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.”

“But she thinks me her mother,” Silence hissed. “How can you separate us when—”

“And who said anythin’ about separatin’?” Mr. O’Connor asked with feigned surprise. “Why, darlin’ I said the babe had to stay with me, I never said ye couldn’t as well.”

Silence inhaled and then found she had trouble letting the breath out again. “You want me to come live with you?”

Mr. O’Connor grinned as if she were a pet dog that had finally learned a trick. “Aye, that’s the way o’ it, sweetin’.”

“I can’t live with you,” Silence hissed furiously. “Everyone would think…”

“What, now?” Mickey O’Connor arched an eyebrow, his black eyes glittering.

She swallowed. “That I was your whore.”

He tutted softly. “Oh, and we can’t be havin’ that, now can we, what with yer reputation bein’ all snowy white and all?”

Her hand was half-raised, the fingers balled into a fist before she even realized it. She wanted to hit him so badly, wanted to wipe that smirk from his face with all her soul.

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?”