With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  Ash stepped forward, a drink in hand. “Don’t heed Dorian. Pearls before swine and all that.”

  Dorian feigned outrage. “Speak for yourself, I’m not the one rolling in the dirt with betrothed debutants.”

  They all looked at Morley and lost their battle with mirth.

  “I didn’t know who she was at the time,” Morley explained darkly. “Or I’d never have touched her.”

  Ash came behind the desk where Morley sat, and put a glass in front of him. He leaned a hip on the edge and poured Morley a healthy snifter from his own decanter before patting him on the shoulder. “I, for one, am delighted,” he said, encouraging him to drink. “You were living like a monk, and let’s be honest, you never were very good with women.”

  “A monk?” Dorian scoffed. “I was worried he was a bloody eunuch.”

  “Or had a terrible predilection,” Ash added.

  “That wouldn’t bother me so much,” Argent cut in, declining a drink with a wave of his hand as he sipped his coffee. “I never trust a man without a dark side.”

  Dorian’s shoulder leaned against the wall and he crossed one foot in front of the other, a cruel gleam in his dark eye. “All this time I worried you took no other lovers because you were still in love with my wife.”

  “Enough.” Morley tossed his whisky back and slammed the empty glass onto the table with a bang loud enough to be heard by the occupants of the floor below them.

  For a man who didn’t believe in miracles, he knew he was witnessing one now as they all blinked at him in blessed silence.

  Wouldn’t last long, he thought bitterly.

  They’d been taciturn villains all, before their women had made them happy.

  Happy men never seemed to tire of conversation.

  Except Argent, who only spoke when words were absolutely required.

  “So angry, Morley,” Dorian tutted. “Struck a nerve?”

  Ash tossed a disapproving look over his shoulder at Dorian. “A low blow, Dorian, even for you. We are all of us angry men. It is that anger that drives the best of us to succeed.”

  “Au contraire, mon frère,” the Blackheart of Ben More twisted an imaginary villainous mustache, ever unrepentant. “Cunning. Cunning is how we do what needs done.”

  “This isn’t a bloody lark, it’s my life,” Morley grit out from between clenched teeth. “She’s seen me as the Knight of Shadows. We engaged in a scandalous affair for a night. And now she’s down there having quite likely murdered her fiancé and desperate to tell anyone who would listen my secrets.”

  “Does she recognize you as the Knight of Shadows?” Argent speared him with a serious gaze.

  Morley nodded, feeling distinctly defeated.

  “There’s more to this, isn’t there,” Argent stated dryly, narrowing his verdant eyes. “Something you’re not telling us.”

  Morley’s head snapped up. There was no way for Argent to know, but the bastard was an infuriating genius when it came to reading other people.

  “Is she blackmailing you or something?” the taciturn detective inquired.

  Morley shook his head. “Worse. She’s claiming I impregnated her that night.”

  At that, all sense of joviality drained from the room as the enormity of the situation pressed the very air into something heavy and dark.

  For all their differences, all four of them had something very much in common.

  They’d grown up without paternal care. Their fathers had abandoned them at best and tried to murder them at worst.

  “Do you have any reason to believe her?” Dorian asked. “Have you seen proof of her condition or is she simply desperate to save her neck?”

  “She hired a prostitute,” Ash said carefully. “So, there’s the possibility the father of her child could have been any number of men.”

  Morley thought on that, and then violently rejected that notion, voicing the fear he’d had for some weeks now. “I’m not certain she’d ever truly had a lover before me.”

  All the men suddenly seemed uncomfortable, but it was Dorian who said, “Well… I mean… there’s an uncomplicated way to tell.”

  “Not… the way we… Holy Christ I don’t know.” Morley buried his hands in his hair and pulled.

  “I’m afraid to ask, and yet I find myself anxious to find out,” Argent said as if this surprised him.

  Morley sorely wished he could be anywhere else. He couldn’t very well admit that he was so bloody ravenous that he might not have noticed the physical barrier of her virginity.

  That her arms were so sweet. Her body so tight, yet welcoming. Her moans might have been pleasure or pain, but her words were nothing but encouraging.

  He proceeded carefully. “She wasn’t…experienced, but neither did I notice a… physical impediment. She wasn’t the shy, wilting flower, obviously, she approached me. But, neither was she a vixen. She’d found out about the Earl of Sutherland’s infidelity and was angry at his selfishness. She wanted a lover of her own.”

  He didn’t want to give them more. To say how adorable she’d been. And so damnably desirable he’d been on the verge of orgasm the minute they’d kissed. He’d been beneath her skirts as he feasted her to completion and was unable to tell if she were shocked or expectant. Nervous or experienced.

  And yet. He’d known it was her first climax. She’d left no doubt about that.

  “She made it sound like her intended was a selfish lover,” he defended himself to no one in particular at this point. “But I can’t say for certain now that she knew this firsthand. And she never went back to Miss Henrietta’s. I paid to be informed the moment she did. So the chances of her hiring another lover are slim.”

  Though, if he thought about it… she could entice any man with the crook of her finger.

  “Why go through with marriage to the blighter, then, if he was unfaithful?” Ash wondered aloud.

