Cleo tossed her hands up in exasperation. “Like what?”
As if she were one of those mermaids who’d traded her fins for long, graceful limbs and moved amongst mere mortals like the siren she was. “You know what I’m talking about,” he clipped out, doing another search for the taller-than-most-guests lady with flame-red curls.
“No, Broderick,” Cleo confirmed. “I really have no bloody idea what you’re saying.”
“Her gown,” he said distractedly. Where in blazes had she gone?
“Her gown?” Cleo repeated. “I have it on account from Gertrude that you were the one who insisted Reggie trade her brown dresses for her current wardrobe.”
He curled his hands into fists. And what a blasted mistake that had been.
“And furthermore . . . what do you think? She was lured off by one of those rogues to some clandestine meeting?”
Broderick opened his mouth and closed it. He tried again.
Except Cleo’s droll query roused unwelcome images. Unwanted ones. A rake luring Reggie off. Tempting her. Running his hands over those exposed, creamy-white shoulders.
Tendrils of something potent, something that felt very much like jealousy, slithered around his chest, making words impossible.
His entire body turned to stone.
By God. Surely, he was not jealous over—
Cleo jabbed him hard in the side with her elbow. “I was jesting.” She narrowed her eyes on him. “And furthermore, why are you, of a sudden, so concerned with where Reggie is or isn’t?”
His mind stalled.
Of course he was not jealous. It was nonsensical and irrational.
Mindful of the attention even now being paid as he and Cleo, two of the most lethal members of the former Diggory gang, stood there, Broderick spoke in hushed tones reserved for his sister’s ears. “She’s here to serve as Gertrude’s companion.”
“Gertrude, who is even now speaking with Ophelia and Connor,” Cleo pointed out.
He continued over her. “Any scandalous actions on Reggie’s part will be a reflection on Gertrude.”
Cleo eyed him like he’d sprung a second head. “And all of a sudden you’re so very concerned with what people might say about us?” She moved closer. More than a foot shorter than his own height, only Cleo was capable of looking down the length of her nose at a taller man. “You never cared about how our past or reputations might impact our future amongst the nobs. I suspect, deep down, you know why you’re really searching for Regina.”
He pleated his brow. What was she suggesting?
“Now,” Cleo said, taking a step back. “If you’ll excuse me? I’ve dragged Adair here far longer than either of us wish to be.”
That was it?
She turned to go. “Oh, and Broderick?” she tossed over her shoulder. “If you are looking for Reggie, she’s in the alcove at the corner of the ballroom.”
His gaze automatically shot to the curtained alcove in question. When he glanced back, Cleo had gone, disappearing into the crowd with the same fleet-of-foot skill she’d had as a girl picking pockets. All the while his sister had known precisely where Reggie had been, and yet she’d allowed him to panic about . . .
What? As she’d taunted, what reasons had he had to be agitated? She’d spotted the lie through his expectations for Reggie’s conduct.
Shifting his attentions back to the very person he’d spent the better part of thirty minutes now searching for, Broderick started through the ballroom, passing men just a smidgeon below royalty and weaving around the leading lords and ladies of London’s ballrooms. It was the realization of a long-held goal, and yet all his focus remained on a pair of thick brocade curtains.
Broderick reached the corner of the hall, and with his back kept deliberately to that hiding place Reggie had made for herself, he stepped back and entered.
As soon as the curtains fell back into place, the hiss of a blade sliced through the darkened space. And its tip pricked his throat.
He’d gone lax. There was no other way of accounting for his being caught off guard. He made himself go absolutely motionless. “Is this to be my repayment for forcing you into the role of companion?” he drolly asked.
“Broderick?” Reggie demanded on a furious whisper. She drew the knife away from his throat. “What in blazes? I could have killed you.”
“Yes.” Adjusting his rumpled cravat, he faced her. “You would have found yourself—”
Reggie lifted her foot and strapped her dagger just above the inside of her ankle, killing the rest of that flippant reply. “Where is your sister?” She paused midmovement, her skirts rucked about her leg, and whipped her head up. “You should be with her. I should be with her,” she swiftly amended.
She’d asked a question. What was it? All logical thought had fled. My sister. Gertrude. “She is currently dancing with Lord Landon.”
Some of the tension left Reggie, and she retrained her efforts on her dagger.
His throat moved rhythmically as a wave of lust bolted through him, and he proved himself as caddish as Lord Cavendish himself, for he could not look away.
While she bent her head over her task, Broderick used the opportunity to study that generous expanse of flesh exposed, a firm, muscular calf belonging to a woman unafraid to work. Of their own volition, his eyes drifted higher, following that swath of skin, and those shameful, wicked questions that had recently stirred at last had an answer—she was freckled everywhere.
An enthralling pattern of those dark flecks kissed long, graceful limbs.
Reggie lowered her dress back into place, and his sanity was restored. He tore his gaze away. “Where have you . . . ?” The question trailed off as he took in those details he’d been previously too preoccupied to note: Reggie’s perpetually red cheeks stood out stark white; her eyes, rounded with fear, had the look of the hunted so familiar to one in the Dials.
She’d pulled a knife on him, in the middle of a crowded ballroom, no less. Reggie wasn’t one to act impulsively or draw a weapon without provocation. He did a quick search of her, lingering on the handful of loose curls that had escaped her intricate chignon.
He narrowed his eyes. “Has someone offended you?” Fury shot through him, a seething, simmering rage that briefly darkened his vision.
“What?” She blinked slowly. “No,” she squeaked. “Why would you . . . ? Who would . . . ?” Her ramblings came to an abrupt cessation. “What are you doing here?” she asked this time with a greater calm. “You should be mingling with the duke’s guests.”
He frowned. Is that what accounted for her peculiar reaction around him? “Are you trying to be rid of me, Reggie?” The idea that she wished him gone . . . rankled.
“Yes,” she said with a blunt honesty that earned one of his first real smiles of the night.
He claimed a spot on the narrow bench built into the wall.
Reggie stamped her foot. “This is not a game, Broderick. We cannot be discovered together.”
He spread his arms behind him. “Pfft. I’ll speak with whomever I wish and wherever I wish.” Nor would he treat her as a servant, lesser than the other people present.
“The rules of your world don’t apply here. You’re in their world now.”
Broderick searched her face.
He’d convinced himself that her feelings on entering Polite Society hadn’t mattered. Nor had her long-held derision for the ton. And for the first time, he felt a modicum of shame at his selfishness.
“What?” Reggie watched him with suspicion in her expressive eyes.
“You think this is all about my appreciation for the nobility.”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I know it is.” He’d have to be deaf to fail to hear the thinly disguised chastisement buried in her tone.
Gertrude’s face flashed to his mind, and a familiar panic knocked around his chest. The omnipresent threat hanging, posed by the marquess.
Ticktock. Ticktock—
“I have no choice.”
“We always have a choice.”