood with his back to her, gaze trained forward on the door.

  Forcing her eyes away from his hated form, she looked to the stranger. The woman was gaunt, with dirt-stained cheeks and unkempt, greasy black hair, and yet there was an astonishing elegance to her classically beautiful features. “You’re mistaken. It isn’t the accommodations but rather the host.”

  The stranger laughed, that sound clear and bell-like and very much at odds with the evil burning in her emerald-green eyes. “You’re not what Oi imagined for a duke’s daughter.”

  Pulling her bound wrists close, she ever so slightly shifted back and forth, trying to work herself free. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.” She paused and raised her bindings up. “Several disadvantages, if one wished to be truly precise.”

  In one fluid movement, the woman whipped a knife out from the front of her apron and brought the blade back.

  Diana wilted away, but her captor slashed those bonds, freeing her. She bit her lip as the blood rushed painfully back to her wrists.

  “Amelie Diggory,” the emaciated woman supplied, ringing a gasp from Diana. The woman smirked. “Even ya, a duke’s daughter, knows his name.”

  Given Diana’s abduction, today was likely the day she’d meet her maker. Such a realization should bring with it a staggering, debilitating terror. But, God help her, she’d be damned before she allowed her captor to believe it was anything less than antipathy for Diggory that pulled forth her response. Even if it expedited her own death. “It would be hard not to,” she answered between tight lips. “Your father brought suffering to many of those I love.”

  Amelie Diggory jammed the hilt of her dagger against her opposite palm. “My father?” she scoffed. “Mac wasn’t my father. ’e was my husband.”

  Her husband? Why, the woman couldn’t be many years past thirty.

  “’e married me when Oi was fourteen.”

  Diana’s stomach lurched. She had been only a child. Despite the fact that this woman had abducted her and intended her harm, a wave of pity assailed her.

  She cried out as Amelie Diggory twined her fingers in her hair and wrenched her to her feet. Tears sprang to her eyes as Diggory’s wife dragged her close. Their noses touched. “Your bitch of a mother brought him that woman,” she snapped.

  “D
elia Banbury,” she whispered, the name automatically leaving her. Ryker and Helena’s mother. Again, the Duchess of Wilkinson’s crimes reared themselves. They would always be there, remaining on in the pained existences of Diana and her siblings.

  Her captor released her suddenly, shoving her hard. Diana caught herself against the wall. “Diggory didn’t ’ave the need for a street whore when he could have the taste of a lady. Oi eventually got rid of her,” she added, with a casual shrug. “Fed her enough poison until she turned her toes up.”

  Gooseflesh dotted her arms. She’d killed Helena and Ryker’s mother. Oh, God. This was the evil Niall had spoken of. It moved far beyond the glimpse Diana had witnessed with her own mother’s atrocities and extended into a depth of the Devil’s darkness. She inched away from the madwoman and then abruptly stopped.

  The handful of lit candles played off her prison, illuminating one wall. Drawn to the cracked plaster, Diana wandered over and touched one of the many peculiar inked marks. And knew.

  Diana layered her forehead to one of those marks made long ago and struggled to breathe.

  This is the place Niall had called home as a boy. This had been the wall he’d been forced to nick off an inventory of all the men and children he’d killed. Biting her lower lip, she let her quavering arm fall to her side. The thought of him and his strength through all life’s darkness spilled into every corner of her person, giving her strength. Steeling her spine, she turned back to Diggory’s wife and met her gaze squarely. “Why don’t we move beyond the history lesson, and you explain what I’m doing here?”

  Amelie Diggory grunted. “Oi could end ya for your insolence.”

  She forced a smile. “Come,” she scoffed. “You intend to kill me, anyway.” But why?

  “An eye for an eye,” her captor repeated, brandishing that serrated blade. “Mayhap Oi should carve an eye out first. Hmm?”

  Diana’s courage flagged. Do not look at it. Do not look at it. The ruthless madwoman wanted to reduce her to a blubbering mess.

  “Oi returned from Austrail to find your mother could not stay away from my husband. Enlisted his ’elp a second time to off Helena. Was to pay ’im good coin for that job.”