Page 82 of Seducing a Stranger
Chapter 17
Prudence had known he’d follow her. That he’d have much to say. She didn’t bother readying for bed as she felt no great need to confront him in a state of undress.
She felt vulnerable enough.
An acid taste crawled up the back of her throat, as she perched on the very edge of the mattress and laced her own fingers together in a painful clench at the sound of his footsteps coming down the hall.
She regretted how she’d acted before. Even after the Ladies’ Aid Society had supported and encouraged her position…she still wished she’d have not lost her temper.
She hadn’t exactly meant to tell the Ladies’ Aid Society matrons her story, but Farah Blackwell had taken one look at her upon arrival and swept her into a circle of the warmest and most extraordinary women, who all demanded to know what was wrong so they could help.
Once she’d recounted everything in various shades of detail, Pru became surprised at just how eventful the past three or so months had been. Nowondershe felt as deflated as a collapsed souffle. No wonder she’d been so unaccountably upset this afternoon.
Shame oiled her insides as she thought about the intimacy of the confession Morley had shared before their row. His sister was a protected and painful secret. His avenging of her death a susceptible concession for a man such as he.
He’d handed her the power to destroy him, and she’d whipped him with it.
After her ire had cooled…she’d had to admit he’d made some salient points. Even though the points skewered her through with injustice and agonizing distress.
She knew they needed to have a discussion, that she needed to make concessions just as much as he did. However, she couldn’t bring herself to do it tonight. Not now, when she felt as though her entire being, both inside and out, was just one taut, brittle nerve flayed open and exposed.
Though she expected it, she still jumped at his gentle knock.
Closing her eyes against the dread, she silently pled.Please, I can take no more. Not tonight.
The door opened, and she knew she should stand and face him, that she should gather up her reserves of strength and determination, notch her chin high, and meet him will for strong will until they overcame their problem.
But, everything at the moment seemed as insurmountable as Mount Kilimanjaro. Producing tears would be a chore, let alone peeling herself off the bed.
She tensed as he neared, her eyes unable to lift above the carpet as she focused on steeling what was left of herself for this. For him.
He stood in front of her for a fraught and silent moment, and when she couldn’t bring herself to lift her head, he did something that took her breath.
He knelt like a penitent on the carpet before her, reached out, and covered her clenched hands with his own. The contact thawed her frigid fingers, unleashing tendrils of warmth that radiated up her arms to ignite the tiniest glow of hope into her shivering heart.
“I’m going to tell you something, Prudence, and I don’t require a response. In fact…” he hesitated. “It would be better if you just let me bungle through it, as we both know I will.”
She swallowed in reply, staring down at his large hands. At once so masculine and elegant, so capable and so brutal.
His voice was paradoxically decisive and uncertain, but it lacked the harshness of before. It contained a hoarse note too tame for desperation and too bleak for nonchalance.
Composure, it seemed, eluded them both.
“Deceit has been a relentless part of my entire life,” he began, dousing a bit of her hopes. Tempting her to curl in upon herself like a salted snail.
But she didn’t move.
And he didn’t stop.
“The only things I remember of my parents, are the lies they used to hurt each other with. When my father died, Caroline and I survived only through dishonest means. Everything we had could be taken by a craftier thief, a better con artist. It was the game we learned to play on the streets. After she…after I…” He broke off, filling his chest with an endless inhale as he pressed his thumbs into the grip of her fists as if he could likewise penetrate her closed heart.
Prudence relaxed her grip incrementally, doing her best to allow her insides to mirror the action. To open. To hear him.
“My parents never documented our birth, so I had no papers. I read the name Carlton off an advertisement for the Carlton Football Club posted on the building next to the military office where I joined up.” He made a rueful noise, shaking his head at the younger man. “Another lie I told, one I thought would have no consequences because I fully intended to die in some hole on another continent somewhere. I never thought I’d live to see England again. Instead, I shot a swath through entire countries. Killing for an empire that fabricates falsehoods and misrepresentations to the world as if words like humanity and honor do not exist in the face of progress and expansion. And then…”
He turned her hands palm up to caress the delicate lines there with his thumbs as he continued. “I became a police officer, of all things. And I implore you to find me a vocation wherein someone is confronted with more deception. Not only do criminals lie to me for every kind of reason, but regular, frightened, generally honest people do as well, merely for what I am and the authority I wield. My subordinates consistently report errors and embellishments, and many of them, apparently, use the uniform for criminal enterprise.”
He crept closer on his knees, powerful thighs bunching and straining against his trousers as he entreated her to hear him. “So much of my day-to-day life is spent unraveling untruths and investigating inaccuracies. I see them everywhere, and because of that, I think I’ve come to expect them from everyone.”
