The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers Book 1) Read online

  “Rot,” she said more to herself. “It was only ever a step above mud, and not much else.”

  He nodded, and another connection between them was forged.

  “And all rations, meals, and favors were doled out according to importance served to the group.”

  “So, you stole,” she predicted, as one who knew. As one who’d been as desperate.

  He inclined his head. “And so, I stole.” His hushed voice barely reached her ears. “I hated it,” he went on, a man lost in his own tortured musings. “Every time, I thought of the items I was lifting. I imagined them to be cherished pieces that meant something to the person I stole from, and I hated myself for those acts.”

  He drew in a shuddery breath. “In providing prostitution, I’d told myself that women had a safe place to sleep. They had food and shelter.” His face spasmed. “With those self-assurances I made to myself, I became everything I hated. I became”—Diggory—“Diggory.” Adair coughed into his hand, offering her a sheepish look. “And so one day, I just . . . realized that I didn’t want to be that man,” he finished matter-of-factly.

  How very wrong he was. With the way he spoke to Cleopatra, his valuing her opinion, and his care for his family, Adair Thorne could never be Diggory.

  Whereas Cleopatra? She’d been born with evil in her veins.

  Knuckles brushed along her jaw, and she looked back as Adair forced her chin up so their gazes met.

  “It was wrong of me holding your connection to Diggory against you,” he said quietly.

  Her entire body jerked whipcord straight.

  “You being part of his gang was no different than me or my brothers.”

  Only . . . it was altogether different.

  She made to move out of his reach, but he retained his hold. His touch, a blend of tenderness and strength, brought her eyes sliding briefly closed. She’d been punched, slapped, and pinched with regular frequency by brutes in the street whom she’d tangled with over scraps. But those cruel thugs—none had ever dared put their hands upon her . . . and the ones who had when Broderick rose to power had lost fingers for it.

  Never had she known a man’s touch could feel like this—a gentle, fleeting caress that made her long to turn herself over to the power of his embrace once more.

  Their breaths mingled—his with the acrid hint of cheroot and coffee, so very masculine and enticing. He dipped his head lower, and Cleopatra lifted hers to take his kiss.

  The door flew open with a rapidity that brought both of their heads up.

  Sidestepping Adair’s attempts to shove her behind him, Cleopatra unsheathed the dagger in her boot and pointed it at a glowering Ryker Black. And as little as the world knew of the ruthless gaming hell owner, Cleopatra knew enough to gather from his seething silence that he was furious.

  The nameless guard who’d stood sentry outside her room stared back with a derisively triumphant grin on his lips.

  Adair took in the pair in the doorway: Ryker and the guard, Wilson, who’d been in their employ for more than ten years.

  His brother was furious.

  As long as Adair had known Ryker, the other man had been a master of dissembling. Where most couldn’t gather what he was thinking and when, there were certain tells.

  The vein bulging in the corner of his eye was the mark of his outrage.

  Ryker moved his piercing stare from Cleopatra to Adair . . . and then settled for a lingering moment . . . a damning one . . . on the building plans for the Hell and Sin Club.

  Silently cursing, Adair tucked his pistol back into the waistband of his breeches. “Usually a knock will suffice,” he drawled.

  That telltale vein throbbed all the more. “Miss Killoran,” Ryker commanded in even tones. “If you’ll excuse us?”

  And Cleopatra, who’d earned his admiration for her cleverness and pride, now with her fearlessness in the face of Ryker’s wrath moved up in his estimation all the more. “We were in the middle of something here, Black.”

  Through the years, their sister, Helena, hadn’t even met Ryker’s simmering rages with a challenge. Cleopatra was a fool . . . but a brave one.

  Ryker’s irises disappeared behind thin slits of barely suppressed rage.

  She hitched her left foot up onto her seat and resheathed her weapon.

  Wilson, once a young man who’d come to their employ after escaping Diggory, glared with a searing loathing at her.

  At the other man’s focus on her exposed limb, fury thrummed to life, and Adair hurriedly stepped between Cleopatra and Wilson’s line of vision.

