PRAISE FOR CHRISTI CALDWELL
“Christi Caldwell’s The Vixen shows readers a darker, grittier version of Regency London than most romance novels . . . Caldwell’s more realistic version of London is a particularly gripping backdrop for this enemies-to-lovers romance, and it’s heartening to read a story where love triumphs even in the darkest places.”
—NPR on The Vixen
“In addition to a strong plot, this story boasts actualized characters whose personal demons are clear and credible. The chemistry between the protagonists is seductive and palpable, with their family history of hatred played against their personal similarities and growing attraction to create an atmospheric and captivating romance.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Hellion
“Christi Caldwell is a master of words and The Hellion is so descriptive and vibrant that she redefines high definition. Readers will be left panting, craving, and rooting for their favorite characters as unexpected lovers find their happy ending.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Hellion
“Christi Caldwell is a Must Read.”
—New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh
“Two people so very broken in different ways, and their journey to becoming whole again. This is Christi Caldwell at her absolute best!”
—Kathryn Bullivant
“One of [Christi] Caldwell’s strengths is creating deep, sympathetic characters, and this book is no exception . . .”
—Courtney Tonokawa
OTHER TITLES BY CHRISTI CALDWELL
Sinful Brides
The Rogue’s Wager
The Scoundrel’s Honor
The Lady’s Guard
The Heiress’s Deception
The Wicked Wallflowers
The Hellion
The Vixen
The Governess
Heart of a Duke
In Need of a Duke (A Prequel Novella)
For Love of the Duke
More Than a Duke
The Love of a Rogue
Loved by a Duke
To Love a Lord
The Heart of a Scoundrel
To Wed His Christmas Lady
To Trust a Rogue
The Lure of a Rake
To Woo a Widow
To Redeem a Rake
One Winter with a Baron
To Enchant a Wicked Duke
Beguiled by a Baron
To Tempt a Scoundrel
The Heart of a Scandal
In Need of a Knight (A Prequel Novella)
Schooling the Duke
A Lady’s Guide to a Gentleman’s Heart
Lords of Honor
Seduced by a Lady’s Heart
Captivated by a Lady’s Charm
Rescued by a Lady’s Love
Tempted by a Lady’s Smile
Forever Betrothed, Never the Bride
Never Courted, Suddenly Wed
Always Proper, Suddenly Scandalous
Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love
A Marquess for Christmas
Once a Wallflower, At Last His Love
The Theodosia Sword
Only For His Lady
Only For Her Honor
Only For Their Love
Danby
A Season of Hope
Winning a Lady’s Heart
The Brethren
The Spy Who Seduced Her
The Lady Who Loved Him
The Rogue Who Rescued Her
Brethren of the Lords
My Lady of Deception
Her Duke of Secrets
A Regency Duet
Rogues Rush In
Nonfiction Works
Uninterrupted Joy: A Memoir
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2019 by Christi Caldwell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503904071
ISBN-10: 1503904075
Cover design by Erin Dameron-Hill
Cover illustration by Chris Cocozza
To my mom:
When money was tight, you made sure I still always had a romance novel in my hands.
And when, years later, I was a grown woman and a mom myself with books I’d written just sitting on my computer, you were the first to tell me I should really “indie publish” them . . . proving, once more, mothers always know best!
I love you!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter 1
St. Giles, London
Spring 1826
It was as though someone had died.
And in a way, someone had.
This would be a physical loss felt throughout the club, leaving the unlikely home silent in ways it had never been.
Gertrude Killoran stared blankly at the maids folding shirts and garments and placing them in neat piles upon an immaculate four-poster bed.
Small garments packed up, to be gone forevermore . . . and never returned.
Stacks of fine wool trousers and jackets alongside tattered scraps better fit for a street urchin. Torn cotton shirts. Coarse wool. Muddied shoes.
Her throat spasmed. “I have it.” All the while the servants, so very focused on their work, continued on, methodical in their task. Gather. Fold. Pile. Repeat. Her quiet words were less of a command and more of a statement, and their whispery-soft quality lent the order an air of weakness.
The only one to pay her any heed was the grey tabby at her feet. Gus nudged his head against her legs and purred.
All these years, Gertrude had been known as the weak Killoran. Blind in one eye, she was the cripple whom no one saw any true value in—at least, not in the way one was valued in the streets. And in this instance, with her young brother, Stephen, being carted off, away from this household they’d shared to the true home he’d been born to, she confronted the reality of her character. And mayhap she was weak.
Because if she were as strong as she’d always considered herself to be, then she’d muster a greater show of strength than this for her brother’s benefit.
