Page 35 of A Dark and Stormy Knight
A motherly gesture to be sure.
He sat close enough to watch her every expression intently, but far enough not to crowd her.
Far enough not to reach out, as he absurdly ached to do.
She’d been astonishingly fair-skinned the night they’d met. But today, even the slash of pink beneath her cheekbones had disappeared. Her lips retained no color. She seemed thinner now, less robust and vivacious.
This room did that to a person.
So did murder.
When she looked up, he made another astonishing discovery. He’d thought her eyes dark like Dorian’s or Ash’s, but he’d been mistaken.
They were the color of the sky before night descended. A deep, soulful midnight blue.
They widened at him, drenched with misery and fear.
“Ididn’tkill him,” she repeated, her voice husky with unshed tears and the cold of this place.
Morley had made a profession of being lied to and could spot a crook with hound-like accuracy. It took him no time to suss out the merit of a man.
But women… What confounding creatures they were.
He read the truth on her open face. And it seemed so improbable. So unlikely.
That he now doubted his ability to interpret anything at all.
Morley set the bucket between them and remained quiet as he divested himself of his jacket and rolled his sleeves up his forearms. He placed a stool in front of her and crouched upon it. Next, he took the soaking cloth from the steaming water and scrubbed it with the sharp-smelling soap before reaching out, his palm up.
She stared at him for a long moment, the braid that had made a crown for her veil wilting dejectedly to one side. “Did you hear me?” she asked. “I said—”
“I heard you.” He kept his hand extended until she slowly peeled her arms from the protection of her middle toward him. The blood on her hands was no longer fresh, and some of it had peeled away from the soft white flesh of her fingers. Elsewhere, it had dried into darker, less crimson colors.
He draped the warm, wet cloth over them both and let it soak away the evidence.
“There are reasons to kill, Miss Goode.” His voice echoed softly from the stones around them, and he endeavored to keep his intonation gentle.
She blinked over at him and his heart wilted…or grew…he couldn’t exactly tell. He’d forgotten he had one for so long that these tremors inside of his chest could have meant any number of things.
“Perhaps Sutherland hurt or molested you?” he prompted. “Threatened you or… or the child?” He swallowed. A child.Hischild.
He’d have killed the man himself, were that the case.
She shook her head violently. “He was a cad, a liar, and a rogue, but George was never physically cruel. Despite my anger, I didn’t wish him dead.”
“Youwerejealous.” He took the soiled cloth and dipped it back into the bucket, before tending to only one hand, wiping between her small, elegant fingers and around her fingernails. It felt intimate, somehow, what he did for her. But he had no intention of that. He only wanted to be kind. “You were jealous enough to… to come to me that night. Perhaps that jealousy became hysteria after so long, a rage fed by the rigors of pregnancy.”
She tried to jerk her hand out of his grip, but he held fast.
“You’re seriously suggesting that I was hysterical enough on my wedding day to stab George with a relic in a church where I was certain to be found out?”
He pulled her forward, closer, capturing her gaze with his. “I’m trying to give you a defense.”
“I don’tneeda defense,” she said through her teeth. “I need someone to believe me. And do you know what else I need? Ahusband.I needed George’s protection for the child you and I made together. Because you left me that night. You left me without even aname.”
Her accusation split him open like a blade. Left him raw and wounded.
Because she was right. Had she a way to contact him, she mightn’t have had to stay betrothed to Sutherland.