  “Oi’m not asking you, Miss Killoran,” Ryker growled, slipping into his Cockney.

  Cleopatra opened her mouth to no doubt protest, but then Penelope entered the room.

  It is to be a bloody gathering, then, Adair thought.

  “Cleopatra,” she eagerly greeted. Rocking Paisley, she tipped her chin awkwardly. “I’ve been searching for you. Would you join me and Paisley this morning in the nursery?”

  His sister-in-law had proven herself mad on numerous scores. Anyone who believed this was anything other than a well-timed rescue on Cleopatra’s behalf didn’t have a brain between their ears. As proud as the young woman had proven herself to be, Adair braced for her to continue going toe-to-toe with Ryker when she stepped out from behind him.

  A soft, wistful expression stole over her features as she stared at the small babe. From the gentleness in her eyes and tender smile on her lips, there was a maternal softness to Cleopatra. An odd tightening squeezed at his chest.

  Adjusting Paisley, Penelope held out her fingers, and Cleopatra immediately joined her. She paused in the doorway, casting a last, lingering glance at Adair before taking her leave.

  “Outside the nursery.” Ryker gritted out the command for the other man, and Wilson immediately scrambled into action.

  Adair watched his retreat, wanting to bloody his brother’s nose for sending a guard after her like she was . . . Like she was what? A Killoran? It was precisely what she was . . . and yet, she’d also become so much more.

  Disquieted, Adair curled his hands into tight balls and used the time as his brother closed the door to compose himself.

  “Wot in ’ell are you doing?” Ryker might have been speaking about the weather for as casual the delivery of that query.

  Adair made a dismissive sound. “She had . . . ideas for the Hell and Sin.”

  Ryker sprang into movement. Storming across the room, he took up position on the opposite side of Adair’s desk. “You gave her the plans for the club,” he boomed, slamming a fist down on the surface with such vigor, the ledgers leapt and then promptly settled into place.

  He folded his arms. “I understand why you might have reservations.”

  “Is that what you think I have?” he asked on a dangerous whisper that would have terrified a lesser man. Adair, however, had battled Ryker numerous times as a boy and knew he bled the same crimson drops. “You believe I have reservations? She is a damned Killoran, connected forever to Diggory.”

  God, how he despised the reminder. For she was more than one of the men, women, and children to spring from Diggory’s gang. “We are all forever connected to Diggory,” he said quietly. It had just taken Adair longer to realize that in their earliest beginnings, he was more like Cleopatra Killoran than he’d ever credited.

  Ryker shook his head. “It’s entirely different. We left that bastard.”

  “She, as a woman, had fewer options than we ever did,” he snapped, impatient with his brother’s habitual obstinacy. But then, weren’t you of the same exact mind-set where Cleopatra was concerned? Yet, in sharing as she had, in challenging him, she’d forced him to see life in ways that he previously hadn’t.

  His brother flared his nostrils. “She’s lived all these years under Diggory and Killoran. She and her family have infiltrated our gaming hell, stolen our patrons, attempted to sow the seeds of mistrust between my wife and I, and undermined us at every turn, and you’d trust he
r? After three weeks?” The shock and condescension blended there scoured Adair.

  He dragged a hand through his hair. Mayhap he had gone more than half-mad for trusting her as he did, and yet with their every exchange, the connection between them had deepened. “She saved Paisley from a drunken nursemaid.” How easily his brother dismissed that.

  “And I am grateful for that,” Ryker said instantly. “But neither does it erase a feud that’s existed so long between our families.” There was an air of finality there, one that indicated Ryker didn’t intend to debate Cleopatra Killoran’s trustworthiness or the accuracy of his opinions. “What did you show her?” his brother asked, diverting the topic to the sheets laid out.

  All of it. He’d revealed the preliminary plans and finalized ones, and then made changes based on suggestions Cleopatra had put forth. He let his silence serve as his answer.

  Ryker unleashed a string of black curses. “You showed her everything? Where the men, women, and children inside the club will sleep? And eat? Where we monitor patrons?”

