The Heiress's Deception

by Christi Caldwell

  Bedford slashed the air with his gloved hand. “Your club is in shaky enough standings with Polite Society. What will they say if they discover you’re the latest of the Hell and Sin proprietors to be bedding a duke’s daughter?”

  Calum already knew what they would say . . . it was the same thing the ton had been saying after Niall and Diana’s marriage. I need more time. “She’s not here,” he said quickly.

  Adair threw him a sharp look.

  “Where is she?” the duke challenged, taking a bold step toward him.

  “She paid a visit to our vendors earlier, and then I provided her the afternoon off.”

  Bedford pursed his mouth. “If I were to call for the constable, you would be found in the wrong. They’d turn your club upside down if I told them you were holding my sister here against her will.”

  The bloody bastard.

  He jutted his chin out. “If you did, then they’d find she is not inside the club.” Which in all truth she was not.

  Both men went toe-to-toe in a silent battle for supremacy.

  Gripping her skirts, Nurse Mattison glanced back and forth between them.

  The duke sighed. “You have until tomorrow afternoon.” The wastrel lord had slept in the private suites here time enough that Calum knew the bastard would be too drunk to wake up in the morn. “I’ll return and gather her. If she’s not here, I’ll destroy your club.” On that, Eve’s brother stalked out.

  Head bowed, the woman was left alone with Calum and Adair. Calum expected her to beat a hasty flight. Instead, with a remarkable and surprising resilience, she lingered.

  As soon as he’d gone, Calum glowered. “You are the loyal friend Eve trusted.” Giving his head a disgusted shake, he pointed at the door. “Get out.”

  Tears flooded her blue eyes. “You have to understand,” she pleaded, turning her palms up, “he came and had the hospital searched. The constable interviewed the children and threatened them. He vowed to see them thrown in Newgate if I d-didn’t tell him where she’d gone, and one of the boys . . .” Her voice cracked, and she continued through it. “Her l-ladyship demanded that they be protected above all others.” Even at the expense of her own self—that cryptic conversation Calum had picked up on the first time he’d found Eve at the foundling hospital at last made sense. He dragged a hand through his hair. “I am so sorry.” A sob burst from the nurse’s lips.

  Seething, Adair stalked past him and thundered for a guard. Thomas, assigned to the main suites that evening, rushed forward. “Mr. Thorne?”

  Calum stared, more an outside observer as Adair once again served the role of head proprietor while Calum stood completely useless, at sea. He dragged a hand through his hair while the other man barked out orders. Calum couldn’t hand Eve over to that man. Bedford would succeed in destroying her where she’d always survived in the past. His gut clenched painfully.

  “Escort Mrs. Mattison back to the Salvation Foundling Hospital,” Adair was saying. “Remain behind in the event Bedford returns there. If he does, send word immediately.”

  “Aye, Mr. Thorne.” Thomas caught her by the arm.

  Still, the nurse lingered. “I tried everything within my power to help her ladyship. I naively believed I was a match for the duke.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “I was so very wrong.” Her voice caught. “Is . . . her l-ladyship well?”

  He wanted to hate the woman. He wanted to turn her out with a cold order to see the Devil in hell. And yet . . . he’d been desperate, too. He knew what that terror did to a man. Calum sighed. He’d not, however, offer false assurances as to Eve’s well-being. “The children at the hospital need you,” Calum said quietly. “Thomas will escort you home.”

  She hesitated and then went with Thomas. The burly guard led her from the room, closing the door behind them.

  “You knew,” Adair whispered, the cryptic softness in his tone more ominous and threatening than his earlier shouts.

  Calum pressed his fingertips into his temple, letting his silence stand as a confirmation.

  “You knew and you let her remain anyway.” Adair stalked over. “With how our club has suffered after Niall and Diana and Ryker and Penelope, you not only let her remain but kept it a secret.” He slammed a hand into his chest. “From me?” he roared.

  Guilt over his own duplicity turned inside him. “I could not have sent her back to Bedford. Surely you see that?”

