The Vixen (Wicked Wallflowers Book 2)

by Christi Caldwell

  “I do,” her brother was saying. “Business I was seeing to before you stormed my offices.” He paused. “Again.”

  Ophelia’s mouth tensed, those rosebud lips tight with her annoyance.

  Connor had always been selfish. From the day he’d abandoned his only friend and thieving partner, Niall, to the day he’d unrepentantly lived a life of ease with the Earl of Mar while Ophelia had been left behind, it had been the greatest flaw to his soul.

  In this instance, with Ophelia before him, hands akimbo and her eyes a mystery, selfishly he wanted her anyway. He wanted her despite the fact that he was the reason she’d been thrown into Newgate and he’d been unable to spring her from that hell.

  Then Ophelia stole a glance at the door. When she looked back, worry darkened her eyes. “Is it time? Is he leaving?” The faintness to those questions stood in stark contradiction to the steely set to her shoulders.

  Broderick hesitated and then shook his head. “Steele presented his . . .” Her. It had been Ophelia who’d pieced together details he’d likely never have himself. “Findings to the gentleman, and . . .” He gestured to Connor.

  “And the gentleman was suspicious. Suspicious enough to doubt the boy is truly his son. I’ve asked him to eventually meet the boy, but he has . . . declined.”

  Shock spilled from Ophelia’s eyes. “What?” She shook her head. “He’s held out faith and hope that the child still lives, and when presented with the truth, he . . . ?”

  Connor knew the precise moment that understanding set in.

  Her lips moved, but no words came out.

  How Connor hated it for her. Despised a world that had always passed judgment on her and her kin for crimes they’d been forced to commit. Once, he’d not seen that. He’d judged, seeing them as different from even himself. What a narrow-minded arse he’d been.

  “That is why you’re here then. To discuss Lord Maddock’s case?”

  Was it merely hope that conjured the regret in her tone?

  He looked to her brother.

  The other man hesitated and then motioned to the chairs at the foot of his desk. “After you’d shared with me . . . your suspicions,” he said once he’d taken his seat, “I didn’t believe you. I didn’t believe you because I didn’t wish to.” Killoran’s gaze fell to the stained, aged leather folders before him.

  Ophelia leaned forward, studying those books. She jerked, gripping the arms of her chair. “Those are—”

  “Diggory’s books. Yes.” The proprietor dug free a book tucked in the middle of his pile. He flipped through it and suddenly stopped. “Here,” he murmured, holding it out.

  Ophelia hesitated, then took the ledger.

  “It contains the names of his wives from that year, along with their children.”

  “I don’t under—” And then she stopped. Her slender frame turned to stone in her seat.

  “It contains Black’s name and his mother,” Killoran confirmed. “A duke’s by-blow, Ryker and Helena Black were perfectly suited children for one as obsessed with—”

  “Noble connections,” Ophelia finished for him. She glanced briefly in Connor’s direction; their gazes locked, and then she cut him out once more. “I do not understand,” she said to her brother. “What does any of this have to do with your hiring Mr. Steele?”

  Again, Mr. Steele. His stomach clenched. Not Connor. Rather, a stranger and nothing more.

  With more reluctance, the head proprietor slipped free the book at the very bottom of the pile. “Your allegations led me to search through his papers and books. And I discovered this.” He handed it over.

  Ophelia read through those pages, and then her gaze locked at the center of the page. “My God,” she whispered.

  “Your brother discovered Diggory’s net had been cast far wider, and the children he’d once sought to make his heir were actually young babes born to the nobility.”

  The leather journal shook in her hands. “He always desired a nobleman’s blood. Wanted it for his own.”

  “And he took it,” Killoran said gravely.

  “Not it,” Ophelia whispered. She lifted ravaged eyes. “He took ch-children. Are there others? Than these?” She glanced back down.

  “Three,” Connor murmured. “Your brother discovered three in that particular accounting kept by Diggory and . . .” His words trailed off, and he glanced regretfully over at Broderick.