  Adair’s patience snapped. “You turned the responsibility over to me.” He jabbed a finger across the table at his brother. “You and Niall and Calum all decided the paths you intend to chart, and left the Hell and Sin to my care.”

  Ryker leaned across the tables. “It is all ours. Every last damned business venture we’ve agreed to undertake, we agreed together.”

  Tugging the pages out from under his brother’s hands, Adair fumed. “I haven’t questioned your new role. I’d expect the same damned courtesy.” Attending his efforts, he reorganized his work into piles.

  “I also didn’t entrust our family and those in our employ’s safety to the enemy,” Ryker said with an infuriating calm.

  Adair tightened his hold on the design plans and concentrated on his breathing. His brother would question his ability to care for those in his employ? It was the ultimate slight a man could be dealt, particularly those who’d spent their lives on the street. “Go to hell,” he ground out. For his indignation, however, doubts swirled. What if you are making a misstep where Cleopatra is concerned . . . ? What if you already did, and you’ve placed your family and those at the Hell and Sin in peril . . . ?

  Pushing back those familiar doubts, he buried them. She’d shared pieces of her past and ideas for his club. He wasn’t so clouded by his own hatred as Ryker was that he’d judge Cleopatra simply because of the gang she’d had the misfortune of aligning herself with. “There is no point in continuing this discussion,” he said dismissively. “Despite both my and Penelope’s confidence in Cleopatra”—his brother stitched his eyebrows into a knowing line—“Miss Killoran,” he belatedly corrected, “you’re determined to not trust the lady’s word.”

  Ryker folded his arms. “You were going to kiss her.”

  The pages slipped from Adair’s fingers. Had Ryker hurled a dagger at him, Adair couldn’t have been any more shocked. His brother knew. Had come in and seen at just one glance the battle Adair lost every time Cleopatra was near.

  “I saw you when I entered,” Ryker persisted, unrelenting. “That closeness is dangerous,” he said with his usual bluntness and calm. “It makes a person careless.”

  “One’s hatred also impairs one’s judgment.” As his brother’s was. “Here,” he said, cutting Ryker off when he began to speak, “look at this.” Adair tossed the folded plans over to his brother.

  Instantly catching it, Ryker frowned.

  “I said look at the damned pages,” he barked.

  With stiff, precise movements, his brother laid out the plans Cleopatra had offered valuable input on. Ryker studied them in silence, trailing a callused fingertip over the converted space and additional gaming tables. His brother paused.

  “She was right,” Adair said flatly when Ryker still wouldn’t pick his head up.

  Reluctantly, his brother looked at him. “They were wise revisions.” The concession may as well have been pulled from him. “But it still is the height of foolishness to give a Killoran an inside look at every damned nook, cranny, and table at our club.”

  “If she were bent on hurting us or our club, she would have let me continue on as I was.”

  “If she were attempting to bring harm to any of us or our hell, she would have proceeded exactly as she has, as well,” Ryker said, and there was a foreign gentleness that only made his counterargument all the more frustrating. “I’m simply asking you to use greater discretion where she is concerned. She’ll be here until the end of the Season at the latest, and married hopefully sooner, and when that happens, she’ll have no reason for any loyalty or obligation to our family.”

  The weight of a boulder crushing down on Adair’s chest restricted his airflow. Given that three weeks had passed and there’d never been a suitor, or even a waltz or walk in the park, it had been all too easy to forget the purpose that brought her here—that she was only here to marry a nob, and then . . . and then, what? Then she’d just go? And there would be no more discussions about the Hell and Sin or the London night sky or—

  “Adair?” his brother urged with a concern in those two syllables that brought Adair’s head shooting up. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” he said quickly. “I’ll have a care.” Impatient to have his brother gone so he could be alone with the upheaval of his thoughts, he motioned to his desk. “I’ve matters to see to before my appointment with Phippen today.” That, at least, was the truth.

