Page 30 of Seducing a Stranger
Chapter 6
Morley retreated to his office on the third floor of Scotland Yard and stared at nothing for the space of an entire hour. His mind churned almost as sickeningly as his stomach.
Disbelief warred with distrust over acres of despair within him. And within that bleak, vast landscape a tiny pinprick of light pierced him.
A child?Hischild?
Had he ever dared to hope for such a miracle?
Did he believe her…about any of it?
How often had he fantasized about finding her? This goddess he’d met in the night. How many times had he wondered if he’d passed beneath her window without even knowing?
And, once again, she’d exploded into his life.
Covered in blood. Quite probably a murderer. And carrying a baby…
Christ, could this situation get any worse?
A sound drew his attention to the door, and Morley looked up to see the most vicious, notorious pirate since Blackbeard saunter in with his hat tilted at a jaunty angle.
The man had come up with him in the East End as Dorian Blackwell, but a brush with death and a bout of amnesia had shucked the identity from him. Since they’d parted after Caroline’s death, he had been christened The Rook on his pirate ship, but had recently married and subsequently shucked his murderous moniker for a brand-new one. Ashton Weatherstoke, the erstwhile Earl of Southbourne.
Known to his friends simply asAsh.
“Can you believe that wedding?” Ash tugged at the collar he wore impossibly high to cover the scars left by the lye meant to dissolve his body in the mass grave he’d crawled out of twenty odd years ago.
Morley stood to shake his hand, grateful for a friendly face on this, the rottenest moment of his adult life. They’d come so far from their days as street rats together, but some things never changed, like the man’s impossible sardonic wit.
“I wasn’t aware you were invited,” Morley said. “I didn’t see you there.”
Ash smirked. “Oh, I was and declined the boring invitation, but it’s all over London in the space of three hours. An Earl falling over dead at his own wedding? Whispers of foul play? What a bloody debacle, eh, Cutter?”
Morley lunged past his friend and slammed his door closed, whirling on the unfashionably tanned and brawny man who wore a smart suit as loosely as his devil-may-care smirk.
“I told you never to call me that,” he snarled.
The smile widened to that of a shark’s. “It’s your name, isn’t it?” He held up his hands against the onslaught of irritation burning from Morley’s glare. “I’m sorry, I’ve tried, but I can’t call youCarltonwith a straight face.” These last words were strained through a chuckle as if to elucidate his point.
“Call me Morley, then, everyone else does.” He returned to his desk to straighten the papers he’d upset in his haste, arranging them into tidy piles. One in need of signatures. One in need of written correspondence. One in need of dissemination to his clerk as signatures and replies had already been made.
Amidst all the chaos, he needed order. He needed it to think. To decide what to do next.
He needed to control the outcome.
What hedidn’tneed was interruptions, even in the form of just-discovered long-lost best mates with murderous reputations of their own.
“Debacle,” he muttered. “Doesn’t even begin to describe what happened this morning.” Looking up, he leaned on his desk with both fists, too agitated to sit down. What word could he possibly use? Catastrophe? Disaster? Nothing seemed quite strong enough.
Three stories below where they stood, a lone woman was locked in a secret cell.
A murderer? A mother?
His lover.
What to do with her was his only pressing concern.
“Is there a reason for your visit, Dorian?” he asked shortly.
