The Vixen

by Christi Caldwell

  Connor reached inside his jacket, withdrew a card, and handed it over to the boy. “I need you to take this. Bring it to the Eve Dabney Foundling House.”

  Furrowing his brow, Ned turned the small scrap back and forth.

  “You will be given shelter there for as long as you shall need it. I’ll visit sometime this week to again speak with you.”

  Ned hopped up. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.” With the same trust that had led Ophelia down an alley with a nobleman, the boy scampered off.

  After he’d gone, Connor returned his attention to his notepad. His pencil struck the small leather book, filled the room, as Ophelia sat there—forgotten.

  Nay, mayhap the word was invisible. It was an unfamiliar state . . . one she’d always craved but had never been afforded. Instead, she’d been pinched and fondled for the unsavory attentions shown her. Even with the safety afforded her as Broderick’s sister, there wasn’t a day she wasn’t leered at or whispered to less than carefully as she walked by patrons.

  Until this man.

  Surely that was all that accounted for this ease in his presence?

  He briefly glanced up, a question in his nearly obsidian gaze.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, “for allowing me to remain.” Even the child had looked at her for the Devil she was.

  Her throat felt tight.

  Connor tossed his pencil atop his book and slowly stood. “Come, Ophelia,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “Do you take me for a monster? Did you expect me to harm the child? Threaten him to get the answers I seek?”

  How was it possible for this man, a stranger, to know her thoughts? For that was precisely what she’d believed.

  Disconcerted, she wandered over to the table and ran her fingers over the scalloped edge. “Oi don’t know ya enough to say if ya would or would not,” she said softly. Life in the streets killed the humanity in most of them. “If ya did ’urt ’im, ya would hardly be the first.” She winced, hating that she’d inadvertently slipped into that coarsened, vulgar Cockney. She’d long associated that speech with the ugliest time in her life, and it served only as an unnecessary reminder of Mac Diggory and his gang. Concealing it had also become a means of killing her bastard of a da’s memory. At the protracted silence, she stole a peek at him.

  Connor’s expression darkened. Was it her retort? The reminder of her birthright? Disgust? Loathing? Anger? What was it?

  “I am not that man,” he said quietly, drifting closer, erasing the space between them. Heat rolled off his powerfully muscled frame. “I am not a bully, and I’m certainly not one to terrorize a child.”

  Dangerous warmth stirred in her heart.

  She’d been propositioned by lords in the street . . . and witless patrons in her family’s club—who’d had their memberships revoked by Broderick for those offenses. Not a single one of those material offers of diamonds, garments, or a fancy townhouse of her own had ever held the sway that Connor’s grave assurance did. “Oi don’t know that about ya, either.” Her voice emerged with a shameful throatiness that brought his thick black lashes sweeping down.

  A gypsy’s lashes that most ladies would have sold their souls for.

  She swiftly averted her eyes, taking in his room once more. “After all, ya’re the law now. Even less reason to trust ya than before.” As such, he could have her thrown in Newgate for having dared touch a nob . . . and stabbed one long ago.

  She shuddered. Through the fabric of her cloak, she rubbed at her arms.

  At his silence, she glanced over and abruptly stopped, letting her arms fall back to her sides.

  A smile grazed his lips. “I’m hardly the law, Ophelia,” he assured, resting his hip on the table.

  “So what are ya, then?” she asked, moving around the opposite end, touching her fingertips to the gleaming mahogany. “Ya’ave fine stuff like a nob.”

  “As do you,” he pointed out, pivoting to face her while she continued her slow move.

  “Not the same. Mine came from . . .”

  “Theft?” He winged an eyebrow.

  Murder. Mayhem.

  “The boy was roight. Ya talk loike a fancy gent.” She chewed at her lip. “But you always did.” Ophelia suddenly stopped. “How did you do it?”

  He shook his head.

  She strode around the table to face him. “How did ya escape?”

  “Without your help?”

  “Oi didn’t say that.”

  “What if I said a benevolent lord?”

