To them, she was Prudence Morley, and her pedigree meant nothing past the man at her side. Didn’t bother her one bit.
“Your husband’s been keeping you secret, all to himself,” a stout man of dusky complexion tattled.
She lifted her brows across at Morley, who seemed to be grappling with the storm of his temper before he allowed himself to speak.
“Should I be offended?” she queried with a mischievous smirk.
“Not at all!” Dunleavy hurried to his defense. “He’s a jealous man, I think. Didn’t want the likes of us ‘round the likes of you, can’t say’s we blame ‘im.”
“Oh,” she drew out the word playfully. “A bunch of scoundrels, I see.”
“He keeps us in line, don’t you, Guv?” Sampson prodded Morley with a boney elbow.
“Not very well, apparently,” her husband grumped. “Don’t you lot have work to do?”
She put a hand on Dunleavey’s arm, noting that more of the men crowded around the office, unable to squeeze themselves in, but wanting a look. “Tell me, Mr. Dunleavy, is my husband a monstrous, iron-fisted curmudgeon?”
“Naw,” Dunleavy blushed and bristled his whiskers in a shy gesture. “He’s as fair as they come.”
“Fairest iron-fist in the land,” someone called from the back. “Now convince ‘im we need a raise, Lady Morley.”
And uproarious laugh swept through the gathering, and she couldn’t help but be swept along with it in their joviality.
“You’ve a husband to be proud of, but you already know that, don’t you?” Sampson beamed.
She couldn’t help but study him, enjoying his rare moment of discomfiture. “Of course. He’s a paragon.”
His expression shifted from irate to rueful as he held her gaze. One might almost believe them a couple now…sharing secrets with their eyes.
“Still holds the record on murder nabs, if you don’t mind me saying,” another crowed.
“I don’t at all mind!” She glowed at them. “You know Carlton, he’s such an enigma. Not at all prone to bragging. I want to hear everything.”
Despite his protestations, she was inundated by his praise. Did she know he’d shot a man threatening his own mother at greater than fifty paces? He’d not only nabbed the thief of the Wordston Emerald, but recovered the gem and returned it to his owner. He heroically pulled fourteen men out of the rubble when the Fenians bombed the Yard some years ago. If they were to be believed, he’d had single-handedly reformed the Blackheart of Ben More.
“All right, that’s quite enough out of you lot!” Morley shouldered past his men to widen the door in a not-so-subtle invitation to leave. His skin darkened to crimson at the collar and the color began to creep into his cheeks. “Lady Morley was just departing. She needs her rest.”
Never had she seen such a crowd deflate so rapidly.
“You’ll visit us again?” Dunleavy asked.
“Of course.”
“Can’t believe you kept ‘er such a mystery, Chief Inspector. Next, you’ll be telling us you ‘ave an entire brood we’ve never met.”
“Not yet.” Unable to contain her smile, Pru placed a hand on her stomach as it still maintained the illusion of slender beneath her corset. “But I’ve been to see the doctor today, and he’s confident that before spring…”
The men gasped and crowed, chuffed, and chuckled with enough enthusiasm to do any cadre of grandmothers proud. They took her hands and kissed them, and many of them moved to give Morley a grand slap on the back or an energetic handshake in congratulations of his virility.
Prudence couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed herself so thoroughly. There were words one didn’t say in the aristocracy. Things one didn’t even express. Babies were announced on paper and then hinted at as a “happy event” or “new addition” until the woman went into confinement. Isolated as if her pregnancy was a shame.
But not so here. She was celebrated. And so was the father-to-be.
She looked over at him, suddenly overwhelmed with something that very much felt like joy.
His thunderous expression had morphed to more thunderstruck than anything. As if he’d stepped into some world adjacent to the one in which he usually resided, and couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. He accepted the shakes and slaps and hearty compliments, looking around uncomfortably as if he didn’t know where to put them.
One thing became instantly, and heartbreakingly clear to Pru. Her husband’s subordinates didn’t just venerate and admire him…
They loved him.
Because he was a good man and a great leader. Someone who not just commanded respect but deserved it. He put wrong things right every day. He took care of so many details at home, she was certain he was just as thorough in his business, if not more so. No task was too menial or too difficult. He did what must be done without compunction or even complaint.
Prudence knew enough about the world of men to realize that was a very extraordinary thing.
A virtue to respect. A man to venerate.
He shredded his own soul and sacrificed his own health and happiness for countless Londoners who would never even know to whom they should be grateful.
How many women had the honor of sharing the life of a great man? A man who would leave his mark on the world and not have to sing his own praises because others did so. How many could claim to be honored to walk next to her husband?
To share a child with him.
She had to blink away a misting of emotion as the wonderment flowed through her.
Morley’s forehead furrowed in concern as he caught her overwrought expression and was at her side in a moment, gripping her elbow to support her. “I’ll walk you out,” he murmured before addressing the room at large. “And I don’t want to see anyone on this floor. You’re either on the streets hard at work, or on your way home for the evening, is that clear?”
The men hopped to obey him, but not without jibes and whispers and merriment.
