The Vixen

by Christi Caldwell

“Stephen Killoran,” the boy cut in, puffing his chest. “Ya can call me ‘Killoran.’”

  Schooling his features into a somber mask, Connor delivered another bow, this time for the boy’s benefit. As one who’d once been equally snarling and angry, he well recognized that pugnacity in the proud child.

  “Stephen,” his sister warned.

  Connor waved off her attempts. “Respect amongst those on the streets is not dictated but rather earned. Isn’t that true, Mr. Killoran?”

  Ophelia’s brother folded his arms across his narrow chest. “Ya’re the bloody law.”

  “An investigator,” he elucidated. “Somewhat different.” There had also been a time when he’d been in possession of the same wariness for the men in Connor’s position.

  “Mr. Steele also lived on the streets.”

  Stephen’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. Then he lowered them swiftly back into place. “Ya funning me?” he demanded of his sister.

  “I assure you, she’s not.”

  “Ya don’t sound loike me or Ophelia,” he challenged, suspicion heavy in his voice. “Sound more loike Broderick.”

  Connor looked to where a blonde girl twirled a porcelain doll in a circle. He’d been near in age to that solitary child when the world had been cut out from under him. “Any child can be made an orphan,” he said gravely. “And I was one of them.”

  “Where’d ya live?”

  With the boy’s tenacious questioning, he’d make for a skilled investigator someday.

  “Mr. Steele lived all over,” Ophelia supplied for him. “St. Giles. The Dials. Bond Street.”

  Stephen took a step closer. Squinting, he peered up at Connor as though he sought for proof of his sister’s claim. “Did ya?” he asked. Some of the hostility receded from his voice. Then the wall of suspicion was back in place. “Oi never saw ya.”

  “Before I was adopted, I was an orphan on my own.”

  “Why were ya on yar own?”

  Because there’d been no other alternative for Connor. Nay, it’s because you chose that fate. Aye. How long had he shut people out? Ophelia had opened his eyes to that. “It was . . . safer.” The choice had existed between his morality and killing on command, as his friend Niall had been forced into . . . or living in the shadows, a boy without a family or friend. “Your sister”—he looked briefly to Ophelia and then back to Stephen—“saved me from capture several times.”

  “Ophelia?” Connor might as well have suggested God himself for the incredulity there. “She would ’ave been a baby.”

  His lips twitched. Two years away from thirty, he’d not considered himself old. “She was just a girl.” And she’d had a spirit greater than all Diggory’s men combined.

  “So ya were loike us.” Stephen gave him a once-over. “But now ya ain’t. ’elp the nobility.” His was a statement steeped in condemnation. “Ya threaten our club.”

  Ophelia shot him a silencing look that the boy ignored.

  So the child knew the terms Connor had put to Ophelia. “I help those in need of help,” he said quietly.

  “At the expense of who?” the boy charged with a world-wary wisdom far suited to one who’d attained two decades more of experience. How very much he sounded like his sister.

  Connor had threatened Ophelia and her family. He had been so removed from how those in St. Giles lived, and for so long, that he’d used ruthless tactics of ensuring cooperation. All along, he’d not thought about the terror known by those children like Stephen.

  “Stephen, run along while I speak to Mr. Steele.”

  The boy set his jaw at a mutinous angle.

  “Here.” She collected the rackets and ball and stuffed them into his arms. “Go play with that young girl.”

  Stephen blanched. Tossing up his palms warningly, he backed away. “She’s a girl.”

  “She’s alone,” Ophelia insisted. “Unless you’d rather return and listen to the remainder of Mrs. Dabney’s speech?”

  Cursing, the child yanked the items from his sister’s arms and stomped off.

  “Remember to have fun,” she called after him.

  Stephen lifted one finger in a crude gesture.

  Ophelia sighed and remained there, staring after him.

  “Mrs. Dabney has since concluded her remarks,” Connor said from the corner of his mouth.

  “Hush, or I’ll invite my brother back to continue his questioning.”

  They shared a smile; the moment was natural, relaxed. How much he preferred it to the contentious debates that had once riddled their exchanges.

