by Shana Galen
At his encouraging nod, she went on with a sigh. “I was a girl. Not only did I commit that sin, but I was an unwanted girl. My father had three boys, and those were his bread and butter. I don’t know if they were really my brothers. I don’t know if my mother bore them or some other woman. Perhaps they all had different mothers. He always liked women.”
“But he didn’t give you up, didn’t throw you in the Thames or leave you on the step of a foundlings house.”
“I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies, but if you think he kept me because my mother had some sympathy for me, think again.” She ran the palms of her hands against the rough wood of the crate she leaned against, feeling the splinters prick her skin. “She didn’t treat me any differently than she did the dog, and she generally kicked whatever mutt latched onto us out of her way.”
“She was a prostitute.”
Fallon nodded. “My father brought men home, and she serviced them. There was a thin curtain between her bedroom and the rest of our small house so I knew what was going on. And when I got a little older, my father started looking at me the way he looked at her. I knew what was coming.”
“He was going to sell you too.”
She nodded. “I didn’t want that. Above all, I didn’t want my mother’s life. By the time I was eight or nine she was sick with the French disease. Horrible way to die.” She shut her eyes, trying not to remember the sores on her mother’s body, the mental confusion, the screams at night. “I’d already been stealing for my father, picking pockets, grabbing food from vendors’ carts. Do you really want to hear this?”
“Yes.”
She straightened at his empathetic tone. “I don’t want your sympathy. If you’re going to feel sorry for me, then I’ll stop right now.”
“I don’t feel sorry for you.”
She narrowed her eyes, studying him in the dim light. “No, I’m sure you’re gloating over your perfect childhood.” She didn’t know where it came from, this defensiveness. She supposed it had lain latent for years as she moved through the ton and adopted their ways. But she’d never been one of them. Deep down, she’d always known that. Fitzhugh was going to make certain she didn’t forget.
“I can’t complain. I did have a rather idyllic childhood, but it was far from perfect and nothing to gloat over. I certainly haven’t overcome what you have. I haven’t made myself into the kind of person you have.”
Fallon studied him for a long moment. Had that been respect in his tone? She could have heard him incorrectly… “In any case, I started taking more chances, stealing bigger items, going with my brothers—actually, by that point, one was in prison and one was dead, so it was brother—on his schemes. We made a good team.”
And it had been through Arthur that she’d met Frankie. But Fitzhugh didn’t need to know about Frankie. She didn’t have to give him that.
“But it wasn’t enough.”
“No. My father was a greedy bastard. Sorry.”
He held a hand up. “Don’t apologize to me. I’m sure he deserves far worse.”
He did, but Fallon could hear Lady Sinclair in the back of her mind saying, Fallon, language!
“He decided to sell me to the highest bidder. I overheard him talking about it with some of the other men from his gang. I don’t know if Lucifer was going to buy me for himself or to sell my virginity to someone else, but when we went to Lucifer’s Lair, I knew the reason. And I knew what would happen when I was bedded.”
“You weren’t a virgin.” He said it matter-of-factly without any disgust.
“No, but my father didn’t know that. He would have killed me. No.” That wasn’t right. He would have done far worse. “He would have passed me around to all his friends and then killed me.”
“Fallon—”
“You need to understand why I did it, Fitzhugh. I didn’t want to murder him, but I also wasn’t going to be sold, especially when that sale meant the worst kind of death and torture. I tried to run away.”
He was beside her now, his hands tender on her forearms. “You don’t have to justify it to me. I’m not judging you. I’ve done far worse than anything you can even imagine.”
“No, you haven’t, and if you did commit murder, it was in the name of service to your country. That’s honorable, not… not—” What was the word? She’d read it somewhere. “Patricide,” she said finally.
“There’s a fine line between duty and murder,” he said, looking away. “I promise you I’m no saint. Tell me the rest.”
“He found me and brought me back. He beat me too, hurt me so badly I was in bed for a week. That delayed the transaction a bit, but it didn’t deter him. He’d negotiated a high price for me. He came home drunk and boasting about it. He said… I won’t repeat what he said. It wasn’t the kind of thing a father says about a daughter.”
She was far away now, present in the room with Fitzhugh and cognizant of his warm hands on her arms, but at the same time back in that filthy little hovel with her father. Arthur had been gone by then, she didn’t know where, and it had been the two of them. And he’d been crowing about how smart he was, how much he’d get for her. He’d been so drunk, drunk enough that he made a grab for her, loosened the ties on her blouse. He only wanted to see the merchandise, he’d said.
She’d smacked his hand away in an effort to cover her breasts, and he’d fallen backward. She hadn’t hit him hard, but he’d been foxed and unsteady. He fell, and when he rose again, there was murder in his eyes. The knife had been on the table. He’d been using it to carve the mutton he’d brought home for himself. None for her, of course. She’d been providing her own food for years now. Before she knew it, the knife was in her hand and she was slashing at him.
She was fighting for her life, fighting to keep the knife away from him, fighting to save her poor, miserable life.
