The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers Book 1) Read online

  I’ll be free . . . and one of my sisters will make the ultimate sacrifice in my stead.

  Feeling Lord Landon’s stare on her, she flattened her lips. “Do you intend to say anything?”

  “About our being alone here together?” he countered, not even pretending to misunderstand. He finished his drink and discarded it on the side of the billiards table. Hitching his hip onto the edge, he swung his leg in a lazy back-and-forth rhythm. “That would depend, Miss Killoran.”

  The blighter would bribe her. Cleopatra’s fingers twitched with the need to form a fist that she could bury in his face. “Oh?” She lifted her skirts slightly, exposing the vicious dagger strapped against her leg. “On what, my lord?”

  For her wariness of the cocksure lord, it was hard to not approve of a fancy gent who merely eyed that jewel-crusted dagger with amusement. He swept his lashes lower, in a rakish leer that she’d wager he’d practiced since his university days. “A dance, Miss Killoran. I’d like a dance.”

  She let her skirts fall back into place. “A dance?” she blurted. That is what he’d request.

  “A waltz,” he clarified. “And then your secret is your own.”

  Cleopatra scanned his sharp-planed features for a hint of mockery. “Foine,” she said finally. “One waltz.” Uneasy with the gent’s urbane charm, Cleopatra took a wide berth around him, making for the door. All the while she kept sight of him from the corner of her eye.

  “Oh, and Miss Killoran?” he called out, as soon as her fingertips were on the handle. “Just to clarify, that set will be tonight. The next waltz.”

  He’d gathered she intended to sneak off, then. So, he was more clever than she’d credited. “Why do you want to dance with me?” she put to him, curiosity making her bold. Was it on a wager, similar to the kind Penelope had spoken of? Did he revel in flouting society’s conventions?

  “Truthfully?”

  She nodded. “If you’re capable of it.”

  “On occasion, I am.” Where they’d had desperate gents inside the Devil’s Den who stole or attempted to cheat, Lord Landon had never been that man. “I find you refreshing,” he confessed.

  Cleopatra snorted. “Oi wasn’t born yesterday.”

  He quirked his lips at the corner. “And that is why I do. It is just a waltz, no more, and your secret meeting with me here—”

  “You invaded my space first.”

  “—shall remain your secret still,” he said over her.

  A dance was all he wanted. Lord Landon, though arrogant with a rogue’s smile and a rake’s eye, was offering her nothing more than what she’d wanted for the past three weeks. And yet, as she nodded and fled back to the ballroom, she found it hadn’t been just a waltz she’d wanted after all.

  She’d wanted a set with Adair.

  Chapter 18

  She’d had her dance.

  A waltz, to be precise, with the Marquess of Landon, and Adair on the sidelines.

  He should be relieved. After all, the roguish lord had spared Adair from suffering through a lesson and then those awkward movements.

  So why did he sit in his office, three hours after their return, unable to sleep . . . or even focus on his work for the Hell and Sin?

  Because you wanted to be the one to take her in your arms. You wanted to curl a hand about her waist and feel her fingers upon you . . . and instead some other man had claimed that right. Just as some other man would eventually claim Cleopatra as his bride. With a curse, Adair hurled the small stub of his charcoal pencil across the room. It hit the wall with a ping and then clattered unsatisfyingly quiet to the floor.

  Nor, if he were being truthful with himself in the dead of night, had it solely been about Cleopatra dancing with another man.

  This frustration and annoyance came from within . . . with himself and his own damned inability to dance.

  A sharp, painful laugh tore from his lungs. Oh, the bloody irony of it. He’d scorned men who’d wasted their time and energies on such inane activities as dancing, just as he’d made light of Niall and Ryker both learning the rudimentary steps. And now, here he stood, feeling wholly inadequate. For even if his role as proprietor hadn’t kept him motionless, more guard than guest at Lady Beaufort’s affair this evening, his inability to dance would have. He, Adair Thorne, who’d long prided himself on being a master of anything he wished to do, had wanted nothing more in his life than to take Cleopatra in his arms.

