Not that Devil was ever wrong. A man of few words, his brother used them to advantage when he actually deigned to employ them. Which was why Dom kept Devil close, as his right-hand man. He was far more reliable than Gavin, who cared more for his prizefighting than he did for the business end of their familial dealings. Far less deadly than Blade, whose skills were put to better uses—namely, dispatching enemies. More practical than Demon, who preferred to spend his time charming ladies and playing the game. And Genevieve? Well, their wily sister was too busy attempting to run her own rookery empire.
What Devil could not have known, and what Dom himself had only finally, at long last, discovered, was that his angel was not at all what he had presumed her to be. Far from being the mistress of a fancy cove, she was the daughter of an even fancier one. A duke’s daughter, to be precise.
“Lady Adele Saltisford,” he said aloud into the creak-interrupted silence of his carriage, trying her name on his tongue.
Pity that by the time he had realized the woman who had become his unfortunate obsession—the one he had torn London apart attempting to find—was not the mistress to Lord Sundenbury at all. Rather, she was the hellraising lord’s sister.
For the first fortnight after her disappearance, Dom had done everything in his power to wring the truth from the spoiled lordling he had sworn to protect. He may have been born in the rookery and raised in the seamy alleyways of the East End, and he may have cut his teeth picking pockets and running confidence schemes, but every leader in the rookeries had his word and his honor.
Without either of those, a man was nothing.
And so, Dom had continued to protect Sundenbury, upholding his end of the bargain with the angel who had so enthralled him and then betrayed him by slipping out of his gaming hell when he had been asleep, never to return. But he had seen the recognition in his quarry’s face, at long last, when Dom had outright inquired after his angel, reminding Sundenbury of the heavy price she had paid to secure his safety. Though the lord had continued to claim he was not currently keeping a mistress, Dom had not missed the moment of dawning comprehension, followed by abject horror.
Dom had witnessed such a look on a man’s face before. Usually, it occurred when he was squaring off against an enemy and feared certain death. He had forced himself to have patience. To wait out Sundenbury until he would once more find himself in Dom’s debt.
Three-and-forty days had been the precise number.
That had been how long it had been until Lord Sundenbury had sunk himself too deep at the green baize—little did he know Dom had aided him in his losses—and had confessed the truth. The angel of mercy who had visited Dom those fateful evenings had not been the despicable lordling’s mistress at all.
No, indeed.
The next order of business had been, naturally, to discover the whereabouts of the lady in question. Sadly, not London.
Even worse, she was currently a guest at a country house party being hosted by none other than Mr. Deveraux Winter, Dom’s despised half sibling. The gods were laughing at him. Vengeful, evil, despicable bastards that they were.
While Dom shared a father with Devereaux Winter, they most certainly shared nothing else save a name, and the name had only been down to Dom’s determination all his half siblings should be united. They had different mothers—all of them save Gavin and Genevieve.
But where Devereaux Winter and his five sisters had been born to a life of privilege as the legitimate children of an incredibly wealthy merchant, Dom and his siblings had been the by-blows. The sources of prodigiousshame. Easily ignored and forgotten. They had been the children abandoned to the terrifying streets, the ones who had been forced to scrabble and claw for everything they had. Dom had united them, and to say the bastard Winters loathed their counterparts was putting it mildly.
Rage was a festering, open sore.
But the gods who had placed Lady Adele at Devereaux Winter’s house party would soon cease their laughter. Because Dom had formed a plan. All he needed to secure its execution was one thing.
Her.
The angel who had haunted his dreams. The only woman he had ever slept beside, trusting as a babe. And what good had his stupid trust gotten him? Waking to an empty bed and the mystery of a woman who did not exist. Lady Adele had not slipped a blade between his ribs that day as many an enemy would love to do, but she may as well have.
And now?
Now, she was going to help him get everything that had been eluding his grasp. Herself included.
At long last, through the swirling flurries against an overcast sky, the carriage approached a sprawling old manor house. The thing was impossibly large. So, too, the space of the outdoors all around him. Dom had been marveling over the vast expanses of countryside between villages ever since his first foray from the comforting boundaries of London had first begun.
Where London was all brick and buildings, tenements and wharves and factories and leaden skies and fog, the country was…almost an innocent cousin. Dom was envious of the cousin, but he bloody well did not want to spend forever at the cousin’s side. He longed for the East End he had grown to love and hate, the streets and men he ruled, the dark alleyways where his name instilled fear into the hearts of so many.
In London, Dominic Winter wassomeone. An important, feared, impressive someone.
In the freezing, snow-bound landscape of the country, he was just another gent traveling to a house party. So innocuous was his presence that a youth had attempted to filch his coin at the last coaching inn where he had stayed. Dom had caught the bugger, forced him to return the coin, and brought him along for the remainder of the trip to Oxfordshire. There was always room for one more buzgloak—pickpocket—in London and in Dom’s employ. The little shite was riding on the box, shivering his arse off for his troubles, but he would find a fine life in Dom’s service if he played by the rules.
Playing by the rules was all that was expected of a man—or woman or child, for that matter—in the rookeries, no matter how twisted, tangled, broken, or bent. But since Lady Adele had come of age on the fine side of London, where the world had no ills worse than an upended teacup, she would not know that.
She would soon.
The carriage rolled to a stop.
Dom did not even wait for anyone to open the door. He snatched up his favorite walking stick and threw the lever himself, before leaping to the snow-covered gravel. Cold winds buffeted him, the chill of flurries clinging to his cheeks and lashes, as he took in the edifice before him, which could have easily dominated an entire city street.
“Are ye sure we’re at the right place, yournabs?” called the little thief from the box.
