The Vixen

by Christi Caldwell

  In the scheme of her crimes and sins, sharing a pretend past with Connor O’Roarke was amongst the least of them. So why did that not ease her deepening guilt?

  A spring breeze stirred through the gardens, washing over her face, pulling at her curls. Several strands tugged free of her chignon.

  “Here,” Connor murmured, collecting those strands. Except . . . instead of tucking them behind her ear, instead of pinning them under her diamond shell-combs, he clung to them.

  Her breath caught.

  Or was that his?

  In this instance, the whole world melted away so that there was only—“Oomph.” Connor blinked and then abruptly released the strand. He rubbed at his temple.

  What in blazes?

  “’ands off moi sister, ya miserable blighter,” Stephen thundered.

  Her stomach lurched, and with it, reality. “Stephen, no,” she commanded in stern tones as her brother came charging. Anticipating his intentions, Ophelia placed herself in the path of the nearly ten-year-old warrior rushing over.

  Not breaking stride, Stephen hurled himself past her. His fist bounced off Connor’s jaw, bringing his head whipping back.

  Connor may as well have been struck with a feather.

  Ophelia’s heart hammered as around them shouts and cries went up from the previously playing children. “Stephen,” she shouted, grabbing the back of his jacket. “That is . . .” He wrenched himself free and lunged again at Connor.

  “Oi read the papers about ya. Panting after moi sister, and now putting yar hands on her. Oi’ll kill ya,” Stephen snarled and launched again.

  Connor easily caught her brother and gathered him in a firm yet unthreatening hold.

  “Let me go, ya bastard.” Stephen bucked and thrashed. “Oi won’t let moi sister be pawed by a bloody investigator. She ain’t a whore.”

  “Stephen, that is enough,” she bit out, taking him by the forearm.

  He yanked the slender limb free. “And wot of ya? Panting after ’im loike one of the—”

  “Not another word.” Connor steeled that command in an ice that cut across the boy’s rage.

  Then she registered the absolute still that had quieted even the spring breeze.

  From the front of the gardens, a cluster of guests stared on with varying degrees of horror and fascination.

  Ophelia’s heart plummeted as she took in her wide-eyed sisters layered between the Dabneys, Connor’s father, and a stricken Lady Bethany. The duchess touched quivering fingers to her lips and then wordlessly bolted off.

  Oh, bloody hell, she knew rot about propriety and decorum, but she knew enough that this was bad. “I’m ruined.”

  “Ophelia,” Connor said in a hushed whisper.

  Only, what was there to say?

  “Let me go,” Stephen cried, bucking back and forth like a wounded dog Gertrude had once taken in. “Oi’ll kill ya. Oi’ll—”

  “Enough.” Gertrude crossed over, effectively silencing their brother.

  Even so, he stood, alternating a black glower between Connor and Ophelia.

  “We’re done here,” Gertrude said.

  Dread sank like a stone in her belly. “It is not—”

  “Not here,” her eldest sister bit out. “We’re leaving.”

  “I arrived with Cleo—”

  “And you are leaving with me.”

  Any other time she’d have gone toe-to-toe with anyone, kin included, who sought to order her about. Only they’d attracted a sea of stares, whispers, and gossip. Who would believe Ophelia would prefer facing questions from Cleo to this simmering eldest of her siblings?

  “We’re leaving,” Gertrude repeated, her mouth not even moving as she spoke. Gripping Stephen by the shoulder, Gertrude gave Connor a once-over and marched off.

  Ophelia lingered, wanting to apologize . . . for this day, for her father’s treachery, for his loss, her lies. There were too many places for her to even begin.

  He gave an imperceptible shake of his head, one that conveyed that all was fine when it wasn’t.

  The guests parted to allow her siblings their exit, and bringing her shoulders back, Ophelia marched forward with her eyes daring anyone to say so much as a word.

  After an interminable march through the Dabneys’ foundling hospital, cloak in place, bonnet in hand, Ophelia found herself back in Broderick’s carriage.