  Instead, he’d stood as a seething observer.

  A light knock sounded at the door. Adair swung his gaze over to the door. It was her. Somehow in the time she’d been here, he’d come to feel her presence. He swiped a frustrated hand over his face. I’m either bloody exhausted or out of my eternal mind . . .

  He considered ignoring that rapping. Considered letting Cleopatra believe he was otherwise somewhere else.

  The door opened, and Cleopatra ducked her head inside. “I don’t believe for a moment that you didn’t hear me,” she nagged.

  Adair sighed. Of course, he should have known better where this spitfire was concerned. She’d take command of any situation and space . . . including his office.

  She folded her arms. “Did you just sigh because I’d come here?”

  “I yawned,” he mumbled, going to fetch his pencil. He stooped and, picking it up, studied it. His broken pencil. Adair scowled at the tip.

  “I know the difference between a yawn and a sigh,” she carried on with her usual temerity. Shoving the door closed with the heel of her foot, Cleopatra wandered over to his desk—just as she’d done so many times since she’d arrived here.

  Only these late-night and early-morn exchanges were fleeting. Tonight’s waltz shared between her and Lord Landon was testament to that. He gnashed his teeth, his frustration intensifying as she climbed into his usual seat, her small frame nearly swallowed by the large leather chair.

  The sight of her there was deeply intimate, and yet a reminder that they’d only been playing make-believe where their relationship was concerned. Ultimately, she’d belong to another. Mayhap, Lord Landon: too handsome for his own damned good, unscarred, once fought over by the prostitutes inside Adair’s club, and now by Cleopatra’s easy smile that night during their set, charmer of the wary Cleopatra Killoran. A red haze of rage descended over his vision, blinding, and with it spread an insidious jealousy throughout.

  Humming a tavern ditty, Cleopatra dragged her knees up to her chest and focused on the notes Phippen had sent earlier that afternoon . . . otherwise neglected by Adair.

  “I haven’t seen this yet,” she correctly noted.

  He clenched and unclenched his jaw. How damned casual she was. When I’m a bloody mess inside.

  “Shouldn’t you be asleep?” he asked, the question coming out harshly. Stalking over, he plucked the sheets from her hands and tossed them to the corner of the desk, out of her reach.

  Cleopatra dropped her chin atop her knees. “We never worked out the final terms of our agreement.”

  It was official, with her ability to torture him, she was very much a Killoran. Only this form of cruelty was all the worse for the unintentional delivery of it. “You had your first waltz. No need for one from me,” he clipped out as he gathered his papers together and proceeded to set his desk to rights.

  Frowning at him, Cleopatra spoke slowly. “You never said what prize you intended to claim.”

  It did not escape his notice that she didn’t refute his words. All she’d sought was a dance, and Lord Landon had provided her precisely what she wished, and far better than a street tough like Adair ever could . . . or would. “No, I didn’t,” he acknowledged, not lifting his head from his task. “I’ve business to see to, Cleopatra. I lost most of the evening to Beaufort’s damned ball and don’t have time to speak about a damned pretend wager.”

  Another woman would have been sent fleeing at his sharp tone.

  “You’re angry,” she observed. Slowly lowering her legs to the floor, she stood.

 
; From the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of creamy white skin before her modest night skirts hid that delectable flesh. Damning her for this quixotic spell she cast, and damning himself all the more for wanting her as he did, he paused in his task and released an exaggerated sigh. “Why would I be angry?”

  Cleopatra lifted her shoulders in an uneven shrug. “I don’t know.” She lifted an index finger. “But I do know you grit your teeth loud enough when you are, and this vein . . .” Leaning up on tiptoe, she touched the corner of his right eye. “It pulses when you do. As it is now.”

