The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(10)

Until the heady cloud she’d hovered upon had come crashing back to earth.

You bloody fool. Of course he wasn’t going to kiss you . . .

Everything with Broderick, even his care of her ear, was all business. That was all that had ever existed in their relationship.

I ultimately find out . . . everything . . .

From under her lashes, Reggie searched Broderick for some indication that he’d gathered her plans. That even now, he simply toyed with her, knowing very well the lies she was guilty of.

As he separated the bloodstained rags and dragged over the handful of remaining clean ones, she studied him.

Or mayhap it was simply that his lashing out at her for those sins against him would be easier than . . . this. His kindness.

For his tender ministrations and concern about her well-being only intensified the guilt that sat low in her stomach.

“I told you, I’m fine,” she calmly repeated when he made to pick up another makeshift bandage. He stopped, midtask, and shot her a probing look. “You really should be on the floors, you know,” she said, her voice creeping up a notch.

I’m not made for this . . . Lying. Deception. Trickery.

“Eager to be rid of me, I see, love.”

Her heart did a funny little jump. Love. “I trust that is a rarity,” she said with forced brevity. Every serving girl, prostitute, and servant sighed as he passed.

“What? Ladies wanting to be rid of me?” He paused. “Quite,” he added with a waggle of his brows that pulled a laugh from her.

And just like that the world righted. This was Broderick. And she Reggie, and this easy, comfortable relationship was all there would ever be.

It is why you’re leaving . . .

An increasingly familiar melancholy took hold.

He quirked a golden brow. “May I continue?” He gestured to her injured ear.

Blast, he was tenacious. There wasn’t a battle he’d concede. Nor did she believe he’d been content earlier with her evasiveness.

She offered a curt nod. “Fine.”

Unwinding the bandage Gertrude had applied, he tossed it aside. The small gash at the top of her ear seeped blood, oozing a warm trail down her cheek.

A hiss exploded between his pearl-white, even teeth. “Bloody hell, Reggie.”

Fury rolled off his frame, and the evidence of that concern for her sent warmth spiraling through her.

“Who did this?” he demanded again.

“I told you, no one.” Which wasn’t an untruth. That furious mount was not of the human species.

Some of the rage eased from his shoulders, and he dusted an open palm over her cheek.

Her breath quickened, and she leaned into that slight touch.

“Poor Reggie,” he murmured, and for the first time, that hated moniker as it rolled off this man’s lips was transformed into a seductive caress. That dizzying web he’d cast over her senses lifted at his next words. “You’ve always been rot at subterfuge.” He let his hand fall.

A blast of cold swept over her, stealing the fleeting warmth of his touch.

He knows.

She clawed at the fabric of her skirts until the stiff wool crunched damningly. Reggie abruptly stopped.

Most people who survived in the Dials did so by ruthlessly taking what they wanted, when they wanted, without a single damn for those they trampled over on the path to their success.

But that had never been Reggie. She’d not developed that edge of ruthlessness after Lord Oliver’s betrayal.

It was why, with Broderick caring for her as he now was, that guilt weighed on her chest, constricting her airflow and making it impossible to muster a flippant lie.

For in the first time in ten years, she kept not only one truth from this man who’d saved her but two.

And just then, she couldn’t sort out which was the greater of them.

Broderick silently continued his work, cleaning her wound and applying pressure.

Collecting an untouched linen, he dunked it and set to work wiping the blood from her cheeks. “Your ear will not require stitches.”

“It looks worse than it is.” Reggie folded her arms at her chest. “You recall better than anyone just how badly the ear bleeds.”

A half grin curved the right corner of his mouth, that honest expression of his amusement so very real and so very different from the affected, cynical smile he wore for the benefit of the patrons and gaming hell staff. “Yes.” During one street fight between Broderick and a river rat with a propensity for too much jewelry, his opponent’s damned ring had snagged his ear, and afterward, Broderick had left a trail of blood through the streets of London. He held Reggie’s gaze, a faint accusation there. “I also recall you insisted on looking after my injury, as well.”

“It wasn’t at all the same,” she said, her voice rich with exasperation. “Your wound required stitches.” Ones that she’d herself expertly threaded when he hadn’t trusted the task to another in the gang. Not even to his sisters.

Broderick lowered the rag, inspected her wound, and then applied a faint pressure. “Turn.”

Reggie presented to him her throbbing ear. “You were out earlier,” she observed, shifting the question to safer ground.

He paused; it was an infinitesimal stretch of time, so brief she might have merely imagined it.

She watched him from the corner of her eye. Broderick didn’t leave his club in the early morn. Those were the hours it was busiest, and he ceded control of his post to no one. Never in all the years he’d led this club had anything called him away from it during those times. “Nothing to say?” she pressed.