  The proprietor’s throat moved spasmodically. “Stephen in another.” Grief contorted his features in a raw show of emotion.

  Ophelia caught her brother’s hands in hers, and Connor briefly looked away. Not only would Ophelia and her family be shattered by the loss of their brother but they’d also be raked through every gossip page and shunned by Polite Society.

  Clearing his throat, Broderick released Ophelia’s hands. When he again spoke, he was restored to the unaffected figure of Connor’s first meeting. “Whether there are more children, I cannot say for certain.” He rolled his shoulders. “It is why I’ve hired Mr. Steele. He’ll conduct the search to find their whereabouts . . . or the fate of each of them.”

  Ophelia gasped. “You believe they are alive?”

  It was unlikely that they’d lived more than twenty years on their own in the streets of London. And yet . . . Stephen had survived. As had Connor. As such, there could be others.

  “He marked the deaths and murders of those in his gang,” Connor supplied.

  Ophelia again studied the pages in that book. “For Diggory, it wouldn’t have been affection that led him to mark the passing of those children,” she said quietly to herself.

  Aye. Everything Diggory had done in his hateful, evil life had been driven with a thought to his empire in mind. The poor souls in his book had been mentioned only in death because of the income lost and the need to replace them with others to fill their roles.

  “There are no marks made on the fate of these children,” she finally said, looking up from the pages.

  “That is correct.” Killoran, with greater reluctance, offered one final book. “It is why I suspected they managed to escape.” And might be alive, even now. “The one other name thus far I’d found so marked was . . .”

  Ophelia trailed her fingertips over the letters of one name. Connor O’Roarke. It is his name. “Connor’s,” she whispered.

  The agony of loss gripped him all over again. It was a pain that would never go away. Ophelia had shown him that even as he’d sought to bury his past, it would always be there: the suffering . . . but also the love he had known with his parents.

  Killoran broke the quiet. “It is the only explanation I could otherwise surmise.”

  Ophelia’s eyes slid closed, and she shook her head. “That bastard.”

  “After he’d taken me in, with my”—he grimaced—“birthright and abilities, I was as close as he could come to respectability. And so I sufficed. We each served each other’s purposes.” Something dark lit the other man’s gaze but then was swiftly gone. “I cannot erase Diggory’s wrongs, but I can try to right them. Steele will be overseeing the investigation. It will be fully funded by the club.”

  “Oh.” Ophelia dropped her eyes to that book. “I see.” Wordlessly, she turned the aged journals over to her brother.

  What did she believe she saw? The question raged around Connor’s mind.

  A knock sounded at the doorway, interrupting their meeting.

  “Enter!” Killoran boomed.

  A heavily freckled young woman ducked her head inside. “Forgive me. Your presence is required on the floors,” she murmured. “A fight has broken out between two of the patrons, and they’re demanding a word with you.”

  A black curse exploded from Killoran’s lips. He shoved to his feet. “I’ll be along shortly. Ophelia. Steele.” He stretched a hand out, and Connor shook it. “You’ve your other business to see to.” A dark glint iced his gaze. “Do not make me regret my decisions.”

  With that, the head proprietor stalked off, and Ophelia and C
onnor were left alone.

  Chapter 26

  Ophelia should have found peace in Connor’s presence here. Her brother hadn’t sought to bury away Diggory’s evil—and because of their connection to that monster—their complicity.

  The ton would gossip.

  The club would likely suffer.

  There’d certainly be no connection to the nobility for Gertrude after this.

  Yet he’d put the lives of three lost boys—now men—before all of that.

  That should be enough. It had long been the one hope she’d carried: that Broderick would abandon his Diggory-like obsession with the peerage and be content with his grand empire.

  Selfishly, it was not.

  Connor had come only on a matter of business.

  He closed the notepads and folders he and Broderick had previously been studying. She followed each careful movement as he neatly stacked them.

  “You have been . . . well?”

  No, she’d been miserable—empty and aching and tortured by memories of Newgate, and riddled with a horror that would never leave. “I’ve not,” she offered instead, unwilling to lie to him.

