The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(6)

What manner of woman is Killoran’s sister? Adair’s sister, Helena, had been raised in the streets, but she’d never have gone about lifting her skirts before a room of strangers—and certainly not the enemy. Adair’s gaze lingered on Miss Killoran’s trim ankle.

The young woman straightened and glared at him through her perfectly rounded spectacles. “Did you want a longer look, Thorne?” she taunted.

And despite his annoyance with the saucy chit, his lips twitched. The women he’d always favored had been curved in all the places a woman should be curved, and yet, if the feisty baggage before him didn’t have the name Killoran attached to hers, he might have found in her the exception to his usual preferences. He touched the brim of an imagined hat. “Not at all, Miss Killoran.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“They are just leaving,” Ryker said in frosty tones as he moved around the desk to meet his wife.

“No, they are not,” Penelope said. The stubborn set to her shoulders was one Adair recognized. After all, this was the same woman who’d not only wrapped Ryker around her finger but also transformed the rooms of the Hell and Sin and struck down prostitution in their establishment. “We gave our word to this family.”

“They burned our club,” Niall gritted out.

“Did they confess as much?” she shot back, then looked around. “Did you?” she posed that to Broderick Killoran. “Destroy my family’s club,” she clarified.

Surprise marred Cleopatra Killoran’s face, but she quickly concealed it behind her mask of drollness.

“Surely you don’t expect the truth from these people?” Adair said with a growl, earning another black look from Killoran’s sister.

With a charm better suited for a gentleman in a London ballroom, Broderick Killoran swept an elegant bow. “My lady, I assure you, I neither set that fire nor ordered a man, woman, or child to see to it.”

“He’s a damned liar,” Adair called to Penelope, earning a slight frown.

“Do you have proof?” she shot back. Silence descended over the room. Penelope smiled. “Then I daresay it would be wrong to break our word on nothing more than past hatred and resentment.”

Adair swiped a hand over his face. His damned trusting sister-in-law. She’d spent all but two years of her life in the fancy streets of London, unscathed by the world’s ugliness.

“Penelope,” Ryker began quietly.

“Do you have proof, Ryker?” his wife cut in. “If not, then I expect us to honor our commitment. We offered them a Season. We”—she motioned to the small circle of people that was their family—“all of us. I’m not one who’d have us break our word.”

“Everything has changed,” Ryker gritted out.

“Has it?” Killoran piped in, wholly unfazed by the glowers trained on him. “Cleopatra promised to lead Marksman to his now wife.” He stuck a finger up. “Which she did. And you vowed to sponsor one of my sisters for a Season.”

Penelope nodded. “And that is precisely what we’ll do, Ryker,” she challenged.

A cocksure grin turned Broderick Killoran’s lips up, revealing a flawless white smile. “I am grateful to you—”

Ryker’s wife swiveled her attention over. “I don’t like you, Mr. Killoran.”

The proprietor’s mouth froze in a strained, befuddled grin. With his crop of golden curls and his rumored ability to charm the peers whose paths he crossed, he was no doubt unaccustomed to disapproval.

Ryker’s wife continued speaking. “You infiltrated my family’s clubs. When I was first married to Ryker, you provided a vile note to create conflict between my husband and I.” With each charge ticked off on her list, she raised a finger. “You sought to sow unrest in my marriage. So, do not mistake my decision for kindness. Are we clear?”

Even a Killoran had the good grace to blush. He bowed his head slightly. “We are, my lady.”

Adair stared at the other man humbling himself so with a potent disgust. How different this family, with their love of the nobility, was from Adair and his own brothers who, outside the women who’d married into their gang, despised the ton.

Penelope held her hand out. Killoran hesitated a moment, then sealed the agreement with a handshake.

“A Black with honor,” Cleopatra Killoran muttered. “Who could have imagined it?”

Killoran gave his sister a quelling look that the spitfire diligently ignored. “I will have one of my sister’s belongings readied, and—”

Miss Killoran and Ryker spoke as one. “What?”

“Her belongings?” Ryker barked, his nostrils flaring.

Cleopatra sprang forward on the balls of her feet, a look of horror stamped in her features, and a question in her eyes. The look was gone so quickly, Adair may as well have imagined it. Interesting.

Adair whistled. “You are mad, Killoran.” He earned another black look from the young woman. Surely the both of them had brains enough not to expect them to take one of their kind in.

“What are you on about?” Ryker demanded. “Surely you don’t truly expect I’d allow any of your family to sleep inside my home.”

The proprietor of the Devil’s Den drew out his gloves and casually pulled them on. “My intentions are an honorable match for one of my sisters.”