Morley pulled her off to the left toward the door to the back stairs. “I am your husband,” he hissed.
“Yes…” was her slow reply. “That’s been quite established.”
He turned her to face him. “You mustn’t keep important things like this from me.”
Her eyes worked from side to side, searching for his meaning. “Like…like what?”
“You went to the bloody doctor, Prudence,” he said in an exasperated whisper, drawing her through a hidden door and into an alcove full of dusty boxes. “I should have been there!”
Oh, they were picking up where they’d left off. “I-I didn’t think you’d want to.”
He sent her a bruised look as he resumed his pacing. “What…what sort of monster do you think I am?”
“The male sort of monster. Men never attend these things. It’s up to the purview of the mother to—”
“If there is medical news about my wife and child, I’ll bloody well be the first to know it.” He rubbed at his forehead and then flung his hand out as if hurling away stress. “I will never understand aristocrats. The distance squeamish men keep from their families for the sake of propriety. It’s patently ridiculous.”
She let out a short sound. “I could not be more astonished at you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are either being obtuse or cruel,” she accused. “Which is it?”
“Cruel? I’ve been nothing but deferential to you.”
“I don’t want your deference. I want you. Home. We’ve been married a fortnight and I’ve set eyes upon you perhaps thrice in all that time. You maintain a distance that surpasses the very idea of propriety. When in the past two weeks would I have possibly had the chance to tell you about this appointment?”
His shoulders fell a little and his chin dipped, reminding her of a chastised boy.
“You could have…left me a note,” he muttered.
“A note, he says!” She gestured to the boxes as if they’d still an audience. “Is that what
our lives are going to be? The polite passing of notes?” She extracted an imaginary pen from her bodice and dabbed it on her tongue. “Dear Carlton,” she began. “Or should I call you Mr. Morley? Yes, I believe I should, that’s more proper.” She drew two strikes through her imaginary note. “I know we have not seen each other in several months, but I’m leaving this note to inform you that I’ve gone into my labors with our child. Please attend at your earliest convenience. All my kindest regards, Prudence Agatha Morley.”
She shot him a glare as she signed her imaginary name with a flourish.
“You’ve quite made your point.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the windowsill. “Your middle name is Agatha?”
“Argh!” She threw up her hands before reaching for the door, intent upon leaving.
He gripped her arm, whirling her around. “This is me, Prudence,” he growled. “This is who I am. Paperwork and late nights. Responsibility and distance, this is—”
She stepped closer to him, her face lifted in challenge. “You’re wrong. That isn’t you, at all.”
“You don’t know the first thing—”
“You forget, husband, I’ve met you already. That night in the garden.”
His eyes flared that quicksilver spark. “That was not me. That was—”
“If you say a mistake, I will slap you.” She raised her hand in warning. “You were more yourself that night than I think you’d been in some time before, and certainly since. You were stripped of all this stalwart artifice. Bare and vulnerable. And yes, dark and angry.” Her hand landed on his cheek, but only with caressing care. “And you needed me just as much as I needed you. And I think…I think you still do.”
His chest expanded with short, rapid breaths as he held himself as straight and taut as a marble statue. His jaw, however, leaned slightly into her hand like a beast searching for comfort.
“You were so wonderful with me on my very first night,” she remembered. “So gentle.”
“Not bloody gentle enough,” he bemoaned.
“You were perfect. We were perfect.”
He regarded her warily. “Are we…not in the middle of a row?”
Her breath hitched with amusement. Farah was right, men were adorable idiots.
“I’m your wife, Carlton.” She’d never called him that before. Not to his face. “For better or worse, our fates are tied together. I might not be what you envisioned, but…I’m here.” She glided closer, until her breasts pressed against his chest, her body molding to his. “It’s permissible to need me. To want me. If we have nothing else, we have that night. We have this child. And this…attraction between us. One that might, in time dare I hope, turn to affection?”
She lifted on to the tips of her toes to glide a soft kiss against his jaw.
“Prudence,” he growled.
“You’re so tired. So tense.” She pulled his head closer, whispering her breath over his neck, allowing her suggestions to glide into his ear. “Let me ease you, husband,” she urged. “Further than that. Let me please you. After all you’ve done for me—”
His head whipped back. “I’d never expect—not as payment—”
“I know,” her fingers caressed the close-cropped down of fine hair at his nape, urging him back toward her. Aching for his kiss. “That is why I offer. I want you, husband. Through everything, that’s never changed. Given the chance, I would make a myriad of different choices over the past three months, but not that one. I cannot bring myself to regret giving myself to you…having you…does that make me unforgivably wicked in your eyes?”
“No.” She sensed the tempest within him, the battle of his dual nature, and identified the precise moment one of the factions beat back the other.
With a foul curse, he closed his hand around her wrist and pulled her after him as he veritably slammed open the door to their alcove, and another to the stairwell. He silently marched her down one flight of stairs, through two more doors in another chaotic office full of typewriters and noise, and then veered her into a long, deserted hallway.
She trotted to keep up as he swept her to the end of the hall and shouldered open an old door swollen with disuse. In an incredible dance of fluid motion, he tugged her inside, firmly shut the door, threw the lock, and pulled her into his arms to crush his mouth to hers.