  His face crumpled. “Oh, Ophelia.” He reached for her. “I wanted to come to you,” he said, his voice ragged.

  Ophelia pushed his hands away. “And yet you didn’t.” She jutted her chin. She didn’t want his pity. She wanted him in her life. She wanted his heart. “I th-thought you were at the very least a friend that you might . . . visit before . . . this.” What a pathetically weak gift to settle for. A visit from him. A mere visit when she wanted all of him, forever.

  “Is that what you believe?” he murmured, drifting around the side of the desk. “That we are friends?”

  “Yes. No.” For she had . . . she’d also, however, after his visit to Newgate and every intimate exchange before it, deluded herself into believing that mayhap they were more. “I . . . I . . . aren’t we?” Because even as he’d been her lover, he’d first been her friend—a truth she’d denied all these years.

  He dusted his knuckles over her cheek, and she leaned into that soft caress. “I wanted to see you.” His hand fell back to his side, and she silently cried out at the loss of his touch. “There was business, however, I needed to . . . wanted to see to before I came here.”

  “Business?” she echoed hollowly. The irony was not lost on her that they’d come full circle. Business was that which had brought him back into her life.

  “My father wronged you. He’s since expressed regret for his treatment of you.” A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye. “I’ll not begin to explain for him or make apologies on his behalf, but . . .” His fingers curled into tight balls. “He proved your worst opinions about the nobility correct, and for that I am sorry.”

  Disappointment threatened to overwhelm her. Connor had come to apologize for crimes that belonged to another. “You are no more responsible for his actions than I am of my father’s,” she said simply. “You showed me that.” He’d opened her eyes to the truth. Some in the nobility were as evil as Satan, but there were those who were good—not unlike the men and women born to the streets.

  Connor sat forward in his seat. “I have operated the better part of my adult life believing I could right injustices.” Regret flashed within his eyes. “And yet Lords Middlethorne and Whitehaven—they’ll not rot in Newgate as they should for their crimes. They’ll not hang.” A seething rage spilled from his frame, and her heart ached anew with her love for him. His visceral reaction, that shared outrage—was for her.

  She plucked at the fabric of her skirts. “Some are untouchable.” Those dark lords who’d sought to ruin her were amongst them. “You can never change that. No one can.”

  He nodded. “Yes, some are. But everyone has weaknesses.” Connor’s gaze locked with hers. “Their reputations matter more to them than anything.” Ophelia stilled. What was he saying? “I made clear to Lords Middlethorne and Whitehaven that every scandal sheet would sing with the crimes they were guilty of . . . if they didn’t leave England.” Her heart quickened. “I promised them the moment they set foot on English soil, everyone would know their sins.”

  The air exploded from her lungs. “You saw them exiled.” For me.

  Connor cleared his throat. “It is less than they deserve, and I wished I could . . . do more.”

  “Thank y-you,” she said, her voice catching. This man had shared in her fury and managed what no one else could . . . or ever would, for a girl born to the streets. She wanted to hurl herself in his arms and live in that embrace forever. And yet . . . “That was the business you were seeing to,” she murmured to herself. That had been the reason he’d not come sooner.

  Connor took her hands in his and trailed his thumbs over the sensitive skin of the top of her fingers. That back-and-forth stroking sent little shivers from her palms all the way up her arm. “I had additional matters I needed to attend.”

  His betrothal.

  Her heart ached all over again. “I understand an arrangement was reached between you and the duchess,” she managed, her voice hoarse. With every admission, she left herself more and more exposed before him, but God help her, she’d no pride where this man was concerned.

  Connor turned her closed hand over and brushed her palm open. “Have you ever had your future read?”

  Blankly, she stared at their connected hands. Actually, she hadn’t. She’d always been too busy telling the futures of others. Incapable of words, she shook her head.

  With the tip of his index finger, he trailed the intersecting line that met her wrist and followed it up to the center of her hand. “This is called your fate line.”

  She studied him, wholly fixed on her palm. “What are you—?”

