The Heart of a Hellion

by Jess Michaels

  His lips pursed as he turned away from her and paced across the room. He set her earrings down on the table and stood at the window, staring out at the busy street below without speaking for what felt like an eternity. She waited, because what else could she do? She was owed no demands. She could ask him no questions after all her lies.

  “Tell me everything,” he ordered, and faced her at last, his gaze narrowed. “Don’t lie to me. If you can.”

  Her breath caught. “Derrick—”

  “Now,” he interrupted.

  She let out her breath slowly, trying to calm her racing heart, her fluttering body. She needed to have her faculties for this, the final confrontation and whatever would come next. He was owed her calm, not some display of hysteria that would require him to comfort or worry.

  She lifted her chin. “What I told you about my family, that was true. They didn’t want me and they did offer me enormous freedom, perhaps in the hopes I’d disappear and they would no longer have any responsibility at all.”

  Derrick’s jaw set, just as it had when she first told him about her past. But he said nothing.

  “I used the freedom as any young person would, I suppose. I ran positively wild. I drank too much, I gamed too much, I learned about pleasure.”

  “The Fox,” Derrick said softly.

  She nodded. “I’m getting there. This is my villainous monologue, Derrick. Allow me my gothic moment.” She saw his mouth twitch a little despite himself, but he didn’t stop her from continuing. “One night I snuck into a party. The one I told you about where I saw my father.”

  “That was the first time you stole,” he said.

  She flinched. “How do you know that?”

  “When I’m not being seduced by my quarry, I’m actually a very good investigator. Well able to put together evidence, my love.”

  She froze at the endearment that gripped her heart in its fist and squeezed. Tears stung her eyes and she blinked at them, trying to rein in the reaction. Trying not to give too much or ask for too much in that moment.

  “Am I your love?” she whispered.

  He hesitated, his gaze holding hers. “Continue your story, Selina.”

  She bit her lip hard enough that she tasted blood, and it did what she wanted—it dragged her back to the present. Away from the dreams she didn’t need to have. Away from whatever future she never could have had in the first place.

  “I was upset after my encounter with the late Duke of Roseford…my father,” she continued, wishing her voice didn’t shake. “I had snuck into a parlor to have a good cry when there were voices. I hid behind the curtains, and there was this horrible woman who dragged a servant into the room. She was screaming at her and screaming at her, berating this poor, shaking girl who was begging for her own life. This wretched woman, revered by Society, slapped the girl and left her sobbing in a pile on the floor as she laughed and went back to her party.”

  “What did you do?”

  “After the servant left, I went back into the ballroom, found that bitch and did exactly to her what I am accused of doing to Katherine. I slipped a yellow diamond bracelet right off her wrist without her even noticing I’d done it. And I was terrified and thrilled in equal measure. It was spontaneous, I should have been caught by all rights, but it felt…good! As if I’d taken back control not just for myself, but for that girl left crying on the floor. Also, it was before I got my settlement from my father, so the money helped.”

  “Selina.” The way he said her name, she couldn’t tell if he was angry, disappointed, sad…or some combination of them all.

  She folded her arms, a poor shield against what just his look did to her. “You can judge.”

  “I won’t be the one judging in the end.” He let out a shaky sigh. “Why didn’t you stop?”

  She shrugged, because that was a question she’d asked herself a dozen times over the years. “Because it was…” She struggled for a word to explain it. “It was safe.”

  “Safe?” he burst out, his control wavering as he took a long step toward her. “How the hell was that safe, Selina? You could have been caught, abused, even worse if the wrong nobleman found you with your hand in his wife’s drawer. You could have been arrested—”

  She moved toward him, and now they were nearly touching. “By you?”

  He shut his eyes, his breath coming in and out of his nostrils like a riled bull. She reached up, letting her fingertips stroke over his rough jaw. Watching his eyes come open, heavier and more focused. He didn’t step away, but he said, “How was it safe?”

  Her fingers fell away as her heart throbbed. She’d promised the truth, but it was so hard to say. So vulnerable to admit. But this man was the only one she could truly be vulnerable with. The only one she trusted with her secrets, her heart, even though she knew he had to take her away in the end.

  He’d never lied about that. He’d never lied at all.

  “If I could do it…if I could take from those who deserved to lose…then I didn’t have to depend on my father and his whims. Or my brother, who I didn’t know at the time. My future was my own.” She dropped her head. “And it also helped me…balance the scales.”

  He hesitated, and then he whispered, “Justice. You saw it as justice.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know you don’t understand.”

  “I understand,” he said quickly. “I’ve built a life around justice, haven’t I?”

  She nodded. “I suppose you have. May I ask you a question?”

  He shrugged, but she saw the wariness enter his posture and his expression. She hated that she put him on guard. She deserved it, but she hated it.

  “How did you know it was me?” she asked. “Even before the ruby bracelet in the ballroom, I know you suspected me. Maybe you even intended to confront me about it when you and I were going to be alone in the library that last night in Roseford.”

  “I did,” he admitted.

  “How did you know?”

  He stepped away from her and put his hands behind his back, widening his stance. A military posture. A posture of a man of discipline. Of the control she so enjoyed taking away. In this moment, he didn’t look as though it could be taken.