  No sooner had the carriage rocked into motion did Gertrude cry out, “What in blazes were you thinking?”

  “It was not how it looked,” Ophelia exploded, tossing the lace-trimmed straw bonnet on the opposite seat. It landed with a quiet thwack beside her sister. “As such, blame should be placed where blame is due.”

  As one, they looked to the waiflike figure on the bench beside Ophelia.

  “Me?” he squawked. “Me? She’s the one who was making eyes at Steele, letting him paw her in public.”

  “Stephen,” her sister snapped.

  High color flooded Ophelia’s cheeks. “I was not letting him paw me.”

  “Liar,” Stephen shouted.

  Gertrude held up a hand just as Ophelia opened her mouth to launch into a tirade against the fieriest of her siblings. “Regardless, it is done.”

  It is done.

  There was an air of finality that hung from those four words that chilled the carriage.

  The eldest Killoran sister rubbed at her temples.

  “Broderick is going to take him apart with his hands,” Stephen said with a vicious glee.

  “Stephen,” Ophelia and Gertrude said together.

  He kicked his feet out on the bench, hooking his ankles. “Wot? ’e is. ’e sent ya to Mayfair to nab a nob, not cozy up to an investigator who—hey,” he shouted as Ophelia knocked his legs out from that insolent pose.

  “There’s no reason he will find out.”

  “Been reading the papers.”

  Of course he had been. He’d always been inordinately fascinated by the gossip pages that offered a glimpse into the lives of the nobility.

  Ophelia caught herself just as she went to massage her own temples.

  “And ’e ain’t happy,” he added, more cheerful than Ophelia remembered seeing him since . . . well . . . ever.

  “First, nothing happened,” she directed to her sister. “Second, aside from the children at the foundling house”—of which there had been ten or so—“no one other than Cleo, the Dabneys, and Mr. Steele’s father and . . .” The woman he’d hoped to marry. A proper, respectable miss who still held feelings for Connor and wished to wed him. “No one will say anything,” she said with a quiet confidence. Assuredly not the woman more than half in love with Connor. A fissure ripped across her heart.

  “You cannot be certain of that.” Gertrude remained in possession of her usual quiet pragmatism.

  “I am confident.”

  “Ya’re relying on trusting the Blacks and a fancy lady?” her brother piped in.

  “She’ll say nothing,” she said more harshly than she intended.

  The carriage came to a slow stop outside Ophelia’s temporary home. She pushed the door open and jumped down.

  “Stay in the carriage,” she heard her sister warn their brother.

  Ophelia made it no farther than three steps before Gertrude caught up with her. She took her by the shoulder. “What . . . ?”

  “Do you care for him?”

  Her mouth moved, but no words emerged. Not a hint of a sound or a sigh or a whisper.

  Her sister repeated in quiet tones, “This Mr. Steele written about in the papers. Do you care for him?”

  Did she care for him?

  A denial sprang to her lips. It was madness. It was illogical. It was . . . impossible.

  Yet she froze, fearing one of the occasional breezes this day would knock her down, God help her. She did care for him. More. I love him. She loved him for caring about the lives of the men, women, and children of all stations and not just his profits, as Ophelia and her family had been. She loved him for visit
ing a little girl named Grace and playing coin tricks with street urchins to ease their fear. “No,” she rasped.

  “Between that reply and the belatedness of it, that is hardly convincing,” Gertrude muttered, jarring Ophelia back from the precipice of madness. “Listen to me.” She took Ophelia by both shoulders. “If you love him, then nothing . . . not Broderick, not the club”—she paused—“not me, nor anything or anyone should keep you apart.” Ophelia stared with horror at her sister, who’d lost the use of one eye because of Ophelia’s actions.

  “I can’t,” she said dumbly. She couldn’t sacrifice Gertrude, not again. Nor for a man who’d been made an orphan by Ophelia’s father. “Leave it alone,” she warned, her voice shockingly steady despite the fact that she was splintering apart inside.

  Gertrude searched her face. “It does not matter what Broderick—”

  “I said leave it alone,” she repeated, more firm in both her resolve and her command.

