The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(33)

Reggie’s cheeks burnt. Yes, those had been the very ideas she herself had put forward when it had been Clara who’d been the skeptic. “It’s complicated now,” she said, willing the other woman to understand.

“Well, then?” The bewhiskered gentleman called from across the hall in his nasally tones. “What is it to be? I don’t have all day to entertain you two.” He raised the monocle dangling from a chain to his eye and gave them both the once-over. “There are other potential buyers interested.” He paused. “Male buyers.”

Reggie jutted her chin out. “And do you rush those potential buyers along, too?” she snapped. For all she’d lost the day she’d left first her family and then the safe post of governess to a duke, she had found an ability to speak her mind. It was a gift she’d discovered with the Killorans. “Or is it merely those of the female sort you take umbrage in having any business dealings with?” That challenge echoed from the rafters.

A pair of rooks took noisy flight, flapping their wings and sending errant feathers fluttering to the middle of the room.

Clara groaned.

“The insolence of y-you,” he stammered. “You insult the property and then challenge me?”

Reggie opened her mouth to tell him precisely what she thought of him but caught Clara’s pleading eyes. Clara, who oversaw all the female staff within the club and begged for nothing, and asked for even less. “We are going to lose it,” she whispered.

Curving her full, rouged lips up in a sultry smile, Clara turned her considerable charms on the crotchety solicitor. “Forgive my friend,” she purred in a husky contralto.

High color flooded the solicitor’s cheeks, and he dropped beady eyes down to Clara’s generous bosom.

Reggie watched the interplay unfold, as Clara used her body to silence the pompous bastard before them.

The former madam drifted over. Her generous hips swaying and her satin skirts molding against her voluptuous frame, Clara presented herself as a carnal display before Mr. Elliot.

Reggie hadn’t been an innocent miss for some years now. Yet even having lived and worked inside a gaming hell where girls had plied their trade, Reggie felt a blush climbing her neck and cheeks.

“It is a lovely establishment,” Clara whispered, dusting a speck—real or imagined—from the solicitor’s shoulder. “As for your reservations,” she went on. She paused to straighten his lapels the way a devoted wife might a loving husband’s. “I assure you, we are both capable.” She dropped her voice. “Very capable.”

Mr. Elliot finally lifted his gaze, shifting that stare reluctantly over to Reggie. “What is it going to be?”





Chapter 9

I’m going to take away everything that matters to you . . .

The next morning, with a nervous pit in her belly, Reggie sailed through the double turquoise doors of her future establishment.

The miserable solicitor followed her approach with a condescending gaze. “I see you are capable of being on time.”

Biting back the caustic response on her lips, Reggie forced them up into a semblance of a smile for the miserable solicitor she had the misfortune of having to deal with—again. “Mr. Elliot, a pleasure to see you,” she lied. Reggie loosened the strings of her bonnet and shoved the article back so she had an unobstructed view of this place that would belong to her and Clara.

Where a handful of candles had been lit at her last visit, now the room was pitch-black; the bright morning light at her back served as an ominous juxtaposition to the place she now entered.

Despite the oppressive darkness of it, and for every last reservation that had gripped her, now there was a euphoria. It froze her in her tracks as she stopped abruptly and simply took in her surroundings.

Where yesterday she’d seen all that was wrong, today, in the light of a new day, Reggie looked upon it as something altogether different—hers.

Hers, when nothing, not even the work she’d done at the Devil’s Den, had truly been for her.

There was a euphoria that came from that empowerment. In a world ruled by men with women fighting for any shred of control, Reggie had accumulated funds through her hard work and was charting a new course on her own.

With a renewed sense of invigoration, Reggie tugged free her gloves and stuffed them inside her pocket. “I would like to sign the documents as quickly as possible,” she clipped out in the precise tonality used by Broderick that had so easily brought about compliance.

Mr. Elliot pursed his mouth. “If you have a problem waiting for my employer, then you are free to leave.”

You’d love that, wouldn’t you, you nasty bugger . . .

“I will wait,” she forced out through a tight smile. Refusing to give him the pleasure of her frustration, Reggie presented the rotter her back and took a slow turn about this place that would soon belong to her.

Regardless of what her future would now be, her time, as long as she was still employed by the Devil’s Den, still belonged to Broderick. If he summoned her, he’d find her missing, and then he’d wonder where she’d gone off to—

You’ll eventually have to tell him . . .

She thrust back the reminder. For she would. When the papers were signed and it became impossible for him to talk her out of her plans with Clara.

Reggie stopped at the center of the stage. Hitching herself onto the edge, she drew herself up.