The Vixen (Wicked Wallflowers Book 2)

by Christi Caldwell

  Ophelia latched on to that.

  “She’s as good as dead,” the toothless brute railed, bucking at them. “Ya got powerful enemies in the nobs ya put yar ’ands on.” Yes, Ophelia’s trial and sentencing had been swiftly pushed through with little effort on the part of Whitefield and Middlethorne. The guard eyed his friend hopefully. “Wot’s the ’arm if we fuck ’er? ’e won’t even know—”

  “What won’t I know?”

  The pair released her determined attacker, and the three immediately sprang to attention.

  The rhythmic click-click-click of his cane silenced even the rats and raindrops that penetrated the ancient stone roof.

  In the darkened space, Ophelia squinted, straining to see the owner of those cultured tones, struggling to bring him into focus . . . and then wished she hadn’t.

  Attired in a garish brocade jacket with a diamond stickpin in an elaborate cravat, his garments were as out of place in this hell as his refined speech. It was not his fancy attire, however, that gave her pause.

  She shrank back before catching herself in that reflexive response.

  For the stranger before her, with his midnight hair drawn back at his nape, accentuating a face that didn’t know if it was beautiful or hideous, had the look of Satan himself. At last he stopped before the three men.

  Lined shoulder to shoulder, the trio silenced; they each kept their gazes wisely on the floor. After giving them a dismissive once-over, he turned his attentions on Ophelia.

  “You are Diggory’s daughter, then,” he murmured in smooth, melodic baritones, his words casual as if he inquired after the weather.

  “Only in the sense he sired me,” she said evenly. Connor had helped her see that she was so much more than that vile, blackhearted bastard who’d roused terror in the hearts of all.

  His lips quirked up. “It is not so simple to divorce one from one’s blood.” He spoke as one who knew.

  Yet . . . with that admission, how very little he understood. She’d not debate the point with him. She studied him; his swarthy features, better suited to a gypsy, were carved in a cold, unfeeling mask. It was enough she knew the truth.

  She realized that now.

  Turning his shoulder dismissively, he glanced to his minions. “Who proposed violating terms of an agreement I struck?” he asked in lethal, ice-laden tones.

  The men quaked; two of them looked to the one between them.

  Lifting a hand that shook, he stepped forward.

  “Tsk, tsk. What. Am. I. To. Do. With. You?” He clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth as he wandered a path around him. Contemplating him. Toying with him. The nameless Devil lifted the head of his cane, close to his mouth, so close his lips nearly touched the gleaming gold metal. “To my offices, until I decide what to do with you.”

  The man swallowed loudly and dropped a bow. He tripped over himself as he ran away to an assured doom.

  For there could be no doubting the man who stood before them was Wiley, known all through the Dials as the liege of this hell.

  He lifted his spare, immaculate white glove.

  The guards immediately faded into the shadows.

  Wylie came closer to the bars. He raked a derisive eye over her person. “You don’t have the look of your bastard of a father, Miss Diggory.”

  Inside, her body shook, and she battled down that fear, refusing to be cowed, refusing to spend the last days she had on earth pleading with a man incapable of mercy. She edged her chin up. “My name is Ophelia Killoran.”

  He chuckled, but the deadened sound was absent of all amusement. “I see you are quite special to some people that they’d unblinkingly turn over a fortune to make your last days . . . comfortable.”

  Her pulse jumped. Who . . . ?

  A tall figure stepped forward.

  Her hopes immediately plummeted. “Broderick,” she said, her voice hoarse and raspy from ill use. Of course.

  “Did you expect it was another?” the warden mocked.

  Her brother took in every inch of her person before ultimately settling on her sheared tresses. His face contorted into a paroxysm which he instantly concealed as he cast a dark glower at the warden. Impervious to that icy rage, he removed a key from inside his jacket. “You have five minutes.”

  “Ten.”

  God, how she loved her brother for the fearless warrior he’d always been . . . on her and her siblings’ behalf.

