The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(73)

“Stop it,” the other woman clipped out with far more loyalty than Reggie deserved. “Do you remember what I first said to you when I moved here?”

“Go to hell?” Reggie reminded her dryly.

The other woman laughed. “Yes, well, that was when I thought you were as cold as everyone else on Killoran’s staff. You told me—”

“That in these streets, we’re taught to mistrust everyone and their motives,” Reggie said softly.

“But that you were once like me, an outsider to this place, and you knew what that felt like.” Clara’s voice cracked in an uncharacteristic display of emotion. “And that whenever I wished it, I’d have a friend in you.” She hardened her jaw, killing all previous hint of that vulnerability. “As such, I’ll not abandon you.”

“You wouldn’t be abandoning me,” Reggie insisted, undeserving of that loyalty.

Clara arched an eyebrow. “Where would you even go?”

For a moment, another place far away from these diabolical streets floated around her memory, the endlessly rolling green hills of the Kent countryside. The family she’d left behind. But in her mind, they existed as she’d left them, a father and two brothers frozen in time, an unaging trio. Tears stuck in her throat. There was no going home. There was no going back from what she’d done. And if she did quit this life and return, Lord Oliver, now that he’d found her, would likely—and gleefully—come for her. And worse . . . her family.

And that’s assuming her once proud papa could forgive the daughter who’d whored herself to a nobleman and then dwelled in a gaming hell—

“Reggie?”

“I don’t know,” she brought herself to say. There was no place for her. She’d deluded herself into believing the Devil’s Den was a home. And for a short while it had been. She held the other woman’s gaze. “I will not begrudge you if you wish to cut me from this.” Reggie spoke over her protestations. “I’m the reason we lost one thousand pounds more to Broderick. All of this is my fault.”

“I’ve already said I will not abandon you, and I won’t. That bastard,” Clara muttered. “Him,” she hurried to clarify. “Not you.” She grabbed one of Reggie’s hands and squeezed hard. “I would never abandon you, but neither can I do this alone without your funds or assistance.” She motioned to the sheet music Reggie had been writing. “If I’d had the idea to start out on my own, I would have established another hell. Another bordello. It’s all I’ve known. You reminded me that I wasn’t always a whore. That I was once a singer.” It had been a piece of Clara’s past that she’d reluctantly shared; her forgotten-but-not-lost love of music, however, had only strengthened their bond.

They fell into silence that Clara was the first to break. “And we’re certain,” she began hesitantly, “the match might not be a welcome one for Gertrude or Killoran?”

It took a moment for the implications of that question to settle around her slow-to-process mind. “What?” Surely she wasn’t suggesting Reggie turn a blind eye while Gertrude married that monster? But then, she’d not shared the ugliest, most humiliating aspects of her time with that devil. How he’d beaten her. Choked her. Mocked her.

“Killoran is determined to have a title at all costs,” the other woman pointed out.

“Not like this,” Reggie said vehemently. Not with this man.

“Are you so certain?”

“Yes.” In this, she was.

“Then why didn’t you tell him last evening?”

Because the moment Lord Oliver became real between Reggie and Broderick, her past would no longer be her own, and her sins and her greatest shame would belong to a man who’d held her heart for the past ten years. “I wasn’t ready,” she quietly confessed. She’d never be ready. How did one ever truly, freely share all the sins Reggie carried? Ones that had left her as tattered as any Covent Garden doxy. “I’ve made many mistakes.” Too many to count. “But I know Gertrude deserves more than a husband like him,” she spoke with a finality meant to signal the end to Clara’s plans to turn Gertrude over to the recently minted duke. Reggie had sold her virtue, her pride, her body, and now the other woman would add her soul to the mix. For the disappointment of that, there was also an ache that settled around her chest. What had driven the other woman to such desperation that she’d sacrifice another in the name of survival?

“Reggie . . .” Clara scooted over and, matching Reggie’s positioning, faced her. “You think me ruthless. Whether she’s a duchess or a whore at the Devil’s Den, or a lover of some undeserving lord, can one ever truly escape that fate? That is a woman’s lot.”

“No.” Reggie was already shaking her head. Yes, that had been her fate, and Clara’s, and too many other women’s. For that Reggie knew better than to give of herself in any way to a man. “I can’t believe that is every woman’s lot.” Mayhap it was naivete or innocence or hopefulness on her part. “Broderick never laid his hand upon a woman.” And he never would.

Clara scoffed. “Because Broderick Killoran once showed you a kindness? His actions since should have opened your eyes to the truth of who he is . . . because it’s who they all are,” she said, drawing out the last five syllables for emphasis. “Men aren’t good and kind.” Hardness iced her eyes. “The one man I thought was proved how very easy it was to turn me out.”