  “Strictly speaking, she didn’t,” Argent reminded them over his coffee cup. “She was found with her fingers around the hilt of the dagger that killed him.”

  “Red-handed, as it were.” Morley huffed a sigh between his compressed lips. “Why would she do it? Why would she do any of it?”

  Ash shrugged, as if it really was of little consequence. “It’s not for us to understand the mysterious minds of women.”

  “Or people in general,” Argent agreed.

  “Perhaps she agreed to marry him because she didn’t want her child to grow up a bastard,” Dorian, the bastard born of a ruthless Marquess, put this to them without a hint of his earlier levity.

  “It’s a probability.” Morley felt his lip lift above his teeth in a snarl. “Or she wanted my child to be the next Earl of Sutherland.”

  “Can you blame her?” Argent had a distinct gift for finding the practicalities in an emotionally charged situation. “This pregnancy makes her less likely to kill the man who would lift her out of this bind, not more. She’d have been a pariah to her family and society if the child had been born without the luxury of a name. It’s extraordinary what women will give up for their children…” Argent trailed off, staring at the blank wall.

  “Unless Sutherland found out and threatened to destroy her with the secret,” Morley theorized.

  “Cutter,” Ash said the name written on no documents and spoken by no one in the world but the unlucky few who’d known him decades ago.

  Their eyes met, and suddenly Ash wasn’t a pirate king, or the Rook, but that black-eyed boy. The one with whom he roamed the streets and threw fists and stole food and created impossible futures.

  “Congratulations, Cutter.” Ash’s lips lifted into the ghost of a smile, his dark eyes softening to something almost tender. “You’re going to be a father.”

  The weight of that word knocked the wind from him. A father. He’d given up that dream years ago.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Dorian, the besotted father of two children gave him perhaps the first look of commiseration he’d ever received from the man
.

  Morley stood and shouldered past them all, retrieving his jacket from where he’d hung it on the rack. “My job.”

  Chapter Seven

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  It was the first thing the woman said when Morley descended the stairs to the private interrogation cell in the basement of Number Four Whitehall Place with a bucket of warm water and stringent soap.

  Prudence. Her name was Prudence Goode. He knew that now.

  This chamber had, decades past, been used for little better than inquisition-like torture. Though the walls had been cleaned and scrubbed by a million different char maids, Morley could still smell the blood. It hung like condemnation in the air, flavoring it metallic and spicing it with mold and despair. He’d given Dorian the famous beating here. He’d used it to hide traitors for the Home Office and other high-profile criminals.

  In the middle of the grey stone, she stood like a soiled white lily unlucky enough to adorn a battlefield.

  Rumpled and bloodstained.

  A tug in his chest had him clearing his throat. She was so sweet to look upon. So lovely and small and concerningly pale.

  He’d thought he’d met enough conniving criminals, both men and women, to not be moved by seemingly innocent features. And yet, here he was, fighting the knight-errant inside him that desired to sweep her away from all of this and lock her in a tower where she would be safe.

  Where she would be his.

  “A clean frock has been sent for,” he told her, pulling a tri-legged stool from the corner to perch in front of the bench upon which she sat.

  The manacles on her wrists weren’t secured to anything, she could have moved around easily. But she remained still, pressing her hands into her belly, as if holding on to what was inside.

  A motherly gesture to be sure.

  He sat close enough to watch her every expression intently, but far enough not to crowd her.

  Far enough not to reach out, as he absurdly ached to do.

  She’d been astonishingly fair-skinned the night they’d met. But today, even the slash of pink beneath her cheekbones had disappeared. Her lips retained no color. She seemed thinner now, less robust and vivacious.

  This room did that to a person.

  So did murder.

  When she looked up, he made another astonishing discovery. He’d thought her eyes dark like Dorian’s or Ash’s, but he’d been mistaken.

  They were the color of the sky before night descended. A deep, soulful midnight blue.

  They widened at him, drenched with misery and fear.

  “I didn’t kill him,” she repeated, her voice husky with unshed tears and the cold of this place.

  Morley had made a profession of being lied to and could spot a crook with hound-like accuracy. It took him no time to suss out the merit of a man.

  But women… What confounding creatures they were.

  He read the truth on her open face. And it seemed so improbable. So unlikely.

  That he now doubted his ability to interpret anything at all.

  Morley set the bucket between them and remained quiet as he divested himself of his jacket and rolled his sleeves up his forearms. He placed a stool in front of her and crouched upon it. Next, he took the soaking cloth from the steaming water and scrubbed it with the sharp-smelling soap before reaching out, his palm up.

  She stared at him for a long moment, the braid that had made a crown for her veil wilting dejectedly to one side. “Did you hear me?” she asked. “I said—”

  “I heard you.” He kept his hand extended until she slowly peeled her arms from the protection of her middle toward him. The blood on her hands was no longer fresh, and some of it had peeled away from the soft white flesh of her fingers. Elsewhere, it had dried into darker, less crimson colors.

  He draped the warm, wet cloth over them both and let it soak away the evidence.

