The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(81)

Did she take his silence as an indictment against her? Did she believe he somehow found her less worthy?

She turned back toward the window, and he ached to call out to her, urging her to face him.

“We were discovered in a”—her grimace was reflected in the windowpanes—“compromising position, and I was dismissed from my post. He insisted he could not live without me. Insisted that he would not, and we . . . planned to elope.” A slow, agonized exhalation spilled past her lips, and he straightened, abandoning his relaxed pose.

“What did he do?” he asked on a steely whisper.

Reggie held on to the opposite ends of the window frame; her fingers curled into those sides, leaving her long, willowy frame in a tragic profile of supplication. “He didn’t marry me,” she said on a broken laugh that chilled him from within. “At first, he said he could not secure a special license, and then there was a need for funds, and . . . there was a host of reasons but never a marriage.” As she spoke, there was a faraway quality to her voice. “If I’d been cleverer, I would have seen that he didn’t take me to Gretna Green but to the slums of London.” Reggie released her death grip upon the window, and the curtains fluttered back into place behind her. “That he intended to bed me but never wed me.”

Broderick pressed his eyes briefly shut, and bile climbed up his throat. “You couldn’t have known that.” At their first meeting, even with the ill quality of her garments and the dirt smudging her face, he’d known Reggie Spark hadn’t been one born to those streets. That she’d been like him in that way. She’d been too trusting. Too innocent.

“Not at first. But don’t pardon my mistakes because of that ignorance.”

“You were innocent,” he said softly, taking a step toward her.

Reggie backed away. “I was stupid,” she said with such bluntness he frowned. “I did not know who he was at first. All I saw was the dashing rogue who could charm a chambermaid with the same ease he could a countess.” Bitterness dripped from those words. “He was a nobleman who actually spoke to me and didn’t treat me like a fragile flower.” Her words rolled over the next as she quickly spoke. “He spoke of a world that we’d create together . . . once we had the funds. And he used that glib tongue, and even when I should have so clearly seen that which was before me . . . I could not.” Her gaze grew distant. “Or mayhap it was because I didn’t want to see.” Reggie’s throat moved quickly. “I learned soon enough.”

A chill scraped his spine.

With that ominous statement, Reggie returned to her bed. She began rearranging the existing piles already coordinated by color into neat, symmetrical piles of evenly stacked garments.

Broderick joined her, standing shoulder to shoulder. She remained fixated on her task, not offering him so much as a glance.

“What did he do?” he asked gravely, needing to know the demons that held her in their snare still. Needing to know the full extent of Glastonbury’s crimes, so he could hunt him and destroy him with a ruthlessness befitting retribution found only in the streets.

Reggie gave her head a tight shake.

Broderick took her lightly by the forearm, forcing her to finally stop. “He is the reason you didn’t want to serve as Gertrude’s companion.” And not caring about why she didn’t wish to come to Mayfair, I forced her to face that monster once more.

“I couldn’t see him again,” she whispered, her voice so faint and so broken it barely reached his ears.

And yet that was precisely the hell Broderick had unwittingly visited upon her. With a groan, he yanked his fingers through his hair. I forced her into the role. She’d been a friend, a woman he’d been closer with than any other, his own sisters included, and in coercing her into the position and stealing away her choice, he’d proven himself no different than Glastonbury. He slammed his eyes shut. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he groaned.

“Tell you what? That I was some nobleman’s whore?”

“Do not say that,” he commanded.

“What would you have me say?” she cried, spinning out of his reach. “Should I have told you how even though I despised his touch, I allowed him to use my body anyway?” He stiffened. Oh, God. He could not take this. “Do you want me to tell you how he beat me, and I let him do it, again and again?” A tortured groan spilled from his lips, and he reached for her. In her haste to escape his touch, Reggie tripped over herself. Her eyes were the ravaged ones of a woman whose soul had been shattered. “I stayed anyway,” she rasped, her slender frame trembling. And then she sobbed. Collapsing to her knees, she hugged her arms tightly around her middle. “I s-stayed,” she wept.

With a groan he fell to his knees beside her and dragged her into his arms. Reggie resisted, digging her fingers into his chest, and then she collapsed into him. She wept as if she might break, her tears soaking through the front of his jacket.

He didn’t offer her false words or assurances. Or toss forth all the words of rage and threats he had for the bastard who’d dared touch her. For none of it would take away her suffering.

And so he simply held her.

These had been the secrets she’d carried alone and for so long.

Broderick buried his cheek against the silken crown of her curls, stroking his palms in soothing circles over her back. This had been what had driven her to the darkest streets of the Dials. What if he hadn’t been there? His gut clenched, and he thrust aside the worry.