The Vixen

by Christi Caldwell

  Connor shook his head.

  “It is true, Connor,” she whispered.

  He reached for the high back of the oak chair and dug his fingers in hard enough to leave crescent marks upon the otherwise-immaculate wood.

  “Her father killed your parents. Raped your mother. And with her ruthlessness, she is just like the monster who sired her.”

  A painful groan lodged in her throat. Did that tortured sound belong to her?

  The door opened, and another gentleman entered. Connor’s father waved a tired hand in his direction, and this time when he spoke, his voice sounded decades older. “If you wish further proof of her treachery, Stanley can stand as witness.”

  A dull buzzing filled Ophelia’s ears, like a swarm of bees set free in her mind.

  She could not move. She could not breathe. Around her the words raced in a nonsensical blur.

  Years later, and more than ten years older, time had changed him, and yet one never forgot.

  Her eyes closed.

  He was fatter, fleshier in his cheeks, and rounder about his middle. A jovial-looking gentleman as soulless as Satan.

  Only now—he had a name.

  Stanley Alberts. Viscount Middlethorne. Lady Bethany’s father. The man who’d attempted to rape her.

  You want it, you little whore. Your kind always want it.

  Biting her lip, she was still unable to keep the agonized moan better suited to a wounded beast from spilling out. Fighting the sting of bile in her throat, she searched her hands around for purchase. Anything to keep herself from collapse.

  A hand wrapped about her lower arm.

  Crying out, she wrenched away, tripping over herself in her haste to be free.

  Adair. It is only Adair.

  She scratched her fingernails down her cheeks. What was happening to her?

  “Ophelia?” Adair urged, concern heavy in his voice.

  “You,” she whispered, staggering back, away from the handful of guests, witnesses to her shame and humiliation.

  Looking around at the witnesses present with befuddled eyes, Lord Middlethorne nodded once. “This is the woman who once attacked me. Years ago. I’d always remember that hair.”

  Look at that hair . . . May I touch it?

  Her stomach pitched. I’m going to throw up.

  “Seems she has a history of it,” Lord Whitehaven spat. “Attacking an innocent child, indeed.”

  Ophelia stood trembling. Say nothing. Challenge him, this man who with his actions that night haunts you still. Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth, and she tried to make it move, to form words.

  Why, why can’t I speak?

  “My wife had died, and this one, a gypsy,” Viscount Middlethorne spat, a grander actor than any London stage had seen, “offered to read my palms. Tell my future.”

  Connor’s body went whipcord straight.

  Motionless, pale, and most damning of all—silent.

  That silence was a greater betrayal and condemnation than had he called her out before the room of guests. Icy rage froze her veins. Her fury grew, and she turned herself over to it. Otherwise she’d become lost to the misery and horror threatening to break her.

  “Liar,” she breathed. “Ya’re all liars.”

  The Earl of Mar sputtered, “Madam, these are some of the most respectable, honorable gentlemen in England. Seize her.”

  The doors exploded open, and three constables stormed the room.

  Adair and Cleo put themselves between Ophelia and the constables, and she took even more strength in that show of support.

  She whirled around.

  The footman who’d been stationed in the parlor leapt forward.

  Panting, her breath coming loudly in her ears, she feinted left toward the window.

  Strong hands wrapped about her waist. “No,” she panted, kicking her feet.

  “Ophelia,” Connor thundered. His father and Viscount Middlethorne wrestled him back.

  With her sister bellowing after the constables, they carted Ophelia off.

  Chapter 22

  In the span of moments, the world had gone insane.

  And at the center of the madness was his father.

  Ophelia dragged off, the explosiveness of her and her family’s fight, left only a stark, empty silence in its wake. Damning.

  Connor glanced to the trio of noblemen assembled—two of whom he’d long respected, one he’d wager was bound for hell for his vices.

  “Get out,” he ordered Lord Whitehaven.

  “Close the door,” the Earl of Mar called over to his friend after Lord Whitehaven scurried off. “I’ll not have servants talking,” he grimaced, “any more than they will be.”

