The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(66)

“Come,” Broderick’s youngest sister scoffed. She gave Reggie a slight shove, pushing her down onto the bench. She claimed a seat on the one across from her. “This is me. You’ve been like another sister. I know you and your . . .”

Secret. Reggie’s breath lodged in her throat. Cleo knew her secret. The one Clara had gathered but otherwise remained unknown to all.

Cleo lowered her thin eyebrows until they disappeared under the wire rims of her spectacles. “He purchased it, didn’t he?”

Reggie sighed. “Your brother has a right to his fury.”

“But only because he doesn’t know the details surrounding your decision,” the other woman said earnestly.

Far cleverer than any person ought to be, Cleo had gleaned early on the feelings Reggie carried for Broderick Killoran. It had been a revelation they’d not spoken of since the night she’d tended the younger woman’s wounds after Stephen had set that fateful fire.

Reggie smiled wistfully. How much Cleo had changed. Once, she’d have never forgiven a person for even contemplating going against the Killorans, let alone one who’d set a plan into motion as Reggie had.

“You’re leaving because it’s too hard being with him.”

And yet she was as astute as she’d ever been. Reggie’s stomach muscles clenched.

“I’m leaving because it’s better for me if I do,” she supplanted. It was a slight distinction, but one that mattered. It shifted the focus to where she’d not allowed it to be . . . ever. Herself. “This decision isn’t about your brother. This is about me.”

“I don’t begrudge you your decision,” Cleo said quietly, her hushed words nearly lost to the thunderous applause of the guests outside the alcove as they concluded the latest set. “I once believed there couldn’t be another gaming hell than the Devil’s Den and all competition needed to be quashed. Adair”—the young woman touched a hand to her heart—“Adair showed me the world is wide and there’s a place for many in it.”

It was an endearingly generous thought . . . that her brother would never be of a like opinion on.

“My husband will be looking for me, but I wanted to give you this.” Reaching inside the pocket of her sapphire satin gown, Cleo fished out a small scrap of paper. “You’ve never put yourself first.” She pressed the paper into Reggie’s gloved hands. “It is long overdue.”

Furrowing her brow, Reggie opened it.

Her confusion deepened.

Martin Phippen.

That single name, wholly unfamiliar, written in Cleo’s hand.

“Mr. Phippen is both an architect and builder,” Cleo explained. “He oversaw the repairs of the Hell and Sin Club after . . .” After Stephen had burnt the gaming hell to the ground. The young woman coughed into her hand, her ravaged features still reflecting the undeserved guilt for that night. “After the fire,” she went on. “And he’s responsible for the design and construction of the Paradise Hotel, Ryker Black’s latest venture.”

Reggie attended that name. “Why are you giving me this?” she asked cautiously. These past years had taught her to be properly suspicious of everyone’s motives and actions. No truer lesson had been handed down, solidifying that reminder, than Broderick’s recent theft of her dream.

Cleo kicked her in the shin.

Reggie grunted and leaned down to rub the offended limb.

“Woipe that look off your face,” Cleo snapped, her language dissolving into Cockney tones that had long marked her upset. “You think I’d deceive you?” she demanded, master of her speech yet again. “I’m trying to help you, because that is what family does.”

Family.

Her throat tightened. That is what the Killorans had always been to Reggie. Since Broderick had shared her betrayal with his siblings, she’d become invisible to Stephen, Ophelia, and even Gertrude. “They’ll come around,” Cleo said gruffly, correctly following the path her thoughts had traversed.

“Perhaps,” Reggie softly returned. But no doubt she’d be gone long before that ever happened. “Your family, they carry powerful grudges.”

Cleo chewed at her lower lip. “You can always . . . tell him.”

Reggie’s mind was slow to process that suggestion, and when it sank in, she recoiled. Share the pathetic depths of her feelings with Broderick? “You mustn’t say anything,” she urged on a frantic whisper. She’d cast aside her pride and shamed herself too many times in the course of the past ten years. She couldn’t do it again. Not for Broderick. Not in front of him or anyone. Not in any way. Taking Cleo by the arm, she lightly squeezed. “Promise me you shall not tell him. I—”

“I won’t. Your secret is yours.” Cleo touched a fingertip to the corner of her eye. “But I will insist that you think about yourself.”

And like the phantom figure who’d robbed nobs all over the Dials, Cleo slipped from the alcove with such stealth the curtains barely fluttered.

Alone, Reggie sat back on her bench and stared at the paper in her hand. It was just a single name, but it heightened the reality of her new beginning . . . and a future carved out with her own hands, by work she herself had done over the years. It represented freedom.

The curtains parted and then fell back into place. “Miss Spark, how very unexpected it is, seeing you again.”