The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(18)

“Competing with Ryker Black’s family?” Clara eyed her like she’d sprung a second head. “You’re too clever to be naive.”

And the rub of it was, the other woman was correct. Broderick was always wanting more. Taking more: The clubs. Power. Noble connections.

The door flew open.

Reggie and Clara exploded to their feet.

Reggie’s heart kicked up a beat. “Stephen,” she greeted. Hurriedly gathering her papers and folio, she filed them away in her bottom drawer. Blast and damn. One of the stealthiest pickpockets in London, he’d plucked fortunes with the same ease he had secrets used by Diggory and his henchmen. “Is something wrong?” From the corner of her eye, she searched for some hint that he’d caught the talk between herself and Clara.

“I got to talk to ya.” Stephen spared Clara a quick, derisive glance and then jerked his head at the door. “Time for ya to go.”

“You miserable little bastard. You need someone to teach you manners,” Clara said crisply.

Reggie winced. No truer words had ever been spoken, and yet Stephen was still just a boy. A boy who’d endured greater hells than most grown men. He’d forever locked horns with the woman who’d come to them from Black’s establishment, with Reggie playing at peacekeeper between them.

“Ain’t gonna be ya.” He sauntered into the room like a prized peacock. “Ain’t gonna be anybody. But certainly not ya.” As proud as if he owned the Devil’s Den himself, he plopped himself into the seat Clara had vacated and dropped his ankles on the edge of the desk.

That relaxed pose he’d imitated from his eldest sibling, however, merely painted Stephen in a boylike image. He was very much a child playing at adulthood.

“Stephen,” Reggie reprimanded in her governess tones. Giving his dirt-stained boots a little shove, she knocked his feet back to the floor. “If you’ll excuse me?” Reggie asked as she handed Clara back her folder.

They exchanged a look, Clara silently pleading.

Reggie shook her head once.

As soon as she’d gone, Stephen again dropped his small feet on the corner of her desk. “Wot was that about?”

Meeting that insolent question with a blanket of silence, Reggie leveled the boy with a stern glance.

His button nose scrunched up.

“Now.” She folded her arms and reclaimed control of the situation. “I don’t believe you’re here to speak about Miss Winters.” Hers was a statement.

“No.” Stephen narrowed his eyes. “Oi ain’t.”

Although the staff and former gang members left over by Diggory regularly derided her for her lack of ruthlessness, she’d gleaned enough from her time in the streets to know the importance of unsettling one’s opponent. “Why were you at that residence?”

Stephen’s color went slightly ashen. “Ain’t yar business.” Except this time he sounded scores less confident. He swallowed loudly. “Did ya tell him?”

That question came out on a whispery croak that tugged at her heart. For all the ways in which Stephen was crass, cold, and oftentimes unkind, he still was just a boy. In these streets that stripped a person of their humanity, it was too easy to forget that.

“I had to tell him something,” she quietly said. “He’s your brother. He’s concerned about you and deserves to know—”

“Did ya tell him where I was?”

In Grosvenor Square. “I didn’t.” She paused. “Should I have?”

He stared at the tips of his feet and answered with a question of his own. “Ya going to?”

Reggie placed her palms on the back of her chair. “Well . . . it depends.”

“You want to know why I was there,” he grumbled, slipping into his perfect King’s English.

“I want to know.”

Stephen scoffed, instantly shattering all pretense of vulnerability. “Do you think Broderick wants to know that Clara missed her shift?” He narrowed his eyes. “He of course will want to know why she missed that shift.”

Just like that, she had the tables flipped on her by a child.

She carefully picked her way around her mind, searching for her next move. It was one thing to put herself at risk, but Clara, who’d been forced out of her last employment, was only recent to their ranks. Nor would any of Broderick’s loyal staff speak to the woman’s defense.

Stephen dragged out her bottom desk drawer with the tip of his boot and propped his feet on the edge of that makeshift footstool. Looping his arms behind his head, he smirked.

Despite that bravado, the truth remained she couldn’t simply turn a cheek to whatever he’d been on about. Given that he’d burnt down the rival gaming hell, she could not risk that others might be in danger because of him.

“Tell me why you were there and what you intended.” As Diggory had always said: a purse was a purse was a purse. One didn’t follow a fat one and sacrifice a smaller, safer one.

A dark glimmer lit the boy’s eyes. “An’ if I do, ya won’t go to Broderick?”

She wouldn’t lie to him. “I don’t know the answer to that.” Having herself been the victim of false promises and assurances, she appreciated the value of truth. “It depends on what you have to say.”

Tears welled in his eyes, and he dropped his feet back to the floor. He focused on the tips of his boots like they contained the answer to mankind’s existence. But it was too late. She’d already detected that glassy sheen. Proud, spitting, and snapping most days, Stephen never showed a hint of weakness. This evidence of his vulnerability caused a physical ache. “Ya got a kerchief? Oi got something in my eye, is all.” He glared at her, daring her with his tear-filled eyes to challenge that.