The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(11)

Cleopatra hitched herself to the edge of the bed and allowed Reggie to oversee the task at hand. They all had their distractors. Cleopatra’s was the tread of her own steps. Reggie had always been an organizer.

“What happened?” Reggie asked, fetching Cleopatra’s trunks. She dragged one back to the bed.

Cleopatra lifted one shoulder in a negligent shrug. “They tried to renege.”

Stooped over that massive trunk, Reggie awkwardly lifted her head.

“Black’s wife was determined to honor their word,” she explained, answering that unasked question. She proceeded to share the details of that meeting.

The door exploded open.

Both women looked as one to the glowering boy. He’d already found out. Another Diggory bastard without a definite birthday, Stephen was likely just nine or ten years old, but he possessed a temper to rival most men.

Reggie released the gown in her hand and wordlessly backed out of the room.

Stephen slammed the door. “I hate you.”

Regret suffused her breast. “You don’t hate me.” One of Diggory’s many bastards, Stephen had been a snarling, snappish, beastlike boy until Broderick had taken him under their care. “If you did, you wouldn’t be here,” Cleopatra said with more gentleness than she’d ever let another person hear from her. She shoved her armoire doors closed.

“Well, then I hate you . . . for now,” Stephen snarled. That she believed. Her youngest sibling had a temper to rival a once-beaten dog. “I knew you’d be the one. I knew you’d not let anyone else do it. You’re always protecting everyone else.” With an angry shout, he pulled his dagger from his boot and hurled it at the opposite wall.

Despite herself, she gasped. A knife in the wall had long been Diggory’s unspoken seal. “Stop it,” she said tightly. Stephen was spoiling for a fight, and when he was in one of his tempers, one had a better hope of reasoning with Satan himself than the boy.

Cleopatra strode across the room and, bracing one palm against the plaster, wrestled free the buried tip. “You need to control your temper.” It would see him ruined, and if they hadn’t been provided security at the Devil’s Den through Broderick’s efforts, he’d have been destroyed long ago for it.

“I’m declaring war.”

“On who?” she snapped. “Broderick?”

“On them . . .”

“Do not say it.” Cleopatra glowered him into silence. The last thing their family could afford was a heightened feud with Black’s family, particularly now that their rivals had links to the nobility.

In a bid to defuse his volatile rage, Cleopatra tossed his blade aside and returned to her bed. “It is done, Stephen.” She knelt and withdrew a small valise from under her bed and set it atop her undergarments. Dropping to her knees once more, she peeled back the Aubusson carpet and partially rolled it back. She found the loose floorboard, and lifting it, she reached inside and drew out several daggers. “Put those in my valise.”

Stephen stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I ain’t your lady’s maid.”

Cleopatra grabbed her two pistols and shoved them across the smooth floor so they landed at his feet. “Certainly not. After all, which lady’s maid would be helping a lady pack an arsenal of weapons?” She followed that with a wink.

Despite the earlier fury that had blazed in his eyes, Stephen’s lips twitched. This was how she preferred her youngest brother—with a teasing light in his eyes and a smile dimpling his cheeks. “That’s better,” she said.

He quickly tamped down his grin. Mirth had so long been a sign of weakness for all of them that it was too foreign to trust oneself over to any emotion. That was something Cleopatra well understood.

“You’re mad,” he grumbled, then proceeded to help her pack her weapons.

“It is just marriage.” They’d all sold their souls more times than even the Devil wanted anymore. Broderick had simply found another part to sell. So why, practical and rational as she was, did that knot her insides? She lowered the floorboard back into its proper place and reached for the corner of the carpet.

“You don’t have to go,” Stephen said gruffly, looking up from his task.

She froze midmovement. I don’t want to . . . I have to . . . Not because she gave a rat’s arse about a connection to the nobility but because if she didn’t succeed in the goal Broderick had for them, then he’d turn to another one of their siblings to oversee his goals. “It has to be me.”

“Let Gertie go.”

Cleopatra frowned. “No.” It wouldn’t be Gertrude.

“Because she’s weak,” her brother muttered.

Blinded in one eye because of a fist Diggory had delivered to her head, and silent as the grave, Gertrude had greater strength than most men. Cleopatra would be damned on Sunday if she let her elder sister sacrifice all for their brood. “Marriage to a lord would shatter Gertie,” she said quietly to her brother. Cleopatra, however, could battle any man, woman, or child and emerge triumphant.

“Because she’s no spine,” he spat again.

And even with the deep bond between Cleopatra and Stephen, and for all his grumbling, he loved Gertrude and Ophelia just as much. Cleopatra quit her spot on the floor and joined her brother at the bed. She took his hands in hers and gave them a squeeze.