The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(15)

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.”

“Meowwww.”

“Oh, now you’ll share some feline attention. Traitor,” she grumbled into her papers. She petted Gus down the middle of his soft back.

He arched, as if to break free, but then turned his lithe body close to her belly.

She cradled the oft-skittish cat on her lap and forced her efforts back to the documents sprawled before her.

Absently stroking the tiger stripes that stretched from his neck to his tail, Reggie redirected her attention to the closest page.

No matter how many times she’d gone through the mathematics of it, the number remained the same: ten thousand pounds was what it cost for that new beginning.

And that didn’t include the weekly and bimonthly and annual costs for drinks and food and a modiste, nor salaries for the staff and workers and . . .

Groaning, she lowered her forehead to the table and banged it in a silent, rhythmic knock.

For one of Broderick’s obscene wealth, such a sum would not even be worthy of a second glance. But this, her venture—something that had never been done before—would require every last, precious fund she’d accumulated in her tenure within the Devil’s Den.