The Vixen (Wicked Wallflowers Book 2)

by Christi Caldwell

  I wouldn’t be so foolish as to laugh at the Jewel of St. Giles.

  There hadn’t been a thing sardonic or biting about that statement. Instead, he’d spoken with a respect and admiration that she didn’t know what to do with.

  “Wot in ’ell are ya doing?”

  Gasping, Ophelia whipped up her head.

  Caught.

  Her sister Cleo cursed a stream of invectives that would have set a sailor to blushing. “Wot in blazes are ya doing?” she demanded again, storming into the room.

  “I’m not stealing from Dabney, if that is what you’re worried after,” she muttered.

  “Oi’m worried about what they’ll say about ya being caught sneaking about Calum’s home.”

  Calum. Another of their lifelong rivals whom her sister now spoke of and about with such ease.

  “Is that what you care about now? The gossips?” My God, what had happened to her fearless, unrepentant sister?

  Except she had cowed to Broderick’s wishes and expectations. Was it a surprise she should continue to falter before that world her brother had thrust her into?

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Cleo snapped.

  “Like what?” she asked, lifting her chin in a challenge.

  Her younger sister’s eyes formed small slits. “And do not presume to play the lackwit with me. You know precisely what I’m talking about.” With a reassuring show of her old spirit, Cleo growled. So she hadn’t been wholly crushed. “You look at me differently.”

  “You are different,” Ophelia said softly. She’d simply believed her sister hadn’t noted the changes.

  Cleo’s waiflike frame jerked erect in the same way it had on the cusp of a street battle. Her sister dropped her voice to a hushed whisper. “You look at me as though I’m weak and you’re somehow stronger.”

  She made a sound of protest. “Don’t be foolish.” Having had her face against a brick wall while a nobleman had pawed at her, Ophelia had no misconceptions of her own infallibility.

  “Let us be clear, Ophelia, as you stand here the proud Killoran, resolute in the face of the enemy . . . you’ve also been ordered about by Broderick, and not unlike me, you are here now, just as I was.” She jammed a finger toward the gleaming oak floors. “You also gave in to Broderick. Why? To prevent him from using Gertrude in your stead?”

  That is precisely what it had been. Only . . . “It’s not the same,” she said through gritted teeth, eyeing the doorway. Her sister had once been more careful. Careful enough that she’d not risk an exchange that could be overheard by those lurking in the shadows.

  “Very well, then. How have I changed, hmm? Do you see me as weak now?”

  “Never that,” Ophelia said at last. She’d endured too much and defeated foes two times her size when she’d been a mere girl. They all had. Those experiences left a person stronger in ways they’d previously never been. That could not be undone, any more than the evils they’d endured to survive could be erased.

  “What, then?” Her sister dropped her hands on her hips and angled closer. “A traitor to the Killorans?”

  There it was. The wedge that had divided them since Cleo had returned to the Devil’s Den and professed her love for a man they’d spent their young lives hating as an enemy. Unable to meet her sister’s too-knowing eyes, Ophelia glanced to the doorway. After dreading dinner with a room full of nobs and her family’s rivals, she found herself wishing she’d followed the guests to that damned dining room.

  The fight drained from her sister’s taut shoulders. “That is why you don’t come around,” her sister noted, and had there been fury and condemnation in her tone, it would have been far easier to take than that whisper of sadness. It was the rawest, most real she’d ever recalled her sister being in any discourse . . . and she didn’t know what to do with this stranger.

  But then, that is what she’d become in so many ways—a stranger.

  Ophelia swiped a hand over her eyes. “I have my work at the club now.” Or she had. Before she’d been ordered away and had ultimately chosen to save Gertrude over all the waifs in the street in need of saving.

  Through her smudged spectacles, Cleo’s regretful eyes met her own. “You could do both,” her sister pointed out.

  Ophelia stared at her quizzically. What was she talking about?

  “Visit me, and see to your work at the Devil’s Den.”

