The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(74)

“But this is not about Broderick or Ryker Black or the Duke of Glastonbury.”

Reggie winced as that carefully omitted admission slipped out.

The other woman went motionless. “He’s a duke. Oh, Reggie.” There was such disappointment there that Reggie flinched.

“He wasn’t a duke at the time,” she said lamely.

Clara groaned. “Reggie, as a duke’s son, he was always a duke. You don’t cross a duke. You don’t anger them. You steer clear of them—”

“I know that now,” she said impatiently. He represented the single greatest folly of her eight-and-twenty years. In giving her heart and virtue to Oliver, she’d lost every part of herself in the process: her family, her innocence, her hopes, and now, if she didn’t do as he wished, her future.

Clara dropped her chin atop her knees. “All right. There is a way out of this . . .”

They stared in silence at one another.

“There isn’t.” Reggie was the one to finally say it. “Not unless I’m willing to trade my future for Gertrude’s.” And Clara’s.

It hung unspoken between them, clear, with Clara not needing to even toss that accusation at Reggie.

With a resigned sigh, Reggie stacked books. “I have to return.”

Stephen’s daily lessons would conclude soon and thrust Reggie back into the role of companion. To a woman who, since Reggie’s betrayal, had said fewer than a hundred words altogether to her.

“Your loyalty will be your downfall, Regina Spark,” Clara said, joining her on her feet.

Reggie collected her cloak. “Some might say the same of you,” she pointed out, shrugging into the wool garment.

“It is different,” the other woman muttered.

“Is it?” she countered, latching the grommets at her throat.

“Those Killoran girls always had one another. They’ve had Killoran and even that miserable cur of a younger brother.” Since Clara had come to the Killorans from the Hell and Sin Club, the boy had never been able to see past his hatred and mistrust for her association with their rivals. “We have lived with only ourselves to rely on. That is the difference. And that is why you should not sacrifice your own existence for a family who won’t even remember you when you’re gone.” The matter-of-fact pragmatism to her delivery hurt more than had Clara hurled the words as a mocking barb.

Wordlessly, Reggie picked up the small stack of books. As they started for the door, she tried to speak. “I . . .” Apologies were useless. Promises to make it right, impossible.

Clara waved that off. “I’ll pay a visit this afternoon to Phippen’s offices.”

“And you have the calculations we’ve gone through on . . . ?”

“The building redesign? Yes.”

On a venture that Lord Oliver could see dismantled with nothing more than a few ill-placed words about the proprietress. The walls closing in on Reggie’s existence narrowed all the more.

As Clara reached for the handle, letting Reggie out, the former madam made one last appeal. “Reggie?” Reggie paused. “How forgiving will Broderick be if he finds out you’ve brought the wrath of a duke down on his family?”

Either way, she was doomed.

For there was either her soul on the line or her future.

Her stomach sick, Reggie closed the door behind her.

Nerrie, standing alongside a lamppost, immediately sprang to attention, the presence of that guard dogging her steps a reminder of her role in the household. She was no friend or family to the Killorans. She had been a member of their staff who’d served their purpose, and now she brought nothing to the proverbial table.

Not giving him so much as a backward glance, she stomped off, her gaze fixated on the carriage.

Nerrie quickened his stride and fell into step beside her.

“It ain’t because he doesn’t trust you, ma’am.” Nerrie, who’d always been the most loyal of the guards to her. Where she’d caught the mocking whispers and aspersions cast about her role in the Devil’s Den, Nerrie had proven different.

He’d also proven how easy it was for a person to cut Reggie from the fold.

“Hmph.”

The guard tugged his hat free. “It’s true. Oh, he’s angry with ya about . . .” Nerrie gestured back behind him to the club. “But he doesn’t want ya running around these streets without protection.”

Reggie hardened her jaw. If the guard believed that, he was as much a fool as Reggie had proven to be in trusting Broderick. “I don’t need anyone looking after me. I’ll see to my own safety.”

Shifting her small burden over to her opposite arm, with her spare hand Reggie pulled the door open and climbed inside without assistance.

With a downcast set to his features, Nerrie climbed atop the driver’s box.

Once alone in the carriage, rumbling through the streets of the Seven Dials, Reggie considered Clara’s words and warnings. How easily the other woman had spoken of putting Reggie’s well-being before that of Gertrude.

The conveyance took a slow turn onto another street, and Reggie’s gaze collided with a waif-thin girl leaning against the wall. Her hair hung in a tangle of limp blonde strands about a soot-stained face. The street-side doxy lifted her skirts for a passing gentleman. And he stopped, drawn closer to the gift the girl sold of desperation. Even with the space between them, the deadness to the girl’s eyes reached through the leaded-glass windowpane, an echo of that seen in the gaze of any woman who’d ever been forced on her own in these streets.