  She knew those details about him. Adair briefly closed his eyes. For all he’d survived, he’d always believed himself above cowardice. Only to find with his inability to mention Lord Landon’s name, and the searing jealousy gripping Adair even now, just how little strength he, in fact, had. He took several steps back, putting desperately needed distance between them. “I was going to require you accompany me to the Hell and Sin.”

  Cleopatra opened and closed her mouth several times. “What?”

  She was the only woman in the whole of the kingdom who would have been diverted at the mention of taking part in the business end of discussions about his hell. “That was to be the deal,” he clarified. “I’d give you your first waltz.” Which Lord Landon had instead seen to. “In turn, you were to accompany me and assess Phippen’s work thus far.”

  A little gasp burst from Cleopatra, and she moved with such alacrity, her wire-rimmed spectacles tumbled from her nose. “When?”

  Not even a month ago, he’d have taken that eagerness as a sign that Killoran’s sister wanted nothing more than a glimpse of the inner workings of the Hell and Sin. How odd to find this woman had been so much safer then, than she was now to him.

  “Adair?” she prodded, tugging at his shirtsleeve.

  “When, what?” he blurted, hurrying to retrieve her glasses. He held them over.

  Cleopatra jammed the wire-rims back on. “When are we going to your club?” She chewed at the tip of her finger. “Of course, it cannot be during the day, because we’d be seen.” She jabbed that same long digit up, and he grunted as it hit his nose. “Unless we go early in the morning before the ton awakes and—”

  “We are not going anywhere during the day,” he said, cutting her off abruptly. Collecting her hand, he lowered it back to her side.

  She was already nodding. “Very well, the early-morn hours when the staff is sleeping and the lords and ladies have returned from their night’s pleasures makes far more—”

  “We’re not going at night, either.”

  She knitted her eyebrows into a single, befuddled line.

  “We’re not going at all,” he clarified, and resumed straightening his desk.

  Silence met his pronouncement, broken only by the noisy shuffle of parchment and vellum as he organized his documents into tidy piles.

  “Very well.” Cleopatra moved to the opposite end of the desk.

  Perplexed, he glanced up . . . and froze.

  The bespectacled miss who’d wholly captivated him stood with her arms bent and stretched out before her.

  What in blazes . . . ?

  “You owe me a dance—”

  “That you already had,” he said as much for himself as for her.

  “And I join you at the Hell and Sin.”

  He gritted his teeth. “I’m not dancing with you, Cleopatra.” Because every time he took her in his arms, he became more and more lost. He needed distance from her. Space that was safe so he could see a restoration of logic and order.

  “You’re angry again.”

  God, she was relentless. “I’m not . . .”

  Clearing her throat, she pointedly tapped at her closed lips. “Angry,” she mouthed, and then she lifted her arms into position.

  Adair searched about, feeling more cornered now than he had as a boy trapped against a back alley with the constables close. She was unrelenting. She’d not quit until he conceded to the set and a visit to his club.

  As if she’d followed his thoughts, Cleopatra waggled her arms.

  “Foine,” he snapped. All he’d end up with by the time this lesson was through was a lesson in humiliation. Particularly as she’d so elegantly glided about Lord and Lady Beaufort’s ballroom with the rakish Lord Landon. Fury whipped through Adair, and he took a lurching step toward her . . . and then stopped.

  He eyed the graceful arc of her arms, lost, when as a rule a man in St. Giles didn’t ever ask the way.

  “Here,” Cleopatra murmured. Stretching a hand out, she gathered his left one in her delicate but firm grip and guided it to her waist. His fingers tightened reflexively upon her. The warmth of her skin penetrated the thin scrap of fabric between them, searing his hand. His mouth went dry as lust bolted through him. “Put your other hand in mine,” she said softly, and of its own volition, his arm came up and he found her fingers with his in a grip that felt so very right.

  “Now what?” Was that question for himself . . . or for her?

