The Lady's Guard (Sinful Brides Book 3)

by Christi Caldwell

  Niall froze, the cheroot halfway to his lips. “Is that what ya believe?” he asked, the jeering quality that had peppered their every earlier exchange now restored with her bold questioning. “That Oi was a poor, scared, innocent boy, sleeping in an alley, marked up by older, tougher men?”

  Her throat worked, and she fluttered her hands about her neck. “I . . . yes . . . no . . .”

  He took a step toward her, and the alacrity of that movement sent Diana stumbling back. She caught the edge of a mahogany side table to keep her feet planted. Forcing herself to not run off, scared and silent, as he surely expected.

  “Oi was the one who stabbed men while they slept.”

  A dull humming filled her ears. She did not believe it. Refused to accept the lies he fed her. She gave her head a clearing shake, but the buzz of confusion remained.

  With a hard, mirthless smirk, Niall continued to smoke his cheroot, eerily calm through her confusion. “Oi wasn’t the poor street urchin ya’ve painted in your mind, Diana. Oi killed on command.”

  His words rang with a truth that numbed her inside, penetrating the wall of shock. He was a killer by his own admission, and his unapologetic, unyielding stance said he had not a single qualm about it. Yet of all those hideous, horrid words uttered, only two held her gripped.

  On command.

  Loosening her clutch on the table, she forced her fingers open. “Who would require that?” she asked softly, drifting over to him.

  He eyed her warily the way he might a midnight specter come to haunt for the crimes he breathed aloud. “Wot are ya on about?” Those coarse, guttural tones were so thick she had to strain and make them out.

  Diana stopped before him and touched the tip of her index finger to the vicious white scar that started at the corner of his nose and arched over his right cheek. He winced but did not draw away from her faint caress. “You said you were made to kill.” It was a distinction. A slight one. And yet so very meaningful. Did he even realize that?

  He stiffened and then hastily tamped out his cheroot on the rose-inlaid table, tossing aside the small scrap. “Ya ’eard wot ya wanted to.”

  “I heard what you said,” she quietly corrected, her eyes touching on the small white circle just above his eyebrow. How did a person come by that very small, very precise mark?

  His jaw worked reflexively, and she saw the war he waged within. The war to keep her out, as he’d no doubt shut everyone else out before. Because for the misery of existing alone in a solitary world, there was something far more dangerous, far more heartbreaking, in dwelling among people who sneered and jeered.

  For the station divide between them, Diana and Niall were more alike in the most elemental ways that mattered.

  “How old were you?” she softly urged when he still volunteered nothing.

  “Seven? Eight? Oi don’t know.”

  She tipped her head.

  A harsh, ugly, empty chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Oi don’t even know ’ow old Oi am, princess. Me ma sold me to Diggory when Oi was a babe.”

  Diana let her hand fall to her side and buried it in her skirts to keep him from detecting that faint tremble. He’d see it as weakness and confirmation of every ill opinion he’d ever carried of her. “Diggory,” she repeated. Again, that name. A heavy pressure settled in her chest.

  Niall nodded.

  He spoke of evil—a person selling a child to a brute. It was an ugliness that matched the crimes of Diana’s mother. Then, it was the very same crime her mother was guilty of. Only the Duchess of Wilkinson had taken no coin for turning first Ryker and then Helena over to that monster. She’d done it with nothing more than her societal status in mind.

  “’e schooled me on how to use a blade. Forced me to off rivals and enemies.” His eyes grew distant, and in this moment he ceased to see her, or anything beyond the visions inside his head. How she wanted to climb inside and battle back his demons for him. To make his pain her own. “There was a boy,” he said, his voice peculiarly absent. “Ryan.” His lips twisted as if with bitter remembrance. “Tiny waif. ’e moved quicker than a rat scurrying through piles of refuse. Diggory had seen that speed and sought to use it to pick the pockets of theatregoers outside Drury Lane. Took ’im in. He was a lousy pickpocket,” he said, more to himself. “Oi tried to train him, but . . .”

  But . . . That word hovered in the air, as real as if it had been spoken.