  Connor jerked. “My God, that is what you now worry over? Gossiping servants?” Who was this man? He no longer recognized him. But mayhap, this was who he’d always been. One who’d wanted to erase the filth of the streets from Connor and transform him into something pure and good—something he would never, could never, be. “You did this.”

  “I did nothing,” his father said tiredly, fetching himself a brandy. “I merely opened your eyes to what the young woman is.”

  It is important that one sees and hears with one’s own eyes what is . . . all around us.

  His breath whistled through his teeth. His father’s earlier words had been a warning, and he’d been too blind to see.

  While the earl poured himself a drink, Connor stared on incredulously. A drink. This man who’d adopted him now sought to sip fine French spirits when he’d consigned Ophelia to—

  His mind came to a screeching, jarring halt; even in silence, he could not bring himself to complete the thought.

  “What is that?”

  His father froze, midpour. He looked over his shoulder quizzically.

  “What is the young woman?”

  The earl slammed his bottle down, and his drink alongside it. “My God, Connor,” he shouted, “her father slaughtered your parents. Raped your mother.”

  “I know what he did,” he cried, slamming his fist on the earl’s desk. “I know,” he whispered. “I witnessed it. I heard their pleas. I saw their throats cut. All of it.” The color bled from his father’s cheeks. “Mac Diggory was the man who did that.” Not Ophelia.

  “Don’t you do that, Connor,” his father ordered. “I saw your reaction when you learned the truth about her father.”

  He sucked in a shuddering breath. Until the day he died, he’d recall the shame bleeding from her eyes as she was held to blame for crimes her father had committed. In his silence, he’d failed her. Shock didn’t excuse it. Nothing could ever pardon it.

  At last his godfather, Lord Middlethorne, stepped forward. “It brings me no pleasure to see the young woman hanged, Connor,” he said in even tones one might use when discussing the weather. “If I might?” he ventured, lifting a finger. “I did see a possible solution to Miss Killoran’s dilemma.”

  This was the man who’d attempted to rape her. The man who still haunted her. Connor clenched his hands into fists to keep from snapping his neck. “Say what it is you’d say,” he said brusquely. How was it possible to know so little of a person? His father. His godfather. Men he’d respected. Men he’d trusted.

  “I understand your father explained my . . . circumstances. Bethany . . . and I . . . are in dire financial straits. Together, a union would at last join our families.” Middlethorne reached into his jacket and withdrew a small stack of papers bound with ribbon. “If you enter into marriage with Bethany, I will, of course, see that the charges against Miss Killoran are dropped. An arrangement has already been drafted; it merely awaits your signatures.”

  My God. The air left Connor on a whoosh.

  “Is that what this was?” he whispered, his mind slowly making sense of it. “An attempt to drive me from Ophelia? For what?” He spun to face the cocksure viscount. “So I might marry your daughter?” How easily they’d dispensed with Ophelia. They’d proven all her hatred and suspicion of the nobility
well founded and deserved, and how he hated himself for his naïveté in failing to see the ugliness around him.

  Viscount Middlethorne stared back, silent. Calm. Unmoved. Unaffected. The same person, more monster than man, who’d pinned Ophelia to an alleyway and scrabbled with her skirts as she’d pleaded.

  A burning hatred scorched through Connor’s veins like a vicious cancer, threatening to consume and destroy.

  I’m going to be sick.

  He swung back to face his father. “You have no qualms with him forcing me to whore myself to save an innocent young woman’s life?”

  His father flinched. “It is . . . not as bad as all that.”

  Connor stalked to the door.

  “Connor,” his father cried. “Do not leave. We are not through speaking on this.”

  Ignoring that order, he continued forward.

  The viscount held up the formal documents. “I trust you’ll see—”

  Not breaking stride, Connor grabbed him by the throat and drove him against the wall. Those traitorous pages fluttered to the floor at their feet. The viscount’s eyes bulged, terror spilling from their depths.

  Said moi mouth was a whore’s mouth that he couldn’t kiss, that he ’ad other uses for it.

  The same primitive fight that had led him to kill and survive on the streets roared to life, and he reveled in the other man’s weakness.