  Grateful that Ryker had always steered away from discourse that was too personal, he stared after him until he’d gone. And even as the panel clicked shut, Adair remained staring at it. Sucking in a breath through his teeth, he covered his face with his hands.

  His brother was both correct and incorrect where Cleopatra was concerned. Adair would wager the future of the Hell and Sin that the young woman didn’t intend any ill will on his establishment. And yet, of all the charges leveled, there was only one that held him motionless, and his stomach churning—she would marry.

  Her union with a nob was the only possible conclusion to her brother’s . . . and her . . . plans. It marked a ruthlessness to all the Killorans that should only further deepen his antipathy for that family, and his mistrust of her.

  Yet, God help him, with his usual logic and Ryker’s reminders, he fought the urge to remain here when all he wanted to do was go off and find her.

  Chapter 16

  Later that night, Cleopatra knelt at the edge of the cradle, contemplating the sleeping bundle resting there.

  Even with the presence of the snarling Wilson, whom she’d the misfortune of being saddled with by Black, and a new, cheerful nursemaid happily bustling about the room, organizing the linens, Paisley Black’s nursery was the last place Cleopatra should wish to be.

  The babe blinked her impossibly large blue eyes several times, and that cloudy gaze moved over Cleopatra’s face. Alas, there had always been something calming in being around babes. They represented the most unsullied part of a person’s soul. At this age and size, defenseless as one was, the evil one might carry hadn’t yet come out. There was nothing but an inherent need and willingness to trust.

  Only this time, being here with this babe was not solely about lingering around innocence. It was about him.

  Adair Thorne, whom she’d been moments away from kissing when Ryker Black interrupted. Given that untimely appearance and Adair’s absence for the remainder of the day, there was no doubt he’d been raked over the proverbial coals for his dealings with her.

  She scrunched her mouth up. Of course, her own brother would have been as vigilant if one of Adair’s kin was forced into the Devil’s Den. It was not, however, Black’s wariness that grated—it was Adair’s. She smiled sadly at the dark-haired babe.

  Penelope’s daughter let out a loud whine, and Cleopatra instantly slipped her finger into the tiny palm, which curled reflexively around it. She closed her eyes, finding and selfishly taking the solace offered by the small child. For if she was bei
ng truthful with herself, at least in this instance, she’d admit that she was terrified out of her bloody mind.

  “I don’t trust for a moment that you wouldn’t snuff the life out of that babe,” Wilson called out from where he stood at the window. Arms folded, his left heel propped against the wall, his was nothing more than a feigned insouciance.

  The nursemaid, Beth, faltered. Stifling a gasp behind her fingertips, she looked between Cleopatra and Wilson.

  Where Adair’s doubts had oddly cut like a knife, this man’s rolled as easily off her back as every other insult he periodically hurled her way.

  “With your lousy judgments, it’s a fortunate thing for you that you’ll never be more than a second-shift guard,” she said, directing that insult to the babe.

  Wilson’s leg slid back to the floor, the plush carpet muting the thump of his heel. “Ain’t you have a fancy nob to try and catch,” he jeered. “Ah, that’s right. You might have a queen’s fortune, but not a respectable lord would ever marry a guttersnipe such as you.”

  Having been brutalized and bullied by Diggory, Cleopatra knew that to engage was to feed and perpetuate the viciousness. She sang a slightly off-key tavern song that had always soothed her sisters.

  As I was a walking down Paradise Street

  A pretty young damsel I chanced for to meet.

  She was round in the counter and bluff in the bow,

  So I took in all sail and cried, “Way enough now.”

  I hailed her in English, she answered me clear,

  “I’m from the Black Arrow bound to the Shakespeare.”

  So I tailed her my flipper and took her in tow

  And yardarm to yardarm away we did go.

  But as we were going she said unto me

  There’s a spanking full-rigger just ready for sea.

  “You need to be gone now,” the nursemaid chided, clapping her hands once. That slight sound brought the slumbering babe’s eyes open.

  “You heard the maid,” Wilson called over. “Get out of the room and away from the babe.”