Page 31 of Seducing a Stranger
“I toldyounever to call methat,” the pirate sent him a black look that might have had a lesser man begging his pardon. Or his mercy.
Both of which he famously lacked.
“It’s your name, isn’t it?” Morley shot back the man’s own words.
“Touché.” Hard, obsidian eyes softened by scant degrees as Ash wandered about his spacious office. He read the commendations on the walls, looked at his certificate of knighthood, his army medals, a broken bayonet, a bullet that had been dug out of his thigh in Afghanistan displayed in a shadow box made by his regiment.
Catalogues of a life they were supposed to have lived together. A life that was stolen from them by the vagaries of fate.
The black eyes softened to something more filial and familiar. “Speaking of the man who took my name when I was presumed dead, Dorian is about to join us for a chat.”
“Come the fuck again?” Morley straightened. “The Blackheart of Ben More, King of the London Underworld is coming here? To myoffice in the middle of the day?” His jaw locked against the rest of the sentence, hissing the last of these through clenched teeth.
“Former King of the so on and so forth. He’s reformed, remember?”
“Allegedly,” Morley muttered.
Ash waved him off. “It’s a central location for us to meet, and we’ve information for you and Detective Inspector Argent to investigate in both yourvocational capacities.” He bucked his brows rather meaningfully.
Morley rubbed at the tension tightening at the base of his neck. “The last time the Blackheart of Ben More was in these walls, I tied him to a chair and beat him within an inch of his life.”
“That isn’texactlyhow I remember it.” As if summoned by his title, the subject of their conversation let himself into Morley’s office with nary a knock and left the door wide open behind him as he stopped abreast of Ash, his very own doppelganger.
Morley’s fingers still itched to throttle the man often. Or, like now, punch the vaguely superior expression from his features and blacken the obsidian eye that wasn’t covered by the eyepatch.
But alas, he could not. Morley and the so-called Blackheart of Ben More had established a truce recently—well, a ceasefire—for the sake of the man they both called brother.
The real Dorian Blackwell—now Ash—and an orphan named Dougan Mackenzie had been locked in Newgate Prison together as boys. Because of their similar looks, black hair, and dark-as-the-devil eyes, they’d been christened the Blackheart Brothers in Newgate, and the infamous moniker had followed them through a menagerie of miseries and misdeeds.
Upon Dorian’s supposed death in prison, Dougan Mackenzie, who was serving a life sentence for the murder of a pedophile, assumed Dorian Blackwell’s identity and release date.
He lived as Dorian Blackwell for two decades, as the reigning King of the London Underworld, whilst the real Dorian, having crawled out of a mass grave with no memory, lived as the Rook, King of the High Seas.
However, when Ash reclaimed his memory, he saw no great need to reclaim his name from his good friend, as his life with Lorelai Weatherstoke was the epitome of his happy ending.
When all was said and done, both Ash and Dorian decided to live with names they’d adopted instead of the ones they’d been born with.
Only Morley and Argent were the wiser. And all the more befuddled for it.
However, since Morley also lived under an assumed name, he could hardly cast aspersions.
People in glass houses and all that.
Dorian strode up alongside Ash with his hands resting comfortably in his pockets. He bumped the pirate with his elbow in a show of camaraderie. An extraordinary thing, as Dorian famously hated to be touched by all but his wife, Farah.
Though the Blackheart Brothers looked much alike as young men, time had separated them somewhat. Standing side by side as they were, it was easy to tell them apart. Ash wore his hair close-cropped, and his skin was swarthy and weathered by years at sea. The grooves branching from his eyes and the brackets of his mouth were carved deeper into features more savage than Dorian’s pale, satirical visage.
Despite his eyepatch, Dorian remained as handsome as the very devil. He displayed more spirit and mirth than his piratical counterpart, wore his hair down to his collar, and outweighed Ash by perhaps half a stone.
“Here’s trouble,” Dorian greeted Argent with a slap to the shoulder as the amber-haired man strode in holding a coffee and a paper.
Argent cast his previous employer a congenial nod.Heat least, turned to shut the door behind him, cutting their conclave of reprobates off from an increasingly curious detective branch.
“Christ, almighty,” Morley said by way of salutation. “I’ve no time for trouble if you’ve brought it to my doorstep. Not today.”
“Well, considering the exsanguinated Earl you’ve cooling in your morgue, I’d say we’ve arrived in the nick of time,” Ash went to the window and opened the drapes onto Whitehall Place, uncovering an unfettered view of the spires of Parliament. “We’d meant to discuss Commissioner Goode with you after the wedding, but it seems that needs must.”
Morley’s lips compressed. “What about him?”
