The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(70)

“And I don’t waltz.”

Cleopatra chewed at her plump lower lip. “Fair enough.” And yet, still, she said nothing.

Adair didn’t press her; he allowed her the time she needed, more than half-afraid that should she not speak on her own terms, she wouldn’t speak at all. “She cared for us, but not the way Diggory’s other women did. Joan cleaned our scrapes when we fell, or sang us songs when we had night terrors.”

What hellish dreams must have come to her as a child. Himself having survived Diggory’s cruelty and having also witnessed firsthand the suffering his siblings endured, he had an idea of what her childhood must have been like. His heart ached.

Absently, Cleopatra skimmed her fingertips over the top of his recent notes from Phippen. The tension in her slender frame, however, countered all show of calm. “Then Joan made an unforgivable mistake.”

Do not ask . . . Having found himself on the edge of death too many times because of cruelty exacted by Mac Diggory, he didn’t want to know that unforgivable mistake. “What was it?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“She wanted to name us. Fought Diggory on it. Said we deserved names. Said she was giving them to us whether he liked it or not.” Cleopatra glanced up from his desk and offered him a chillingly empty smile. One that had no place on her lips. One that he wanted to erase from her face and instead fill her life with laughter that dulled all the darkest memories she carried.

Then her words registered. He shook his head. What . . . ?

“For many years of my life, I was simply Girl.” Cleopatra traced the D upon her palm. “My sister Ophelia was Stupid, and Gertrude was Twit.” A mirthless laugh bubbled in her throat but never made it past her lips. “I went through those years of my life believing my name was Girl.”

Oh, God. Her profession briefly weighted his eyes closed. Dead. He wanted to kill Mac Diggory all over again, only this time with his bare hands, and not the mercifully quick bullet his sister, Helena, had put in the bastard’s belly. “What did Diggory do to Joan?” he asked quietly. “After she’d wanted to give you a name?” The most basic gift passed down to a babe to begin their place in the world, and she’d been robbed of it until a stranger to whom Diggory had turned her care over stood up to fight for her.

Cleopatra drew in a slow, noisy breath through her teeth, then let it out. “’e set fire to our apartments. Diggory told me to choose.”

Horror turned his blood to ice in his veins.

“Someone always pays the price for lines being crossed,” she said in an eerie echo of orders that had been hurled at Adair himself by that same monster. “Oi ’ad to choose my sisters’ burning room . . . or Joan’s.” She took her skirts in a deathlike grip, draining all the blood from her knuckles. “Oi chose my sisters.”

“Oh, Cleopatra,” he said on an agonized whisper. He wanted to take her pain, make it his own, and fill her life with the happiness she deserved. He’d spent years hating her, but she, in having no choice but to remain under Diggory’s control, had endured far more than Adair or his siblings.

She waved her scarred palm about in a stiff gesture. “Oi did what I had to do.”

“I know that.” He paused. “Do you?”

Growling, she jerked her chin up. “Didn’t I just say I did,” she barked, sounding like a wounded pup he’d come upon outside the Hell and Sin once.

“No. You said you chose your sisters.” He continued with the same calm he’d affected for that fractious dog. Had she ever made peace with the sacrifice she’d been forced to make? But then, did any of them?

A sheen of tears filled her brown eyes, those crystalline drops made all the brighter by her lenses. It was the first time he’d ever seen her cry. With an agonized groan, he pulled her into his arms.

She held herself with such tautness, a sharp wind could have snapped her slender frame. Tightening his hold upon her, Adair lowered his cheek atop the crown of her head.

When she spoke, her words emerged muffled against his chest. “She told me Oi needed to save them. She made the choice.”

And yet, Cleopatra had claimed ownership of a decision that hadn’t really been a decision, taking on the guilt of it. “Oi wish we’d been kept together,” he said roughly. “Oi wish that Oi’d been part of the same end of London as you and your sisters.” For how her life would have turned out differently. She and her sisters would have become part of his family, and she’d not have relied upon a merciless monster.

Cleopatra stepped out of his arms, and he fought the need to draw her back, close. “That could ’ave never been, and it could ’ave never worked,” she said in deadened tones. She blinked in rapid succession and then looked up, her thick brown lashes shielding her thoughts from him . . . but not before he caught the flash of regret. As soon as that emotion flickered to life, however, it was gone. She jutted her jaw out. “After she . . . was gone, I took over caring for me and my family—until Broderick.”

“And you’ve been taking care of them ever since.” Did she realize she’d taken on the mantle of responsibility to assuage a guilt that would always be with her?

“I haven’t done it alone,” she said defensively.

Reality intruded. “Killoran.” How easy it was whenever she was near to forget who her brother, in fact, was. To set aside all the enmity between their families and just . . . be two people who enjoyed being together.