And when all was said and done, she was covered in blood. His blood. And he lay motionless on the rough floor of their ugly house. She knew what came next. Prison would be a blessing considering what Arthur or any one of her father’s gang would do to her.
And so she’d run.
“And that was when Sinclair found you?”
She nodded. “I was shivering in a corner of Hyde Park in the early hours a few days later. I was hungry and tired and about to give up. Sinclair rode by on a gray horse, and at first I thought he was some kind of apparition. I thought I was imagining things. And then he reined the horse in, jumped down, and asked if I needed help.” Fallon laughed a little at the memory. She could only imagine how she must have looked to the earl—a ragged, filthy, little beggar who would just as soon steal his purse as do him the same kindness.
“I said no, of course. But he said I was to come with him anyway. I was too tired to argue. I thought prostitution was pretty much inevitable at that point, and he seemed nice enough and as far removed from my father and his associates as I could get. He took me home with him, and that’s when I met the countess.”
It was also when she’d realized the huge disparity between the wealthy and titled and the world she’d grown up in. Fallon had stared in wonder at the enormous town house with its sunny rooms, high ceilings, and soft furnishings. She was ashamed to remember how the first few months of her stay all she’d thought about was what everything was worth and how easy it would be to steal it. Why, she could just walk out the door with a silver candelabra that would pay her rent for a year.
But she hadn’t. Partly because she liked the countess and she liked Juliette, who had also been living under the Sinclairs’ roof at that time. She liked having a clean, soft place to sleep. She liked being clean. She liked how Sinclair never expected anything of her. And, most surprisingly, she enjoyed her lessons.
She’d never learned to read or write, and her speech had been absolutely horrible. But the countess herself had sat with Fallon for hours and hours each day,
teaching Fallon how to be a lady. And Fallon had wanted to be a lady.
Most of all, she wanted to stay with the Sinclairs, where she was safe and where she knew her father’s men would never find her.
But as the years passed, she occasionally ventured back to her old haunts. No one recognized her, and there was no hint of her father, not even a whisper of his name. She began to feel bolder and braver. By then Lily had joined them, and the countess had come up with a plan to help the girls become self-sufficient.
“You became The Three Diamonds. It’s a brilliant plan, and it has served you well.”
“But there’s one problem. My past is still my past. You discovered it.”
“I’m a good researcher.”
“Good enough to be certain my father is still alive?”
“Absolutely certain.” His fingers trailed up and down her arms. “You didn’t kill him that night. You may have gravely injured him, forced him underground for a time, but he’s back. And he wants me dead.”
Fallon closed her eyes. For so long she’d thought her nightmare was over, but it had just been in hiding. Her father wasn’t really dead. If Fitzhugh could find her, so could Bayley, especially now that she’d told Gabriel her real identity.
“I’m not going to let him touch you,” Fitzhugh said, grasping her arms. “I’m not going to let him hurt you.”
“You can barely protect yourself right now.” She indicated their present hiding place. “How can you protect me? And don’t pretend you didn’t involve me in all this to use me as bait. Don’t forget where I came from. I know how to catch a fish.”
Fitzhugh let her go and looked away. “I admit, that was my intention.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I hoped I could find some clue as to the identity of the man paying your father. Who is he? Does your father work for him, or is he a man who prefers not to dirty his hands? It’s someone wealthy, and if my instincts are correct, someone with a title or a place in the government.”
“But so far we’re at a dead end.”
“Yes. The only lead I have is to your father, but I won’t use you as bait.”
She shook her head. “Why not? Don’t tell me you care about me. I’m no naïve virgin. I know what happened between us back at The Grotto doesn’t mean anything.”
“Doesn’t it?”
She frowned and studied him, confused. “Why are you always making cryptic statements like that? Are you trying to imply that what happened did mean something to you?”
“And what if it did? What if I told you I’m half in love with you, Fallon?”
Her heart kicked so hard, she had to sit on the edge of the crate to keep from falling. She did not understand this man. She thought she understood all men, knew what they wanted. But this man bewildered her. She looked up at him. He was watching her, waiting.
“I wouldn’t believe you. I’d think it was some sort of trick or ploy.”
He nodded. “Of course you would.” He bent over, ostensibly searching for the exit again. “Men tell you that all the time.”
“They do,” she admitted. “But not… not like this.” She couldn’t explain exactly how Fitzhugh’s admission was different. Was it because they were locked together in a hole in the ground? Was it because he could have already had her and didn’t take the opportunity?
But he’d never been after her body. No, what he wanted from her was far more dangerous. And now he was playing with the hottest fire of all—love.
“You don’t mean it, do you?” she asked, finally.
He glanced over his shoulder and gave her a sardonic look. “Are you going to help me look, or would you rather sleep here tonight?”
She stood and began moving spades again. She was almost at the end of the pile when Fitzhugh swore.
“What is it?” she turned quickly to find him smiling.
“I’ve got it.” He grinned at her. “You’re too smart for your own good, Fallon.” He brushed the dust and dirt away from a door that matched the interior of the room quite well. But it was a door and big enough for even a tall man like Gabriel to use as an entrance and exit. “Ready to see where it leads?”