  “No,” Adair snapped, his long-legged strides eating away all the space between them until their toes touched. “I do not see.” Incredulity seeped from his street-hardened eyes. “I do not see,” he repeated in more even, crisp tones. No, he could not. Because even though they were brothers closer than had they shared blood, they’d never discussed what they felt, outside of the hell that had sustained them, whether or not they had dreams and what they dreamed of. Adair frantically searched his face. “My God, man, the duke had you hauled into Newgate, and you’d help his sister?”

  “She’s no more responsible for Bedford’s crimes than we were for Diggory’s,” he said quietly, willing his brother to understand.

  Adair was already shaking his head. “She cannot stay here.”

  Calum’s body coiled tight like a serpent poised to strike. “It is not your decision.” He’d be damned to hell once again before he betrayed Eve.

  “No.” Adair settled his hands on his hips and met his gaze in a primal stare. “It is all of our decision. In allowing her to remain, ya’ve put all of us at risk.” Adair’s outrage made him sloppy, and his Cockney slid in, replacing his long-practiced cultured tones.

  “I love her.”

  Voicing that admission aloud knocked him off balance.

  Silence hung in the room.

  Men of the streets didn’t talk of matters of the heart. Mayhap men of any station avoided those topics. Discussions of cards and spirits and business were always fair discourse. Now Calum had plunged them into a murky world that was foreign to them both.

  “You love her,” Adair repeated, those three words as vacant as his eyes.

  For the sliver of a moment he believed that would matter if not most, at least in some small way, to his brother.

  “The men, women, an’ children who work here call this place home, and you’d threaten all of that. All of them.” Calum winced, and Adair pounced. “Ryker, Penny, the babe they’re now expecting. Niall, Diana, even ya,” he spat with icy condemnation. “Ya’ll all be foine . . . ya’ve your fancy ladies and your purses.”

  Calum opened his mouth to deny it, but the words stuck there. For in this, Adair was correct. Restless, he stomped over to the window and stared out into those cold streets he’d spent too many years sleeping on. If Calum married Eve, they’d face society’s condemnation for the divide in their stations, but he had a fortune enough set aside to sustain them . . . just as Eve herself was in possession of significant monies. What would become of the rest of the members of the hell when—if—the club’s reputation was completely destroyed, and their membership disappeared?

  “What do you want me to do?” he whispered angrily; his taut features stared back in the crystal pane.

  “What do I expect you to do?” Adair scoffed. “You know the answer to that.”

  Yes, he did. Calum, Ryker, Niall, Adair, Helena—they’d all made a vow to one another years ago. Their family would always come first, before all, and they’d let no person jeopardize one another’s security. Frustration and restless annoyance twisted at him, and for the first time, resentment sprang within. Niall had been permitted to love where and whom he would. Calum had supported him in that union unconditionally, and now he himself would be denied that choice?

  But then . . . did you not expect Ryker to put the best interests of the club before all? That taunting reminder echoed in the chambers of his mind. It hadn’t mattered that Ryker had eventually fallen in love with Lady Penelope. It mattered that Calum, just as Niall and Adair, had expected Ryker to do what was best to preserve the club’s reputation. In
the windowpane, he caught Adair’s retreating form.

  He faced him just as he reached for the handle. “How can you expect me to turn her over to him?” he entreated, the question as much for himself as for Adair.

  There was a slight softening in the other man’s scarred features. “Because if you don’t turn her over to Bedford, then you’re turning over three hundred and seventy-nine other people in her stead.”

  Those words hit him like a gut punch.

  Adair pulled the door open, and Eve spilled inside.

  The only thing that stopped Eve from landing face-first in a damning heap on Calum’s entryway was Adair’s quick hands and reflexes.

  Eve curled her toes into the soles of her boots. Calum had taught her better about listening at keyholes than this. “F-forgive me,” she stammered.

  Both brothers stared silently back. Formidable in their silence, these two men before her were indeed fearless warriors of the streets.