  “I gathered evidence I didn’t want to see,” he explained. “A list of things that, when put together, pointed to you as the culprit. First”—he ticked one finger off—“I caught you at Lady Winford’s room that night when I came to search it. You had your explanations and they weren’t bad.”

  “Thank you. They were off the cuff and I was terrified you’d arrest me then and there,” she said.

  His lips pursed as if that answer gave him no pleasure. But he continued, “Later you mentioned a party with Lady Winford, another time when you chose a victim thanks to her treatment of a servant.”

  She lifted her chin. “I’ve seen servants, especially woman, treated worse than one would treat shit on a shoe. People, Derrick. Deserving of respect.”

  “Yes, you are their champion, it seems. I can’t fault you for that. But your mention of the party sent me to look at some of the lists we had compiled from the Fox’s…from your history.”

  “Really?” she breathed.

  “It wasn’t that hard. Your targets were public. We crosschecked guest lists because we thought some gentleman was perhaps the culprit. We’d thought the robbery of Lady Rendleman’s bracelet was probably an early strike by the Fox. When you mentioned the party with your father, I could guess your age and glean the facts from some details.”

  “I always knew you were brilliant,” she said. “So you tracked me via the parties. What else gave me away?”

  “You once told me I had no idea what you were capable of. An off-the-cuff comment, but one that added to my suspicions. And your companion… I suppose she isn’t a companion, though, is she?”

  Selina froze. It was one thing to give this man all the details of her own misdeeds. Another to force Vale into prison along with her.

  “She is a compan
ion,” she said.

  “Selina,” he said, his tone sharp.

  She folded her arms. “I won’t do something that will send her to gaol along with me. I won’t lie about my own life, but I won’t reveal hers.”

  He sighed. “Fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “But the night I came to your room, when I found her there. She said something about you being…fire. That you have to be controlled so you don’t burn out of control.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “Vale said that?”

  “Yes.” He sighed. “And lastly was your hairpin. Though that was after you disappeared, after you admitted the truth, so perhaps it doesn’t count.”

  “My hairpin?”

  He tilted his head. “I was taking your hair down one night when we made love and scratched myself on your pin. I thought it was oddly shaped then, but was too distracted. But when we searched your rooms after you disappeared, I found the pin. It’s a lockpick. You didn’t leave a great many clues, Selina. But they were there, waiting to be collected.”

  She nodded. “And I suppose you would have to be the one to collect them. I got so much more careless after I met you. I knew you were tracking me but I kept…failing. Being reckless. If you punish yourself for being distracted by me, know that I was also distracted by you.”

  He stared at her a long moment, his gaze unwavering on hers. Then he stepped closer. “One last question. Was anything between us real?”

  Chapter 24

  Derrick was holding his breath as he waited for the answer to the only question that had ever mattered to him. His chest felt like it was collapsing around his heart, squeezing it. His hands shook like leaves in the fall.

  She moved toward him, her own trembling hands cupping his cheeks as a tear slid down her face. She held firm there, keeping her eyes on him, revealing herself to him in ways she’d never fully allowed before. This wasn’t just confession or vulnerability—this was surrender. It was bittersweet and he could see she felt that, too.

  “There wasn’t a moment I spent with you that wasn’t true.” Her voice caught and she struggled to compose herself. “I told you things, gave you parts of myself, that no one else has seen. Ever.”

  “Not your brothers?” he asked. “Not your friends?”

  “Never anyone but you. I am a lie, Derrick. But what I feel for you isn’t.”

  He covered her hands with his, smoothing his thumb along hers. Her skin was satin and he wanted to roll himself up in it forever. But he needed her to say the words, to go further. To go all the way now. “What do you feel for me?”

  She licked her lips, he felt her tremble, he saw her fear. But she was stronger than all of that. Stronger than anything or anyone he’d ever met.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  A thrill crested over him, a joy, an utter peace. But it was followed by heartbreak. She gave, but it would all be taken away, and soon.

  “I love you with all my heart, and it scares me,” she continued. “I am so afraid of it, of you, of what you can do to me with just a look, with just a touch. And mostly I’m afraid because I know what I’ve done, I know what I am, and those things will steal any future we might have been able to make together.”

  He pulled her closer, letting his arms come around her as he molded her body to his with a ragged sigh. She was right, of course. He might not be able to save her. There was too much at their backs now. But he still had to try.

  He kissed the crown of her head, breathing in her vanilla scent, dragging it deeply into his lungs and making it a permanent part of him. “You said you didn’t take Katherine’s bracelet at the ball,” he murmured.

  She looked up at him. “I would never do that. I’d never hurt her or my brother that way.”

  “I believe you,” he said. “I always believed you.”

  She sagged in relief and he buoyed her up with his strength. Everything about her had softened with those words. His faith meant something to her. She’d experienced so little of it in her life, given or received. He knew that was part of why she’d become what she’d become. He knew it was why she could change herself if she wanted to do so.

  “But if you didn’t do it, that means someone wanted to make it look like you did,” he said. “They knew your secret, Selina. And they used it against you in an attempt to destroy you.”