  “Ten,” the devil shockingly concurred. He let Broderick inside.

  Her brother rushed forward and then stopped, again studying her.

  At last, he opened his arms.

  Ophelia hugged herself close. “I . . . You shouldn’t.” As if a reminder of all the reasons she wasn’t fit to be touched by anyone, the mites making a home in her scalp wrought havoc on the already rubbed-raw skin. She scratched again.

  Groaning, Broderick came close and drew her against his chest.

  She struggled against him.

  “Do not . . . ,” he whispered against her lice-filled scalp.

  This was the last she’d ever see of him. Never again would she see her sisters, or Stephen, or Connor. “Broderick . . .” Then she wept, crying great, big gasping tears and wetting his jacket front with the misery she’d fought these past days. Only there were no other words. What was there to say, after all? Every decision she’d made, as a girl of eight and then as a woman of two and twenty, she’d have made all over again.

  “I know,” he said softly, cupping her cheek. He just held her, with the precious time they were allotted melting away. At last, she managed to gain control of her sorrow. She forced herself to back out of his arms.

  “I wanted to come sooner,” her brother explained hoarsely. “I offered a fortune.” He cast a hate-filled look to the place Wylie had occupied a short while ago. “In the end, Steele made arrangements.”

  Connor.

  Ophelia fluttered her hands about her throat. “Connor.”

  He’d done that. Despite knowing who her father was? Any other man would have let her rot alone for the secrets she’d kept. But then, that had never been the manner of person Connor was.

  Broderick held her cheek, forcing her attention back to him.

  “I cannot save you.”

  The hoarsened words should have cleaved her in two for the finality there and the fact that her fate had been sealed.

  Except . . .

  It was what she’d been expecting. She’d known the truth before he’d even said it.

  “I know,” she said softly.

  “I am so sor—”

  “Five minutes,” the warden called out.

  She pressed her fingertips against Broderick’s lips, willing away his guilt. She was the owner of every decision she’d ever made. “You need to allow Gertrude a role in the club. She is intelligent. She sees so much. Do not underestimate her. Not anymore.” They all had. For so, so long. He gave an unsteady nod. “And Adair—be kind to him. He loves Cleo and has a heart that is so wonderful.” The column of Broderick’s throat moved rhythmically. “It is time for us to be at peace with the Blacks.” Why had it taken her so long to realize the good in them? Because you needed Connor in your life to make you at last see. “I’d have you make me a promise.”

  He caught her hands and raised her fisted knuckles to his lips. “Anything,” he managed, his voice rough.

  “I want you to end prostitution in the club.” Her brother’s pained laugh echoed around the stone walls, and she continued over it. “The women we hire, they’ve had no choice but to sell themselves to survive”—how narrow her views on survival had been—“but they possess skills and strengths as great or greater than any man we’ve hired.” Just as Ophelia had been overlooked, so, too, had the women employed by the Devil’s Den. “Speak to Black and his family about what they’ve done. They will guide you. Promise me.”

  A glossy sheen filled Broderick’s eyes, nearly breaking her.

  She bit her lower lip to keep from giving in to ano
ther fit of misery.

  He offered another jerky nod.

  “Promise me,” she urged, demanding that he say it. Needing to know there would be a new beginning for some women when there wouldn’t be for her. Oh, God. I do not want to die. Her heart crumpled. I thought I was so much stronger. “Promise,” she said. Her voice, tinged with panic, pitched to the ceiling.

  “You have my p-promise.” His voice broke.

  Ophelia patted his stubbled cheek. How many times had he taken on the role of soother, assuring her and her siblings that all would be fine? How those roles had been so transposed.

  “Two minutes,” the warden announced, stirring the panic in her breast.

  “There is one more thing.” Ophelia drew in a slow breath.

  “Do not,” he begged, because of course he already knew. Ultimately, she believed that deep in her heart. Broderick would do what must be done.

  “He is not ours, Broderick.”