  “But,” she gently prodded, capturing his cheek in her hand and forcing his face back to hers.

  He blinked. Did he even remember before now that she was here?

  “Oi couldn’t pick pockets anymore. Oi’d gotten too big. Wanted me to kill for him instead. I wouldn’t do it.”

  She caught her lower lip hard between her teeth, imagining Niall as a boy. He would have been mutinous, with a defiant glimmer in his eyes and a dark curl hanging over his forehead. “What did he do?” she asked, needing him to finish this telling as much for him as for herself.

  “Two of Diggory’s men ’eld one of his rivals. A miserable bruiser. ’is name was Boyd. A man Satan himself wouldn’t ’ave ’ad a use for.”

  His voice grew hoarse, and she ached to fold her arms around him and hold him close. Knowing, however, to do so would sever the connection and end his telling. So she stood frozen, motionless, waiting for him to continue. And this time she did not prod, but waited, with the longcase clock ticking away the passing moments.

  “’e took Ryan,” he said, at long last. Oh, God. “Put a blade to his throat.” No. “Told me to choose. Either Oi killed his rival Boyd . . .” His Adam’s apple moved with the force of his swallow. “Or he killed Ryan.”

  A chill worked along her spine, icing her flesh from the inside out. No. No. No. It was a silent, useless entreaty inside her head. For a different ending to the one she already knew. Please do not let him say it. Please . . .

  “Oi couldn’t do it. Next time ’e promised it would be me and not Ryan choking on my blood.” She swallowed back the bile burning at her throat. “It was the last time Oi faltered,” he said quietly. “After that, ’e made me mark my kills in that hovel I called home. Every time Oi took a life, he had me carve it in the wall with black ink.” He touched his chest absently, his gaze far away. “Kill or be killed,” he said, his voice quiet and distant, living with memories only he could see.

  Her stomach lurched, and Diana concentrated on breathing to keep from casting the contents of her stomach up. In this instance she proved very much her mother’s daughter, for, God help her, if she had a blade on her person and Mac Diggory lived even still, she would have gladly stuck a knife in his heart for what he’d done to Niall and the boy Ryan.

  Tears flooded her eyes, and she blinked them back. He’d only take those as further marks of her frailty. “You were a child,” she said softly, when she trusted herself to speak. “Regardless of whether you were eight, nine, or ten. You were forced to do . . .” God help her for a coward, she could not bring those words forward, and yet it would not be fair to this man. “You were f-forced to kill, Niall,” she finally managed. How am I so calm? How am I so calm when inside my heart is splintering apart? “The things you did, you did because you were forced to,” she repeated, willing him to see that. “That cruelty is not in your blood.”

  Unlike Diana, who was forever bound to the evil coursing in her veins.

  He’d not breathed those words aloud to a single person. After Ryker had felled Diggory’s henchman and sprung Niall free, Niall had fled his former life and never looked back. And never looking back had included never sharing those dark, evil secrets that had earned him a place in Hell early on.

  Until now.

  Until this woman. A fragile slip of a lady who wouldn’t have lasted a day in the Dials and who innocently believed a heavy curtain enough to hide her presence from someone of his stealth and skill.

  And yet, even issuing those dark utterances, Diana stood before him anyway. The faint tremble of her hands and slight quiver of
her lower lip the only mark of her upset. He searched for disgust in her expressive blue eyes, but saw nothing more than sadness, regret, and—he recoiled, looking away—pity.

  “Oi don’t want your pity,” he snapped, spoiling for a fight, needing one. What had made him share those words with her? Why now, when he’d kept all thought of Diggory and the dark deeds he’d carried out for that man tightly shut away?

  She shook her head, and her perfectly plaited golden braid flopped over her shoulder. “I don’t pity you,” she whispered. Her full lower lip quivered.

  “You’re as bad a liar as ya are a sneak, Diana Verney,” he muttered.

  She erased the space between them, stopping so close the fragrant hint of flowers that kissed her skin wafted about him. He filled his lungs with that purifying hint of innocence. Innocence in a world riddled with nothing but blackness.