  She snorted. “No such thing.” She’d known a lifetime of suffering and disdain at their hands; she knew better than to believe that twaddle squat.

  He bowed his head. “Then we shall call it luck, madam, and leave it at that.”

  Leave it at that. Because there was no reason for their paths to again cross. Not when she’d declined to help him on his futile mission—one on behalf of a ruthless lord who’d offed his wife.

  There was an air of finality to that decision that filled her with a peculiar melancholy. Perhaps it was because, ultimately, the sacrifice she’d made that had resulted in Gertrude’s partial blindness hadn’t been in vain: Connor O’Roarke’s life had been spared.

  Ophelia fiddled with the strings of her bonnet. “Oi’m . . . ’appy ya didn’t ’ave yar neck stretched.”

  He shoved away from the table and drifted closer. “Come now, Lagertha. I’m going to come to think you actually like me.”

  His words called forth that long-ago exchange. He remembered, too. “Don’t be getting foolish thoughts in yar head.”

  They shared a small smile.

  I should go.

  “Yes, you should.”

  Ophelia started. She’d spoken aloud?

  “You did,” he murmured, his baritone thick and warm and dangerously hypnotic.

  He touched his hooded gaze upon her face, lingering that piercing stare on the slight tilt of her nose, then on the teardrop-shaped birthmark to the corner of her right eyebrow, and ultimately on the mouth she’d long lamented as too full.

  Lips made for wickedness and sin.

  How many times had that accusation been hurled at her by Diggory’s men, an invitation they’d made themselves to debase her with their taunts?

  Connor dipped his head and then stopped. He lowered it a fraction more, so close his quick, ragged intakes of air stirred her cheeks. His lemon-and-coffee scent melded the bitterness of that brew with a delicate sweetness at odds with the liquor-soaked patrons inside this club.

  A little fluttering unfurled in her belly, like a thousand butterflies set free.

  How much more wonderful that sensation was than the fear . . .

  Her chest moved in time to his own as their breaths mingled.

  I want to explore it. She wanted to know if she was capable of feeling everything a woman should be capable of feeling: desire, hunger, and passion . . . without being consumed by shame and fear.

  Ophelia darted her tongue out and trailed the seam of her lips.

  Connor’s eyes darkened as he took in that subtle movement.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed in his thick neck.

  “I want to kiss you.”

  Now who did that whispered admission belong to? All sense and order had ceased to be, and Ophelia continued on in this nebulous state.

  Fluttering her lashes closed, she tipped her head back.

  His mouth touched hers, and there was an unexpected softness to his hard lips.

  For an instant, panic slammed into her as this moment blended and melded with another long ago. The sound of her own screams, muffled against a punishing hand. The stench of brandy and turmeric, peppery and robust as it clogged her senses.

  I wouldn’t kiss a street whore . . . I’ll have your mouth elsewhere.

  God help her . . . Her breath came in frantic spurts. The keeper of her past, in all his infinite vileness, had proven correct in this—there was a searing intimacy in such a meeting.

  Ophelia tangled her hands into the fron
t of his jacket to push him back. Only it was not the satiny softness of French silk under her palms but rather a coarse wool—garments worn not by a gentleman or lord but a man unafraid to work with his hands.

  “Connor,” she whispered against him, a reminder to herself that he was not a stranger of long ago but a stranger of a different sort.

  He groaned and then palmed her gently about the nape, angling her head to better avail himself of her.

  I am safe.

  It was a foreign concept, surely steeped in madness to find a sense of safety in her childhood nemesis’s embrace.

  Yet as Connor slanted his lips over hers in a masterful stroke, it blotted all fear and rekindled the earlier warmth in her belly. Heaven help her, she wanted more. She dimly registered her bonnet sailing to the floor and landing with a soft thump.

  She wanted the burning heat of his mouth upon hers and the hot desire thickening her veins. She wanted all of it. To be a woman, capable of passion.

  How much more glorious this heated connection was than the fear.

