Scandalous Desires (Maiden Lane #3)(2)

Silence breathed in the scent of milk and baby, tears pricking her eyes. When she’d found the toddler gone—when she’d feared that she’d never see Mary Darling again—her heart had seemed to shrivel into a tiny, frozen thing.

“Mamoo,” Mary Darling sighed, and unwrapped her arms to pat Silence’s cheeks.

Silence ran her hands over Mary Darling’s black curls, touching and squeezing and rubbing, making sure the little girl was as well as when she’d last seen her, half a day before. The previous six hours had been the most frightening of her life and she never wanted to repeat—

“Ahem,” a masculine voice murmured nearby, and Silence suddenly remembered where she was.

She clutched Mary Darling to her breast and whirled to face the river pirate. “Thank you. It’s most… most kind of you to have given her back to me. I really can’t thank you enough.” Silence took a step backward, afraid to take her eyes from Charming Mickey’s face. “I… I’ll just be leaving—”

Mr. O’Connor smiled. “Oh, certainly, sweetheart, do as ye wish, but the little one will be a-stayin’ with me, I think.”

Silence froze. “You have no right!”

The pirate lifted one inky eyebrow and reached out to finger Mary Darling’s black curls. His tanned hand was large against her little head. “Oh, don’t I? She is me daughter.”

“Bad!” Mary Darling glared at Mickey O’Connor, dark eyes meeting dark eyes, black curls framing a face that might’ve been a feminine miniature of Mr. O’Connor’s own.

The resemblance was quite devastating.

Silence swallowed. Mary Darling had been abandoned on her doorstep almost a year ago to the day. At the time she’d thought that the baby had been left with her because Silence’s brother, Winter, ran the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children. Now she wondered if there had been a much more diabolical reason. Fear that she was about to lose Mary Darling forever made her clutch the baby closer.

“You abandoned her upon my doorstep,” she tried.

He cocked his head, eyeing her with ironic amusement. “I left her with ye for her safekeepin’.”

“Why?” she whispered. “Why me?”

“Because.” He let his hand drop. “Ye were—are—the purest thing I’ve ever seen, me sweet.”

Her eyebrows drew together, confused. He didn’t make any sense, and besides, they’d wandered from the main point. “You don’t love her.”

“No. But I’m a-thinkin’ that don’t matter when ye do, Mrs. Hollingbrook.”

Silence felt the breath catch in her throat. “Let me leave with her.”

“No.”

Mary Darling squirmed again with one of those mercurial shifts of moods that toddlers are prone to. “Down!”

Silence let her slip from her arms, watching as the little girl carefully stood against one of the huge trunks of booty. She looked so small. So precious. “Why are you doing this? Haven’t you done enough to me in this lifetime?”

“Oh, not nearly enough, m’darlin’,” Mickey O’Connor murmured. Silence felt more than saw him reach out his hand toward her. Maybe he meant to fondle her hair as he had Mary Darling’s.

She jerked her head out of his way.

His hand dropped.

“What are you about?” She folded her arms and faced him, though she kept Mary Darling within sight.

He shrugged, the movement making his shirt slip further off one muscled shoulder. “A man in me position has many an enemy, I fear. Nasty, mean creatures who don’t let the thought of innocence or youth stop them from doin’ terrible, murderous things.”

“Why take her from me now?” Silence asked. “Are these enemies new?”

His mouth curved into another smile, this one entirely without humor. “Not at all. But me enemies have become more… er… persistent in the last month, ye understand. ’Tis merely a matter o’ business—one that I hope to soon tidy up. But in the meantime, should me enemies find the wee child…”

Silence shivered, watching as Mary Darling grabbed for a dark fur and pulled it half out of the trunk. “Damn you. How could you have put her in this danger?”

“I didn’t,” he said without any signs of conscience. “I gave her to ye, remember.”

“And she was safe with me,” she said desperately. “What has changed?”

“They’ve discovered where she and ye live.”

She shifted her gaze to him and was disconcerted to find him only a foot away. The room was big, and besides Harry and the sweetmeats boy, a gang of pirates sat around Mr. O’Connor’s throne. Was he worried they’d be overheard?

“Let me keep her,” Silence whispered. “She doesn’t know you, doesn’t love you. If there’s truly a danger, then send men to guard her where we live, but let her stay at the home. If you have any decency in you at all, you’ll let her go with me.”

“Ah, love.” Mickey O’Connor tilted his head, long coal-black locks of hair slithering over his broad shoulders. “Don’t ye know by now that decent is the last thing anyone would be a-callin’ me? No, the lass stays with me and me men, here where I can keep me eye on her night and day until I can put an end to this bit o’ bother.”