  “You would take on guilt for things that were done to you as a child,” she said softly.

  “You’re wrong.”

  If she heard the dangerous warning there, she gave no indication. “Am I?” she countered in her willingness to take him on, braver than most grown men in St. Giles. “When was the last time you killed someone?”

  He’d spent his whole life believing fancy ladies like Diana weak and fainting, pathetic excuses for people. Yet, she didn’t wilt or bolt from him with horror of his revelations. That grudging respect he’d carried for her for these three weeks now gave way, allowing a deeper, abiding appreciation for her strength and courage.

  Niall looked away. “Oi got caught keeping some of the loot from a theft. Stabbed me for it.” He rubbed his hand over the place that vicious blade had speared his flesh.

  Diana buried a broken gasp in her palm.

  The terror of that long-ago day surged forth. Niall’s screams as the blade sluiced through his skin. The burning agony. Sweat beaded his forehead, and he briefly closed his eyes, willing back the memories. “Your brother saved me,” he managed to squeeze out through his constricted throat. So she might know the depth of the bond between Niall and the man who shared her blood. Drawing in an even breath, he opened his eyes. “After that?” Niall shrugged. “Oi left that hovel and vowed to never kill again and never return to that place.” And he hadn’t.

  The silver flecks in her eyes glimmered with sadness, and she claimed his hands in her own. “And that is why you are not the monster you take yourself for.”

  Niall’s gaze went to the disparateness of them. Riveted by that juxtaposition. Diana’s skin lily white, soft like satin, and neatly manicured, and his scarred, riddled with marks and jagged nails. He had no place putting his hands, stained forever with the blood of men he’d killed, upon her in any way.

  Yet she showed no trace of fear, and it roused a disquiet. It had been easier, safer, to see her as a pampered miss afraid of the world around her. Only to find, with her unflinching through the darkest stories of his past, that she was stronger than most men of his acquaintance.

  “Ya’d make me out to be someone Oi’m not,” he clipped out, yanking free of her grip. “Oi may not ’ave killed men, but Oi’ve beaten them. Threatened them.” Done other vicious things that even he couldn’t breathe aloud to this woman. Not when it would shatter her innocence even more than he had with talk of his black sins.

  She rocked on her bare heels. “Yes, well, I expect those men no doubt deserved it.”

  That was it. Ten words. Trusting ones that proved again her lack of fear . . . and the inherent goodness in her soul.

  “What manner of woman are ya, Diana Verney?” he puzzled aloud.

  “A practical one,” she said automatically. “One wise enough to see that you did what you had to do in order to survive, Niall.” She touched her fingertip to the scar above his brow, left by Diggory’s cheroots, and he fought the hungering to lean into that butterfly soft caress. “And one who is glad you’re alive for it,” she murmured softly.

  He started. He’d never doubted his siblings’ loyalty, but not a single person, not even the woman who’d given him life, had given thanks for his existence. He served a purpose: to keep people safe and to create work for bastards in the street. Beyond the purpose he served as head guard, what need did anyone have of him? Uncomfortable by Diana’s raw honesty and the peculiar lightness her admission roused in his chest, Niall disentangled their hands. He stalked over to her portraits, pausing beside one all-too-familiar image.

  Even in watercolor she’d captured the dilapidated buildings and layers of grime and muck covering the uneven cobblestones of St. Giles. Not just any part of St. Giles. He peered closer.

  “It is from the day H-Helena”—she tripped over her words—“and I were to visit the club.”

  The day Helena had shot Diggory dead, and Diana Verney had come streaking inside the Hell and Sin and into his arms for help.

  He moved on to the next portrait. This scene, of a different end of London. The lush greenery of Hyde Park set amid a backdrop of a turbulent storm, with rain battering down on two figures—a slender, cloaked female . . . and him. He glanced over his shoulder and found Diana, her cheeks blazing red, even in the darkened space.

  Niall returned his focus forward.

  An utterance she’d breathed in the midst of that rainstorm slid forward.

  “They’re all places you’ve been,” he said quietly, piecing together the eclectic array of artwork.