All pretense of the civilized Chief Inspector melted away beneath the heat exploding between them. His hands were suddenly everywhere. His lips were no longer compressed into their tight, laconic lines. They molded to hers with a wild, wet consummation that surpassed anything she’d ever imagined.
He’d once again succumbed to the starving, carnal beast that lurked inside him. One locked away in a cavern so deep it was as if he attempted to bury it forever.
But anyone knew that a predator denied sustenance became the most dangerous of creatures. Prudence realized that she somehow possessed the key to the dungeon where he kept that beast.
And she’d hoped that once she’d let it lose, it would devour her.
True to his nature, he didn’t let her down.
Her body melted against and around him while he kissed her as if he could make up for every absent night and every empty morning. Beneath the fervency of his embrace, a heart-rending sweetness existed. A sort of awestruck marvel that moved her to the very marrow of her bones.
This was something he couldn’t express with words, she understood. Not yet.
Perhaps not ever.
Though there was no chance of him releasing her, she still clung to him, her fingers digging into the convex muscles of his back, reveling in the mounds of strength she found there.
His tongue didn’t wait for invitation, sweeping into her mouth in drugging, silken strokes. He moaned against her lips and she breathed it in, relishing the honest pleasure in the sound.
The ragged need.
He crowded her backwards, never breaking the seal of their kiss. His hands cinched her waist and lifted her onto a desk, or a table, she couldn’t be sure. Only once he’d secured her there, did he allow his restless lips to venture elsewhere. He dragged them across her cheek, rooting into the sensitive hollow of her throat, nipping at the soft lobe of her ear as he pressed her knees open to fill the space with his hips.
This was how he would have her next, she realized. Here. Now.
He was going to take her again. To consummate their marriage.
In the scant moment she was allowed to absorb her dim surroundings, she identified the skeletons of shelves and boxes as some sort of ill-used storage room lit only by a grimy window.
Something about the illicitness of their setting sent excitement and anticipation surging through her. The only sound in the room was the rasp of her dress as he gathered it up in desperate fistfuls, and the tiny explosions of their rapid breaths.
She was frustrated by the layers of his clothing, as well. Whatever clay composed him, the very essence of him called to her. Arrested her every sense. She wanted to see him. To score his skin. To smell and touch and taste.
His rough hands snagged on her stockings as he pressed forward, urging her legs further apart to accommodate him. His fingers were both strong and gentle as they charted her inner thigh. Breathing seemed to become more of a struggle for him as he found the edges of her stockings and her garters.
When he tugged at the ribbon on her drawers, the curse he emitted drew fire from her blood and a flood from her loins. The desperate, crude word from lips such as his was indescribably erotic as it vibrated against her skin.
His fingers grazed her heat, producing a gasp between them. Prudence clawed at his shoulders and the short layers at his nape as he found the soft, turgid flesh already swollen and damp with desire.
“Yes,” the word escaped on a jagged breath and her body moved sinuously, her hips curling forward, seeking the forbidden pleasure of his intimate caress.
He angled back just enough to look down at her. His face half exposed to the grey light, and half in darkness. The danger
ous glint in his eye caused her to catch her breath before the slick movement of his fingers forced her to release it on a whimpering plea.
He watched her like a man witnessing a miracle or mapping the very cosmos, his features a mask of reverent awe and blasphemous lust.
“So wet,” he breathed, his thumb circling the aperture of aching flesh above her opening.
She couldn’t answer.
He didn’t need her to.
As he evoked thrills of molten pleasure in her womb with the relentless pressure of his thumb, his finger slid through the ruffles of flesh protecting the entrance to her body, probing gently before sliding inside.
The electric delight of the intrusion drew from her throat a desperate sound she’d not known herself humanly capable of making.
“So tight,” he ground out as though in agony.
She wanted to say something. To entice and encourage him. To praise and plead with him. But every time she opened her mouth, only a mewl or a moan would escape as she suffered instant and excruciating rapture at the mercy of his clever fingers.
He covered her mouth with his, swallowing the sounds as her pleasure intensified into a surge of throbbing beats as wild as primitive drums. Her hands clawed at him, her thighs clenched as spasms of bliss assaulted her, driving against her like the unrelenting waves of a violent storm. She was helpless to do anything but ride his hand, emitting strangled sobs, as her release drenched his fingers.
She was too pleasured to be scandalized by their wickedness. Too captive of her passions to be worried about discovery. She existed only in this moment. In this place where he dismantled the woman she was and rebuilt someone new. A creature of desire and darkness, suffused with only one need.
Him. This. Them.
He didn’t bring her down gently this time, didn’t take the time to soothe or distract her with drugging, lavish kisses, or to croon sweet words against her flushed skin. His hand left her only for a moment as his hips levered away.
And then it was there. Thick and hot and pulsing.
The crown of his cock brushed her sex and she bloomed like a garden of summer roses. She’d yet to regain her breath before he thrust forward, filling her with a sensation so infinitely wonderful, it unstitched her at her very core.
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