  She scrabbled with the sides of her skirts. For though she had been consumed with her role in helping the children of St. Giles find safety and security, she could have, as her sister argued, come ’round.

  But Ophelia had been unable to enter Adair Thorne’s household, even with her sister living there. There were too many years of hatred and mistrust.

  Cleo gathered her hands, squeezing them tightly. “My God, they forgave our family for burning down their clubs, Ophelia. Yet you still cannot see past your hatred. They were not wrong all these years. Our family was—”

  She recoiled. “Do not,” Ophelia rasped. It was enough that Cleo had tied herself to the Blacks. It was an altogether different matter to have that same sister now question who the Killorans had been all these years and what they’d done to survive.

  Releasing her, Cleo gave her head a shake.

  “I am here now,” Ophelia said lamely.

  Her sister smiled, a pitying one that cut to the quick. “Yes. Yes, you are . . . here.” Precisely where Cleo had been and would forever remain.

  Had her younger sibling spoken them, the words couldn’t have been clearer.

  They stared at each other, neither conceding another word or emotion.

  Cleo was the first to look away.

  She glanced to the clock. “Come.” Cleo held out her arm. “As it is, with the both of us gone, they’ll no doubt wonder if we’ve made off with Calum’s silver.” She followed that with a smile, a hesitant bid at returning them to normality.

  Ophelia looped her arm through her sister’s and allowed her to lead her to her first societal event . . . within the enemy’s lair, with Connor O’Roarke seated at the opposite side of a supper table.

  Connor with his steel-hard eyes, who’d teased her. It was an incongruity that didn’t fit with the cold investigator who’d threatened her family’s livelihood.

  Too soon, Ophelia and Cleo arrived in the Dabneys’ formal dining room.

  All eyes swiveled to the doorway, equal parts fascination and revulsion spread amongst the respectable guests.

  Ophelia curled her toes so tight her arches ached.

  “You can do this.”

  Did that muted whisper belong to her sister? Or was it merely a product of her own silent thoughts?

  Tilting her chin at a defiant angle, she glowered in return, daring the crowd with her eyes, moving her stare down the length of the table—and then colliding with the empty seat alongside an unsmiling Connor O’Roarke.

  Oh, please, please, saints above, let the seat belong to my sister. Please.

  “Miss Killoran.”

  She stiffened as that gentle and cheerful voice sounded from the head of the table.

  Mrs. Dabney, the sister of a duke whose cultured tones and graceful movements were so at odds with the man she’d wed. Waving off a servant’s offer to assist, she hopped up from her seat and joined Ophelia and her sister. “Allow me to show you to your seat.”

  No. Please. No. She allowed herself to be pulled along past lords and ladies and Blacks, feeling like one being led to one’s executioner.

  Mrs. Dabney escorted her to that blasted open seat beside her lifelong nemesis.

  Connor, with a gesture better suited a gentleman, climbed to his feet.

  If she had any inclination of the palpable tension between them, their hostess hid it and beamed, glancing back and forth between Ophelia and Connor. “Mr. Steele, please allow me to introduce you to Miss—”

  He settled an inscrutable stare on her face. “I have had . . . the pleasure.”

  Whatever their hostess and the
assembled guests close enough to hear that statement had been expecting, it assuredly had not been that. Mouths fell agape, and looks were exchanged.

  As Ophelia claimed the seat next to Connor, she silently cursed a day that had gone from bad to worse—and was now a disaster.

  The vixen was miserable.

  Which shouldn’t matter. This was an altogether different misery from what he’d come to know from the heated spitfire.

  Shoulders bent, she devoted all her attentions to the contents of her white soup, the way a clergyman attended his morning prayers.

  As she had since it had been set down before her nearly fifteen minutes earlier.

  It doesn’t matter to you.

  She was quite clear in her opinion of him and his company. She detested him—as she had since she’d found him in the streets, a boy fighting recapture.