  She closed her eyes and surrendered herself to simply feeling.

  Ophelia climbed her fingers up the broad, muscled wall of Connor’s chest, questing higher to tangle in the unfashionably long strands of his hair. Going up on tiptoe, she pressed herself against him, meeting each increasingly hungry slant of his lips over hers.

  Their chests rose and fell in a frantic rhythm, deepening their connection.

  She panted, her lips slightly parting, and he swept the inside of her mouth with his tongue.

  Her legs weakened under her, and she dimly registered him catching her about the waist and anchoring her close. He slid his palms lower, cupping her buttocks.

  Dampness settled between her legs, and with it a throbbing, tingling ache.

  A moan climbed up her throat, that wanton sound swallowed by Connor’s kiss. Since that long-ago day, no one had intimately touched her again. This embrace, however, was altogether different from that one stolen from her. This exchange was one she freely gave, and she wanted the moment to continue forever.

  Their tongues met slowly at first, with a hesitancy, and then with increasing ardor. It was the feel of being branded, burned, and marked by him.

  His breath rasping loudly in a tantalizing, erotic haze, Connor shifted his attentions lower, to her neck.

  Ophelia’s head fell back, and an endless moan escaped her as he tenderly placed his lips to the place where her pulse beat wildly for him and his embrace and this moment.

  This is what the other women in the club had spoken of . . . this was the splendor and bliss she’d mocked as a delusion or a harlot’s trick, and how gloriously wrong she’d been.

  Connor brought a hand between them, and he filled it with the plump flesh of her right breast. Through the fabric of her satin day dress, the tip pebbled and puckered. “So beautiful,” he breathed against her neck, and delicious shivers danced down her spine.

  Biting her lower lip, she tipped her head to allow him a better vantage to taste her. For when he uttered those words, they were a prayer of sorts, and not the empty, emotionless platitudes tossed at her by powerful lords.

  For he wasn’t. He was . . . he was . . . Connor O’Roarke, the ruthless investigator threatening her family’s clubs.

  A gasp exploded from her lungs. Ophelia stumbled back, tripping over herself in a bid to put space between them.

  Connor’s ragged breath filled the offices, and as the thick haze of lust clouding his vision receded, only horror remained.

  What have I done? Ophelia touched shaking fingertips to her tender mouth. I’m a traitor to my family . . . “My God,” she whispered. “I . . . I . . .”

  But what was more, she’d wanted to continue in his arms.

  His own lips that he buried behind a steadier palm than hers were damp and swollen from their kiss and surely a mirror reflection of her own. “Miss Killoran—” he began hoarsely, shattering the brief illusion of closeness and recalling the madness in desiring, of all men, this one.

  “D-do not,” she said tightly, the timbre of her voice trembling. She wanted neither his apologies nor his explanations. Not for what they implied: a mistake.

  When everything about his embrace had felt—right. “Stay away from me,” she snapped, illogical in that command. Knowing she’d been the one to follow him. Knowing she was the one guilty of this embrace.

  Proving herself an even greater coward, Ophelia grabbed her bonnet and fled.

  A short while and a miserable hackney ride later, Ophelia hurried down the alley beside the Devil’s Den.

  Oh, God. What would her brother and sisters say if they knew she’d chased after Connor O’Roarke and, worse, melted in his arms? Fingers shaking, she fiddled with the door to the kitchens. Only it wasn’t her fear of alleys that sent her into a panic.

  She cringed. I kissed him.

  And you enjoyed it.

  At last, managing to let herself in, she stumbled into the kitchens.

  And into the fire.

  Broderick stood, arms folded, brow furrowed.

  Her stomach sank. “B-Broderick.” Around them, the bustling kitchen staff scurried about, stealing sideways looks at brother and sister.

  “Leave us,” he quietly ordered.

  The men, women, and children all abandoned their tasks and filed from the room.

