He was still far away, she realized. Somewhere in the night above them, unable to return back to the troubles of life below.
She understood a little, she thought. Morning would bring no pleasure to her, especially not after trust had been broken by those she’d once considered closest to her. But her sadness felt like a phantom next to what sort of bleak emotion settled on his features, and she thought to dispel it with a compliment.
“Whatever you charge, sir, it’s not enough.” She sighed contentedly. “You are a master of your craft.”
“Never enough…” he murmured, his eyes still somewhat unfocused, his chest still struggling a bit for breath.
It made sense, she thought, he’d done all the work. She’d just lain there and enjoyed herself.
Feeling at a loss herself, she pushed herself up on her hip like a depiction of a mermaid, legs stretched out to the side. How did one conclude such an interaction? And why didn’t she want to?
It wasn’t an interaction, was it? But a transaction.
And yet she felt an odd sense of attachment to him now. Was this normal? She could ask, but something told her the question would drive him away.
“Are you cold?” She gathered his coat from beneath her and did her best to brush off errant blades of grass.
He finally glanced over at her, then at his jacket, as if seeing it for the first time. “No. But thank you.” He sat up and took it from her, donning it deliberately. “Are you all right?” He asked the question as if he dreaded the answer, but his features didn’t at all convey what his voice had.
She wished she could identify his expression, but it was a certain kind of inaccessible. Pleasant, but arch. Remote, but attentive. Intense, but polite.
Very carefully so. As if he was suddenly wary or mistrustful of her.
Had she done something wrong?
“Never better.” She summoned her most dazzling smile, wishing she had the strength to open her lids past half-mast. That she didn’t suddenly want to cry, not because she was sad, but because something powerful had just happened and her emotions hadn’t been prepared for it.
“Do you ever—that is—do you care about the women with whom you’ve spent the night?” she ventured. “Romantically, I mean?”
His gaze flicked away from her, and he stared at the gate, as if hoping the exit would draw closer.
“I don’t allow myself the luxury of romance,” he answered, and Pru believed she’d never heard anything more honest. Or more depressing.
“Do you ever want to, in spite of yourself?” She was a sentimental fool, but something within her burned to know.
He shook his head adamantly. “Terrible things happen to those I care about.”
His answer piqued both her curiosity and her compassion, but he stood before she could reply, and reached down to help her up.
He lifted her with such surprising strength. He was neither overly tall nor was he more than elegantly wide. But rather superbly fit, his every inch hardened with well-used muscle.
She’d first-rate knowledge of that.
“Is it gauche of me to express gratitude?” she asked. “Other than remuneration, that is.”
His face softened and the glaciers of his eyes melted behind his mask, his gaze touched every part of her face. “Is your coach nearby? How are you getting home?”
“I’ll manage, thank you.” A part of her deflated. Of course, he was gently telling her it was time to go. Bless him, for keeping up at least the appearance of concern. “What are you called?”
A sad smile touched his lips as he lifted a lock of her hair that’d escaped its coiffure. He tucked it back in place, smoothing it down with such a tender motion, her throat ached. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just a shadow.”
Bending down, he retrieved her drawers from where they lay discarded by the fountain and turned to give her privacy. She turned as well, bending to step into them.
“But what if I—” She almost toppled when trying to step into the second leg of the garment and had to steady herself before going on. “What if I’d like to find you again?”
“You won’t, I’m afraid.”
She drew her underthings up over her stockings and garters. Glad that they’d absorb the dampness that lingered there, until she was able to return home. Wriggling into them, she dropped her skirts and petticoats and smoothed them down her thighs.
Thighs that had just been spread for him. For the man who didn’t want to tell her his name.
She whirled back around. “I’m Pru—”
He was already gone.