  “I was—” She dropped her gaze briefly to the floor. She’d already given this family enough lies that she’d not add one now explaining away her presence. She had been listening. Against Calum’s orders, she’d stolen abovestairs and sought out the adjoining office to listen in on that hated meeting. And though the thick plaster had muffled a good portion of Calum’s rebuttals to Gerald, her brother, in his typical boisterous fashion, had been as clear as the bells of St. George’s Cathedral.

  “If you’ll excuse us,” Calum said tightly.

  Coward that she was, relief took root. “Of course.” She dropped a curtsy and wheeled about.

  “Adair, my lady. I was speaking to my brother,” Calum called out, halting her in her tracks.

  My lady . . .

  Adair looked back and forth between them, and her skin pricked with the fury emanating from him. Then, wordlessly, he stalked off.

  “I told you to wait in the stables,” he snapped as soon as the door had closed.

  The anger and frustration in those eight words were at odds with the tender lover who’d held her in his arms twenty minutes . . . twenty days . . . twenty years . . . a lifetime ago? How can you expect me to turn her over to him? “He’s my brother. It was my place to know what terms he’d set.” But how she wished she didn’t know the threats he’d made against Calum, his family, and the hell. “I took care to use the side entrances and only listened in from my office,” she assured him.

  He brought his hand down in a wide arc. “Damn it, Eve. Had he ordered the club searched for you, he would have turned you out, proved me a damned liar, and seen you hauled off,” he shouted.

  He was afraid. When she was a girl, she’d learned early on that Calum Dabney protected himself with blustery shows of temper. And the truth of his worrying ran her ragged inside. It mattered not whether that terror was for her, himself, or the whole of the Hell and Sin, but rather that he knew fear. I don’t want that for him . . . He’d already known so very much of it. Too much. She watched as he fetched himself a brandy, taking in his swift, uncharacteristically jerky movements while he poured. He is gone to me. In every way. Pain cleaved at her breast. “I told you he would not relent until I was returned,” she said quietly, when he finally faced her.

  Calum flattened his mouth into a hard line. She drifted over. “You allowed yourself to believe that you could ultimately prevail over him, but the moment he learned I was here, nothing would have ever stopped Gerald.” She spoke with a quiet pragmatism that roused a rumbling in Calum’s chest.

  “Do you doubt my ability to look after those in my care?” he put to her on a silken whisper coated in ice.

  “No,” she said sadly. Because if you don’t turn her over to Bedford, then you’re turning over three hundred and seventy-nine other people in her stead. “But I’m not in your care. I was here of my own volition.”

  He jerked, but otherwise made no attempt to counter that. And why should he? He’d already agreed that her time here was limited.

  “You were only partially right,” she murmured, clasping her hands together. “About Nurse Mattison,” she clarified when Calum creased his brow. “All people are capable of betrayal, but some are forced to it. She was forced to do what she did to protect the children.” She’d not hold the woman who’d been like a sister to blame, just as she’d not force Calum to make a choice between her and his club.

  He stared morosely into his drink. “You’d forgive her?”

  “Forgive her?” She shook her head. “This from the same man who forgave me for my crime against you. And yet you believe me so selfish that I’d expect her to sacrifice the children inside that hospital?” Eve waited until he lifted his gaze. “Of course I don’t blame her, Calum. This is not her fault, and I would never, ever hold her responsible,” she said with a quiet insistence, willing him to hear that. Calum was no more to blame than Nurse Mattison.

  His throat muscles worked. “If you’ll excuse me, Eve?” he said hollowly.

  He’d turned her away. She flinched. “Of course. Forgive me.” She lingered. “Calum,” she called out, and he slowly lifted his head. “I—” Love you. Those words didn’t belong here now. Not when he fought himself over the decision he had to make. Poor Calum, always in charge of all, didn’t realize that ultimately this was and always had been only hers. “I’m so sorry.” Eve left him, closing the door softly in her wake. She started down the hall, past that library where she and Calum had made love, and reached her chambers. Eve touched a finger to the curved gold door handle. How odd to have been here but three weeks and to have known more happiness and peace here than she had in the other five and twenty years of her existence.