  Broderick squeezed his eyes shut and then covered his face with his hands.

  She wrestled them back to his side.

  “We cannot lose h—” His voice cracked. “I cannot lose you both.”

  Her already broken heart ripped all over again, bleeding from the agony in her brother’s tone and ravaged eyes.

  “Oh, Broderick,” she whispered, squeezing his hands in hers. “He was never ours.”

  “Your time is up, Killoran.”

  They both looked to the iron bars.

  Nonetheless, her brother remained. “Until I draw my last breath, I will regret that I sent you away. You belonged with us. If there hadn’t been a Season . . .” His eyes slid shut.

  “If there hadn’t been a Season, there would have been no Connor, and my life was incomplete before him,” she said with a surprising strength.

  The door opened.

  Her brother stretched out a hand, brushing his fingertips against hers, and then he was gone.

  There was nothing more to do but wait until her walk to the gallows.

  Chapter 24

  Connor had stalked the halls of Newgate many times before.

  Countless cases had carried him within the miserable gaol to put questions to men and women who’d murdered or stood accused of murder. To interrogate rapists and thieves.

  One never forgot the stench of feces and rotting bodies, the metallic tinge of blood and sweat. As a once young investigator, he’d despised every trek he’d been forced to take down the rotted corridors. He was never more grateful than when he finished his questioning and was able to step outside and suck in the fresh air to drive back the fetid odors that clung to a person.

  Not a single one of those visits could have ever prepared him for this one . . . to this woman.

  Swallowing the bile at the back of his throat, he kept his gaze forward, on the guard escorting him through the dank, dark corridors.

  From somewhere deep in the belly of London’s most ruthless prison, a sharp, keening cry echoed throughout.

  His breath rasped loudly in his ears, and he fought to shield those sounds.

  She was here. She was deserving of more than his weakness.

  With each step that brought him farther into the abyss that was the hell of Newgate, panic clawed at his mind, stealing reason and logic.

  “’ere we are,” the guard lisped.

  A rat scurried over his boots, and Connor stared after the enormous rodent.

  She is living here. She is living with rats and rapists and—

  The guard opened the door.

  It took a moment for Connor’s eyes to adjust to the dark, narrow space. Then he found her, and his heart cracked, bled, and died there.

  Ophelia lay in the corner. With her back presented to the door, her gown in tatters, and those glorious blonde tresses now shorn unevenly about her head, it was the absolute stillness that ushered in the truth.

  She had given up on hope.

  It invariably struck all forced into this place. But the evidence of it, from this woman whose life mattered more to him than even his own, destroyed him in ways he would never, could never, recover from.

  He dimly registered the guard closing the door at his back, and Connor and Ophelia were left alone inside.

  Connor went down on a knee beside her, hovering his hands over her, wanting to take her in his arms, afraid to force her. Afraid that despite the deal he’d struck with the devil who ran this place, she’d suffered anyway. “Oh, Ophelia,” he whispered, his voice catching.

  Her slender frame stiffened, but she made no move to face him.

  “Has anyone hurt you?” For if they had, Connor would find the ones responsible, gut them with a dull blade, and gleefully watch as they choked out their last breath.

  She gave her head a slight shake, and a wave of relief so strong assailed him it brought his eyes closed.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” He finally asked the question that had haunted him since the moment she’d been hauled off. Had she not trusted him? Had she believed so little of him and his love for her?

  But then, you never told her that you loved her.

  At last she forced herself upright. When she faced him, the sight of her hit him like a kick to the chest. Dirt and grime stained her ashen cheeks, her crimson lips a stark contrast to their pale hue. But it was the wide pool of her blue eyes—haunted, hunted, tortured.

  He ached to make her suffering his own.

  “How could I tell you that?” she whispered. “How could I have told you, the only man I ever loved”—oh, God, her words splayed him open—“that my father was the one responsible for every suffering you and your parents knew?”