  She forced herself to remain absolutely motionless as Broderick passed a probing gaze over her disheveled hair and rumpled cloak, damp from when she’d been knocked down. Which only conjured images of Connor covering her with his broad, powerful frame—her breath caught—and the feel of his mouth on hers. Which hadn’t been at all vile. It had been . . . magic. It had been . . .

  Broderick lingered his eyes on her lips. Thoroughly kissed as she’d been, the heat of Connor still imprinted upon her person, surely her brother could see that brand left?

  Heat scorched her entire body.

  “You ran out of a shop.”

  She bit down on the inside of her lower lip. “I’m not a child in need of lecturing.”

  He went on. “The most celebrated modiste in London, and only after you threatened a lady.”

  “It was two.” Her brother stitched his eyebrows into a single line. “Ladies,” she clarified. “Nor did I threaten them,” she said on a rush. “I merely”—she waved her hand—“revealed my knife.” Or rather the one she’d relieved one of the guards of. She took care to leave that detail out.

  Broderick covered his face with his hands and inhaled loudly. He let his arms drop to his sides. “We had an agreement.” Her every muscle tensed. “You honored it . . .” Her brother yanked out his gleaming timepiece and consulted it. “Less than fifteen hours ago,” he confirmed, snapping the case closed. He tucked the fob back inside his jacket.

  No.

  “Reggie is seeing to your things.”

  Ophelia fluttered a hand to her throat. “Seeing to my things?” Her voice emerged faint.

  “Your trunks. I’ve sent word to Cleo and . . . her husband that you’ll be arriving.”

  A tortured little moan left her lips. “But . . .”

  “Your word is your bond,” he reminded, killing her useless appeal.

  She tried again. “But . . . but . . . my role here.” The control she’d wrested for herself could not be this fleeting. Bloody impetuous self. Why had she gone after him? Because you were worried about the child. A child who’d burned with his hatred of her and hadn’t even wanted her underfoot anyway.

  “Your role will be overseen by another.”

  Think . . . think . . . She inhaled slowly. He sought to protect . . . which had always been Broderick’s way. First Ophelia and her sisters in the streets, and Stephen, their brother . . . then the men, women, and children employed by the Devil’s Den. It was an inherent part of his character he could not divorce himself from. He sought to scuttle her away for her own protection. “I’ve done nothing wrong, Broderick,” she said with equanimity, mea
nt to reassure. “I am safe.” She gave him those three words. That one he’d been single-mindedly fixed on since he’d entered their midst a scared but determined-to-survive orphan.

  Broderick paused. “No one of our station is ever safe. Not truly.”

  It explained his hungering for a connection to the nobility that he was determined to secure at the expense of her happiness and future.

  “You leave tomorrow.” Without another word, her brother left.

  And her fate was sealed.

  Chapter 9

  Once, Ophelia had been saved by her brother, Broderick.

  Only to be sacrificed by him all these years later.

  “A dinner party,” she muttered.

  From where she stood, on the fringe of Calum and Eve Dabney’s parlor, Ophelia scanned the crowded room.

  Under any other circumstances, the fact that she’d set foot in the home of her family’s rivals would have been reason enough for the unease churning in her gut. But everything had changed. Through the marriage of her sister, the once-hated family had become an unlikely ally . . . and was the reason she was able to be presented before Society even now.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall.

  Her back went up.

  One had to always be prepared for battle.

  An older white-haired gentleman entered the room as bold as if he owned the space. The smile on his face was a contradiction to the harsh glowers she’d come to expect of the peerage.

  There’d been enough nobs with that same type of smile . . . and there had been nothing but treachery in their black souls.

  You like it rough, do you? All the better, my naughty little girl.

  Her stomach pitched, and to keep from giving in to the nightmares, she breathed in slowly through her nostrils.

  “’is Lordship, the Earl of Mar,” the coarse butler announced in street Cockney.

  Ophelia shook her head hard, fighting back the memories and focusing on Dabney’s servant.

  Street rats holding doors and announcing lords. When had the world gone topsy-turvy? Ophelia made to look away from the stranger even now being greeted by their host, but something about the older lord called her back.