  “There was a boy you once saved. You were destined to again meet.”

  Aye, it had always seemed that way where she and Connor O’Roarke had been concerned. Their paths had been meant to cross and their fates to be inextricably intertwined. Only to be so neatly severed by Lady Bethany and her father. Several tears slipped down her cheeks.

  “And this,” he murmured, grazing his fingertip over the horizontal line that met below her pinkie and following it to the middle of her hand, “is your love line.”

  “Stop it,” she whispered, struggling against his grip, but he held firm.

  “And in it I see a man who’s loved you so hopelessly and helplessly from the moment you entered his life as a mere child. A man who loves you even more now, as a woman of strength and courage and compassion.”

  A little sob burst from her, and tears flooded her eyes, blurring his visage. “What game are ya playing?” she cried.

  “There is no game,” he said, so collected. He lifted his gaze, meeting hers, and then resumed his reading. “This man will remind you how to smile and laugh and love.” Oh, God. Tears slid unchecked down her cheeks. “And there’ll be a babe. Many of them. At least four.”

  A ragged sob tore from her throat.

  “I offered to marry Bethany,” he said quietly.

  Ophelia bit down hard on the inside of her cheek and struggled against him. She exploded to her feet. Wanting to flee. Wanting to escape him and this moment and the future.

  “I did it to save you—”

  “You don’t get to sacrifice yourself to save me,” she cried, tossing her arms up. “Not again.” Only he had.

  “That reading,” he went on, motioning to her palms.

  “You cannot steal my reading, Connor.” She knew precisely what her future would be without him in it: empty, bleak, with her married to a nob her brother approved of, and now it wouldn’t even matter. It wouldn’t matter because her heart had died in that cold Newgate cell.

  “Ah, but you see, Ophelia.” Connor brushed back the moisture from her face, but there were other tears to take their place. “I can use that reading you gave me. Because our lives, like our hearts, have been forever intertwined. That future you saw for me . . . was true. Because it was linked to you.”
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  She covered her hand with her mouth, catching another sob.

  His eyes grew somber. “Bethany freed me from her father’s expectation.”

  Ophelia’s entire body went ramrod straight. Heart thudding wildly against her rib cage, she jerked her gaze to his. “What?”

  “She explained that my friendship meant too much to ever keep me from the woman I love. That even as desperate as she was, she herself was unwilling to enter into another cold, empty union.”

  She pressed a hand over her chest, willing his words to make sense. “What are you saying?”

  He gathered her palms again and raised them one at a time to his lips, placing a lingering kiss upon her knuckles. “I am saying we are both . . . free. As such, the other business I spoke of . . . was with your brother.”

  “My brother?” she echoed, desperately trying to follow.

  He sank to a knee.

  Ophelia gasped, jumping back a step.

  “I am asking you to marry me. Even as I have no right.” No right? “My father wronged you, and because of him,” he went on hoarsely, “I’m the reason for your suffering—”

  Ophelia buried the remainder of that admission behind her fingertips. “You are not allowed to take ownership of the actions of another, Connor. You rightfully wouldn’t allow it of me, and I’ll not allow it for you.”

  “There will be only you, Ophelia,” he repeated, and this time, where she’d halted his profession before, she now needed it from him. Wanted it. “I love you.”

  Joy exploded in her breast, but she hesitated.

  “What is it?” he asked, his tone somber.

  For all the time they’d known each other, from when she was a girl to this moment now, he’d made decisions that defined her future. Each time at the expense of his own. “I can’t have you like this,” she finally said, taking a step back.

  His features contorted. “What? I . . . I don’t . . .” Connor shook his head.

  She lifted her chin, needing him to see and understand. “You don’t get to sacrifice yourself for me, Connor. Not anymore. If you had married h-her . . .” Her voice broke, and she struggled around the despair stuck there. “There are many deaths a person can suffer,” she whispered. His marriage to Lady Bethany would have left her forever bereft. Ophelia stared beyond his shoulder. “I would have preferred the hanging.”