Page 28 of Seducing a Stranger
Her brow furrowed and she cast an accusatory look at him. “YouknowI did.”
“How wouldheknow?” her father demanded. “You’ve never been introduced.”
A glint of warning frosted the inspector’s eyes impossibly colder.Don’t.It warned.Don’t ruin us both.
“I meant…” Pru turned to her father. “Y-youdid. I told you George was unfaithful, and you insisted I marry him regardless.”
Her father, a powerful man with the build of a baker who enjoyed his own work, put up his hands against Morley’s attention. Such large hands for such fine white gloves. “It was little more than wild oats,” he defended George. “And Prudence has always been a romantic, fanciful creature. I wasn’t about to see her future ruined by rumor.”
“Itwasn’trumor,” she argued, even though everything inside of herself told her not to. “Everyone knows George had bastards. He conducted a very public affair with Lady Jessica Morton. And yet you insisted I invite her to the wedding.”
Why was she having this discussion covered in blood? When all she wanted to do was flee. Or fling herself into the inspector’s arms.
She knew how strong they were. How capable they’d be of carrying the weight threatening to drag her beneath the surface of an ocean of despair and desperation.
She had to tell him—
“And so, you came to meet him before the ceremony,” the Chief Inspector prompted very gently, as if he were talking to a child. “You came to receive his apology. Then what? What did he say to make you angry?”
She shook her head with such vehemence her eyes couldn’t keep up. The beautiful Chief Inspector became a golden blur. “Nothing! He said nothing. I opened the door and he was… like this.” She gestured to George’s body, unable to look down again. “Blood poured everywhere, the knife was already in his neck. He was rolling on the floor trying to pull it out, so I ran to him and tried to help. I was thinking if he took it out, it would bleed that much more. That maybe he should keep it in. I was trying to hold it.”
“Nonsense, you’d put it there!” her brother-in-law accused, jabbing his finger toward her. William’s features were purple with rage, his thinning ashen hair stuck out in disarray. He wasn’t a large man, but he was tall, imposing. And not for the first time, Pru wanted to shrink away from him.
How did Honoria stand him?
“I wastryingtostopthe bleeding.” She turned to Morley, beseeching him. “I know it was silly, I don’t know why I thought I could. But I had to try, didn’t I? He wasdying. And finally, he dislodged the knife and blood sprayed…” She held out her arms to show him. “And he was gone.”
“That’s not what it looked like when I came in,” William hissed through his disorganized teeth. “She was pushing the knife into his struggling body. He was thrashing about and she was sliding it into his neck.”
“I never!”
“If the Earl took the knife out of his own neck, how did you come to be holding it?” The Chief Inspector held his hand up against further comment from William while he assessed her from deep set narrowed eyes.
His suspicion lancing through her like a spear thrown by an Olympian.
Don’t you remember me?she wanted to ask him. In the middle of this lake of blood. All she wanted was to go to him. He had to understand why—
“Honoria told me you hated him,” William continued after an embarrassingly wet sniff. Was he crying? Of course he was, his best friend had just been killed.
Shouldn’tshebe crying? She felt tears somewhere, a threat to her distant future when she wasn’t so numb. So cold and confused.
William continued his relentless assault. “She told me that you wept yourself to sleep last night at the thought of being his wife.”
Yes, she’d wept plenty over the past few months. Perhaps she was empty now. Honoria had been right, but why had she told her husband? Why did it seem like her sister continuously betrayed her?
Prudence shook her head again, fearing she looked like a lunatic. “I don’tknow. I must have taken it from him. But, I didn’t do this. I didn’t kill him. I needed him! If I had the will or the stomach for murder, I would have poisoned him. I would have been clever. I certainly wouldn’t have waited for mywedding day. I wouldn’t have gotten all this blood on my dress…”
“Your dress is the least of your problems, you conniving bitch!” William lunged forward and Morley caught him.
“That’s enough out of you.” Morley’s voice was hard as he flattened his forearm against William’s neck and shoved him against the wall. He jabbed his finger within a breath of William’s eye. “You leave this room and walk one door over to the right. There, you willsitandwaitfor me, do I make myself clear?”
William nodded, his anger turning to fear in the face of such authority.
That dealt with, Morley turned to her father. “Sir, I understand this is delicate, that the suspect is your daughter, but you’re aware you’ll have to be excused from this room, as you cannot be an impartial part of this inquest or this arrest.”
Arrest? He was going to arrest her?
Her father ran a trembling hand through his shock of white hair. “I’m going for our solicitor.”
