Page 301 of From Rakes to Riches

Mercy scowled at him. “You’re acting as though you’re preparing me for her murder to never be solved.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

His answer paralyzed her. Morley got to where he was by nabbing and convicting more murderers than anyone in the history of Scotland Yard.

“How could you say that?” she accused.

His gesture was cajoling as he placed a warm hand on her forearm. “We are stretched so thin, Mercy. I’m endeavoring to hire more officers, but detectives are difficult to come by. There is a rise in gang violence because the substances of the streets have spilled into the solariums of the wealthy and powerful. I’m putting down migrant riots and trade strikes. We’re in the middle of a crime wave, and I’m doing my utmost to keep hundreds of women and children who are still alive, that way.”

“What are you saying?” Aghast, she stepped out of his reach. “That the murder of one measly drunken socialite doesn’t merit investigation? Do you agree with Trout when he said Mathilde isn’t worth the trouble it would take to find her justice?”

“Of course not.” Morley ran frustrated fingers through his hair, tugging as if to pull a solution out of it. “I’m saying an investigation like this is rarely simple and almost never timely. We will do what we can for Mrs. Archambeau, you have myword. In fact, this is just the sort of case the Knight of Shadows takes interest in, eh?”

He gave her a friendly nudge to the shoulder.

Mercy nodded, more to get rid of him than anything.

“Let this go, Mercy. Let justice take its course.”

The Knight of Shadows was an effective vigilante, to be sure, but no one knew how to contact him. He was a man. He did what he liked.

Oh, she’d let justice take its course...

Because justice, as everyone knew, was a woman.

8

“How did this happen?”

Raphael knew to expect the question, but he never ceased to flinch upon its asking.

Because it produced a maelstrom of emotion he couldn’t escape.

Guilt. Shame. Pain. Hatred.

Most ofall,hatred.

Less toward the men who had done this to his brother, than the one who had brokered it.

He still seethed.

Grappled rage into submission as he watched Dr. Titus Conleith palpate his brother’s ruined face for the final examination before tomorrow’s reconstructive surgery.

Raphael detested everything about hospitals, though this one was nicer than most.

The glaring awful whiteness of them, the smell of solutions and cleansers. Of shit and blood and food and death. Even the neatness of them rankled. Rows of beds full of misery. Nurses dressed in smart uniforms, their hair held in severe knots beneath starched caps.

It made him all the more determined to die whilst young and healthy.

Gabriel was the only soul alive that could get him through these doors.

If his brother could suffer such indignities, the least Raphael could do was be there.

He only had to watch.

They had visited Dr. Conleith several times in the past handful of weeks, and never once had the surgeon savant made the dreaded query.

How did this happen?

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