The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(115)

“Lies,” Walsh hissed, lunging for her.

Reggie easily stepped out of his reach, and he collided with a rose-inlaid table, upending the mahogany piece. Energy pumping through her, she put more distance between herself and the monster with murder in his eyes. “This is the man who wronged you”—she directed that warning to Lord Maddock, her gaze never wavering from Walsh—“and with whom you’d tie yourself in a partnership, condemning another to his death, while the one who murdered your wife and stole your son lives high on the coin you feed him.”

“You lying bitch,” Walsh cried out, reaching into the waistband of his tattered trousers.

Reggie froze, and time stood still as the fire’s glow glinted off the head of his pistol.

The door burst open to her brother’s shouts of fury.

Stephen!

Their simultaneous cries rolled as one.

“No!”

“No!” He hurtled himself at Reggie, just as the sharp report of that gun thundered around the room.

Gasping, she collapsed, flying back. Reggie landed hard, all the air bursting from her lungs with Stephen’s small body draped over hers.

Her chest moved rapidly, and she closed her eyes. Blood seeped through her gown, a sticky warmth that knocked her from her shock.

The room dissolved into chaos.

Quint and the marquess wrestled Walsh to the floor, even as a constable came rushing in. Reggie’s arms folded around the slight boy in her hold. Panic pounded at her chest, making breath impossible. “Stephen,” she moaned.

He flashed a crooked smile. A weak one. “I saved you,” he whispered.

She cried out. Gently rolling him to the floor, she came up over him. No. No. No. No. It was a litany that played out in her head. “Why did you do that?” she sobbed, tears dampening her cheeks, and she blinked back the useless drops that blurred his little frame. With fingers that shook, Reggie ripped open his shirt. “A doctor,” she screamed.

Abandoning Walsh to the constable’s care, Quint raced from the room, tripping over himself.

Blood seeped from the wound at Stephen’s side. Another agonized moan belonging to a tortured animal spilled from her. There was so much blood. So much of it.

“Stephen.” That hoarse cry brought her head snapping over. Of course—he should be here.

Jerking off his cloak as he went, Broderick stormed into the room. He is here.

“He’s h-hurt,” Reggie said in between wrenching sobs.

Doing a quick sweep of Stephen’s wound, Broderick pressed the garment to staunch the flow of blood.

Stephen winced, and over his prone form, Reggie’s and Broderick’s eyes met. Her own terror was reflected in his gaze.

“Reggie,” the little boy whispered, his voice threadbare, snapping all her focus immediately back.

“Yes, love,” she soothed through her own tears, stroking his cheek. “What is it?”

He flashed a weak smile, cocksure even through his pain. “Told you I didn’t hate you . . .” His eyes rolled back.

Reggie’s keening cry pealed around the room.

“No,” Broderick chanted. “No. No. No.” He collapsed over Stephen’s tiny frame and poured his tears into the boy’s blood-soaked shirt. Broderick’s words were an incoherent jumble of pleading and prayers of forgiveness.

A faint groan split through that heartbreak.

Yanking his head up, his eyes wild, Broderick searched his brother for a sign of a pulse. A strangled cry tore from his throat. “He is alive.”

Reggie dimly registered the floorboards shifting under her as someone fell to a knee alongside her and Broderick. Reggie glanced blankly at the marquess.

His jaw slacked. He closed his mouth, but it fell agape. He shoved past Broderick, ripping that makeshift bandage from his fingers. With his other, trembling palm, he traced the birthmark at the corner of Stephen’s navel. “I didn’t believe . . . I didn’t trust . . .” The marquess’s eyes weighted closed. “August,” he whispered his son’s name, and then crumpled over the child’s supine body.





Chapter 29

For nearly three days straight, it rained.

Until later that third day, the sun broke through the thick grey clouds, bathing London in a calming light.

“I’m fine, you know,” Stephen muttered for a fourth time as Reggie checked his bandages.

He’d been patient with her attentiveness these past days. “I do,” she murmured. “There’s no one more resilient or stronger than you.” Hers weren’t words to stroke a boy’s ego. He’d endured graver injustices and miseries than most old men took on their way to meet their maker.

Stephen would survive.

“I like havin’ you care for me more than my sisters,” he said matter-of-factly. “Because you don’t treat me different.” Treat him different since he’d been claimed by the marquess. “Perhaps he’ll let me stay,” he ventured tentatively, and Reggie’s fingers stilled.

The man who just four days ago had sobbed over this very child and had accepted the truth he’d denied himself over a fortnight wasn’t one who’d relinquish his hold forever. “No, Stephen,” she said quietly, refusing to lie to him. “He won’t.” She glanced up at the somber little figure lying on his back, staring mutinously overhead. “But do you know, Stephen?”