Except he was no longer smiling. He watched her, his face expressionless, his eyes intent, like a wolf waiting for the hare to break from cover.
Trembling, she let her hand fall.
He shrugged, looking mildly disappointed. “Ah, well, it’d be a great inconvenience to have ye livin’ under me roof anyway. I ’spect ye’ve made the right decision.”
He turned away from her, sauntering smoothly toward his throne. She’d been dismissed, it seemed. He no longer found her interesting enough to play with.
In that moment, with rage and grief, and yes, love, swirling all inside, Silence made her decision.
“Mr. O’Connor!”
He stopped, still turned rudely away from her, his voice a rumbling purr. “Aye?”
“I’ll stay.”
AH, BUT VICTORY felt so fuckin’ lovely. Mick smiled, his back still toward the little widow. She was so outraged, her dusty black feathers all ruffled, she probably didn’t even feel the net tangled about her prim little feet. And yet, how easy it’d been to make her walk into his palace of her own volition, simply by kidnapping the babe.
He turned, eyebrows arched as if surprised. “Ye’ll be stayin’ with me, is that what yer sayin’, Mrs. Hollingbrook?”
Her pointed chin was raised as if to challenge him in his own palace, poor foolish wench. She was an odd creature, Silence Hollingbrook, pretty, of course—or he’d not have looked twice at her in the first place—but not his usual type, oh no. She didn’t flaunt her charms, didn’t try to lure a man with titties overflowing from a low bodice or a wicked wink. She didn’t try to lure at all, come to think of it. She held her womanliness locked up tight like a miser, which, on the whole, was a bit irritating.
Irritating and alluring at the same time—made a man want to find the key to her locks, truth be told.
Mud was splashed on the hem of her plain black frock; her shawl and cap were tattered, and yet her eyes stared at him all defiant like. Ah, but what eyes they were—large and wide, and a glorious hazel—made of golden brown and grass green and even a bit of gray blue. Hers was a face that might haunt a man’s dreams, make him wake in the night sweating and lonely, the flesh between his legs heavy with longing. Why, it made him think of those ghost tales his mam used to tell him when he was but a wee lad, crying for lack of a dinner and the burning from the welts upon his back. Wailing women, dripping water in the night, searching for their lost loves.
Mind, the tales might’ve been lovely, but his belly had still ached with hunger, his back had still stung with pain when he’d woken in the morning.
“Yes,” Mrs. Hollingbrook said, her nose tilted proudly in the air, “I’ll come and live in this… this place. Just to take care of Mary Darling, nothing else.”
Oh, it was hard not to grin at those words, but he was strong, keeping his expression as solemn as a judge’s. “And what ‘else’ might ye be thinkin’ about?”
The color flew high into her pale cheeks, making her eyes sparkle. Making his cock twitch. “Nothing!”
“Yer sure now, Mrs. Hollingbrook?” He took a step closer, testing, watching for her to flee, for despite his enjoyment of this sparring, ’twas a serious matter that she stay beneath his roof. Her very life might depend upon it.
But she stood her ground, his little widow. “I’m quite certain, Mr. O’Connor—”
“Oh, do call me Mickey, please,” he murmured.
“Mister O’Connor.” Her eyes narrowed on him. “Despite what the rest of St. Giles thinks, you and I both know that my honor is quite intact, and I’ll thank you to remember that fact.”
She was a brave one, was Silence Hollingbrook. Her small chin outthrust, her hazel eyes steady, her pale lips trembling. Any other man might’ve felt a twinge of guilt, a trickle of remorse for the sweet innocence he’d taken and smashed to the ground like a fine china dish.
Any other man but he.
For Mick O’Connor had lost any vestige of guilt, remorse, or soul on a winter’s night sixteen years before.
So now he smiled, without any conscience at all, as he lied to the woman he’d hurt so cruelly. “Oh, I’ll be sure and remember, Mrs. Hollingbrook.”
She heard the mockery in his voice—her lips thinned—but she soldiered on. “You said that you’ll soon have your business tidied up.”
He tilted his head in interest, wondering what loophole she thought she’d found. “Aye?”
“And when you’re done with your… your enemies, then Mary Darling will no longer be in danger.”
He merely watched her now, waiting patiently.
She inhaled as if to fortify herself. “When that happens—when your enemies are defeated and Mary isn’t threatened anymore—I want to leave here.”
“O’ course,” he said at once.
“With Mary.”
Oh, now, but the lass wasn’t daft, was she? “She’s me own flesh and blood,” he said softly. “The only soul in London related to me—or at least the only one I’ll acknowledge. Will ye be partin’ a fond papa from his wee little one?”
“You’ve said you don’t love her.” Mrs. Hollingbrook ignored his pretty words. “I can provide a loving home for her, a wholesome, decent life.”
Well, and he’d already admitted to a lack of decency, now hadn’t he? The corner of his mouth curved, a bit too sharply. He glanced at the babe, playing with the furs from a chest. Her down-bent head was topped with hair the exact shade as his own—and his mam’s, come to think of it—and yet the sight didn’t cause anything to stir within his chest.
He looked back at Mrs. Hollingbrook. “When I say the danger’s past, when I say ye can go, then aye, ye may take the babe with ye.”