  Her sister instantly fell silent. “I see.”

  No, she didn’t. She couldn’t. Because Ophelia had kept secrets of old and had only added new ones to them, and ultimately they all somehow came back to Connor O’Roarke. Ophelia was too much of a coward to share the truth with either of them. “I am doing this. Marrying a lord.” Horror squeezed at her insides. These past three weeks, she’d lived in a world of pretend where only she and Connor had existed. Originally he’d been comfortable, safe, a link to her past and the lifestyle she knew, and not that of the peerage. Somewhere along the way, everything had changed, morphed into something more. “There is nothing between me and Conn . . . Mr. Steele.”

  Not allowing her sister another question, she darted up the steps of Cleo’s townhouse and sailed through the front door, opened by the burly guard there.

  Before it had even been shut, Ophelia raced abovestairs and didn’t stop running until she reached her rooms. Panting from her exertions, she let herself in and pushed the panel closed.

  She layered her back against the door and stared blankly at her temporary rooms.

  Do you care for him?

  How simple her sister’s questioning had made it out to be.

  When in truth there could never be anything between Ophelia and Connor. Too many lies, crimes, and hurts existed between them that made the dream of having more impossible.

  But there was one thing she could do. One gift she could offer him. It had been the only one he’d ever sought. Once she provided it, they could be through.

  Then she could move on and begin the process of forgetting Connor O’Roarke.

  Chapter 14

  “Are we not going to speak of it?”

  It had been inevitable.

  Striding through the halls of the Eve Dabney Foundling Hospital, Connor cast his father a sideways glance.

  “I hardly trust this is the place for a discussion.”

  There had already been display enough with Ophelia and her brother and a host of guests . . . and Bethany. Connor would not delude himself into believing the tension spilling from his father’s frame came from anywhere but Bethany’s response.

  Exiting the establishment, they fell into step and made for his father’s waiting carriage. “Join me.”

  Connor spared a look across the street to where a small boy held the reins of his mount. He firmed his jaw. “My mount—”

  The earl lifted a hand, and one of his footmen leapt from his perch beside the driver. “See my son’s horse returned to his residence.”

  Oh, bloody, bloody hell.

  Connor fought the urge to tug at his collar, feeling a good deal like the boy he’d once been, caught stashing the earl’s fine silver under his bed in preparation for his eventual ejection from the household.

  His father motioned him in and then pulled himself in behind.

  The earl gave a firm command. Having always excelled in his studies and having succeeded in every endeavor he’d undertaken since he’d been adopted, Connor had only ever striven for his father’s approval.

  Taut, he steeled himself for something wholly foreign and unfamiliar—the earl’s displeasure.

  “Bethany is in dire straits.”

  Connor rocked back in his seat. Of everything and anything he’d expected from his father, that had certainly not been it.

  “Her . . . husband wagered it all away. Mistresses, whores, drinking.”

  As a young man he’d been hurt by her betrayal, and yet he’d still not wished, nor ever would wish, ill will upon her. For she had been a friend to him . . . and still was. “What of her dowry? The viscount?”

  His father grimaced, giving his head a slight shake. Connor’s mind raced, trying to keep up with the revelations. “It does not make sense,” he said to himself. He’d based his career and his cases on logic and reason, and nothing in what his father revealed made any sense. Both Bethany and her father were in deep, and yet . . . “It doesn’t fit with the viscount.” Through the years he’d proven himself measured and proper. The pieces did not fall into place.

  “It was why he made the match between Bethany and Argyll, Connor. Poor investments, bad crops. The duke was willing to overlook a penniless bride.” A penniless and stunning beauty deemed a Diamond of the First Water, she’d taken the ton by storm.

  At that point Connor had been recent to London, just beginning to establish a career with funds given him by the earl. He’d have never made a sufficient match for the viscount. Not when he’d had a penniless daughter and a mountain of debt.

  I would say you’re better off than being trapped with a wife who, one, didn’t have the courage to choose you over her father’s wishes, and two, lied to you, making you believe she would marry you.