  Chapter 21

  Calum had but five hours until the Duke of Bedford returned to the Hell and Sin.

  In the end, it was not Ryker, Niall, or Adair who could help him from his situation.

  One of his uniformed servants handed over the reins. “’ere ya are, sir.”

  Accepting them with a murmur of thanks, Calum pulled himself astride. He nudged Tau into a quick trot, and then as he reached the end of the street, Calum gave the restless mount his freedom. Tau bleated his appreciation and thundered onward.

  The night’s cold still hung in the air, and Calum welcomed the wind as it slapped against his face. His pulse accelerated, pounding a frantic beat in time to Tau’s hooves as they struck the cobblestones. Any other time, he would have found calm in this. Riding had always filled him with the same exhilaration as securing a fat purse, and then racing off from those unsuspecting lords and ladies.

  Not now.

  Five hours. He had five hours before Bedford returned. The same bastard who’d put a knife in Calum’s side and seen him in gaol. The vile reprobate who’d given his friend permission to rape Eve.

  And I am expected to turn her over to him.

  Because there could be no mistaking Adair would hold him accountable when Bedford struck the final death knell on their club. A familiar frustration rooted around his belly and mind, once more. Calum had begrudged Niall not one jot of his happiness, and yet Calum would be expected to make a decision for all, at the sacrifice of his own happiness.

  As the dirtied cobblestones of St. Giles gave way to the fashionable end of Mayfair, he flexed his jaw.

  It surely spoke to his selfishness that resentment burned strong inside him for what his siblings had that he’d be asked to sacrifice.

  Calum slowed his mount outside a familiar white stucco residence. Dismounting, he did a search of the area. Even if the lords and ladies of Polite Society failed to see them, they were always there. His gaze landed on a small boy with a cap pulled low on his head. He motioned to the lad, and he instantly sprinted forward. Yanking out a purse, Calum tossed it to the street urchin, who easily caught it with dirt-stained fingers. “I need you to watch my . . .” His words trailed off as the cap slid forward on the child’s head. “Horse,” he finished.

  For the lad with wide blue eyes and thick, curly blonde hair was none other than . . . a girl. H
is heart pulled. With her dirt-stained cheeks and tattered garments, she may as well have been Helena, all those years ago, when they’d sprung her free of Diggory.

  “Wot?” the girl demanded combatively. She stuffed the purse inside a pocket sewn along the side of her pant leg. How many times did I don garments like the ones this child wears now? “Ya aren’t lookin’ for me to bugger ya,” she demanded.

  “No,” he said quietly. “I’m not. I’ve a meeting in this household,” he pointed to the front door. “When I return, there will be more coin.” I was this child . . . Near an age to himself when he’d been orphaned and then escaped from the foundling hospital. Her belly grumbled loudly. “Afterward, if you are searching for honorable employment, I am the proprietor of a—” Gaming hell. His throat tightened, and the staggering truth of the threat facing that very establishment slammed into him with the weight of a fast-moving carriage. This is what I jeopardize. Men, women, and children who will find themselves on the street once more.

  “Oi’m not lookin’ fur the koind of employment you’re talking about,” she spat at his feet, jerking him to the present.

  “It is a gaming hell. The Hell and Sin. The best . . .” He faltered. For that was no longer true. “One of the finest in London. Your work wouldn’t involve you lying on your back or offering any other favors. Think of it,” he said quietly.

  She narrowed her eyes and met his offer with stony silence. Smart girl. That world wariness could only come to one who’d lived on the streets.

  Bounding up the steps, Calum rapped hard on the door.

  The wide panel was instantly opened by the graying butler there. “Mr. Dabney,” he greeted. It spoke volumes of the servant’s professionalism that he gave no outwardly show of surprise to the early-morn meeting. Then, mayhap it served as greater testament to the peculiarities he’d come to expect from the Duke of Somerset’s family.