Chapter Four
Three Months Later
“Congratulations, Morley, you’re famous!” Millie LeCour lowered the periodical she read from across the carriage and wriggled dark brows at him. “They’re calling you the Knight of Shadows.” She leaned deeper into Detective Inspector Christopher Argent’s side so she could show him what she read. “Sufficiently ominous, don’t you think, darling?”
“Terrifying,” he replied with his distinct brand of prosaic nonchalance. He didn’t spare the paper a glance, but he tilted his head to inhale the very nearness of Millie before pressing a careful kiss into her coiffed dark hair.
Morley’s grim mood darkened to thunderous. “Bloody journalists,” he muttered, hoping his companions would believe the papers solely responsible for his ire.
And not their nuzzling nonsense.
It’d never much bothered him before that night with— No. No, he didn’t allow himself to dwell on that. To transpose sylphlike features over Millie’s bold ones, if only because she shared the slight build and black hair of the woman who haunted his dreams.
Because he’d almost convinced himself the most memorable night of his life had been exactly that. A dream. A strange fabrication of fancy. A hallucination induced by exhaustion, an overtaxed psyche, and vacuous lack of sex.
“Oh, I realize you two men are of the opinion it’s sensational and absurd,” Millie continued. “But if you think about it, a villain setting out to commit a crime might think twice if he’s worried about running afoul of the Knight of Shadows.” Reaching up, the celebrated actress smoothed an errant auburn forelock away from Argent’s soulless eyes. She touched him with the absent fondness of a longtime lover and Morley had to look away from them both. He sought refuge out the window in the bustle and unaccountable brightness of a late-summer London morning.
“And don’t be too sore at the writers,” she prodded Morley. “Anyone in my profession would commit murder for that sort of free press.”
He’d committed murder for it too…
The Knight of Shadows. Another farce. Another mantle he’d thrown over his own shoulders almost purely on accident. One night, ages ago, Chief Inspector Carlton Morley had been denied legal entrance to a brothel where he knew evil men sold young, desperate foundlings to disgusting clientele.
He’d a suspicion the Justice involved in his denial was a customer.
The voices of every victimized child he’d ever known had torn through him. Dorian, Ash, Argent, Lorelai, Farah…
Caroline.
He could not abide it. Would not allow it. Not anymore. Not in his city and especially not within his own departments of Justice.
His questionable decision fortified by more brandy than he’d like to admit, he’d tied a mask over his eyes, and broke out the tools of a trade he’d long since deserted.
And a boy he’d long since buried.
He thought he’d left Cutter Morley in the grave he’d dug, but neither was it Sir Carlton Morley who’d shot every pimp in the brothel dead before sending the youths to refuge at St. Dismas Church in Whitechapel.
That night something had eased within him. A sense of helplessness he knew every police officer carried around with him.
The shackles the law locked upon its enforcers were both right and necessary. And yet, they created certain loopholes that became leashes whereby a lawman might be forced to watch an atrocity happen wit
hout being able to take recourse.
After years of fighting, of watching the system of which he was a part of, fail so many, mainly those unfortunates believed by most to reside beneath notice, he could stand by no longer.
He was the knighted war hero Chief Inspector because he had to be, and he’d become the Knight of Shadows because London had needed him to be.
How many bodies were there now? The pedophile watchmaker on Drury Lane. The murdering rapist in Knightsbridge. A maniacal doctor who performed gruesome experiments on his immigrant patients, often resulting in disfigurement or death. Two brothers who’d taken everything from their infirmed aunt and moved into her house, effectively keeping her prisoner whilst they spent her meager income.
He’d meant to merely evict them, but one of the men had pulled a pistol on him. And well…Morley’s dead-eye had done the job for him.
Then there’d been—
“The public so loves a memorable sobriquet.” Millie interrupted his thoughts.
“The public are idiots,” Argent reminded her.
“A public you both protect, I might remind you.” Millie smacked him square in the chest, and Argent smirked down at her.
“If you ever hit me and I find out about it…” He tonelessly poked fun at her petite stature and feeble strength.