  “She needs a husband,” he said somberly. It explained why the young widow had made such pointed attempts at reestablishing their previous relationship.

  His father frowned. “Do not make her out for a fortune hunter.”

  “Isn’t that what she is?” he asked without inflection. “Twice now.” At his father’s silence, he winged an eyebrow. Granted, she was a woman with little choice in a world that restricted nearly all opportunities for women. However, she’d been driven more by the need for funds than by her feelings for him. At the very least, his father could acknowledge as much.

  A vein bulged at the corner of his father’s right eye. “Is that what you’d like? For the lady to suffer now because she chose another?” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “By God, she is my goddaughter, Connor. Stanley’s daughter.”

  Now, both the viscount and Connor’s father expected him to rescue the lady and her family.

  How much his father had worried about the viscount’s daughter, and yet, as Ophelia had pointed out, where had been Bethany’s faithfulness to Connor? Where had been her courage and conviction to throw over expectations and marry the street rat he’d once been? “It is odd you should speak solely of the lady being hurt when she made the choice long ago to marry another.”

  An impatient sound left his father. “At last it makes sense.”

  Connor creased his brow.

  “Your interest in that woman.”

  That woman. It was a snobbishly dismissive reference to the young woman that marked her as more object than person. Connor thinned his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “With the attention you’ve shown that woman, you’ve done nothing but hurt Bethany.”

  Fury spilled through him. “That is what you believe? That I am using Miss Killoran as a pawn to incite the jealousy of another?” Did his father think so little of him?

  “She made a mistake, Connor,” he said, confirming that ill opinion.

  He whistled. “By God, it is what you think.” He held his father’s gaze. “Is it so unfathomable to you that I enjoy Miss Killoran’s company?”

  The earl winced; it was a slight, nearly indistinguishable twitching of the muscles in his face and body, and yet Connor saw it.

  “I understand you must . . . relate to the youn
g woman.”

  Still, his father could not bring himself to utter her name. Frustration knotted in his gut. “In what ways, Father? The fact that we were both thieves?”

  “Stop it, Connor Steele.”

  “Oh, come,” Connor spat out. “You know I speak the truth. It’s why you”—despite Connor’s protestations—“insisted I change my name and garments.”

  High color flooded the earl’s cheeks. His silence served as a mark of the truth, further fueling Connor.

  “It’s why you provided me a fine education.”

  His father slammed his fist against his palm. “I wanted you to have an education because you were intelligent and deserving of a new beginning.”

  Connor scoffed. “You wanted to erase all hint of the streets from me.”

  “You are being difficult,” his father gritted out.

  “Tell me, do you hate her because she reminds you of what I am?” He put the somber question to him. “Not only a thief . . . but also a murderer.”

  His father clamped gloved hands over his ears. “It is because when you are with her, you can remember only what you’ve done, and I don’t want you to think of the past,” his father cried out, his chest heaving. The fight went out of him; his shoulders slumped. “I don’t want you to remember your demons,” he whispered, stretching out a hand. “I want them buried . . . for you.”

  Connor sank back in his seat. That was what this was about. “And you believe that in my having”—what . . . what was it he had with Ophelia?—“any connections with Miss Killoran, it will remind me of my past?” A past he could never truly forget. One that had been indelibly burned into his mind, heart, and soul?

  “I remember you as you once were, Connor,” his father whispered, his voice ragged, his eyes overfilling with anguish. “The day you first came home with me, I intended to feed you, clothe you, and send you on your way with a sizable purse. You were a scared, wounded animal, and I could not let you go back out into that world with those people.”

  He’d been four and ten. Already jaded in more ways than the Earl of Mar could have even fathomed.

  Yet, despite his father’s fears, with Ophelia—because of Ophelia—Connor had realized there was a world outside of his work. She’d made him dream of a life that included a family—with her. I want that with Ophelia. “Don’t you see, Father?” He searched the harsh plains of a face showing signs of age. “All of that . . . it will always be with me.”