Broderick gnashed his teeth. “I’ll sack the bastard.” Another one of Diggory’s leftovers. The bloody servant wouldn’t work in the Dials again.
“So you haven’t kept her around because you’re tupping her?” Stephen pressed.
Broderick swept a hand over his eyes, and then he let his arm drop to his side. “I have never been anything but respectful toward Miss Spark. Reggie is”—was—“a friend.” And regardless of what had come to pass these past two days, he’d never so disrespect her that he’d tolerate Cowan or any other man, woman, or child in his employ disparaging her.
Stephen swiped the back of his hand over his nose. “Hmph,” his brother said noncommittally. “Cowan said that was the only reason you trust her.”
Not only had he disparaged Reggie but he’d also cast aspersions on the reason for her influence at the club? He’d bloody the man senseless before he sacked him.
“Bloody hell,” he gritted.
“You asked,” Stephen protested.
“I know. It’s . . . let it go. I assure you, Cowan is wrong . . . on both scores.” Proper as any lady in London, Reggie Spark wasn’t the manner of woman who’d take any man as her lover . . . including a blighter like Broderick.
“So why ya keeping her around, then?” his brother persisted.
Had he always been this tenacious?
“I am not . . . keeping her around.” He was keeping her close, as he would anyone who came upon the information about Stephen’s parentage and Broderick’s role in the boy’s kidnapping. He’d not share Reggie’s fate with the Killorans with his brother. His world had been upended enough. “This isn’t appropriate discourse.” In the Dials there was no limit to the type of talk a person, of any age, could take part in. Not, however, for the world Stephen would soon enter.
And he’d do so with a knowledge of the streets and life that no young child should carry with them. Glancing to the doorway and finding it still empty, Broderick dropped to a knee. “It isn’t appropriate to use that language or to speak as you’ve done about Miss Spark, Stephen.” Again, guilt assailed him. For he was the one responsible for stripping this child of his innocence.
Stephen pulled his brows together. “Why?”
“Because you just do not,” he awkwardly explained.
“That ain’t much of a reason.”
Broderick grimaced. “No,” he muttered to himself. It wasn’t. He’d failed Stephen in so many ways. At the very least he could eventually return him to his father with this most basic form of decency explained. I should have done so long before . . . I should have worked harder to see that he didn’t become this angry, scarred creature. He tried again, calling forth lessons given him by another man long ago. One who’d been good and decent and like a father. “How you speak, the words you use, matters. To descend into cursing suggests a lack of intelligence and an inability to find the appropriate words to convey how you’re feeling.” That guidance had come not as a castigation by the earl his father had worked for, but rather as a gentle explanation.
“But I like cursing.”
He winked. “It’s because you haven’t found the other words you need yet.” Lord Maddock would find all the appropriate tutors to school the boy . . . and manage what Broderick hadn’t. “And you don’t speak ill about any woman, do you hear me? Regardless of her birthright,” he tacked on.
“What about women who betray ya?” Stephen asked dryly. “Can a fella talk about them?”
So his brother had been listening in. Broderick lightly cuffed his brother under the chin. “Not even them.” How did a boy of eleven become such a master of turnabout? He shoved to his feet and glanced yet again at the doorway.
Thunder rumbled ominously, and a solitary raindrop landed on his nose.
Bloody rain.
He tugged out the enamel watch fob, his last link to the life he’d left behind, and consulted the time. What was keeping them?
“You sure . . .” That hesitant child’s voice pulled his attention down to Stephen. “We gotta live there?”
Broderick sighed. “We do.” As Reggie had rightly pointed out, Gertrude would already face society’s censure for her past and the place she’d called home. “It would open her to”—even more—“gossip, if she were to return each night to a gaming hell.”
“Ain’t wise for ya to be away from the club,” Stephen persisted.
Nor had he ever been gone from the Killorans in all the time he’d served Diggory and then taken the hell over. “I trust it won’t be long before she’s wed and—”
Stephen’s face crumpled, and with it, Broderick’s heart.
With a black curse, he glanced to the nearest servant. “Where in blazes are—?”
Gertrude stepped outside, her hands folded primly before her and the hood of her muslin cloak drawn up. Leveling him with a harsh glare, she swept down the steps.
At last.
Impatient, he looked beyond her toward the still-empty doorway. Searching for the still-missing companion. Gertrude stepped directly into his line of vision. “Where is . . . ?”
“Not. One. Word,” she clipped out.
“Reggie . . . ?”
“I said not one,” she spoke over him.
Stephen’s jaw went slack as he looked between Gertrude and Broderick.
This increasing show of spirit was still unexpected and unfamiliar from the one sibling who’d always been . . . not difficult. If he weren’t so bloody frustrated, he’d have been proud of that resolve.
“In the carriage, Stephen.” Broderick didn’t take his gaze from the gaping double doors. From the corner of his eye, he caught his youngest sibling reaching for the handle behind him. “You will ride in the other one with Gertrude,” he instructed.
Stephen spoke over Gertrude’s shocked gasp. “Why you riding with her?” he bemoaned.
Shifting his gaze over to the obstinate little boy beside him, Broderick gave him a hard look.
“Oh, fine,” the boy mumbled, and cursing under his breath, he stalked ahead to the other conveyance.
As soon as Stephen scrambled inside, Gertrude unleashed her temper. “What have you done?” she whispered, fury coloring her tone.
Aware passersby and servants baldly stared on, he spoke from the corner of his mouth. “I’ve done nothing.”
“Reggie is silent and sad. She did not wish to do this. What did you do to gain her capitulation?”
“Miss Spark agreed of her own volition to serve as your companion.”
“Oh?” Gertrude demanded snidely. “And just what did you threaten her with to bring about that sudden change of heart?”
And blast if he didn’t feel heat mottle his cheeks. “What did she say?” Had she returned yesterday and played the victim, presenting him as the villain?
“Do you know what she said?” He stiffened. “Nothing. She refuses to speak out against you or share any of what happened.” Gertrude’s throat bobbed. “Except to say that after I was married, she would no longer be employed by the Devil’s Den.”
A niggling of discomfort needled at his chest. After she’d stormed off yesterday, he’d been so struck by his own outrage that he’d not focused on the fact that when they left, she wouldn’t return to the Devil’s Den as his right hand. That their relationship as he’d known it was at an end. Even with everything that had come to pass, a sliver of regret slipped in. She’d been as much a part of the family and the clubs as Cleo, Ophelia, Gertrude, or Stephen.
The fight left Gertrude. “What transpired between you two?” she repeated, imploring with her eyes.
Of course, Gertrude had always been incapable of sustained anger and fury. That had set her apart from the rest of the Killorans.
“I don’t—” He was saved from replying by Reggie’s sudden appearance.
She lingered in the doorway.
Just then, the wind gusted, tugging her stubborn red curls free of her neat coiffure. They whipped about her shoulders as she stood there with the regal bearing of a queen.
“I’ll discuss it with you later,” he promised.