  Or it shouldn’t matter. Only, he’d been her. New to Society, whispered about by all and respected by almost none. It had taken him years to let those insults roll off his person and become content in who he was.

  Oh, she might believe herself different from him, but the truth remained: given the crimes they’d committed and the evil they’d witnessed, they’d always be alike—whether either of them wished it or not.

  It was surely that reason alone which counted for the need to see her usual spirit restored—even if it was to the spitting and snarling creature she’d always been around him.

  “I believed it was palms.”

  Slowly lifting her head, she met his gaze squarely. “Beg pardon?”

  She begged no person’s pardon, and she certainly never had his.

  Connor gestured to the gold-filigree Limoges bowl. “I’ve seen you study a hand with such intensity only when telling the future.”

  Her eyes went wide, and her lips moved, but no words came out.

  He winked and spooned some of the light broth into his mouth.

  “You know that,” she whispered. Given the fact that before he’d been plucked from the streets, he’d existed as nothing more than a shadow hunted by Diggory, hers was a fair query. “How do you know that?” Her returned question was heavy with skepticism.

  Lowering his spoon, Connor placed his lips close to her ear. “I may not have been as skilled at subterfuge as you, Ophelia Killoran, but I did manage on occasion to survive, unseen, without your help.”

  It still did not diminish the great favors she’d done him. She had been the only one of Diggory’s gang whose path had crossed his. And for all her shows of hatred for him, she’d never turned him over, and for that he would be forever grateful.

  She wrinkled her pert nose, indecision warring in her eyes. “I haven’t read them since I was a girl. I have no intention of ever doing so again.”

  She didn’t trust him. It was there clear for him to see, an indelible part which every person who’d lived in St. Giles would carry.

  Then she collected her spoon, dipped the silverware inside, and drew a circle in the broth. He expected a stretch of uncomfortable silence from her.

  “You never explained why you are here.”

  But then, he should always know better than to make assumptions where Ophelia was concerned. “You never asked,” he reminded. He took a long swallow from his crystal goblet. All the while he studied her over the rim.

  Ophelia paused with her distracted movements. “Your investigation?”

  He lifted his lips in a droll grin. “It’s hardly an equitable trade to offer details about my presence when you have proven less than accommodating to discuss why you are here.”

  Had he not been studying her so closely, he’d have failed to miss her long fingers tightening around the stem of her spoon and the way the blood drained from those digits as she kept a death grip upon it.

  She no more wanted to be here amidst Polite Society than he himself had all those years earlier. She’d the same look of one poised to take flight. For the tension that had always existed between them, he felt a kindred connection to Ophelia in this instance.

  “Am I to expect you, the great investigator, knower of all information, has failed to see all the stories about me splashed upon the gossip pages?” she asked, bitterness making her tone sharp.

  Setting aside his glass, Connor reclined in his chair. For the majority of rot published in those pages, there was occasionally a snippet of information that had helped him solve cases. As she’d predicted, he was one who gathered details and filed away that which could benefit whichever case he’d taken on. “You are correct. I did read the gossip.”

  Ophelia’s full upper lip curled. “Of course you did.”

  “You judge me for being cognizant of what is being said? Yet never did I claim to take the words written in those sheets as fact. Are they true?” he asked curiously. It was surely a curiosity about the minx from his past and nothing more. “Are you here to make a match with a nobleman?” If so, she was no different from the Lady Bethanys of the world.

  All his oldest annoyances boiled to the surface.

  A footman inserted himself between them, and Connor silently damned the gold-clad servant now clearing away the first course of the evening meal.

  After the next dish was placed before them and the servants returned to their positions against the wall, Connor redirected his attention to Ophelia.

  “Well?” he asked, as though there hadn’t been so much as a break in their discourse.

  She grabbed her fork and knife, and he tensed, warily eyeing those makeshift weapons.

  The ghost of a smile graced her lips. That slight expression of mirth softened her features, chasing away the unfortunate cynicism that had marred her since she was a girl. “Do you think I’m going to carve you up?”

