With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

He meant to show her exactly who he was. Exactly what she was about to get herself into. “I come from nothing. Lower than nothing. That accent you say was a farce, it is the one I was born with. I used to speak like any other street rat out there, and high-born folk would kick me in the gutters.” He gestured to the wall, beyond which a bustling city scurried with unwanted children. “But I trained myself to act like them. To look and speak and dress like them. And now… I police them all. The entire city. And one of their own will be my wife.”

  She put her hands to her eyes. “Tell me you are not engaged.”

  He dropped the cloth into the bucket and stood. “Don’t be obtuse, I obviously meant you.”

  “What? Absolutely not!”

  An anger welled within him, one as ancient as he felt. The anger of every unwanted child. Every unrequited love. Every rejected, low-born git made to feel not good enough. “I don’t see that you have a choice,” he said in a slow, even tone. “If you’re pregnant with my child. I will raise that child, and that’s the end of it. In any case, it’s the best way of getting you out of this predicament.”

  She sat on the cot with her hands in her lap, clenched and white-knuckled. “My father… he will never approve.”

  “Oh, he will now.” Morley would make certain of it.

  “But…” She held up the manacles surrounding her wrists.

  “We’ll get to that,” Morley said darkly as he lifted the bucket of soiled water and stalked away from her.

  One catastrophe at a time.

  Chapter Eight

  Shackles came in many forms, Prudence decided. She was given a choice between two, and no matter which shackles she chose, they were until death.

  They’d each left their marks on her body.

  As she sat in her parlor—no, Morley’s parlor—her fingers idly traced the disappearing circles of irritation on her wrists where she’d been cuffed earlier and hauled into a private arraignment in front of a judge who’d lifted her confinement. He’d done this only after the Chief Inspector had promised a staggering amount of cash for her surety before he drove her to the registrar to trade her cuffs for a ring.

  Despite everything, it had been Morley who’d looked as if he were bound for the gallows. He’d stiffly spoken their vows and signed paperwork before ushering her to his astonishingly handsome terrace in Mayfair.

  Where Prudence’s family had been waiting.

  Pru stared at the ring. The symbol of eternity. This day had been a bloody eternity.

  They all had traded awkward conversation through an uncomfortable dinner where, thank heavens, her younger twin sisters, Felicity and Mercy, were sprightly enough at nineteen to chat incessantly when heavy silences threatened to descend.

  After a sumptuous but abbreviated three courses, the ladies had been asked to withdraw to the parlor so the men could talk.

  They’d been talking for entirely too long.

  Prudence glared at the door. Her father and husband were discussing, nay, deciding her future somewhere beyond. Shouldn’t she at least be there? Shouldn’t she have a say?

  A lump of dread had lodged within her throat, and try as she might, she could not swallow it.

  She mustn’t be surprised. When had she ever wielded power over her own life?

  Especially when it came to marriage.

  It wasn’t as though Sutherland had been her first proposal. She’d offers from Barons, foreign leaders and dignitaries, a Viscount, and even an American magnate she’d liked once.

  But her father had rebuffed them all, holding out for an offer that never seemed to come until, somehow, she’d found herself firmly on the shelf.

  It was Honoria, herself, who’d long-ago suggested an alignment with George. Honoria’s husband, William, was both besotted with and devoted to her. Woodhaven and Sutherland were great friends, and he very much wanted his best friend married to his wife’s sister, even if he had to press the man into the arrangement.

  George had so much as admitted it. “I never thought to have a wife. Sorry you’ll be stuck with me, old thing, as I’m terribly certain I’ll make a horrendous husband.” He chucked her on the chin, and everyone had laughed as though life would be a lark.

  But in reality, they’d been laughing at her. Poor Prudence. She’d be stuck at home while her husband spent her fortune on other women. He’d gamble everything away and she’d nothing to say about it.

  But at least her child would have a name.

