She released a shuddery sigh.
Broderick tipped her face up to his, needing for her to see his eyes and the truth there. “It is not your fault,” he repeated. The guilt she’d taken on belonged to the bastard who’d hurt her . . . a man who’d violated her trust and her virtue . . . and something more: her soul. “None of it,” Broderick said urgently. “It never was.”
Reggie slid her gaze away. “It was,” she said, sagging slightly against him. “I let him—”
Broderick placed a fingertip to her lips, stifling that self-guilt. “He was a monster. He wronged you. He hurt you.” He’d harmed her heart, soul, and spirit. “And despite all the suffering he wrought, you emerged triumphant. You pulled yourself from his clutches—”
“You did that,” she said tiredly, and then she drew back. He mourned the loss of her in his arms.
Reggie laid her back against the mahogany bed frame, and drawing her knees close to her chest, she tilted her head up at the plaster ceiling.
Broderick scooted over, joining her. They sat so close their thighs brushed.
“You approached me at London Bridge,” he murmured.
Her body tensed beside him. “To sell myself,” she whispered, and then glanced quickly about, as if fearing someone lurked nearby who could gather the secret they’d both tightly held on to.
And at last he asked the question he’d yearned to have an answer to for the past ten years: “Why?”
At her silence, he glanced over.
She dropped her cheek atop her knees. “For two sovereigns, he offered to let his friend bed me.”
The loyal gentleman who’d saved Glastonbury.
Rage momentarily blinded him to everything so all that he saw, heard, and tasted was hatred.
“I gathered the purse that had been handed over, jumped out the window . . . and ran.” Reggie lifted her head, and steel infused her spine as she sat upright, breathtaking in her fury. “Because to hell with him.”
And with those five words, he fell. He fell so hopelessly and helplessly in love with this woman that everything that came before this moment ceased to matter.
“If I was going to have to sell myself, I’d choose who it was.”
And she’d chosen him.
How easily it could have been someone else. Any other ruthless blighter in the Dials or caddish lord who’d have taken the gift she offered and left her nothing but a handful of coins in return.
And in the end, he’d failed her.
His chest ached. Drawing breath from his lungs was a chore. Needing to move, needing to run, he shoved to his feet.
The sight of her belongings brought him up short.
The floorboards groaned faintly as she stood.
He surveyed those piles she’d made. That had always been patent Reggie. From his family to his finances, she’d been one to organize—everything. He’d taken for granted that she’d be there, and in that, he’d taken her for granted. She was leaving.
“I know I cannot stay here,” she murmured, her thoughts as always in synchronic harmony with his own. “He’ll ruin you for protecting me.”
“You believe I’d cast you out to save myself?” Broderick demanded sharply. Never mind that he had already roused the fury of that powerful foe himself. “Your opinion of me is that low?” But then had he given her any reason to trust him of late?
“Broderick, think,” she said with a calm at odds with the tumult inside him. “He will be sure that everyone knows.”
“I don’t care.” Society could go hang.
He started as the truth slammed into him—he meant it.
His life, his club, and the lives of so many hung on the balance of his being connected to Polite Society. But he could not . . . would not ever sacrifice this woman to achieve those ends.
A panicky laugh gurgled past her lips. “You don’t care what a duke thinks? Come, Broderick—think. You, your family, the Devil’s Den. I can leave now, and you can explain to the duke that you didn’t know.”
“I care about you.”
Her lips parted.
Broderick cupped her cheek. “I’ll not sacrifice you for a bastard like Glastonbury . . . or anyone.” And with that vow, he left her there, silently staring after him.
Chapter 22
Yes, you’ve made this entirely too easy . . .
The Killorans were ruined the following morning.
Or rather, their ruin was printed in every last gossip column in London.
Nor was it a mad marquess who’d brought them low, but rather a duke bent on revenge.
Seated behind his desk, Broderick tossed down the scandal sheet in his hands. Three sets of eyes bored into him.
Faintly accusing.
Largely questioning.
He sighed, suddenly wishing he’d never allowed the fierce lot of them free say to question any and every decision or action that involved him or their club. Because the last matter he cared to discuss with any of them was the reason he’d thrashed the Duke of Glastonbury within an inch of his life. Jealousy, hatred, and resentment all wrapped together inside for the bastard.
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.”