Scandalous Desires (Maiden Lane #3)(38)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

He cocked his head as if considering. “I don’t rightly know. One o’ me earliest memories is going to the corner on a freezin’ night in winter.”

“How awful!”

He looked at her sardonically. “There be worse ways to make a penny.”

She bit her lip. There were indeed worse ways in St. Giles to make money. So many came to London from the English countryside, from Scotland and Ireland and even from the continent. There were far too many for the jobs available. She sometimes saw the women coming home in the morning after a night of walking the streets. And it wasn’t just women who walked the streets. There were children, too, of both sexes.

Silence peeked at Mickey O’Connor from under her eyelashes. He was beautiful, his eyes dark and sensuous, his mouth mobile, his hair thick and black. He would’ve been a lovely child—too lovely.

“You’re Irish,” Silence blurted out and then felt the heat rise in her cheeks. The Irish were numerous in London—and almost universally despised.

He smiled, dimples creasing the corners of his mouth. “Aye, me mam came from Ireland lookin’ for work. She was one o’ ten children to a widowed mother, or so she told me. I never met me Irish kin. She came over alone.” He bent his head as he donned the shirt he’d taken from the back of a nearby chair. “ ’Tis a far cry from yer own family, I’ll wager.”

She nodded. “My father’s family has lived in London for generations. My mother’s people came from Dorset and live there still, though we don’t often see them.”

“Ye’ve a sister and a brother, I know,” he said.

“Two sisters and three brothers, actually,” she replied, smiling a little. “I’m the youngest of six children. There’s Verity—she brought up Temperance and me when our mother died, then Concord who took over Father’s brewery on his death. Both are married with families of their own now. Asa is my next brother, but I don’t know exactly what he does—he’s something of the black sheep of the family. Temperance used to run the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children before she married Lord Caire, and Winter is the next youngest above me.”

She stopped suddenly, a little out of breath. He probably thought her a ninny for prattling on about her family. It occurred to her that although her family was not rich, compared to his, she’d been quite well off. Further, in his world—a world of beggars and thieves—he had risen quite far. In his own way, Mickey O’Connor was a successful man.

“Ye’d a happy childhood.” The comment was a statement of fact, but she had the feeling that the idea was a foreign one for him. Dear Lord, what might his childhood have been like?

“Yes, I was happy,” she said simply. “My father was strict, but he loved all his children and made sure we each were properly educated. We may not have been rich, yet we never lacked for food or clothing.”

He nodded, unsurprised. “He was a good provider.”

“What of your family?” she asked tentatively. “What did your mother do when she came to London?”

He shrugged. “Afore I was born I’ve heard that she was a spinner for a time.”

“And then?” Silence whispered.

He looked at her, his face devoid of expression. “And then she met a monster.”

Silence covered Mary’s little head with her hand as if to shield her. How bad would a person have to be for a river pirate to consider him a monster?

Mickey’s beautiful mouth had twisted into a terrible snarl, his voice ragged and low. “She fell under his spell, this monster, for he was a silver-tongued man and knew well how to hide his evil. Hide it until she was too entangled in his web to free herself. He took her and made her his, blindin’ her so that she could never look entirely away from his dark eyes, never think without his voice in her head. He had a still and she helped him make gin. When the still wasn’t makin’ money, she’d whore herself for him, spendin’ nights on the streets and turnin’ out her pocket to him when she came home again. Sometimes he sent her out on the streets even when there was money, and she went without protest, so under his spell was she. ’Twas his way of keepin’ her firmly beneath his fist. Keepin’ her bewitched.”

“And your father?” she asked bravely. Had he been born from one of his mother’s nights walking the street?

He simply looked at her with those beautiful black eyes and did not reply.

MICK WATCHED THE color drain from Silence’s face. Was she simply repulsed by his poverty-ridden upbringing and the fact that his mother had been a whore? Or had she some little care for him? A tiny bit of sympathy for the devil himself?

She stood before him clad only in a worn chemise and equally worn shawl, cradling the baby in her arms. He’d grown enormously erect in the last few minutes, simply from staring at her. He’d donned his shirt, but left it untucked from his breeches in feeble disguise. Silence’s chemise hung only to her calves. Her lower legs were smooth and delicately shaped. He could just make out—if he squinted hard—the shadowed outline of her thighs. He fancied he could see a dark triangle as well, but that was probably the product of his over-heated brain. Still, his cock didn’t seem to care between reality and fantasy.

Did she have no sense of self-preservation? he wondered, suddenly irritable. She knew what he was, his unremorseful cruelty, and yet she stood before him only half-clad and as innocently unaware as a lamb. Except that wasn’t the entire truth. His gaze dropped to the child’s curly black hair. Silence had been worried about the baby. It was her love for the child that made her vulnerable and he had an urge to protect that—both the woman and the maternal love she held.

That love within her was more precious than all the gold in his throne room.

“I-I had no idea how awful your childhood was,” she said.

He blinked and had to think to remember the conversation they’d been engaged in. “No matter. Me tale is one that’s often told in St. Giles.”

“But it shouldn’t be. Your mother should’ve protected you.” He chanced a glance and saw she was nibbling on her bottom lip, her eyes uncertain. He nearly groaned.

He arched a mocking eyebrow. “The way of the world, isn’t it? Children are born from sin and learn to look to themselves as soon as they can walk. Why should me childhood be any different?”

“Because we aren’t animals,” she said simply. “You deserved better.”