“Probably right into Gabriel’s lair.”
“Then I’ll rescind my earlier compliment on your intelligence.” He tugged the handle, and the door creaked open. “What do we have to lose?”
Fallon peered into the dark tunnel. I’ve already lost it, she thought, and crawled inside.
Ten
Warrick stripped off his soiled coat and shirt and left them in a pile for his valet. He’d dismissed the man, wanting time alone now that he was finally in his own home, in his own bedchamber. He’d deemed it too dangerous to return to Fallon’s residence, but his own was a bloody fortress. Neither Gabriel nor Joseph Bayley nor Lucifer himself was going to get in. If they made it past the guards patrolling the perimeter, they’d never make it past the locks, bars, and the four two-hundred-pound mastiffs that served as his intruder alerts.
The Grotto’s hidden door had led to an alley a few blocks from Gabriel’s establishment. Warrick and Fallon had emerged into the dark night, blinking like surprised owls. He’d expected her to argue about returning to his town house, but she was either too tired or finally resigned to trusting him because she followed without comment or protest.
And now she slept in a bed just a few doors away. At least he hoped she slept. He didn’t sleep. He never slept anymore. It was too dangerous.
He paced his room, ignoring his untouched bed. Fallon was complicated. That shouldn’t attract him, but for some reason it did. She hadn’t believed him when he’d said he was half in love with her. He could have proposed marriage and she probably would have laughed. He imagined men proposed to her all the time. Conventional methods of wooing a woman were not going to succeed with Fallon. She was too jaded, too wary, too wise.
And that was all the more reason to treat her as a business associate and little else. He didn’t need a complicated woman. He had enough of those in his life between his mother and sisters. And good God, he could only imagine the looks on their faces were he to be seen courting the Marchioness of Mystery. His mother would probably faint. Or at least pretend to faint.
He did not need another complicated woman.
So why couldn’t he stop thinking about Fallon? Why couldn’t he stop imagining what it would be like to have her here in his room, beside him in his bed? She’d be naked, that glorious honey-toned skin silvered by moonlight…
He glanced at his window, where the drapes were firmly closed. He’d have to open them before he carried her in here. And was there a full moon tonight?
He sat on his bed, put his head in his hands, and willed himself to stop thinking about her, stop planning her seduction, their lovemaking. This wasn’t a mission. He had bigger, more important dilemmas at the moment than whether he or she should be on top. Besides, he would be on top the first time. He wanted to be able to look down at her face when she climaxed, and he wanted to control the penetration. He’d take her with agonizing slowness. She thought she liked it fast and hard, but he’d show her there was something to be said for torturously slow. He’d make her cry his name again. He’d make her cry it again and again.
And that would probably wake up the servants.
Damn it! He flopped onto his back. He didn’t care about the servants—except they would likely report to his mother, and then she’d show up, wanting to know what was going on. She’d report back to his father, who was already not speaking with Warrick. Oh, the shame of having a son who insisted on pursuing a place in the Foreign Office. And the shame of the younger brother who followed him into battle. But just because the Earl of Winthorpe had disowned Warrick didn’t mean the man didn’t receive regular briefings about his wayward son.
And that didn’t mean Warrick didn’t hope his father would one day accept him again. Accept him
for who he was—not who his father wanted him to be. And he was a man who would take great pleasure in making love to Fallon, whether she was the Marchioness of Mystery or not. And to hell with his mother and father.
He was a grown man and could do what he damned well pleased.
He lay on the bed for another quarter hour and unwillingly succumbed to a restless sleep. He dreamed he was on a battlefield. He couldn’t say which one. It was gray and misted with fog. It looked like any of the dozens of battlefields he’d seen in his career—littered with the corpses of dead and dying men; reeking with the stench of blood, sweat, and excrement; and punctuated by the agonized groans of the wounded.
Warrick didn’t want to be here. He was supposed to be somewhere else. He couldn’t think where at the moment, but it was urgent. He felt for his satchel, where the documents he was ferrying would be stored, and his hand came away wet. He stared at it, at the bright crimson dripping from his fingers. Was it his blood or another’s? Where was his horse? Had he lost him? Was that why he was walking?
He stumbled and fell to his knees, his face inches from the severed head of a man. Warrick tried to jump up, but he couldn’t get his footing on the slippery, uneven ground. And then he looked down and realized he hadn’t been walking on ground at all. He’d been walking over bodies—hundreds of them, thousands of them. He’d been stepping on their hands and chests and noses, trudging through their blood and waste, and he had to climb over thousands more to reach the edge of the battlefield.
That was if there was an edge. It seemed to go on and on, disappearing in the omnipresent fog. He wanted out of here, but he was seeking… something. Something vital. He called for help, hoping one of his countrymen would hear him. It was stupid to call out—the enemy could come just as easily as an ally, and he had those documents. Not that he cared about them anymore. There was something else.
He called out again, knowing he shouldn’t but desperate now, his state verging on hysteria. The eyes of the corpses were looking at him, staring at him. “Don’t look at me!” he yelled.