The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(89)

Reggie jammed an elbow into Ophelia’s side.

“Oomph. What?” her sister groused. “We were all thinking it, and someone really should have said it . . . long before now.”

“I believe Cleopatra knows very well who saved her,” Gertrude said with her usual pragmatism. “She wasn’t unconscious, just . . .” Burned and weak from the smoke inhalation. But she’d always known who’d braved a burning building and saved her. Not one of Black’s men. Not a rival, nor a member of Black’s gang. Not even her brother, who’d come to the base of the burning Hell and Sin. Rather, Adair Thorne, who’d lost his family to fire and risked that same torturous fate—for her.

And it had been her youngest brother who’d destroyed everything Adair had loved.

Tears filled her eyes. Only it was Stephen, not the brother everyone had believed was guilty.

Ophelia patted her hand. “There is no shame in being saved by a Black. We’re just happy you are alive.”

Cleopatra blinked slowly. Is that what her sisters believed accounted for her misery? That Cleopatra’s hatred was so great that she lay here—ashamed for having been rescued by Adair?

As her sisters spoke over one another, she stared blankly back, feeling like an outsider in a foreign world. That is who I was, too. Judgmental and guided so much by hatred that she couldn’t see they were all defined not by their kin . . . but by who they were on the inside.

Adair had shown her that. That she was so very much more than Diggory.

Cleopatra turned her face away.

And my family repaid that gift by torching that which he loved most.

Removing the spare pair of spectacles she’d donned since hers had been lost, Cleopatra brushed back the tears streaking down her cheeks.

Clearing her throat, Ophelia quietly spoke. “I trust it will not leave too bad a scar.”

“Do you know me so little you believe I care about the scars?” Cleopatra cried, that hoarse shout ushering in another wave of thick silence. The puckered, blistered flesh just above her ankle was excruciating by its own right, and stung with the same vicious pain as when Diggory had branded her. And yet . . . her heart crumpled. “There are altogether different types of suffering,” she said tiredly.

“Oh, dear. You are. . . crying.”

And if she weren’t so bloody miserable and hurting inside, she’d have found amusement at the horror wrapped in Ophelia’s tone, and the scolding administered once again by Reggie.

“She is entitled to a good cry,” Reggie said softly. “She’s endured more than most these four weeks.”

They of course assumed she’d been silently suffering in Black’s residence, and her near death atop a burning building was the cause of her moroseness.

“Oi can’t do it.” The admission ripped from her still raw throat, and the three women looked at her like she’d descended into the final depth of madness. “Oi can’t marry a nob to make Broderick his connections.” Odd that it should be easier to speak about her decision than the uncertain fate of her brother. The crime of burning down a nobleman’s club would only be met with a fate of Newgate. Of course, given Stephen’s treachery against him and his family, there could never, ever be anything more with Adair . . . she still couldn’t sell herself in marriage. Not when her heart would only belong to him.

Cleopatra sucked in a shuddery breath through her teeth, grateful that they’d never been a family to pry and probe. Their silence allowed her to gather her thoughts. She lifted her gaze from the floral coverlet and met her sisters’ gazes. “Oi thought I could . . .” And then for the first time in the whole of her existence, she uttered words she never before had . . . and certainly never thought to give to her sisters. “But I can’t. I cannot marry a nob.” Not any gentleman. Not even to save her siblings.

Silence enveloped the room.

“I love him.”

Ophelia cocked her head and did a search of the room with her gaze. “Love who?” she blurted, startling a painful laugh from Cleopatra.

She buried her face in her palms. “Adair Thorne.”

“Thorne? You love one of Black’s . . . oomph.” Ophelia cursed. “Would you stop hitting me, Reggie?”

“Let your sister talk,” Reggie chided.

Biting her lower lip, Cleopatra managed a shaky nod. “I love him.” She breathed that aloud inside the Devil’s Den, in this room she’d slept in since she’d been a girl, schooled on all the reasons to hate Adair Thorne and his family. “He’s a good man. He became my friend.” Once she would have cringed at uttering that admission aloud, feeling weak for it. “We talked about everything, and he never sought to change me but solicited my opinion and teased with me and didn’t think me silly for wanting to dance—”

“You . . . want to dance?” Ophelia squawked. “You, who mocked me for enjoying Monsieur La Frange’s lessons, all of a sudden like oomph . . . by God, if you jab me one more time, Reggie—”

“And he danced with me,” Cleopatra whispered. And he’d made love to her. “And . . .” I want it all with him. I want to be his wife and partner in every way. Unable to share those intimate truths with even her sisters, she fell silent. “And it cannot be, any longer.”

“Because of Stephen,” Gertrude supplied.