The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(57)

“I’m not missing,” Reggie muttered as she slid into the chair. “Furthermore, I’ve nothing to feel guilty over. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

The curtain clasped between her fingers, Clara paused to glance back. “Do you believe that?”

“No,” she said, again resuming her work. “I know that.”

“Then that is a good thing.” Clara let the curtain go. “Because he’s here now.”

Reggie jerked her head up so quickly pain shot down the muscles of her neck. “That is impossible.” Broderick and Gertrude were attending their first formal event amongst the ton.

“Oh, it is quite possible. In fact, I had the right of it earlier. He looks as though he intends to murder you.”

Reggie groaned.

Bloody hell.





Chapter 15

There is one certainty: you will pay for your crimes, Killoran.

She’d been hiding in plain sight.

He’d searched all day.

Nay, Broderick and his siblings had searched all day. As had the damned guards, the same ones who’d let the blasted chit slip out from under them.

All their searching had turned up empty.

And during his flight through London, something had happened. That fury had turned over and become something different, something sharper, more acute, and more crippling: fear.

It was as though Reggie Spark had simply vanished, leaving not a trace that anyone could or would find, and on the heels of that had come the realization that he’d be empty were she to go. Nay, when she left.

And all along she’d been the last place he’d have considered looking—his damned club.

His cloak whipping about him and Stephen close at his side, Broderick stormed through the front doors of the Devil’s Den.

From his spot atop the dais, MacLeod glanced up, a question stamped on his features. Saying something to one of the pit bosses next to him, he trotted over. “Is there a problem?”

Yes, there was a damned problem. A nearly six-foot-tall, willowy one, to be precise. “Where is she?” Broderick demanded, yanking his gloves off as he went.

His head guard drew his brows together. “Who?”

“Who do ya think?” Stephen bellowed.

Broderick growled, and several dandies new to the club bolted in the other direction. “Miss Spark,” he clipped out. “The same Miss Spark who lost her role as assistant in this club and who recently had guards placed on her to monitor her movements.”

They reached the back of the club and continued past the burly guard stationed there.

“Did the lass do something wrong?” MacLeod asked, their footsteps falling in tandem as they climbed the stairway to the private suites.

Aside from terrifying him out of his bloody everlasting mind? No. Stephen had discovered Reggie’s whereabouts from a pair of street urchins who’d been petitioning for work out back by the servants’ doors when she’d arrived.

His patience snapped. “Not a single bloody guard”—not MacLeod or anyone—“thought to send word to me?”

MacLeod’s already ruddy face flushed with color. “The lass walked right in. She’s been with Miss Winters.”

“Course she’d be with that one,” Stephen spat. “That means we can’t trust either one of them.”

“Enough,” Broderick clipped out. “MacLeod, return to the floor. Stephen, wait for me in your rooms.”

Stephen and MacLeod spoke over one another, their words rolling together. “But I don’t—”

“I didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to be here,” MacLeod called up after him as Broderick took the final stair to the landing.

Reaching the former madam’s doorway, he didn’t even bother with a knock. He tossed the door open, and the two women standing shoulder to shoulder at the center of the room gave not even a hint of outward surprise at his entrance.

Even having confirmation from MacLeod that she was in fact here, relief assailed him.

They’d been expecting him. Immediately any advantage was cut out from under him, as he found himself confronting not one displeased pair of eyes, but two.

Broderick’s problem, however, wasn’t with his damned former madam.

The terror that had dogged his steps eased from him.

Had it been simply terror? He himself had schooled her on self-defense and well knew she could handle a blade better than most street thugs. Or had it been the fear that she’d simply fled? Away from London. Away from his family. And away from me . . . Never to be seen again.

Unable to make sense of those riotous thoughts, he fixed on that which was safer: his fury.

He homed his gaze in on the tall, flame-haired warrioress standing with her shoulders back and a dare in her eyes.

“Out,” he seethed.

Clara thumped a fist on the nearby desk, rattling the teacup and chamberstick at rest there. “You don’t enter my rooms and order my guests about, Killoran.”

Broderick briefly shifted his focus to the pursed-mouthed woman. Almost three years ago, he’d extended an offer of employment to Ryker Black’s lifelong mistress in what had never been anything more than a ploy to get under the skin of his damned rival, but she had proven the bane of Broderick’s club. Oh, she was damned good at her work, but the woman had made a million kinds of headaches for him since. “I can always sack you,” he said coolly.