Page 83 of A Dark and Stormy Knight
Instead, he propped himself on his elbow and simply studied her in a rare, unguarded moment. It only seemed fair. She’d stripped him bare, laid him wide open and dangerously close to defenseless. The intimacy he felt forming between them, the bond that wove between his ribs and hers, stitching their ticking hearts together, was made of some stronger material than the steel and ice he’d encased around his heart.
Something magical, probably, if one believed in that sort of ridiculous thing.
Which he didn’t.
And yet, when had he ever slept so well? When had he ever been on the precipice of such a sheer and infinite ledge, and felt so safe?
She really did sleep the sleep of the innocent. Even after all the wicked things they’d done together.
And the ones he still wanted to do.
Christ, they’d need weeks. Perhaps longer. Honeymoons made so much sense now.
He could take her to Antigua to swim in a warm ocean as blue as her eyes. Or maybe closer, somewhere continental? They could cosset themselves in the far north beneath ceilings of glass, watching the Northern Lights snap overhead as he made love to her on soft furs like a Viking lord. Or they could visit a Moroccan spice market or Turkish bazaar and sleep beneath lattices of flowing silk with air spiced with exotic blossoms.
He’d let her decide, of course. He didn’t care.
For the first time in…maybe ever…the idea of doing a bit of nothing actually appealed to him. So long as it was with her. He would lounge like an Olympian, feeding his goddess any ambrosia she desired. Learning her, consuming her. Mind, body, and soul.
“Wherever your mind is, I want to be there too.”
Morley jolted back to the present to see a smirking Christopher Argent lounging against his office doorframe.
“You’re not invited,” he said irritably.
“Ah.” A sly understanding sparked in the man’s clear eyes. “Speaking of your wife. A messenger boy came to deliver this. She’s gone to her sister’s to help pack some things.”
Morley snatched it from his hand, his ire spilling over to impatience. “You read it?”
“It was on a card, not in an envelope,” Argent remonstrated, not a man used to defending himself. “How could I help myself?”
“Unscrupulous cretin.” Morley’s words had no heat as he looked at his name scrawled in flawless feminine script.
Argent’s shoulder lifted. “I’ve been called worse.” He stalled, lifting his hand to his jaw to rub at some tension there. “Morley…the murder case you handed over to me some months back, the Stags of St. James…”
He looked up at the uncertain note in Argent’s voice before he’d been able to read the note. The Stags of St. James…a case growing colder by the day.
The very investigation that’d started this entire thing.
“What about it?”
Stoic features arranged themselves carefully, as if Argent knew he was treading on unstable ground. “I interviewed a man recently who intimated one of the Stags of St. James had regularly lain with a high-born, dark-haired beauty. He said she was a, and I quote, ‘Good girl.’”
Good girl…as in…Goodegirl?
Morley went very still, carefully examining the effect the information had on him.
It wasn’t his Goode girl. He knew that. He trusted that. His wife had told him it had been a discussion between her friend and her elder sister that’d sent her looking for a stag in the first place.
“Prudence has a sister with dark hair,” he said. “She’s married, but could have used her maiden name for such purposes. She and her husband, William Mosby, the Viscount Woodhaven, were sent to Italy by the Baron.”
Agent’s brows made a slow decent as he pondered this. “How does a Baron send a Viscount to Italy, one wonders? Even if he is a son-in-law, I can’t see a man like Woodhaven being easily told what to do.”
“ImpoverishedViscount,” Morley clarified, rifling through some papers to find the slim file he’d made of Woodhaven on a whim. “Honoria’s dowry and monthly upkeep is all that keeps them afloat, I’ve gathered.”
“Honoria?” Argent echoed, his voice sharp as a blade in the close office. “If she’s in Italy…how can your wife be meeting her at a row house in Gloucester Square?”
Morley’s skin flushed hot, though his blood felt like ice in his veins as he looked down to scan his wife’s hastily scrawled message.