Though, Morley supposed, most anyone seemed diminutive next to the ginger giant.
“Think of everyone we know with anointed designations they never thought to give themselves,” Millie ticked their connections off on her fingers. “The Rook, The Demon Highlander. The Blackheart of Ben More, The King of the London Underworld, though I suppose those two only count as one…” She trailed off and turned to her husband. “How did you escape without a moniker?”
Argent gave a rather Gallic shift of his shoulder. “If an assassin becomes famous enough to be recognized, it’s time for him to retire.”
“I’m glad you did,” Millie said with feeling. Though the man hadn’t retired because of any sort of infamy, but because he’d met his match. Her. The woman he’d been hired to kill, and instead fell in love with.
Morley supposed he should be concerned about how many people were privy to his nocturnal identity by now. Argent had guessed that Morley had begun to spend his nights as a vigilante before he admitted it, only because he and the former assassin were once after the same villain on the same night.
And what Argent knew, Millie knew also.
Morley had confided it to his childhood best mate, now known as the Rook, which meant his wife, Lorelai, knew. And probably also the Blackwells, Dorian and Farah.
The press had begun to follow his exploits but, as Morley had predicted, the descriptions of him scraped from the recollections of villains and survivors were notoriously unreliable, lost in the miasma of misinformation that was the London press.
They all remembered a mask covering the upper quadrant of his face and the fact that he often wore a hat.
He wore many hats. Both figuratively and literally.
Morley sighed before admonishing Millie. “You of all people know better than to believe what you read in the papers. I don’t do half the good they credit me. Or, rather, this bollocks Knight of Shadows doesn’t.”
“The fact they’ve guessed you’re a knight means it is possibly getting dangerous out there for you,” Argent warned.
“I think the title is a coincidence.” Millie waved a dismissive hand. “With that mask on, he could be anyone. The public has merely distinguished him by merit of his service on their behalf. Though everyone’s dying to know. I saw an advert for him in the lonely-hearts column just yesterday.” She turned to Morley, pursing her lips playfully. “If you’re interested, a Miss Matilda Westernra is just nineteen and wants you to know you’ve touched her virtuous heart. I dare say stolen it.”
“That’s disgusting, I’m twice her age.” Morley shifted in his seat. “Besides, I’ve no interest in touching or stealing hearts, lonely or otherwise.”
“If you don’t wish to touch her heart, I’d wager she’d let you touch her—”
Millie scowled at her husband. “Christopher, if you finish that sentence, so help me.”
“What? I was going to say virtue.”
“Like hell you were.”
Morley realized it spoke to the esteem in which Argent held him that he was allowed such an unfettered view into the man’s personal life. Even though Argent worked for Morley, only a fool would consider himself Argent’s boss.
And Morley was no fool.
Except, it seemed, when it came to women.
“Knight of Shadows.” Argent grunted in a manner a kind man might have called a laugh.
A fit of hysterics for the terse giant.
“Sod off,” Morley muttered, as their carriage pulled alongside Holy Trinity Cathedral, and the footman opened the door.
Five years hence, if anyone had told Morley he’d be sharing a carriage with Christopher Argent, the Blackheart of Ben More’s former right-hand assassin, he’d have laughed at them.
Or punched them.
But here they were, climbing the stairs on a perfectly good workday to attend a rather mandatory society wedding.
“How’d you get roped into this?” Morley queried out of the side of his mouth. “I wasn’t aware you knew the couple.”
“I don’t,” Argent said, looking around rather mystified. “Millie had me try on a new frock coat she’d had made for me, and suddenly I had some place to wear it.”
Morley chuckled at that, but then Argent shrugged. “Actually, I think…she knows the bride, Prudence Goode, through her sisters who volunteer at the Duchess of Trenwyth’s Ladies’ Aid Society.” Argent lifted his chin to the door where the father of the bride stood to shake hands. “When Millie realized their father was your immediate superior, and therefore mine, she said we both had a reason to attend.”