  The irony of it all was, being a wife and mother was all Pru had ever desired. She’d no great need to be an accomplished and influential noble matron, nor a modern single woman with progressive sensibilities. She left that to women possessed of better and bolder minds than she.

  Her hours were happily spent enjoying simple pleasures. Riding fine horses on beautiful days and reading fine books on dreary ones. Shopping with her sisters. Paying calls on friends. Attending interesting lectures, diverting theater productions, and breathtaking musical venues.

  She didn’t dream of an important life, just a happy one. One with a handsome man who loved her, and healthy children to do them credit and fill their lives with joy.

  And now, it seemed, one mistake in a fairy garden precipitated a lifetime of misery, scandal, and, at least for the moment, immediate imprisonment in her husband’s home until everything was decided by men who knew better.

  It was enough to crush her.

  “Did you hear me, Prudence?” Baroness Charlotte Goode’s shrill question broke her of trying to stare through a solid door.

  Pru put her fingers to her aching temples, suddenly overcome by exhaustion. “I’m sorry, Mother, what were you saying?”

  Pursing her lips, Lady Goode clutched a dazzling shawl around her diminutive shoulders and shivered. “I was wondering at the dark fireplace, dear. One would worry if your new husband can afford to warm the house.”

  Considering the sum Morley had paid for her freedom without blinking, Pru very much doubted the man had trouble keeping the household. Though, there did seem to be an alarming lack of staff for such a grand, sizeable home.

  “It’s still warm, Mother,” she said with a droll breath, doing her best not to roll her eyes.

  “He likely didn’t want us overheating, Mama,” Felicity defended from where she perched on a delicate couch overlooking the lovely cobbled street. Even in the dim gaslights of the late evening, her coiffure glinted like spun gold.

  Mercy, never one to sit still for long, handed her mother a glass. “Drink this sherry, it’ll warm you.”

  The Baroness took the drink, her shrewd dark eyes touched everything from the golden sconces to the muted sage and cream furniture of the sparsely decorated parlor. “You’ll have to engage my decorator, of course. You can’t be expected to live in such barren conditions. The house is nearly empty and old enough to be decrepit. I mean, look at the panes in the windows, they’re positively melting. And only three courses for your wedding meal? It’s as if—”

  “It’s as if I were released from prison for murder only this morning to be saved by a man who would give me the protection of his position,” Prudence said sharply, her voice elevating in octaves and decibels with each word. “It’s as if he had scant hours to plot the entire affair and endless things to consider, the least of which are the courses of a farcical celebration.”

  Her mother gave an indignant gasp. “I thought we all agreed not to mention—”

  “Oh, don’t let’s antagonize her, Mama.” Mercy moved to Pru’s side at once and sank next to her. She gathered up both her hands and kissed them. “Poor Pru, it’s been an upsetting couple of days.”

  Prudence attempted to summon a wan smile for her younger sister and wasn’t up to the task. Her nerves felt like they’d been stretched on the rack and were screaming for release.

  Upsetting… the word couldn’t touch a description for the last forty-eight hours.

  “I rather like Sir Morley,” Felicity remarked, daring a glass of sherry of her
own. “He’s so…well he’s such a…” Her wide eyes narrowed as she searched for the right word, tapping her chin with a burgundy-gloved finger. “Well so many men are either elegant, or handsome, or extremely masculine, but the Chief Inspector somehow manages all three.”

  Pru blinked at her sister. Leave it to ever-romantic Felicity to describe her husband perfectly.

  It was what had attracted her to him that night. He’d been a savage in a bespoke suit. A beast burdened by sartorial elegance. The dichotomy never ceased to fascinate her.

  Mercy patted her hand. “And your new home is lovely, Pru. Everything is so fine and well-preserved.”

  “Indeed, our rooms in town look like closets in comparison,” Felicity added encouragingly.

  Mercy nodded. “People are paying large sums on the market for these spacious grand old places. I’ll bet that chandelier is imported and at least a hundred years old.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you not to discuss money in public, Mercy?” their mother lamented. “And our rooms in town might not be so large, but they’ve a fashionable address.”