  She pursed her lips. “Yes. I’ve thought of that, myself. The same person who left my glove in Lady Winford’s room, I suppose, was the one who went further with Katherine’s necklace. Little trails left to damage me.”

  “Do you have any idea who?”

  She sighed. “There could be many people. A person I robbed, another thief who hates my infamy or wants it for their own.”

  “What about a friend?” he asked.

  Her eyes went wide and it was clear she took his meaning. “Vale?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “No, I don’t…I don’t want to believe it.” She backed away a fraction, though she kept his hands clasped in hers. Like she was afraid to let go. “She and I have known each other for years. I helped her off the street.”

  “That’s how you met?”

  She shifted and he waited for her to push back, just as she always had when he’d asked about Vale in the past. Only this time, she didn’t.

  “I was gaming one night in a nasty underground club.” Her voice barely carried. “The bet was…unconventional.”

  “Christ,” he muttered, trying not to picture what unconventional meant.

  She shrugged. “I would win his money, he’d win a night a with me.”

  He flinched at the idea she’d be so desperate as to make such a wager. Selina liked pleasure, he didn’t begrudge her that past. He certainly benefited from it. But this was something…different.

  “I won,” she continued. “He was angry. And he followed me. He had me cornered in an alley and it was clear my body wasn’t all he’d take. And then this sprite leapt out of the shadows and bashed him in the head with a piece of wood she found laying there. Knocked him out cold.”

  Derrick shuddered at the dangers this woman had experienced in her relatively short life. Things that had almost kept him from ever knowing her. “She saved your life.”

  “Yes.” She dropped her chin. “It created an instant bond between us. I came to trust her. Enough that I told her my secret about The Fox. She has never come close to letting it slip. We don’t always agree. She believes her way is the only way, and she can be hard. But I can’t believe she would betray me. Try to harm me.”

  “Selina…” he said, more uncertain than she was. After all, Vale had access. She had means galore to frame her friend.

  “I’m her golden goose,” she insisted. “At the minimum, why would she destroy me and deplete her means of income?”

  He pursed his lips. Selina wasn’t wrong, of course. But he wasn’t certain her faith was perfectly placed. “I recognize that you don’t want to hear Vale as a potential suspect. But if she had betrayed you, tell me, would she harm you? Physically.”

  “No,” she said instantly. “No.”

  That gave him some small relief. “Then I’ll keep looking into who could have done it,” he said. “But you must understand that Barber won’t back down. He’s riding for you.”

  “As he should,” she said with a sigh. “He’s a good man.”

  “So you don’t blame him for his singular dedication?” Derrick asked, genuinely surprised by that answer.

  She smiled. “I knew what kind of man he was the moment I looked at him. I knew his heart because he’s too honest not to show it. Of course, he feels a need to complete his duty. To bring the villain to justice. That’s his role—I would never blame him for it. Or for my own failings. Where is he now? Waiting for you to finish with me?”

  He shook his head, guilt rising in him. “We knew you wouldn’t take the main road to London and were left with two viable options. He took one, I the other. I found you. We’re supposed to report to each other what we f
ound when we meet up tomorrow. But I…I won’t.”

  She gasped and her fingers clenched against his. “Derrick, I would never ask you to betray—”

  He lifted their hands to her lips, stopping her from continuing. “I know you wouldn’t. I’m doing it, myself. Because I love you, Selina. You must run because I love you.”

  She caught her breath and the tears returned to her eyes. “You do? How? How could you love me knowing what I am?”

  “You are my heart,” he explained, that heart nearly bursting in his chest. “And I do know what you are. Not the Faceless Fox, though she is part of you. You are Selina Oliver. You are strong and independent and infinitely frustrating and funny and beautiful, and I could go on and on. I know what you are. And I love every part of you.”

  She was shaking now, not just trembling. “I intended to get Vale to safety and then turn myself in.”

  He flinched. “If you must, then we’ll face that together. But for now, just hide. Hide away in London and I’ll try my best to fix this. If I can’t…if I can’t, I’ll find you and we’ll determine what to do next together.”

  She sagged against him with a shuddering sigh. Then she glanced up at him. “Do you really love me, Derrick Huntington?”

  He smiled through the pain. “Oh, I do. I do really love you. I’d like to prove it. How much time do we have?”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and drew his mouth toward hers. “An hour or two.”

  “Hardly enough time at all. But I’ll take it,” he murmured before he brushed his lips to hers.

  His body pushed him, screamed at him in the language of desperation and need and fear. But he ignored it. If things went wrong, this would be the last time he took this woman to bed. And he didn’t want to make this joining about fear or pain or regret.

  He wanted to make it a promise. To her. To himself. So he deepened the kiss as he eased her toward her bed. She didn’t resist, she just lifted into him as he lowered her back and covered her body with his.

  She moved beneath him like the ocean, lifting into him as he kissed her, as his hands stole down her body and memorized her lines, as he unbuttoned her gown and let his fingers dance beneath the fabric against her warm, bare skin. They had done this so many times, so many ways. It had bonded them and united them even when they were worlds apart.