  “You certainly suggested you’d do it.”

  If ya know what’s good for you, O’Roarke, ya’ll stay away from me and mine, or Oi’ll cut ya up and feed ya to the dogs in St. Giles.

  Ophelia briefly dipped her eyes, but not before he spied the darkening there. Was it regret he observed in them? He studied her bent head. The chandelier’s glow cast a soft light upon her pale strands, adding to the otherworldliness of this woman. No. It wasn’t possible. She’d never been anything but unapologetic where he’d been concerned. “What have you heard?” she asked gruffly.

  “What have I read?” he corrected. “That you have your eye on a title.”

  “And what do you think?”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her whether it mattered . . . when it never had. She’d been the proverbial oil to his water. Only—

  If he spat that retort, that would undoubtedly be the end of their discourse.

  “I always believed you’d rather cut a lord than marry one.”

  A smile dimpled her cheek and lit her eyes, and by the softening of her expression, he may as well have plucked a star from the heavens.

  All of a sudden, that soft amusement withered. “My brother,” she conceded, shoving the tip of her fork at the ragù of veal on her plate. He hurried to mask his surprise at her forthrightness. She abruptly lifted her head, and her next words came out underscored with a defensive edge. “My brother wants the match,” she said softly from the side of her mouth. “Not me.” As soon as that revealing bit slipped out, she went tight-lipped.

  He flicked his gaze briefly to Bethany, though he was wholly engrossed in his discussion with Ophelia. My father insists I make the match, Connor. What else can I do? It was all women ultimately desired. It was why he’d never wander down that perilous path of love again.

  “And only nobility will do for the Jewel of St. Giles?” he murmured.

  “According to my brother.”

  Oi would have made ya moi wife. Oi’ve a special spot for ladies.

  The distant screams of his mother melded with her pleading echoed at the back of his mind where the darkest demons would forever linger.

  The lively discussions and periodic peals of laughter occurring about the dining room heightened the viciousness
of the crime that had seen Connor an orphan. Three crimes committed that day that had seen Connor shattered and alone.

  Hatred sang in his veins for Diggory and the men who’d helped him amass his power, Broderick Killoran being the greatest one. In his craving for a link to the peerage, Killoran proved himself very much the Devil’s apprentice.

  The young proprietor was too blinded by his lust for power to see: no lord in London could ever be a match for the Jewel of St. Giles. With her contempt for the peerage, no nobleman could ever make her happy; nor would those gents understand her and the life she’d known.

  “Well?”

  Brought back to the moment, he arched an eyebrow.

  Ophelia lifted her shoulders. “I told you my reason for being here. What is yours?”

  Again, Connor leaned forward. “The truth?”

  A snort escaped her, that inelegant sound attracting several disapproving stares. Connor and Ophelia ignored them. “It’s a certainty that I wouldn’t have you lie to me.”

  “I’m a guest.”

  “You’re a guest?” she echoed, incredulity in her eyes. “Of Calum Dabney?”

  He frowned. She didn’t know. Ophelia truly had never gathered what had happened to him that long-ago night. Didn’t know that when he’d stepped in to forfeit his life so she might be spared, he’d been saved in every possible way by one of those noblemen she so mistrusted. “You find that so hard to believe?” he evaded.

  “You, an investigator, keeping company with a proprietor of a gaming hell?” Her words came to an abrupt stop. Understanding dawned in her eyes. “I see.”

  “What exactly do you believe you see?” he asked, wondering which path her clever mind had traversed.

  “He supplies you with information about St. Giles.”

  “Calum Dabney has been forthcoming with the information that would be helpful to my case, but I am not here on a matter of official business.”

  “Then, why are you here?” she asked with a frankness he appreciated.

  He considered her question a moment. “You asked how I survived . . . that day. How I escaped the constable and gentleman who dragged me off.” He paused. “I was saved.”