Page 34 of A Dark and Stormy Knight
And yet. He’d known it was her first climax. She’d left no doubt about that.
“She made it sound like her intended was a selfish lover,” he defended himself to no one in particular at this point. “But I can’t say for certain now that she knew this firsthand. And she never went back to Miss Henrietta’s. I paid to be informed the moment she did. So the chances of her hiring another lover are slim.”
Though, if he thought about it… she could entice any man with the crook of her finger.
“Why go through with marriage to the blighter, then, if he was unfaithful?” Ash wondered aloud.
“Strictly speaking, she didn’t,” Argent reminded them over his coffee cup. “She was found with her fingers around the hilt of the dagger that killed him.”
“Red-handed, as it were.” Morley huffed a sigh between his compressed lips. “Why would she do it? Why would she doanyof it?”
Ash shrugged, as if it really was of little consequence. “It’s not for us to understand the mysterious minds of women.”
“Or people in general,” Argent agreed.
“Perhaps she agreed to marry him because she didn’t want her child to grow up a bastard,” Dorian, the bastard born of a ruthless Marquess, put this to them without a hint of his earlier levity.
“It’s a probability.” Morley felt his lip lift above his teeth in a snarl. “Or she wanted my child to be the next Earl of Sutherland.”
“Can you blame her?” Argent had a distinct gift for finding the practicalities in an emotionally charged situation. “This pregnancy makes herlesslikely to kill the man who would lift her out of this bind, not more. She’d have been a pariah to her family and society if the child had been born without the luxury of a name. It’s extraordinary what women will give up for their children…” Argent trailed off, staring at the blank wall.
“Unless Sutherland found out and threatened to destroy her with the secret,” Morley theorized.
“Cutter,” Ash said the name written on no documents and spoken by no one in the world but the unlucky few who’d known him decades ago.
Their eyes met, and suddenly Ash wasn’t a pirate king, or the Rook, but that black-eyed boy. The one with whom he roamed the streets and threw fists and stole food and created impossible futures.
“Congratulations, Cutter.” Ash’s lips lifted into the ghost of a smile, his dark eyes softening to something almost tender. “You’re going to be a father.”
The weight of that word knocked the wind from him. Afather. He’d given up that dream years ago.
“What are you going to do about it?” Dorian, the besotted father of two children gave him perhaps the first look of commiseration he’d ever received from the man.
Morley stood and shouldered past them all, retrieving his jacket from where he’d hung it on the rack. “My job.”
Chapter 7
“Ididn’tkill him.”
It was the first thing the woman said when Morley descended the stairs to the private interrogation cell in the basement of Number Four Whitehall Place with a bucket of warm water and stringent soap.
Prudence. Her name was Prudence Goode. He knew that now.
This chamber had, decades past, been used for little better than inquisition-like torture. Though the walls had been cleaned and scrubbed by a million different char maids, Morley could still smell the blood. It hung like condemnation in the air, flavoring it metallic and spicing it with mold and despair. He’d given Dorian the famous beating here. He’d used it to hide traitors for the Home Office and other high-profile criminals.
In the middle of the grey stone,shestood like a soiled white lily unlucky enough to adorn a battlefield.
Rumpled and bloodstained.
A tug in his chest had him clearing his throat. She was so sweet to look upon. So lovely and small and concerningly pale.
He’d thought he’d met enough conniving criminals, both men and women, to not be moved by seemingly innocent features. And yet, here he was, fighting the knight-errant inside him that desired to sweep her away from all of this and lock her in a tower where she would be safe.
Where she would behis.
“A clean frock has been sent for,” he told her, pulling a tri-legged stool from the corner to perch in front of the bench upon which she sat.
The manacles on her wrists weren’t secured to anything, she could have moved around easily. But she remained still, pressing her hands into her belly, as if holding on to what was inside.