  “Did you know me so little that you believed I should hold you accountable for his sins?” His question emerged harsher than he intended, and he immediately regretted it.

  Tears pooled in her crystalline eyes. “At first the lie was just . . . easier. Easier than admitting that when we first met, I didn’t even have a name. That I was simply ‘Girl.’”

  I will not survive the pain of this. “It is why you never gave me a name?” That agonized question came, dragged from him. A low moan seeped from his lips.

  “I created a world that I’d wished was mine,” she said softly, steadier in that explanation than he could manage. How much stronger she’d always been. “I offered you the world I’d secretly dreamed of.”

  “But I wanted all of you, Ophelia.” Wanted . . . a tense that marked the end of what could never be. I won’t survive this. Losing her would leave him hollow and deadened in ways even his own parents’ deaths had not. “I didn’t want the imagined; I wanted all of you.” He reached for her.

  She recoiled, scooting away from him until her back knocked against the wall. “Don’t,” she whispered, threading her hands through those shorn locks. Of all the agony and misery of her being here and what would come, and what he’d been powerless to stop, he mourned the loss of those pale-blonde strands. The ones that had lain draped about him like a silken waterfall were now jagged, greasy wisps.

  Had it really been mere days since his world had fallen apart? How, when it felt like an interminable lifetime had come to pass?

  “Oi’ve got the creepers.”

  With a groan, he pulled her into his arms, and she went unresistingly. “Do you think I would let that keep me from holding you?” When the time between them was so short. The air trapped in his throat, strangling him. All the while he was deluged with panic and something more crippling—helplessness.

  They remained that way, still in each other’s arms, on the dank cell floor.

  Ophelia was the first to move.

  She turned her head and layered her cheek to the place where his heart pounded. A soft, even sigh, a peaceful one, sifted from her lips. She grazed her fingertips, in a butterfly caress, over the front of his chest. The tenderness of that touch threatened to break him all over again.

  Gathering her onto his lap, Connor simply sat there on the floor of Newgate, wanting to remain forever
as they were, because then at least she would be in his life, still breathing. As long as they were together, he could survive anywhere.

  Tears pricked behind his lashes, and he squeezed his eyes tight, wanting to be strong for her. “My Lagertha.” Connor touched his lips to her right temple.

  Ophelia edged back. “Tell me the story of it . . . that name.”

  There it was. For the first time since they’d met as children and he’d used that name, she asked.

  The cinch squeezed all the more. “There was once a man named Ragnar Lodbrok. He went to war with the king of Sweden. Amidst the battle, a warrior emerged, an Amazon woman, braver than all the men on that entire field. Her hair hung about her shoulders as she fought. At the battle’s end, captivated, Ragnar made her his wife.” Just as Connor had wanted a future with Ophelia. He swallowed the ball of emotion in his throat. “And from then on, when he went to war, they fought at each other’s side.”

  At her silence, he stole a glance down.

  A wistful smile hovered on her lips. “I love that story,” she said softly. Slipping her fingers into his, she joined them, connecting those digits. Ophelia raised his knuckles and placed a kiss upon them and then urged him to unfurl them.

  “Your hands,” he hissed, noting that detail he’d failed to previously see: the blood staining her fingers.

  Ophelia made a dismissive sound. “It is the lice.” She caressed her fingers over the palm of his hand and then trailed a jagged nail down an intersecting line over his left hand.

  “This is the line of fate,” she said, drawing his eyes to the perpendicular one that crossed his hand.

  That was the last palm I ever read. Now, she’d read those lines upon his hand. There was a heavy shadow of finality to her actions. His stomach clenched sharply. “I don’t want to know—” She briefly lifted her eyes, quelling him with a look. She returned her scrutiny to his hand. “You’ll find yourself in possession of great wealth.”

  Connor stared blankly at her bent head. He had a fortune, built with his own hands, as well as the unentailed wealth and properties awaiting him at his father’s passing. What good was any of it? All of it had proven useless thus far in trying to free Ophelia from this hell.