  “This is Mayfair, Mama, every address is fashionable,” Felicity said with a droll sigh.

  The twins shared a wince with Pru, who returned Mercy’s fond squeeze.

  She’d always admired young Mercy’s enterprising wit and busy mind. It was as though her trains of thought were numerous and confounding as those running through Trafalgar station, and branched in just as many directions.

  Whereas Felicity’s notions were a bit less weighty and more idealistic, their mode of transport a hot-air balloon drifting upon the whims of a strong wind.

  Either way, they were each darling girls dressed in gem-bright silks and forever the fair counterparts to Prudence and Honoria’s dark looks and darker deeds.

  Before she could reply, footsteps clomped down the hall before the parlor door burst open containing the storm cloud that was her father. The dark blue eyes they’d all inherited from him glinted with displeasure from his mottled features.

  “We’re going,” he stated shortly.

  They all stood.

  “Is everything all right?” her mother queried anxiously.

  The Baron pinned Prudence with a scathing look as he announced through his teeth, “Everything is settled.”

  Morley stood in the door looking both resolute and enigmatic. He watched the tableau with a vague disinterest. Removed from it all.

  Remote.

  Would she ever be able to reach him?

  Felicity and Mercy embraced, kissed, and congratulated Pru, each wearing identical looks of pity and concern.

  “We’ve left a trunk of your things for you from your wedding trousseau,” Felicity said. “Come around for the rest when you can.”

  Her mother curtsied to Morley and her father shook his hand, each of them maintaining the barest façade of civility.

  Her husband’s manners remained impeccable and his expression impenetrable. His spine straight and tall as he looked each of them right in the eye.

  They left with barely a word for Prudence.

  She swallowed as a lump of hurt lodged above that of the ever-present dread aching in her throat.

  Would it ever be comfortable to breathe again?

  Morley stood between her and the door, his wide back expanding with deep breaths, as if he were bracing himself for something unpleasant.

  Like turning to inspect his unwanted wife.

  The short-cropped hair at his nape did little to hide a red flush on his neck and a trickle of sweat that ran into the collar of his evening suit. It was the only indication that he even suffered an emotion or two.

  When she could no longer stand it, Pru asked, “What happened between you and Father? How on earth did you get him to agree—?”

  He finally turned, and it was all she could do not to take a step back, so abrupt was the movement. Military in its precision.

  “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “This is my future, of course I must worry about it.”

  Rather than look at her, his stare remained fixed on a distant point down the hall. “It’s settled to both of our satisfactions…or neither. Now, follow me,” he said as he swept past her.

  What about her satisfaction? she wanted to ask. Didn’t that matter at all anymore?

  The old Pru would have said something. But fear lurked in the Prudence who’d spent the night in a jail cell. One that feared that if she displeased this new husband of hers, he’d toss her right back in the cuffs.

  She trailed him as he led her through a long hall with stunning antique scroll paneling but devoid of portraiture or art.

  “I’m glad you both agreed, I’m just bewildered is all,” she rambled. “My father is a stubborn man…not easily convinced of anything. And the very fact that he suffered through dinner without making a scene is nothing less than miraculous.”

  “Suffered?” Morley’s disdainful sniff echoed in the empty hall. “I’m certain it causes him no end of suffering that his newest son-in-law is beneath him socially. Sitting at my lowly table must have been a torment for you all. I commend you for containing your disappointment.”

  “No! Not at all,” she rushed, before ceding the falsehood. Her father, and especially her mother, were devastated more by the loss of Sutherland’s earldom than the man, himself. And to have him replaced with a man of the working class, even a knight, was little compensation. “What I mean to say is that we’re attempting something highly irregular. It’ll take a miracle for society not to discover that I married two days after my wedding to poor George was interrupted by his murder and that I gave birth not six or so months after—”

  He paused, and she nearly ran into the back of him.