  Connor and Ophelia watched the playing children.

  “Perhaps I should . . . smooth the way for introductions,” she ventured, worrying at her lower lip.

  “You needn’t worry. The girl is more capable than most.”

  Ophelia glanced up quickly. “You know her? Is she—?”

  “A subject of my investigation?” he drawled. What accounted for the pang of disappointment that she believed him incapable of good and driven by nothing more than the assignments he took on? “She is not. I . . . found Grace several months back. It was winter. She was begging . . .”

  “And you brought her here,” Ophelia correctly surmised.

  “I’m a . . . benefactor of Mrs. Dabney’s newest foundling hospital. I serve on the board for several of her organizations. When I’m able, I visit Grace.”

  Utter shock transformed Ophelia’s features.

  With a wink, Connor found a seat on the wrought-iron bench facing Grace and Stephen. Ophelia’s indecision carried with it a lifelike force; he felt her hover, lingering in the spot he’d left her, and then with slow, reluctant steps, she stopped at his shoulder before sliding onto the bench beside him.

  They settled into a comfortable silence, watching as Stephen attempted to provide Grace a lesson in tennis.

  Periodically the boy frowned, rolling his eyes to the heavens.

  “He’s angry,” Ophelia murmured, the first to break the quiet.

  Connor studied the boy. “All the people who lived on the streets are.” How long had he himself hated everyone, regardless of station?

  She flattened her lips. “No. This is . . . different. He was a cheerful babe, always smiling. Each year, however . . .”

  “Each year?” he encouraged.

  “With Diggory’s death, I thought Stephen would lose some of the hatred and anger in him.” Her voice grew as distant as the gaze she now trained on her sibling. “Instead, he only became angrier. More . . . unpredictable.” The boy hit the ball to Grace.

  She made an ineffectual swat, and it sailed past her shoulder.

  Stephen’s loud grousing reached them as he sent the girl to fetch the ball. The pair resumed their slow-moving game.

  “I was not unlike him in that regard. When the earl took me in, I hated the world and everyone in it. I trusted none. Eventually I learned to trust again. To smile. In time, it comes.” Or it had for him.

  Sitting here, their legs nearly brushing, amidst the sun-soaked grounds, it occurred to him how little he truly knew about Ophelia. Where he’d opened to her about his existence, she guarded her secrets and past. “And what of you?”

  Her expression instantly shuttered. “What?” she repeated carefully.

  A strand of hair fell over her eye. His fingers itched to brush it back, and yet at the same time he preferred that pale curl as it was: natural and unrestrained. “I’ve known you since you were as young as Grace,” he murmured, more to himself. “And yet I know even less about you than the young girl I found six months ago.”

  Ophelia’s thick, nearly white eyelashes swept low, but not before he detected the stricken expression in her eyes. “There’s nothing really to tell,” she ventured, clenching and unclenching her hands. “I lived on the streets with my three sisters, and eventually Stephen and Broderick.” She gave a shrug. “That is all.”

  The paleness of her cheeks and the tension in her narrow shoulders belied the casualness of her word
s.

  He took in that uneasy gesture, and she instantly stopped. She flexed her fingers and laid flat palms on her skirts.

  Once, he would have left her to her secrets. Now, having known her these past weeks, he wanted to know more. “What was your life like before . . . ?” The name stung his tongue and hung there, briefly unspoken, because when one uttered that name aloud, it would add a chill to the spring air and usher in the darkness that had always accompanied it.

  She tipped her chin. “Diggory?”

  But then, she’d always been braver than Connor. Defying Diggory when she was only a child herself had stood as a testament to her strength.

  He nodded.

  Tension brought her lips angling down, and she held herself coiled so tight beside him, he felt the emotion spilling from her slender frame.

  “I already told you . . . there is nothing to tell,” she finally said, her tones gruff. “My parents died . . . I was part of Diggory’s gang, and that is all I am.”

  His heart stumbled. That was what she truly believed. That those three sentences defined her existence.