  “All the steps are: one, two, three. One, two three. Even,” she added, as a seeming afterthought. “You’ll step forward with the heel and backward with the toe to the foot.” She squeezed his hand slightly, urging him through the box movements. “And count: one, two, three. One, two, three.”

  His pacing off, Adair stepped on her right foot. He cursed. Lord Landon hadn’t missed a single bloody step. His movements had been as smooth as his rakish smile.

  “Shh. Close your eyes, Adair.”

  “A man who closes his eyes is asking to be stabbed in the belly,” he muttered.

  “Hush,” she scolded. “If you overthink the movements, they’ll never come natural. Your eyes,” she again instructed.

  Adair hesitated and then complied. It was surely a mark of her hold over him that she managed to make him abandon so many of the rules of the streets that had guided his existence.

  Cleopatra led him through the movements, neatly sidestepping the handful of furniture pieces in the otherwise empty space he’d converted into an office. Adair held himself stiffly erect, training all his efforts on the soft instructions she offered up. Her husky voice washed over him, chasing off some of the tension in his frame. Mayhap he’d been wrong about this dancing business, after all, and the fancy toffs had been correct. For there was something so damned appealing in having a woman in one’s arms like this. Nay, you wouldn’t feel that way about any woman. It’s this one.

  He immediately stomped her left foot.

  His eyes shot open in time for him to detect Cleopatra’s wince.

  “Oi’m rubbish at this,” he rasped, slipping into his Cockney.

  Cleopatra squeezed his hands. “Eyes closed.”

  Then she began to sing. Hers was never a voice that would be considered flawless by society’s standards. It was slightly too low, and even more discordant. But there was a sultry realness to her contralto, and it only pulled him deeper and deeper into her hold.

  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 sing that one often,” he observed.

  This time, Cleopatra faltered, missing a step. Adair quickly caught her against him. Righting her, he brought them gliding back into steps of the waltz.

  “That has nothing to do with your waltz lesson,” she said gruffly, fixing all her attentions on his shirtfront.

  He caught her foot again under his, but instead of drawing back in humiliation and ending the set as he’d atte
mpted to earlier, he continued waltzing her sloppily about his makeshift office. “No,” he acknowledged. “It has to do with you.” And he wanted to know because of it.

  “Not much to say.” The pain in her tone said enough for her. “Diggory had one of his wives”—it was what he’d called the women he bedded and gotten his brats on—“care for me and my sisters. She used to sing it.” There was an air of finality that discouraged further probing.

  And a little more than three weeks ago, he would have contentedly left her to her secrets and her past. A person didn’t ask those personal questions, but she’d cracked the door open, and he wanted to walk through.

  “What happened to her?”

  Cleopatra abruptly stopped. “Doesn’t matter,” she said impatiently, taking a step out of his arms.

  Settling his hands about her shoulders, Adair brought her back around. “I don’t believe that.” He passed somber eyes over her face.

  Her skin white and her eyes ravaged, she wore her pain like a physical mark. “Oi don’t talk about it.”

  “And I don’t waltz.”

  Cleopatra chewed at her plump lower lip. “Fair enough.” And yet, still, she said nothing.

  Adair didn’t press her; he allowed her the time she needed, more than half-afraid that should she not speak on her own terms, she wouldn’t speak at all. “She cared for us, but not the way Diggory’s other women did. Joan cleaned our scrapes when we fell, or sang us songs when we had night terrors.”

  What hellish dreams must have come to her as a child. Himself having survived Diggory’s cruelty and having also witnessed firsthand the suffering his siblings endured, he had an idea of what her childhood must have been like. His heart ached.

  Absently, Cleopatra skimmed her fingertips over the top of his recent notes from Phippen. The tension in her slender frame, however, countered all show of calm. “Then Joan made an unforgivable mistake.”

  Do not ask . . . Having found himself on the edge of death too many times because of cruelty exacted by Mac Diggory, he didn’t want to know that unforgivable mistake. “What was it?” he asked, his voice hoarse.