She sighed a bit. He had the feeling she didn’t like it, not at all—he’d not put a date on the day she could go—but she’d already made the bargain, hadn’t she?
“Very well. I shall have to return to the home to retrieve my things and Mary’s. We’ll come back here as soon as—”
“Ah, ah.” He shook his head with amusement. Did she think he’d toddled into St. Giles yesterday? “The lass stays here with me. Ye can take two o’ me men with ye to bring back whatever ye’d like.”
She must’ve known she was pushing the matter. She merely pursed her pretty lips, nodded, and bent to kiss the oblivious baby on the top of the head. “I’ll be right back, sweetheart.”
Then she turned to stalk to the door.
Mick admired the outraged sway of her hips for a second before jerking his head at Harry to follow the little widow. Harry touched his forehead and hurried after her. He’d get his cohort, Bert, and between the two of them guard Mrs. Hollingbrook to and from the home.
There was a squeak somewhere around the level of his knees. Mick glanced down and saw the babe’s face turn a bright shade of beet red as she watched Mrs. Hollingbrook leave the throne room. It was his only warning.
And then all hell broke loose.
“YOU DON’T HAVE to escort me all the way back to the home,” Silence muttered irritably some moments later.
“ ’Imself says we do, and so we do,” Harry said somewhat obscurely.
He took one step for every two of hers and might’ve been out for a late afternoon stroll. The buttons of his frayed brown coat strained over his barrel chest and he wore a bright red scarf wound around his neck, the ends flung debonairly over his shoulders. The scarf was at odds with his battered face and massive broken nose—Harry looked like a pugilist who had lost one too many rounds. The early spring wind was chill with a nasty edge of damp, but Harry didn’t seem to notice as he stumped along, his old cocked hat at a jaunty angle.
The same couldn’t be said for his companion.
“And ’oos mindin’ the palace, is what I’d like to know,” grumped Bert. He was half a head shorter than Harry and was hunched inside the collar of his bottle-green coat like a turtle. A huge gray scarf wrapped around and over both his face and the seedy wig he wore, making his head look disproportionately swollen. “Sendin’ us off in the middle o’ the day with a wench!”
“There’s a dozen o’ the crew at the palace,” Harry pointed out. “And Bob.”
“Bob! Jaysus, Bob,” Bert said in disgust. “Couldn’t guard a kitten, could Bob.”
“When ’e’s not three sheets to the wind ’e can,” Harry said judiciously.
“ ’E’s always fuckin’ drunk!”
“Watch yer tongue,” Harry said, and then as an aside to Silence, “ ’E’s missin’ ’is afternoon tea is Bert, and it makes ’im tetchy like. Normally the most placid o’ men is our Bert.”
Silence, watched as “our Bert” spat through his missing two front teeth, almost hitting a passing mongrel. She was rather doubtful that the man was ever in a good mood, tea or no tea, but she wisely decided not to share this thought. For whatever reason Harry seemed to have taken a liking to her, and she was loath to spoil their accord.
If she was to live with Charming Mickey O’Connor she would need a friendly face.
Dear God. Only now as she walked the grimy streets of St. Giles, did the full impact of her decision hit her. She’d pledged to live in the same house as the most notorious man in St. Giles—a man she’d spent over a year hating and fearing. Whatever shreds of respectability she’d been able to pull together over her battered reputation in the last year would be truly torn asunder now. But what choice did she have? One look at Mary Darling’s face and she would’ve walked through fire.
Silence shivered and pulled her cloak more firmly about her person. Mickey O’Connor had never actually hurt her—not physically anyway—and she had Harry as an ally. She would draw on her own strength, keep to herself, and avoid the company of Charming Mickey and his men as much as possible until his enemies were defeated and she could go home.
Pray that was soon.
She turned into a small lane and the modest door to the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children came into sight. It was the temporary Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children, sadly, ever since a fire had burned down the original home a year ago. A new building was being built for the home, but a series of setbacks had delayed their move to the new place.
The door was flung open before Silence could touch it.
“Have you found her?” Nell Jones, the home’s trusted maidservant, looked eager, but her bright blue eyes dimmed when she saw Silence’s empty arms. Nell’s pretty face was flushed, one blond lock fluttering around her ear—her disorder a measure of how worried she was about Mary Darling.
“I did find Mary Darling,” Silence said hastily. “But… well, it’s a long story.”
“And who are these two?” Nell asked suspiciously, eyeing Harry and Bert.
“Gentlemen what ’as seen yer mistress safely ’ome,” Harry said. He removed the battered tricorne from his head, revealing a thinning patch of straggly brown hair, and bowed rather elegantly, considering his size.
“Huh,” Nell sniffed, though her tone was less strident. “Best come inside, then.”
The entryway to the home was narrow and cramped and the two men seemed to take up not only what little room there was, but the air as well.
Nell stared at them disapprovingly for a moment and then turned to a small boy loitering curiously behind her. “Joseph Tinbox, take these, er, gentlemen back to the kitchen and ask Mary Whitsun to make them a pot of tea.”
“Why, that’s quite kind o’ ye, ma’am.” Harry beamed.
Silence was surprised to see Nell fight to keep her face stern.