  “There are reasons to kill, Miss Goode.” His voice echoed softly from the stones around them, and he endeavored to keep his intonation gentle.

  She blinked over at him and his heart wilted…or grew…he couldn’t exactly tell. He’d forgotten he had one for so long that these tremors inside of his chest could have meant any number of things.

  “Perhaps Sutherland hurt or molested you?” he prompted. “Threatened you or… or the child?” He swallowed. A child. His child.

  He’d have killed the man himself, were that the case.

  She shook her head violently. “He was a cad, a liar, and a rogue, but George was never physically cruel. Despite my anger, I didn’t wish him dead.”

  “You were jealous.” He took the soiled cloth and dipped it back into the bucket, before tending to only one hand, wiping between her small, elegant fingers and around her fingernails. It felt intimate, somehow, what he did for her. But he had no intention of that. He only wanted to be kind. “You were jealous enough to… to come to me that night. Perhaps that jealousy became hysteria after so long, a rage fed by the rigors of pregnancy.”

  She tried to jerk her hand out of his grip, but he held fast.

  “You’re seriously suggesting that I was hysterical enough on my wedding day to stab George with a relic in a church where I was certain to be found out?”

  He pulled her forward, closer, capturing her gaze with his. “I’m trying to give you a defense.”

  “I don’t need a defense,” she said through her teeth. “I need someone to believe me. And do you know what else I need? A husband. I needed George’s protection for the child you and I made together. Because you left me that night. You left me without even a name.”

  Her accusation split him open like a blade. Left him raw and wounded.

  Because she was right. Had she a way to contact him, she mightn’t have had to stay betrothed to Sutherland.

  “That is counted among the many misdeeds I committed that night,” he acquiesced with a heavy breath as he released her one hand and reached for the other. For a moment, the only sounds in the dank room were the drops of water into the bucket and their uneven breaths.

  “I know who you are.” Her whispered words fractured around him, barraging him from all sides.

  He looked up at her sharply.

  Her eyes stayed locked on where the skin of her hand emerged from beneath the blood.

  “I worked it out while I was reading the paper some weeks past. You were no Stag of St. James. You told me you were a shadow. In fact, I believe you are the Knight of Shadows.”

  “You’re clever,” was all he replied.

  “I’ve been trying to figure all this time why the much-touted savior of the city, this moral vigilante with a reputation for protecting innocence, would relieve me of my own.”

  She still wouldn’t look at him. And he didn’t blame her.

  Her narrow nostrils flared with breath, and the hand in his trembled.

  She was afraid.

  “I only accepted what you freely offered.” It was the truth. Not a defense. He was a blackguard for doing so. A moral reprobate and a scoundrel and the worst kind of bastard. But he didn’t steal her virginity. He didn’t take her. He claimed the prize she handed him wrapped in such a lovely beribboned package. He’d given, too. He gave her pleasure. He gave her gentility and deference.

  He gave her a child.

  Shit.

  “Under false pretenses.” She finally speared him with a wounded, accusatory gaze. “You let me think pleasure was your vocation. Everything about you that night was a lie, even your voice, your accent. God. I dishonored myself with a man known to my father. Did you know who I was?”

  “No,” he stated firmly, dipping his cloth back into the bucket and running it between her fingers. “You know we’ve never met, and you’ll forgive me if I don’t keep up on society weddings, even that of my superior.”

  “Then…why?”

  Her question stilled his hand, and this time it was he that could not meet her gaze.

  “Why did you make love to me?” she pressed.
>
  He’d been asking himself the same question for weeks.

  “I didn’t make love to you, I fucked you. I did it because you asked me to.” He’d done it because she’d possessed something few women did. An indefinable allure that made him forget anything resembling reason or thought of consequence.

  He’d done it because he’d been hungry and desperate for so many things in his life, but no privation had torn at him with such strength until she’d offered herself as a banquet.

  She flinched as though he slapped her, and he instantly regretted his harsh words. But he’d be damned if he’d take them back. If he’d allow her to think she had any kind of sexual thrall over him now. Or any power at all.

  Because the precedent had to be set if this was going to work.

  Morley remained silent. Waiting for her next move. He expected her to make demands. To use that night as blackmail and threaten to tell her father.

  “I wanted so desperately to find you,” she murmured, as if in disbelief. “And here you were all this time, a charlatan charading as a gentleman.”

  She didn’t know the half of it.

  “A gentleman is nothing but a charade,” he said stiffly, returning to his vocation of scrubbing her hand.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The million rules a gentleman lives by, or ladies for that matter, it’s nothing but pretense, is it not? A construct to hide who we truly are. What we think. What we want. We are naught but artificial beasts.”

  “No…” Her little nose scrunched as if he’d stymied her. “Our rules of civility separate us from the beasts.”

  “Nonsense. The rules give us a pretty cage for our beasts to hide in. And let people like your lot put yourselves above the rest of humanity. It’s a way to identify who thinks they are made better than others by happenstance of birth and rigorous training.” He made a wry, bitter sound. “Well, any man can train himself. Just look at me.”

  “What do you mean?” She finally pulled her hand out of his grasp, the soap making her clean skin slippery.