  “Connor,” his father shouted, “release him.”

  The viscount gasped and panted, clawing at Connor’s hands. Tightening his grip, he choked him all the harder. “How does it feel?” he whispered. He brought back his left arm and planted his fist in the viscount’s nose. The satisfying crack of bone shattering was followed by the spray of blood that coated Connor’s fingers.

  “Connor!” his father entreated, grabbing at his arm.

  Connor punched the viscount again and again, until he was a limp mass in his hands. He released him.

  Lord Middlethorne slid to the floor, sucking great, heaving gasps of air, scrabbling with his neck.

  His body was a divide separating Connor from his father. “He is a monster,” Connor said in emotionless tones. “He . . . attacked her as a child.” How many other young girls had been so assaulted? How many more who’d been violated in every way by him?

  “It is not possible,” his father bit out. “He could not. He would not.”

  “Wouldn’t he?” he thundered, and the earl recoiled. Connor swiped the contract from the floor. “He expects me, your son, to whore himself to save Ophelia, the woman I love.” He ripped those pages and tossed them at his father. “You are too blind to see.” He shook his head in disgust. “All these years I’ve admired you for being a champion of those unfortunate boys and girls like myself. I raised you in my mind as a hero. But you’re not.” His chest squeezed. “You passed judgment on Ophelia for no other reason than because of her birthright while you’d defend”—he spat on the viscount’s prone but still unfortunately breathing body—“this man.” With a sound of disgust, he stepped over the viscount and started for the door.

  He yanked the panel open, and Bethany came spilling in. Her skin ashen, she pressed her palms against her mouth. “Connor, please wait. Don’t—”

  “Where are you going, Connor?” his father pleaded behind him.

  He paused, his fingertips on the door. “I am going to fight for Miss Killoran’s freedom. And God help you all if I can’t win it.”

  With that, Connor left.

  Chapter 23

  Tucked in the corner of her dank cell in Newgate, with the date of her execution already set, Ophelia came to a realization: she hated satin.

  It was a rather silly, nonsensical detail to note, given that the only thing between her and drawing no more breath was two more sunsets. And yet there it was. She despised the bloody fabric, and if she believed in miracles and the possibility of escape, she’d vow to never again don a blasted garment made of the damned stuff.

  Oh, she hadn’t always hated the whispery-soft, fine fabric. As much as her brother’s obsession with the nobility had grated, she’d celebrated the day she’d shed her tattered, coarse wool garments for the fine satins and silks Broderick insisted they don.

  Now, she appreciated how useless those expertly sewn dresses were. The heavy chill and dampness of the cell permeated her fabric, stinging her skin and freezing her from the inside out. Ophelia hugged her arms close to her chest and rubbed in a futile attempt to restore warmth.

  How much easier it was to focus on one’s clothing than the stench of death and decay all around. Pungent odors hung heavy in the air, clogging one’s nostrils and threatening to choke off the last clean breath in one’s lungs.

  A bold rat scampered close to her slippers, and she shot out a foot, kicking him back.

  He darted into the tiny crack in the wall he continually slipped in and out of.

  Dragging her knees to her chest once more, Ophelia wrapped her arms about them. She rested her cheek atop the smooth fabric and eyed that rat’s nest.

  The irony of this moment was not lost on her. Her life with Connor O’Roarke had come full circle.

  Since she was a girl, stealing the coin purse from a nobleman, and Connor had stepped in to spare her, she had been destined for this place.

  Yet living a life of crime and sin on the streets, and dancing on the edge of discovery, nothing could have prepared her for the hell that was Newgate.

  A vicious itching at her scalp threatened to drive her mad, and she dragged her ragged nails through the uneven tufts that had been left by the guards. She scratched furiously, until she registered the whisper of warmth on her fingers.

  Yanking her hands down to her lap, she stared at the crimson stain left by her efforts. Absently, she wiped the blood onto the front of her tattered skirts.