  Grace’s boisterous laughter carried on an errant spring breeze. Had Ophelia ever known laughter as a child?

  Connor gathered her hand in his, twining their fingers together. “That is not all you are, Ophelia Killoran. It never was nor will ever be all that defines you.” He raised her knuckles to his lips and dropped a lingering kiss atop them. “Tell me about your parents.”

  “Wh-why do ya want to know?” she whispered, her voice cracking.

  How suspicious she’d always been.

  Across the way, Ophelia’s brother and Grace played on, the innocent actions of two souls who’d also known darkness, but in this they may as well have been a pair of children innocent to the ugliness in the world. “I don’t know why I want to know,” he said quietly, his lips close to her ear. Perhaps it was a cowardly desire to know that at some point she’d experienced happiness. “But it matters.”

  It matters.

  It had been inevitable, the question of her parentage.

  Only, she’d convinced herself it was not coming. She’d allowed herself to believe that he’d already accepted that she was a bastard and nothing more . . . and therefore no queries were needed.

  How easy it had been to delude herself. Restless, she pushed to her feet and wandered closer to where her brother now played.

  Tell him. He’s proven one capable of forgiveness. Far more than Ophelia herself. Yet seeing good in an otherwise dark world and in people of all stations was altogether different from speaking of the man who’d raped his mother and murdered his parents. Her mouth went dry . . . and God help her for being a coward, she could not drag the confession out.

  Ophelia registered Connor taking a place at her side, and in the absolute absence of her response, she forced a chuckle. “Is this another debt to be paid, Steele?” she charged, erecting that small but necessary barrier. “Ya told me of yar past, an’ Oi should tell ya moine?”

  Hurt flashed briefly in his eyes, and shame—morphed with guilt—threaded through her. She hated herself for altogether new reasons.

  “That was never why I shared my past with you, Ophelia.” He spoke in hushed tones.

  Why aren’t you snapping at me? Why aren’t you indignant and hateful?

  Because there was only one hateful one between the pair of them, and it had never, ever been Connor.

  He drifted closer. “I wanted to let you in . . .” Please don’t. Don’t, Connor. “Just as I want you to let me inside.”

  Her throat worked. Oh, God. He’d said it. A handful of words that spoke to more than a case and even hinted at something greater than friendship.

  Ophelia closed her eyes, warring with herself. All the while Connor remained beside her, silent. He didn’t pressure or probe further.

  She rubbed at her arms in a futile bid to bring warmth back to those cold limbs.

  “They . . . died,” she finally settled for, her voice hollow.

  Even that was only a partial truth. Her da had taken a bullet to his chest at the Duchess of Somerset’s hand, but whoever had birthed Ophelia and her sisters was just any other mystery of the streets. Shame choked her airflow.

  “How old were you?”

  Ophelia gave a jerky shrug. “Oi don’t know, Connor,” she said, exasperated—with him . . . with her circumstances. “Oi wasn’t”—she slapped the air with her hand—“loike ya. Me mum and da . . . they weren’t fancy folk. They didn’t know their ages. They didn’t know how to read or write.” When Broderick entered their fold, he’d transformed Ophelia and her siblings into more than their parents had been. As much as she resented his using her like a pawn on a chessboard, she’d forever love him for seeing in them more than street rats, incapable of, and undeserving of, better.

  Stephen paused to look at her, his arm drawn back midswing. With the handful of paces between them, the protective glitter in his eyes sparkled in the afternoon sun.

  She offered him a smile meant to reassure, and silently mouthed to him, “I’m all right. Have fun.”

  He pointed his eyes to the sky and then shifted his focus back to his game.

  Ophelia sighed; the defensive fight had left her. “Gertrude was the eldest. We always knew that. She was always also the most clever.” A wistful smile stole across her lips.

  “I cannot believe she, nor any woman, for that matter, could be more clever than you.” Connor’s matter-of-fact pronouncement wrought havoc on her heart.

  Her entire life, she’d been overlooked and underestimated. Oh, she’d managed to wrest some control of club business from her brother, but ultimately she’d forced his hand. Broderick hadn’t trusted her the same way he had Cleo. Had even, by so easily sending her away, dismissed the significance of the work she did.

