The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(113)

Three inches taller than her almost six feet, Quint glanced down at her. “No, my lord. Not yet.”

Reggie trained her ears. Who did “they” refer to? The constables who’d received the orders to cart Broderick from Drury Lane to Newgate? Or someone else?

Feeling Quint’s probing stare on her, she schooled her features. After all, she, too, had learned the art of dissembling and the need for it.

He opened the door and motioned for her to precede him into the dimly lit rooms.

Reggie blinked, adjusting her eyes to the shroud of darkness that hung over the place. Bearing the stale scent of aged books and leather, it fairly ached for a window to be thrown open and a wash of fresh air.

“Who the hell is this?”

Reggie sought the owner of that brutish snarl. Seated behind a cluttered desk, the gentleman with his crooked nose, square jaw, and unkempt hair bore the look more of a street tough than a noble lord.

Her brother cleared his throat. “My sister.”

She shivered. It was the eyes that were a window to a person’s soul, Broderick had once told her. In them, one might determine anything and everything about anyone. Were they kind? Were they cruel?

“Your sister?” And in this brooding figure who scraped a dismissive gaze over her, he was the monster Stephen had made him out to be. Emotionally deadened.

But by that returned query, he was one in possession of her past and his butler’s secrets. Surely such a man hadn’t been so completely destroyed by his own suffering?

Regina dropped a curtsy. “My lord,” she greeted, bowing her head.

“What does she want?”

She frowned. He’d dismissed her outright. She’d not allow him, or anyone, including her brother, to speak about her as though she weren’t there. As though she were undeserving of a word with a marquess. Reggie jutted up her chin. “I came to speak with you about your son.”

The marquess blanched. His entire body went ramrod straight, making a lie of his earlier indifference. “What?”

Reaching inside her cloak, Reggie fished out the latest note to arrive and waved it. “And also to speak about your intentions for Broderick Killoran.”

Quint gasped.

His employer swung a furious gaze from Reggie to his butler.

Her brother shot his hands up, frantically shaking his head. “I didn’t . . . she didn’t . . .” He glowered at Reggie. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

Ignoring him, she came forward with the latest note to have arrived. The final one that would mark the death knell for Broderick. “You are in the wrong.”

Lord Maddock slammed his fist. “Get out.”

“I won’t.” She looked to her brother.

Quint sprang forward on the balls of his feet and then fell back. His options were to throw her out on her buttocks or . . . nothing.

“Get her out,” the marquess bellowed.

Match fury with calm. Meet yelling with quiet. They were the rules any skilled governess was wise enough to carry, and lessons aptly used on all—including men rumored to be mad.

“I know this man,” she said softly. “He is not the one wholly deserving of your rage.”

“Regina.”

“He saved me,” she went on over Quint’s entreaty.

That brought her brother to silence, and the marquess’s brows dipped.

Encouraged by quiet on both their parts, she continued forward until she stood before the marquess’s desk.

“Get out.”

She stood firm. “I won’t. I won’t leave until you hear me out.”

A golden eyelid twitched. “I could throw you out on your arse.” He’d do it. Whatever loyalty existed between her brother and him be damned. She saw it in the hardness of his eyes.

Reggie held his stare. “And lose a window into your son’s life?” She shook her head. “You won’t do that.” Uninvited she slid onto the nearest seat, and the reed chair creaked under her weight. Only, seated before this stranger, with her brother looking on, she wavered.

It’s not your fault . . . None of it. It never was . . .

For so long she’d felt dirty and ashamed, less for those sins that had seen her ruined.

Despite all the suffering he wrought, you emerged triumphant. You pulled yourself from his clutches—

The echo of Broderick’s assurances gave her the strength to share the history behind her meeting with the marquess’s enemy. When she’d finished her telling, Quint stood, faintly trembling, his cheeks whitewashed. “He could have made me his whore,” she said matter-of-factly. “But that’s not who he was. He wasn’t and isn’t a man who preyed on those weaker. He protected them. He gave them homes and security.” She paused. “And he did the same for Stephen.” Withdrawing that crumpled scrap, she pushed it across the desk.

He made no move to touch the note, and then with stiff, reluctant movements, he reached for it.

The marquess skimmed the brief contents and then tossed it aside. “You expect I’d believe—”

“You can’t see past your own hatred that which is directly before you.”

“Regina,” her brother warned.

She gripped the edge of the marquess’s desk. “Walsh tried to sell me to Diggory.” Her skin crawled. “Diggory loved the nobility, and Walsh convinced him that because of both my speech and decorum that I was in fact a lady born. Broderick saved me.” Her heart swelled with her love for him. “He insisted I was his and put himself between me and that monster.” Reggie turned her palms up, willing him to see. “That is what he does. He saves people. The children he still hires for his clubs, the whores with not even pride left to their names, soldiers without eyes—they are all given a new start.”