  “I would take it as a kindness if we mentioned the former Earl of Sutherland as little as possible in this house.” His chin touched his shoulder, but he didn’t exactly look back at her. A chill had been added to his endlessly civil tenor. “If ever.”

  “Surely that’s impossible while I’m still under suspicion.” She stepped closer to him. Close enough to put her hand on his back if she wanted. “Is that how you convinced my father to be agreeable? By offering to protect me from—”

  “Your father is being investigated by the Yard for smuggling illicit substances into the country through his many shipping companies. He is aware of your pregnancy, and he concedes that marriage to me is the thing that could very well save your life and his reputation. If you want the honest truth, I resorted to little better than blackmail to gain his word and his silence.” He paused. “Let’s not pretend I have his blessing.” He turned the corner at the end of the hall and began to conquer the stairway up to the second floor.

  Pru stood there for a stunned moment. “Smuggling?” She roused herself and trotted after him, lifting her skirts to climb after him. “Are you the one conducting the investigation against him?”

  “I cannot discuss it.”

  “Not even with me?”

  At the top of the stairs he finally looked back to level a droll look down his sharp nose. His eyes were like two silver ingots glowing from the shadows covering the rest of his features.

  “Especially with you.”

  He disappeared from the stairwell and Pru crested the steps to turn and chase him down the corridor.

  “The green parlor downstairs is for your particular use.” He both spoke and walked in short clips. “But I will leave the running of the house to you. Decorate and arrange it how you like. I’ve a cook, a maid of all work, and a footman, but I’m certain you’ll require additional staff. Hire them at your leisure.”

  A naturally curious person, Prudence ached to open each of the doors they passed, but she didn’t dare. “Surely you don’t have my dowry yet,” she remarked.

  He stopped, having come to the end of the hall. “Surely you don’t think I need it,” he threw a perturbed glance over his shoulder. “I’ve quite enough to keep a wife. Even a high-bor
n one. I should think that’s evidenced by my estate.”

  She’d offended him. She hadn’t meant to, but despite his very fine house in an expensive part of town, and the sum he’d forfeited for surety, she hadn’t any true ideas what his finances were like. “I didn’t mean to imply…”

  “You needn’t worry. Your dowry is yours to do with as you wish. I don’t require it and I won’t touch it.” He said this like her money was diseased, before he swept open an arched door. “Your room.”

  Pru had to brush past him to step inside, and she hesitated to appreciate the scent of cedarwood and soap wafting from his warm, virile body. She prolonged a blink as she remembered that scent. Remembered burrowing her face into his neck and gasping in great lungs full of it.

  Even now, it provoked her exhausted body into a state of unnatural awareness.

  When she opened her eyes, she marveled.

  This wasn’t a simple chamber, but a veritable suite. She’d a wardrobe at home smaller than the gilded fireplace, and everything else was to scale.

  Like the rest of the house, the room was devoid of extraneous furnishings. However, the bed was half again as big as anything she’d slept in and angled toward windows that stretched from the ceiling to the floor.

  Unlike the antique, leaded panes of downstairs, these had been installed recently, and the whole of the vast city spread out beyond in a tableau of dazzling light and spires.

  “Your trunks are at the foot of the bed,” he informed her. “Until a lady’s maid has been procured for you, Lucy, the maid of all work, will tend to your needs. Unfortunately, she is with her ailing uncle until tomorrow afternoon. So you might need to call upon—”

  “It’s all right. I’ll manage.” She turned around, clasping her hands in front of her, doing her best not to look at the bed.

  He seemed to be avoiding it as well.

  Lord, how different this interaction was from the last night they’d spent together. Would they ever find that sort of warmth again? Would he ever look at her with that all-consuming heat threatening to turn her into a pile of ash and need?

  She watched him stride around the outskirts of her room, inspecting the view as if he’d never seen it before. Avoiding her as if she carried the plague rather than his child.