Gertrude scoffed. “What a supercilious thing to say.”
Yes, it was. He deserved to be called out on it. And yet he’d still rather his siblings took him for a self-important prig than know the truth: that he was a bounder lusting after a loyal employee and woman who’d been like family to them. Broderick fiddled with his collar. “Although I call Reggie friend and trust her with my very life, Polite Society will never prove as accepting,” he brought himself to say. Which wasn’t untrue. There was no one he trusted more. No one as loyal as Reggie. Those bastards, however, wouldn’t see her worth or her strength. They’d merely see her bloodlines—or rather, lack of—and both she and Gertrude would pay the price in the ton’s disdain.
“Since when did you become so bloody puffed up?” Gertrude shot back. Master Brave hissed; that sound sent nervous whinnies up around the stables. “Oh, my apologies, love,” Gertrude crooned, Broderick summarily forgotten. The cat darted farther down the wood beam. “I shan’t do it again.”
“Gertrude,” Broderick began, needing her to let the matter of Reggie go. “You require someone who can perform proper introductions and who knows the social norms of the peerage.” Liar. You’re just afraid to have Regina Spark there, now that you’ve noticed the hue of her bow-shaped lips and can’t stop thinking of what it would be like to claim them.
“Reggie can do all those things, and the continuity will be good for Stephen,” Gertrude said, matching Master Brave’s back-and-forth pacing.
Yes, there was nothing Reggie couldn’t do. But he could not have her there. She’d be a distraction . . . that he couldn’t afford. Not now.
“Furthermore,” Gertrude said, “I’m not sure if you’ve ever listened to or observed Reggie, but she wasn’t born to the streets.”
That brought him up short. Yes, Reggie spoke in flawless King’s English and exuded propriety and decorum in a place wholly stripped of either, but that did not mean she was also familiar enough with that world to ease Gertrude’s way. As his sister continued to cajole that black cat overhead, Broderick caught his chin in his hand.
Nay, Reggie hadn’t been born to Polite Society, but she, as Gertrude aptly pointed out, was more skilled than any of the governesses who’d tutored his sisters on proper decorum. More than that, she could wield her tongue with the same skill she could a blade but without Cleo’s and Ophelia’s loose tempers. With a fierce protector such as Reggie Spark at her side, there could be no doubting Gertrude would be defended if—when—need be, while having a companion who also knew how to conduct herself amongst the peerage. And that mattered more than his own sudden fascination with the young woman.
“Very well.”
Gertrude spun around. “What?”
She hadn’t thought he’d concede that term, then. “Reggie will serve as your chaperone,” he said clearly for his sister’s benefit. His mind was already going to what needed to be done before Reggie took on that respective role. She’d require a new wardrobe, one that would mark her position of influence and wealth.
An image flashed behind his mind’s eye of Reggie as she’d been a short while ago, with her hair in a tangle of crimson curls around her nipped waist, and he stripped her of those drab brown skirts, replacing them with purple ones.
His mouth went dry.
Nay. A rich emerald green of diaphanous satin that clung to Reggie’s long, supple frame—
“At last!”
Broderick jumped.
Master Brave scrambled down the sloping beam and rushed into the corner stall. A moment later he bolted out from under the opening in the door and raced over to Gertrude. She scooped him up and murmured soothing, nonsensical words to the troublesome creature.
His ears burning, Broderick started for the front of the stables.
“Broderick?”
He turned slowly back. And for a horrifying instant he believed she’d seen those wicked thoughts that had gripped him.
Gertrude arched a brow. “I suggest before you’re so confident in your promise that you speak with Reggie.” Even dimly lit as the stables were, he caught the sparkle in Gertrude’s eye. “And I suggest before you do that, you wash the stench of sweat and horse from your person.”
He snorted. For everything that had proven beyond his control and influence, his sister had at last charged him with a task he could succeed at. Broderick would pay a visit to the one person who’d never denied a request he’d put to her in the ten years he’d known her.
Chapter 5
Soon you’ll know what it is to lose everything you care about . . .
“Over the mountains
And over the waves,
Under the fountains
And under the graves,”
Reggie softly sang.
“Under floods that are deepest,
Which Neptune obey,
Over rocks which are the steepest,
Love will find out the way.”
Seated at her desk, she tapped her pen back and forth in time to the beat of the familiar ballad. The long-forgotten joy she’d always known as a girl singing those beloved melodies filled her. How much she missed music. And soon, if she was successful, she and Clara, the former madam who had been placed in charge of the female Devil’s Den staff, would have a whole life devoted to that love. She glanced down as her current work companion—Gus, the grey tabby found ’round back of the Devil’s Den—yawned widely.
“How shameful,” she chided. With her spare hand, she ruffled the smooth fur between his brows. “I just sang my heart out, and not so much as a meow?”
My girl . . . you’ve a voice that would make a whole choir of angels weep with envy . . .
The unexpected echo of her father’s voice, coupled with her once innocent laughter, filtered around the chambers of her memory. It had been so long since she’d thought of them. It had been so long since she’d allowed herself to think of him. Or her brothers.
Gus lapped her palm with a coarse tongue, snapping her back to the moment. “Meow.” He purred, nudging his head into her hand. Just one of many animals rescued by Gertrude Killoran. Reggie had developed a kindred connection to Gus. A snarling, snapping, terror-filled creature scrounging for scraps in the alley, he’d been so very much like Reggie. Despite his world wariness, he’d become a reliable, comfortable companion.
“Pfft, now you’d offer your feline praise.” Reggie tossed down her pen. “Just like every man, you are. Making a lady beg for your attentions and oblivious to how she’s feeling.” Reggie softened that chastisement by lifting the nearly weightless creature into her arms. She held him close, his wet black nose pressed to hers, his accusatory green eyes staring back. “Oh, very well. You are correct. I am . . . being deliberately avoidant, but you are so very sweet that it makes it easier to do.”
Avoidant, just as she’d been since Cleo Killoran had wed Adair Thorne of the rival gaming hell and the fabric of Reggie’s existence—a family member—to the Killorans had begun to unravel. Her ordered life within the Devil’s Den as assistant to Broderick Killoran was coming to an end.
And then where would she be?
The smile she had for Gus dipped, and she glanced over at the clock ticking away incessantly in the corner.
And with it, reality crept back in.
Reggie dropped her gaze to the pages spread out before her. A jumble of numbers and calculations that all added up . . . to a possible new future.
Away from the Devil’s Den.
Away from when Gertrude, the last unwedded Killoran woman, married.
And away from Broderick Killoran . . .
Why had he been so blasted nice that morning? He’d tended her ear and sent a doctor to inspect her injury.
And each of those kindnesses vastly complicated everything Reggie had dreamed of, plotted, and intended to carry out.
Reggie dropped her head and banged it against the surface of her desk.
Gus dug his claws into her thigh, kneading her brown wool work dress.
“I know, I know,” she groaned. “I’m a bloody fool.”