The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(33)

“You expect us to believe you were just here to calm Ryker’s babe?” Adair asked with incredulity.

He thought her mad, then. That realization drove back her panic and confusion, replacing it instead with righteous indignation. She jutted her chin up. “Oi don’t care wot ya believe, Thorne.”

“Where is the nursemaid?” Black commanded.

“You’re all a bunch of bloody fools,” Cleopatra snarled to the room at large. “Ya, too,” she said to Black’s wife, who was hugging her child close. How quickly all that pretend warmth and kindness from a day earlier had faded. It only proved what she really thought of Cleopatra. Not that Cleopatra blamed the woman . . . she’d simply, however, reinforced the truth that they were enemies. And would always be so, deal or not. “Your nursemaid is in her bed, drunk enough to sleep three nights straight.”

That charge was met with a heavy silence.

Penelope glanced between Cleopatra and Ryker Black. “I don’t—”

“Know anything?” Cleopatra supplied insolently for her. “Ya certainly don’t.”

A muscle ticked in the corner of Black’s right eye, and then he stalked wordlessly across the room and shoved the door open. A bleating snore met that sudden movement.

The roomful of Blacks stared on at Cleopatra with varying degrees of mistrust. She studiously avoided Adair’s probing green eyes.

Black reemerged with that brass flask in hand; top removed, he held it up in silent confirmation.

Shoulders back, Cleopatra started over to the door.

“Cleo,” Penelope said quietly, regret filling those two syllables.

“Oi’ll be gone tomorrow,” Cleopatra returned. This had all been a mistake. Broderick would have to find some other way to have his respectability . . . but using the Blacks’ connections was not, nor would ever be, the way.

“Miss Killoran?” Ryker Black barked after her, staying Cleopatra’s steps. She stiffened, and her hands curled into reflexive fists.

“Thank you,” he said gruffly.

Ignoring his useless words, Cleopatra stalked past his guards and returned to her rooms for her final night.





Chapter 9

She left the next day.

Or to be precise, Cleopatra Killoran left somehow, somewhere, in the early-morn hours, after the house had finally rested. With the stealth with which she’d moved about Ryker’s home and then escaped unseen, she could rival the greatest London pickpocket. Which, given Adair’s own prowess and familiarity with nicking from the ton years earlier, was saying something indeed.

Now the hellion was gone. Seated at the breakfast table, sipping his coffee, Adair confronted the quiet in this stuffy—and temporary—residence. With the tumult that had dogged his life since the Hell and Sin burned to the ground, he’d now be able to rest, knowing he didn’t have to safeguard his family from an enemy within. There should be peace . . . and at the very least, calm. There should be. Instead, Adair sat restless.

Oi wouldn’t ’urt a babe . . .

Cleopatra Killoran’s indignation rang in his head as clear as it had in the dead of night. Adair stared into the dark contents of his glass. Nay, she’d not hurt Paisley. Rather, she’d seen what Paisley’s own parents had been unable to about their drunken nursemaid.

And for her efforts, Adair had pointed a pistol at her breast.

Grimacing, Adair took a sip of his coffee. I’ll be damned if I feel guilty. He’d reacted as any sane, rational guard would to finding a Killoran with Penelope and Ryker’s babe in her arms. The Killorans were the manner of people who dwelled with the Diggorys of the world. Anyone—man, woman, or child—who chose to live with the Devil was capable of the same evil. Whereas Adair and his siblings? They’d plotted and planned their escape from Diggory’s hold and dreamed of a life apart from him. They’d sold their souls to survive, but they’d not made a deal with the Devil to do it.

If he were being honest with himself now, in the light of a new day, he accepted that which he’d not been able to see in the moment of immediate danger: Cleopatra had been cradling Paisley and humming a discordant tune. Hardly the actions of one about to snuff the life out of a child. Rather, there had been a maternal warmth that, had Adair been asked up to that moment, he’d have wagered every earning he’d made on the Hell and Sin Club the termagant was incapable of.

Even so, it was a risk he’d not have taken with his brother’s precious babe . . . or any of the family and staff dependent upon them.

Yet, sitting here with his plate full, damned if he did not feel the unwanted strains of guilt plucking at his conscience still. Guilt that came not only from the fact that he’d succeeded in driving off Cleopatra Killoran, but that she’d sneaked out into the streets of London, unarmed, and had no doubt found her way back to the Dials, where her family’s club was located. His gaze went to the serpent-headed dagger that rested alongside his silverware.

Diggory’s knife . . . but still also, Cleopatra’s. She’d a right to it, and she’d certainly had a need for it hours earlier when she’d slunk off. “Enough,” he muttered under his breath. Searching for a distraction, he set aside his glass and picked up the leather folio that rested alongside Cleopatra’s knife. Adair popped the folder open and proceeded to read the first page that enumerated the damages incurred at the Hell and Sin.