  “Oh, but Gertrude is the wise one. In ways myself and Cleo never were.” This was safe. This spoke to a world Connor O’Roarke, now Steele, could understand: a loving family who loved deeply in return. Kin who protected one another at all costs because of that love. “Gertrude,” she went on, warming to the talk of her beloved family. “She could make sense of letters and numbers long before Broderick hired tutors and governesses for us.” She chewed at her lower lip. “I would mock her for wasting her time. What use did any of us have of numbers and letters? We served only one purpose. Gertrude disagreed. One day she lined each of us up and explained that she’d determined an approximation of our ages.” The stray laughter of children playing blended in a cheerful harmony of innocence. “I had on my usual scowl.”

  “I know the one,” he said lightly, and she looked up.

  They shared a smile.

  “But all the while, I fought from grinning. Secretly, I wanted to know something about myself. She placed me in the middle between her and Cleo and reasoned through our ages. I was . . . in awe.” She shook her head. “I’d forgotten all that until now,” she said softly to herself.

  Grace glanced over and waved excitedly at Connor. He returned that exuberant gesture. After she’d returned to playing, Connor spoke.

  “And what of your parents?”

  She knew nothing about the woman who’d given her life. Ophelia’s da had been the Devil incarnate. Those were hardly the joyful details Connor had shared of his own departed parents.

  Feeling his eyes on her, Ophelia looked up. Tell him . . . tell him all.

  It would kill all the warmth he’d shown her these past weeks and destroy the unlikely bond they’d formed.

  Selfish she was, and selfish she’d always been.

  She wasn’t ready for the end of what they’d known together. Nor could there be any denying that the inevitable conclusion to their relationship was coming. When he’d finished his case, he’d no longer have any need for dealings with her. Their paths would never again cross. He’d have his duchess and the fancy lifestyle he’d been born to and always craved.

  And Ophelia? She would have some nobleman husband.

/>   Never before had she felt more like weeping.

  She hugged her arms close to her midsection and drew in a shaky breath. “My da . . . he knew I loved hot cross buns.” How easily that lie had rolled off. “There weren’t funds for them and yet . . . Oi always wanted them.” Which was as much a truth. While out thieving, she’d passed so many bakery windows, her mouth watering from the scents and sights of those baked treats in the window. “Did ya ever ’ave them?” she asked curiously.

  “Shrewsbury cakes were my choice treat.”

  Of course, he had owned a bit of the life she’d dreamed. Once she would have been riddled with resentment and hostility. No longer. Now, she took comfort in knowing one of them had been happy once.

  Ophelia wandered over to a nearby marble rendering of three children playfully climbing within an urn. She trailed her fingertips along the sun-warmed stone curls of one girl. Plump, grinning, and playing amongst the flowers, it was a future she’d secretly longed for as a girl herself. There had been little reason to dream and hope for those in Diggory’s gang, and ultimately those longings had faded. How much easier the fabricated life was from the truth. Warming to the pretend history she crafted for herself, she continued to weave her world of make-believe. “My da knew ’ow much Oi loved them. We’d ’ave no funds, and yet he’d insist my ma make them.”

  Eat it, girl . . . ya steal from me . . . ya’ll eat it.

  Perspiration beaded on her nape. Do not let him in . . . Do not let him steal even the pretend dreams from you. Or mayhap that was merely her punishment for the falsehoods she offered. She dusted her hand over the back of her neck and wiped it away. Sinning had always come far more naturally to her. As such, the lies continued falling. “My da, ’e’d ’ave me sit there, and we’d watch me ma together. Oi was always so hungry.” She whispered that truth to him. “He allowed me to eat the whole plate. And then came the tea.” She shivered. Please don’t . . . Oi promise Oi won’t do it again. Her own screams pealed around her mind. Drink it, girl . . . drink it. “Oi’d finish that whole cup quick-like.”

  Children’s laughter echoed around the gardens, as if mocking the gamut of lies she’d fed Connor.