The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(83)

Wordlessly, Gertrude turned the newspaper she’d just finished reading over to Cleo.

He clenched his teeth. “Do you really need to read every damned paper?”

“Oh, yes. We really do,” Cleo said happily. She skimmed through the Times and then snorted. “This one claims you broke his nose.”

“I didn’t break it,” he mumbled. Though he would have relished the pleasure of shattering that damned noble organ.

“You’re certain?” Gertrude ventured. “Because by this account”—she briefly held up the page—“of slamming the duke’s face into the floor? You very possibly could have.”

“It wasn’t the floor.” It had been the wall. “And I didn’t break it,” he clipped out. There’d been blood, but he’d broken the noses of enough men to know when the bone cracked.

“Even so, if you did, there are actually procedures he might have done to—”

“I don’t give a damn about the bastard’s nose,” he snapped.

Gertrude went owl-eyed and immediately stopped speaking.

Cleo snorted. “I haven’t lived amongst the fancy sort long, but I know enough that this”—she tossed the paper over to land with a slap in the middle of his desk—“is not the way you’re going to find yourself respectability.”

He winced. No. “He was deserving of it.” The papers had dragged Reggie’s name through the pages as the former lover of a duke turned gaming hell owner’s mistress. He curled his hand. Aye, he should have broken the damned nose.

“Either way, it’s rubbish,” Ophelia said, impatiently skimming those pages. “Reggie as your mistress.” She scoffed. “Of course the ton would come to that foolish idea,” she muttered, collecting another newspaper and skimming the front page. “They don’t understand loyalty and family quite the same. Otherwise they’d know she’s like another sister to you.”

There’d been nothing the least bit fraternal about the feel of her in his arms, the breathy moans spilling from her lips, swallowed by his mouth. Cleo fixed a probing stare on him. Broderick’s neck went hot, and he fought the urge to adjust his suddenly too-tight cravat.

Ophelia cleared her throat. “The state of the duke’s nose aside, I have a solution to the problem,” she said quietly.

“Which one? We’ve a number of them,” Cleo muttered from her spot at the window. Periodically, she scanned the streets below.

All his muscles knotted as he was besieged by the weight of his failings. By his inability to right the wrongs of his past. At not having answers as to how to fix this.

Ophelia smiled, looking entirely pleased with herself. “Yes, well, there are any number of problems I’ve solved. As you know,” she went on, “there’s the obvious threat of Lord Maddock. There’s . . .”—she briefly faltered, sadness crossing her features—“the matter of properly restoring Stephen to his rightful position.”

“Family,” Broderick somberly intoned. “Restored to his rightful family.”

“To a nobleman who, if he had any real honor, would have claimed his son the moment he learned the truth,” Ophelia rasped.

Yes, his sister was correct on that score. The marquess had chosen to use Stephen as a pawn on a chessboard, treating him like an object to be used to torture Broderick. It only spoke to the man’s madness. And yet . . . “He is the one who has a rightful claim to Stephen,” he reminded his sister in somber tones.

Ophelia’s features twisted in a mask of grief. “Yes, well, if I may continue?” she demanded hoarsely. “There is also Gertrude we have to consider . . .”

The eldest of his sisters bristled, sitting upright in her chair. “I beg your pardon?” Fire flashed in her gaze.

Ophelia waved a hand. “I meant no insult.”

As his sisters quarreled on, he stared over the tops of their heads.

For the first time, he was unable to erase the threat hanging over him, his club, and his family. And yet Reggie had been correct. For all the frustration over his fallibility, there was a pride a father surely felt at the women his sisters had become. He would hang. Maddock’s note all but promised it, each line of that letter dripping with the retribution he’d exact.

When he was gone, his sisters would remain—proud, strong, and courageous women who’d bow to no man. They’d stand tall when he eventually faltered. For they had one another.

And what of Reggie? What would become of her? A woman, making her own way in the world without family. And for the strength to be found in his sisters, Reggie had done something not even Cleo, Gertrude, or Ophelia had been forced to do: she’d forged a path in the Dials—alone.

And she’d do it again. After her time here was done.

Even as admiration swept through him for who she was, for the first time since he’d discovered her plans to leave, he felt something new settle low in his belly—guilt.

Out of his own hurt at her ability to simply leave, he’d set out to crush her as he had countless others before. I saw Reggie as the enemy. I saw her venture as competition. Broderick slid his eyes closed. He’d been so accustomed to destroying all in order to be—and remain—the best that he’d let that ruthless drive come before their friendship and her future.