She’d have packed his garments herself. Offered him words of strength and encouragement. Something. He deserved that. He deserved more in the face of uncertainty. Because of all he’d suffered and the pain he would forever know.
From where she stood at the windows overlooking the streets outside the Devil’s Den, the glass panes reflected a pair of footmen behind her, entering her br
other’s rooms with yet another trunk.
Another one to fill with Stephen’s things, taking all with him when he was gone.
Oh, God.
With jerky movements, she rushed over to the unfolded garments. “I have them,” she said, her voice slightly pitched, and something in it cut across the bustling activity that had existed in this room throughout the day. The maids looked up with bereaved eyes. Tear-filled ones. Stephen would not see tears. Not today. Not on his final day inside the Devil’s Den. “I said I have them,” she repeated, agony making her tone sharper than she’d intended. “You may go.” Gertrude looked to the four somber servants. “All of you.”
The group of servants hesitated.
Even though Gertrude had taken on a greater role at the clubs since her sisters had married, it was still new to the staff. They likely didn’t truly know what to do with this commanding version of her usually collected self. “Now,” she said curtly when they made no move to leave.
The pair of maids relinquished the garments in their hands and filed after the footmen. They closed the door in their wake so that Gertrude was left . . . alone.
Her breath came slow and shallow, straining the constricted walls of her chest as she stared at the oak panel of Stephen’s door, nicked and scarred from the tip of the dagger he’d hurled at it, a street game he’d carried with him into the club.
It was just one more physical proof of the wrongness of his having lived here. And of the life he’d been forced to live as a member of their family. They’d brought irrevocable harm to him. In every way. But how were they to have known? She bit hard at her lower lip, scrabbling the flesh. How were they to have known that the young boy brought into their gang, squalling and incoherently inconsolable as he’d wailed for his mum and da, had in fact been a marquess and marchioness’s son? How were they to have known Stephen had been kidnapped from the comfortable, exalted folds of the peerage and plunged into the living hell and squalor of St. Giles?
And now . . . he would return. Still, by Polite Society’s standards, a boy in years, but in the suffering he’d endured and the hell he’d visited upon others at the behest of their gang leader, Mac Diggory, Stephen was more jaded than a man who’d lived sixty years.
Gertrude slid onto the edge of the mattress, depressing the too-soft feather-down bed he’d insisted on. It had been the one luxury he’d embraced when he’d shunned every other hint of respectability.
Her ears pricked.
And she heard him before he’d even reached the other side of the door.
That heightened sense was a gift that had come after she’d lost vision in one eye and been forced to rely upon all her senses in order to survive on the streets.
Gertrude leapt to her feet. Then, catching a glimpse of her grim pallor in the mirrored wall chest that cased Stephen’s weapons, she hurriedly pinched her cheeks and plastered a smile on her lips . . . just as the door opened enough to allow the gaunt boy to slip right through.
Stephen scraped a hate-filled stare over the clutter of his belongings that covered the bed behind her, and then his gaze settled on the large trunks marked with their family name.
His familiar scowl slipped, and in that instant he underwent a rare transformation into a vulnerable, scared child.
Gertrude’s heart buckled.
“Hullo,” she greeted with false cheer.
His glower deepened. “Are you happy to see me go?”
The muscles of her face froze in a painful mask that strained her cheeks. “What?” How could he . . . ? He was like the child she had never had—and would never have. “How could you dare ask that?”
“Yar grinning like the village lackwit,” Stephen muttered, and shoving his heel behind him, he slammed the door, shaking the wood frame. He started past her.
Gertrude slid herself into his path. “Stop.” She planted her hands on her hips and gave him a pointed look. “Seven years.”
He wrinkled his high, noble brow. A young earl’s brow. “Wot?”
“I’ve been giving you lessons on reading and writing and every other last topic considered polite and respectable. You know how to speak properly, Stephen.” And yet despite it, he moved between flawless English tones and Cockney the way a skilled thief slipped through a just-emptying Covent Garden theatre.
Fire flashed in his eyes, and he jutted his chin out. “It doesn’t matter how I speak.” It did not escape her notice that he’d adopted those perfect tones, the ones she suspected came more readily to him than he’d ever dare admit . . . even to himself.
Gertrude settled her hands on his narrow shoulders and, stooping down so she might meet his gaze, gave her brother a little squeeze. “It does matter. You know that. And you might be angry at”—she struggled to get the words out—“your change in fate,” she settled for. “But you know your life will be . . . easier.” Or as easy as it could be for a stolen boy reseated at his rightful place. “If you attempt to . . . if you . . .” Words failed.
“Make myself someone I’m not?” he jeered.