  “My God, no . . . please . . . Oi . . . no . . .” The incoherent, muffled cries of another poor soul reverberated around the prison until Ophelia wanted to clamp her hands over her ears and blot out all sounds: the squeal of rodents who’d feast on flesh, the moaning and weeping of prisoners who’d not yet accepted the truth: there was no absolution or salvation coming.

  All that awaited was that iron-cased half door and the iron-bound, lattice-oak Debtor’s door that led to the scaffold and one’s public execution.

  Ophelia slid her eyes closed as every nerve in her body twitched with fear, straining with her need to batter herself against the doorway in a useless bid to break down the barrier between her and freedom.

  She knocked the back of her head against the stone wall, dislodging a small piece of plaster.

  How close she’d been to having everything she’d ever wanted—everything she’d never known she wanted—until it had been too late.

  Not even one month ago, she’d have cynically believed she’d stepped into a well-laid trap perfectly executed by Connor and his father.

  How effortlessly he’d knocked down the guards she’d erected to keep herself safe. No longer the bitter, snapping young woman she’d once been, she had seen with clarity the shock, disbelief, and horror in Connor’s eyes for the truth they were.

  By God, you will not take her.

  A shuddery sob started in her chest and climbed up her throat. She clamped her hand over her lips, blotting out the sound of misery that would alert the guards stationed nearby.

  For once again, even knowing what her father had done, Connor had stepped between her and the path to Newgate. He’d brandished a weapon, threatening the constables, his father, the powerful peers in that room, when it would only shatter the reputation he’d earned as an honorable, respectable investigator.

  A tear slipped from her eyes. She rubbed her cheek over her skirts, hiding that lone drop. He’d always deserved his Lady Bethany. Ophelia had hated the woman on sight for what she represented. Now, she could accept the truth—Lady Bethany was right for Connor in all the ways she had always been wrong.

  Another tear fell. Followed by another. And another.


  “Another one’s making the march,” one of the guards outside her cell called. The sound of spit landing on stone followed. “Wot’s our wager on this one?”

  “Ask the bitch. Fancy gaming hell owners, her sort know sumfin of it.”

  That mocking retort was met with a series of guffaws from the other brutes; their laughter echoed through the corridors and carried through the manacled cell.

  Lisp, as she’d named one of them for the reptilian quality to his voice and the rasp of his tongue when he spoke, pressed his face against the bars. “Want in on the wager, fancy piece? An extra plate an’ water . . . We get a piece of ya if ya lose.”

  Ophelia sat there, stone-faced, looking through him.

  You want it, bitch.

  Do not think of him. Do not think of them. Think of Connor. Think of the fleeting wonder you knew in his arms and with him.

  “Wot?” one of the guards demanded. “Ya think yarself too good to part yar legs for us. Playing at lady. Not so pretty without yar ’air, are ya?”

  Unwittingly, she slid her fingers through the sloppy tangle of short strands.

  He laughed. “Ya and yar kind ain’t no different from the other whores ’ere.”

  Refusing to give any of her taunting captors the satisfaction, she let her hand fall and met their questions and charges with a flinty silence.

  “Too good to sit on ’er mattress,” another guard piped in. “She ain’t goin’ to be so proud when she’s making the march. Ya ’ear that, bitch?” He cupped himself through his wool trousers. “Maybe we should show ’er she ain’t no different.” He fiddled with the falls of his breeches.

  Ophelia jumped up and held out her fists. “Try it, ya ugly, pox-ridden son of a whore,” she seethed. “Oi’ll rip the scrawny bit between yar legs off and feed it to ya for yar last meal.”

  Cheeks mottled red, her jeerer surged forward. “Oi’ll give it to ya good, ya bloody bitch,” he shouted.

  His more-restrained friends grabbed at him.

  “Get control. Ya know we can’t touch ’er. She’s off-limits.”

  Ophelia latched on to that.

  “She’s as good as dead,” the toothless brute railed, bucking at them. “Ya got powerful enemies in the nobs ya put yar ’ands on.” Yes, Ophelia’s trial and sentencing had been swiftly pushed through with little effort on the part of Whitefield and Middlethorne. The guard eyed his friend hopefully. “Wot’s the ’arm if we fuck ’er? ’e won’t even know—”