Morley and Argent shared a look of chagrin. The second daughter of Commissioner Clarence Goode, Baron of Cresthaven, was marrying some Earl from somewhere, and if Morley was absent from the festivities, as he longed to be, he’d hear no end of it. Attendance was expected of him. And Carlton Morley always did what was expected.
So that his sins were never suspected.
As he mounted the stairs to the chapel, a raven cackled from where it clung to the stone banister, taunting him and twitching its wings.
A raven on a wedding day. Wasn’t there some wives’ tale about ravens being harbingers of death or doom or some such? He paused, staring at it intently, transfixed by the brilliance of its feathers. Brilliant, he thought, because while the bird was black, it reflected the entire spectrum in the sun with a glossy iridescence.
Just like her hair had done when the lamplight had shone through the water…
He shook his head, trying to dislodge the thought.
Most of the time he was glad he didn’t know her name. Because then she’d become too real. He couldn’t shrug that night off as some fantastical dream that’d happened to someone else.
Other times, he longed for her to be something other than a pronoun.
Her.
Blinking, he turned from the blasted creature, taking the stairs two at a time to catch up to his compatriots.
He had to stop this lunacy. To cease searching for her in every slim, raven-haired woman of passable good looks he saw on the streets. Or the park. Or Scotland Yard. Or in a bloody church.
The city was full of dark-haired beauties, it seemed, and that fact had threatened to drive him mad.
One night, when he’d been unable to stand his longing, when his body had screamed for release and his every sense was overwhelmed by the memory of her, he’d gone to Miss Henrietta’s School for Cultured Young Ladies, and had lurked near the fountain.
If only to prove to himself it had actually happened.
He’d touched the smooth stone of the fountain ledge where she’d perched and lifted her skirts and the mere sight of her shapely calves had driven him pas
t all reason.
He swore he could still taste her, summer berries and female desire. He’d waited for her, his raven-haired miracle, and she’d not come.
Not that he was surprised. He’d told her she wouldn’t find him again.
And he’d meant it.
Morley rubbed a hand over his face, scrubbing at a smooth jaw where she’d once found it stubbled, wanting to wipe her from memory.
The Commissioner had disappeared into the church as he’d dawdled in reverie, and he’d missed the entire reason he’d attended this blasted wedding to begin with. To be seen by Goode, and thereby make his excuses to leave.
This had to fucking stop, this…obsession with her.
The entire affair had been a mistake. He’d never in his adult life done anything so ridiculous. So dangerous.
So…marvelous.
He hadn’t been himself that night. He’d been stretched at the end of a long-frayed rope. His will weakened by exhaustion and a seemingly futile struggle between him and the entire world. Between the two parts of himself. He’d been weak, there was no gentler word for it. Weakness wasn’t something he allowed, in himself or those who worked for him.
This had to stop. He whispered a solemn vow then and there to never look another dark-haired maiden in the eye. Never search for her sharp jaw and arched brows, or her delicate ears with elfin tips.
What would he do if he found her, anyway? She thought him a prostitute or, if she were a clever woman, she’d have worked out that he was the so-called Knight of Shadows because of his mask. Because he hadn’t taken her money. Because if she’d asked at Miss Henrietta’s or approached any of the Stags of St. James, they’d tell her he wasn’t among their ranks.
Either way, she’d a secret that could crush him in the telling of it—not that she’d come out smelling of roses.
Even so.
It was better to stuff the entire misadventure into the past and forget it. Forget her.
The church bells tolled the hour, or maybe the event, as Morley stepped into the already uncomfortably warm church. The organ music ground at his nerves, and he hoped to sit next to a large woman with a very busy fan, so he might not expire from the heat. How long was this bloody thing supposed to last? Did he have to go to the soirée after? If he made certain Commissioner Goode saw him at the ceremony, he could pretend he was lost in the crowd later.
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