“But it is who you are,” she said quietly, sucking the energy from the room and dousing it with a thick, impenetrable tension.
Stricken eyes met hers, a mark of her brother’s vulnerability.
Stephen came to life. “It is not,” he cried. He whipped himself out of her arms with a hiss that sent Gus into flight across the chambers and sprinting under the oak side cabinet. “I’m from the streets, just like you and Cleo and Ophelia and Broderick. I’ve committed the same crimes as all of you.” Fury blazed within his too-jaded eyes. “Worse,” he reminded her in a chilling whisper that raised the gooseflesh on her arms.
His was more an unnecessary reminder of the crimes he’d committed. Trained by Gertrude’s sire, the vile and thankfully dead gang leader Mac Diggory, he had been schooled on how to light fires and had destroyed countless businesses and ruined lives. “That time in your life is over,” she said, as much as for him as for herself.
His lower lip trembled, and then with a growl, he stalked to the window overlooking the St. Giles streets.
A sense of helplessness clawed at her heart.
God help her, she had no words. What did one say to a boy who’d been raised as one’s brother, only for them to learn together that it had all been a lie? That the ruthless gang leader, whom they’d all hated, hadn’t found Stephen in the streets as he had so many other orphans, but had ordered two of his thugs to steal the child? Oh, Cleo and Ophelia would have some words for Stephen. They always had a ready supply of them and invariably hurled them first and worried about any consequences after.
He broke the quiet. “They’re loading my things.”
“Yes.” Gertrude drew in a slow, silent breath and then exhaled through her nose. She strode over to the still messy pile of garments and, with jerky movements, proceeded to fold them. Shirts in one pile. Trousers in another. As long as she’d been alive, organizing the once meager, now great belongings they owned had calmed her. It had proven a distraction that kept her mind from the horrors that had been and always would be her life.
Until now.
Now she was . . . empty and aching.
Desolation swept through her.
“Ophelia would have somethin’ to say,” Stephen taunted, aiming a fierce glare at her.
She didn’t pause in her folding. “Ophelia always has something to say.”
Stephen retrained his stare outside. Shoulders hunched and head down, he was an empty shadow of the spitfire she’d always known.
And she didn’t know what to do with this agonized version of him.
Gertrude forced herself to stop folding but reflexively drew the threadbare shirt close to her chest. “There will be good in you returning.” He belonged there. He had never been one for this place. Not so for Gertrude. The blood of a whore and a street thug flowing in her veins, and with a blind eye to boot, she’d never been destined for anywhere except this place.
“To him?” Stephen chuckled, an
empty darkness to his laugh. “He shoulda burnt in the fire beside her.”
Oh, God. How could he . . . ?
“Do not say that,” she rasped. The “her” in question was the very woman who’d birthed him, who’d been just another of Mac Diggory’s victims, pregnant, burnt to death after that same Devil had given the orders and sealed her fate.
“He’s a stranger,” Stephen said with an indifferent shrug. “And he’s proven to be a monster. Believe—”
“What someone shows himself to be,” she finished the familiar adage.
My God, how is my voice so steady? How, when I’m splintering apart and breaking up inside?
“Stealing my goodbyes,” Stephen whispered, resting his brow against the crystal pane. “Making decisions for me about when I go. Who I’ll see. Who I won’t . . . s-see.”
Gertrude briefly pressed her eyes closed. “He is within his rights.” Even as she said it, it rang hollow. “And he has reasons for his resentment toward our family.” How could the marquess, who’d had seven years with his son stolen, ever have any warmth or affection or anything less than a deep, abiding loathing for the Killorans? Gertrude cleared her throat. “He’ll be expecting us shortly.”
That statement, spoken in a hollow voice, brought her brother back around, his usual sneering self restored. “Ain’t letting you go.”
She cocked her head.
Her brother gave her a once-over. “You or Broderick or Cleo or Ophelia. None of you.” He spat in a disgusting habit that she had long despised but now ignored, focused solely on that statement.
“What?” she demanded, stalking over, her arms still filled with his favorite shirt.
“Broderick called me to his office. Explained the Mad Marquess don’t want any of my family about. Making me come on my own.”
Her mouth moved, but no words were forthcoming. He’d rob them of that final goodbye. And why shouldn’t he? The marquess was well within his rights and reasons for his hatred. Why should he allow those who’d served, and shared the blood of, the scourge of St. Giles, a man who had destroyed the marquess’s own family, to set a foot near his properties?
Yet . . . he should still consider how the changes would affect his son.
And for the first time that day, some emotion other than despair and pain flared in her chest: anger. Palpable. Biting. Distracting. And she clung to it.