Page 42 of Courting Trouble
“Have you connected him to my—to William somehow?” She’d stopped thinking of him as her husband ages ago.
Morley rubbed at his brow as if erasing a headache. “Several nights ago I—apprehended one of his men and gleaned that cocaine is the least of Sauvageau’s concerns. As he told it, a shipment of unminted gold from America went missing while in your husband’s possession. Sauvageau is lying in wait, it seems, certain that much gold can’t stay hidden for long. To spend it, someone must smelt it. And if it were in your possession and you sold it…your influx of fortune would become readily apparent. I imagine that’s why he’s watching you.”
“Well I’m in no danger of a fortune, apparent or otherwise.” Nora put her tea and saucer back on the tray table at her elbow, and then smoothed the skirt of her cotton frock over her knees with a wry sound. “Do you remember at the docks, before I was…” She cleared her throat. “William was frantic over a missing crate. He was going to take Prudence and me somewhere downriver.”
Morley shifted with consternation, turning to look out the window toward the district over which Harrods gleamed above London’s wealthy merchant class. “I’d give my eyeteeth to know where the crate is now,” he muttered as if to himself. He glanced back at her, his glacial eyes softening for a moment. “We haven’t spoken of that day. You must have complicated—even hostile—feelings about what happened. About me.”
“Why would I, Chief Inspector?”
He blinked thrice before answering. “I killed your husband. In front of you.”
Nora shut her eyes.
Not because she harbored any unpleasant feelings… but because she didn’t. Morley had done what she’d fantasized about more than once. What she’d never had the courage to do.
He’d saved Prudence, and for that she’d always consider him a hero.
He apparently mistook her silence for grief. “In my experience, women often still love the husbands who hurt them. Even after they’ve done their worst. There’s no shame in that. I don’t blame you if—”
“I never loved William,” she said vehemently. “Ever. And I will be forever grateful to you for saving my sister’s life. My husband was a monster and, apparently, a killer. When I think of all he did because of me…” Emotion choked the air from her throat and tightened her muscles in such a way that set her shoulder to aching. “I only wish I’d had the courage to put an end to him sooner.”
“You’d have been hanged for murder.”
“Better my life than those of the innocent men he killed.”
He leaned forward as if he meant to offer comfort, and then thought better of it when he caught the look of caution in her eyes.
“What he did to your…lovers, was no fault of yours.” His eyes shifted away. “Tell me to mind my own business, but were you emotionally involved with any of them? Do you have…someone to turn to with your grief? I’ve always found Dr. Conleith to be a keen and considerate confidant—”
“Titus is the last man I’d discuss such matters with.” Nora stood, pacing away from him toward the window, if only to retreat from her guilt.
“They were all kind men, even George, the philandering rake. Hadn’t a mean bone in his body. But I…was with him because I knew I would never feel attachment to a man like him. Likewise, my time with the Stags of St. James was nothing more than selfish pleasure. A diversion I paid for so I wouldn’t have the complication of emotion. None of them meant more to me than what we did in the darkness. Perhaps that makes me a monster, as well.”
She looked at her reflection in the window, a translucent overlay against the skyline, and didn’t recognize herself in it. “I mourn them. They were vital men who oncelived, and because of my actions, they no longer do.”
Morley approached her carefully, standing at her shoulder to survey the city he was sworn to protect. “As much as I’m glad I put William in the ground, I perversely understand the primitive need to kill a man for touching the woman you love. Only… most of us don’t follow through on the instinct.”
That he admitted his jealous nature made her smile for Pru’s sake.
“But what I can’t fathom,” he continued, “is how you can love someone and wound them on purpose.”
Titus’s young face flashed before her mind’s eye, his anguished expression at her long-ago cruelty wounding her a thousandfold.
“William only knew how to hurt what he loved,” she said. “He didn’t beat me, per se. Not with fists and rage and the hatred that I see some men unleash upon their wives. His love was obsessive. Cruel. It was as if he wanted to punish me for not loving him back.”
For loving another, she didn’t say.
Suddenly the tableau of the city melted away, and the years she’d spent with a madman played like a stereograph against the grey sky. “He toyed with me endlessly. Isolated me from having friends. Made me pay for every moment I didn’t spend with him, even when I took a day out with my family. He would profess his effusive love for me, threatening to kill himself if I couldn’t summon warmth for him. And then, when I tried, he would see through my pantomime of affection and would tell me how easy it would be to hurt me while I slept. Would explain in graphic detail what ways he fantasized about torturing me. Terror was his weapon of choice. There were weeks I didn’t sleep for fear of what he’d do, certain that this was the moment he’d finally lose what was left of his mind.”
“It is unfathomable that there is no legal recourse for such behavior.” Morley’s voice was a tangle of frustration, the heat of his breath lightly fogging the window in front of him. “I don’t wish to prod at bruises, but William mentioned that he hurt you…physically. Was that a lie?”
Nora shifted with distress, but for some reason she wanted to say it. To tell someone what the last decade had been like without worrying about their resulting emotions. Morley was a perfect recipient of such information. He wasn’t a squeamish man. He dealt with the worst humanity had to offer on a daily basis. And he’d secret shadows in his eyes that had been put there by someone volatile. Though it was difficult to imagine what could strike fear into a dominant, confident man like him, she knew he understood her sense of helplessness.
“William used to tell me he would someday disfigure me, but he never so much as slapped my face. He would throw things. Break things. He tripped me a few times, once halfway down the stairs. He’d push me into the sharp side of a table or a doorframe. It was all so childish, so retributive.” She swallowed a familiar rise of revulsion. “Sometimes, he would hurt me at night…when we were together. If only to elicit a response from me, he’d say. It was the guilt he felt later that disgusted me the most. The weeping. The begging of my forgiveness.”
“Christ,” Morley hissed, his fists tightening at his sides. “It’s no wonder to me, that you sought comfort in the arms of other men.”
“Comfort was always elusive,” she sighed. “But sometimes I found escape.”