  Diana cleared her throat, and he felt her approach more than heard her, hovering at his shoulder. “Hardly many,” she conceded, confirming his supposition. She moved in a whir of white skirts and gathered a book. “But I hope to.” Coming forward with that small leather book, Diana held it out like an offering to him.

  Niall hesitated. He was not a man to seek or want entry inside another person’s thoughts, hopes, or dreams.

  Diana pressed the open sketchbook into his hand, making the decision for him. “I wish to go here,” she said, with a restored enthusiasm to her lyrical voice. She jabbed the page, forcing his eyes away from the lively color brightening her cheeks and to the page. The deep blue of the waters captured held him momentarily transfixed. From those green and sapphire waters rose a jagged mountain lined with green shrubs and brush. “It is St. George’s,” she clarified, and her eagerness was infectious. He studied the page while she spoke. “They call it New London.”

  He snorted as dry irony slapped at him, and he briefly glanced between her and the sketch. “There isn’t a thing about London in that page.”

  “Well, the cobbles came from Wales,” she explained, motioning to the gray road paved on that sheet, “but otherwise, I agree.” And this time when she spoke, she did so as a woman who seemed to forget Niall’s presence, and damned if he didn’t hate that faraway place she dreamt of with such longing. “It was formed by volcanoes, and”—she dusted her fingertips over the water she’d skillfully painted—“they say the sand of St. George’s is pink and soft like satin under your bare feet.” It was hard, for even him, one of London’s most jaded cutthroats, to not be drawn in by the fantastical lands she painted. Her voice took on a far-off, distant quality. “And the water, they say, is a cerulean water.” She nibbled at her fingertip, studying her work, and then slowly, meticulously, severed the page from the book. “My attempts appear too dark, and yet no matter how many times I attempt, I can just not get it quite right. Until I see it . . .”

  He snorted. The only island he’d ever known was the Queen’s England, and their waters were as black as their streets. “Who says that?”

  Looking up abruptly, she knocked into his bent head. He grunted, waving off her apology. She opened and closed her mouth several times. “Who says what?” she blurted.

  He jerked his chin at the sketch in her hands. “About their fancy waters and sands?”

  A little blush dusted her skin. “Uh . . .” He narrowed his eyes, having lived a jaded enough life to detect when an innocent miss was prevaricating. She had her secrets. They all did. But damned if he detested
hers. “Helena’s cousins by marriage,” she said at last, reluctantly. “They are from a seafaring family. The Viscountess Redbrooke’s brother is a merchant, and he’s told tales of St. George’s.”

  And Niall, who didn’t give a jot about anyone or anything, found himself filled with jealousy for the nameless “he” who’d filled Diana with tales of places Niall had never been, nor would ever go.

  Through his tumult, she set down that page and spoke casually. “Because of the vast ocean and plentiful cedar trees, the people who lived there turned to privateering and . . .” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Piracy.” A curl popped free of her loose braid and tumbled over her eye.

  A wistful smile pulled at his lips, and he brushed back that single golden lock, tucking it behind her ear. She spoke of pirates as though they were romantic characters belonging in the pages of a book and not the bloodthirsty wretches who plundered and pillaged. How different they viewed the world. “Ya find pirates romantic?” Such a detail would have earned his scorn three weeks earlier. Now it was just an endearing part of this innocent lady who’d enthralled him.

  “No,” she said quietly, unexpectedly. “But it is fun to sometimes imagine a world of excitement where men and women sail the seas and venture into waters different from our own.” Our own. And when she spoke that way, she created an intimate connection where it was a world they, in fact, shared. An illusion. Nothing more. Diana stepped away from him and took that fragile hint of warmth with her.

  Niall watched her every careful movement as she wandered away, settling at last before that St. Giles painting. “You’re leaving.”

  It wasn’t a question. “They apprehended the men who attempted to kill Penelope,” he said gruffly, giving her more information than he would another soul.

  She looked back. “Did they?” she asked cautiously.

  Something was expected of him here. He knew it by the glimmer in her cobalt eyes, but he’d never been a man to make any sense of emotion or feelings, so he gave nothing more than a brusque nod.