With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  He threw his body weight down on the crowbar and tipped the lid aside before wading into the shavings of protective packaging. “Why do they even allow Barons to keep titles, anyhow?” he said as though muttering to himself. “They’re hardly needed these days, it’s not the Middle Ages. And your father, debasing himself with this shipping venture to make his fortunes, only to remain so miserly with his stipends.” His lip curled in disgust. “A tighter bankbook doesn’t exist in Christendom. Where is it!” In a shocking explosion of temper, he pushed over an entire crate. Prudence cringed away as it splintered, spilling an array of silks that unspooled in a riot of color.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked, hoping to keep him talking as the knot at her right hand finally gave enough for her to slip through it, rendering the other one useless.

  Still, she kept her hands behind her back.

  “Payment for the risk I took,” he snarled. “Payback! I’ve a barge waiting at the end of the dock, and we’ll be out to sea before we’re missed with a crate full of cash.”

  “If this is about money…”

  “Of course, it’s about money!” he roared “Every bloody thing is about money these days. Birth and titles and blue blood mean nothing anymore in this churning, blasphemous machine that is our nation now. What happened to the nobility?”

  She leveled him her coolest stare. “Are you acting nobly now, William?”

  “Don’t question me, you sanctimonious cow.” He struck her with the back of his hand, wrenching her neck to the side. Pain singed her cheek and brought tears to her eyes.

  An explosion shattered the very next moment.

  Prudence managed to look back in time to see one of the men nearest a window drop to the crate he’d been bent over.

  Missing the top of his head.

  She covered her open mouth with both of her hands to contain the scream bubbling up from inside of her. It escaped as a raw, strangled sound.

  Another crack resounded through the warehouse, shattering the window beside where a grizzled man reached for his weapon.

  The bullet sheared through his neck.

  Pandemonium erupted outside the warehouse as day laborers and dock workers scattered at the unmistakable sounds of a rifle.

  Prudence was sorry for their fright, even as her chest expanded with elated, overjoyed relief.

  He was here. Her Knight of Shadows.

  He’d come for her.

  William dropped the crowbar and drew his pistol as he and the two remaining men scrambled to find from which shadow the gunman fired.

  “Don’t fucking stand at the windows, you bloody imbeciles!” he screeched.

  The hired thugs took longer than was wise to recover after the initial volley, and Morley was able to clip the wing of a third man before they scrambled to take cover behind the very crates they’d been searching.

  A deafening barrage of bullets pinged everywhere from the floor to the few skylights above. Prudence dropped to her knees, covering her head with her hands as slivers of splintered wood rained down on her.

  Eventually, they ran out.

  Her heart skipped several beats in the eerie silence that followed.

  Had they gotten him? Had they shot the man she loved? Her one hope at salvation?

  Right when happiness was in their grasp?

  The sound of glass breaking behind them stole their attention to the far end of the warehouse by the loading bay. One more man dropped to his death before the echoes of the gun blast finished rebounding in her head.

  “William,” she hissed, tucking her legs beneath her so she could loosen the rope around her boots. “Let me go now, or this will end very badly for you.” Her foot popped free on the last syllable, roughening it with strain.

  He opened the cylinder of his pistol and shoved his shaking hand in his vest pocket, extracting two bullets and angling them into the chambers. “Do you really think it’s wise to threaten me?”

  “I’m not threatening you, I’m warning you,” she cried. “My husband was a long-distance rifleman in the army. He’s going to shoot every man in this room. He’s going to kill you.”

  “Not before I kill you.”

  Prudence spied the crowbar he’d dropped next to a container and lunged for it, hoping to get it before he had the chance to reload that gun.

  He surged up, caught her by the hair, and wrenched her back against him, using her as a human shield.

  The cold kiss of the pistol against her temple matched the metallic taste of fear in her mouth.

  “Either we both get out of this alive. Or neither of us will,” he yelled to the unseen gunman before whispering to her. “Not that you deserve to live.”

  He dragged her so his back was against the stone wall, clutching her to his front with an arm locked around her neck.

  Any tighter and she’d choke.

  “I didn’t kill George,” she panted, both hands pulling at his arm to keep her throat from being compressed. “I swear. There’s no reason to hurt me.”

  “I’ve known that all along, you idiot cunt. Who do you think plunged the knife through his neck?”

  Shock sent Prudence’s limbs completely slack.

  It made sense. William had found her. He’d been so keen to point the finger at her.

  Because it got him off, scot-free.

  “He was…your—your closest friend!” she cried.

  “The friend who fucked my wife.” Hatred dropped like acid from his words.

  “What?”

  “Don’t be too sore at Honoria,” he said in a voice as dry as sawdust. “She had her scruples. When I told her I was going to set up a match between you and George, she protested most ferociously. Until finally I sussed out why. She was bending over for him at least three times a month. It disgusted and disturbed her, to think of her lover fucking her sister.”

  Prudence fought for breath, her panic flaring to a fever pitch as they neared the doors out to the docks. Honoria? And George? The betrayal of her sister sliced through her worse than any pain George might have caused her.

  “I told her if you ever found out about them, I’d ruin you in a way she hadn’t yet conceived of. And she knew me well enough to believe me.”

  “But, I’ve done nothing to you,” Pru said in a broken voice.

  He’d finally made it to the far corner of the warehouse, and he dared to peek up to see if he could open the door without a hand blowing off.

  The air remained still but for the clamor outside. “All wars have collateral damage, I’m afraid.” His voice echoed off the cold stone walls. “Besides, you deserve it now. That bloody husband of yours has been getting in my way. Confiscating my goods. Arresting my brokers and interrupting my supply chain all to clear your name.”

  “The cocaine,” she realized aloud. “You were smuggling it in my father’s ships?”

  He let out a long-suffering sigh. “I care not for the stuff,” he said. “I was going to boil the frog slowly, establish the vulgar shipments to smuggle in goods, make a tidy fortune. Then, tip off the police so the Baron would be arrested. George too, as I forged his name on the papers. And I’d walk away with your father’s wealth as well.”

  “But you killed him instead? On our wedding day?”

  He made a noise of derision. “Did you know, by the time you were to marry, George was actually besotted with you? That he was thinking of trying at being a decent man. That’s when I knew, he didn’t get to claim happiness. None of them get to. And I ended him. Now open the fucking door.”

  She reached out and fumbled with the latch, her fingers weak and cold from lack of blood. Wait, she paused. “None of whom?”

  “The men my slag of a wife fucked beneath my own roof!” he roared.

  Prudence froze. “The Stags of St. James,” she whispered.

  “Whores!” Panic and rage, it seemed, was making him maniacal. “My wife paid whores. They defamed her. They turned her into a creature of vile lusts and tempted her to stray. Men lik
e them, like George, cunning and handsome and charismatic.”

  “So you…murdered them?”

  “If only to make her pay twice. Thrice, even. She had bruises where no one can see. She has wounds that will never heal. I made sure of it. But still she wouldn’t keep to my bed. She didn’t obey me. She didn’t fear me! And so, she forced my hand. I’ve put every man who touched my wife into the ground. As a warning to her…she has no ground to run to, not even after we make our getaway. I’ll come for her. I will—”

  “Why not take me now?” The door swung open, and the gun ground into Prudence’s head with devastating force.

  At the sound of Honoria’s voice, William cinched his arm so tight, little stars danced in Prudence’s periphery as she fought for breath.

  Honoria stood at the doorway draped in gingham and cream silk, her features almost serene in their perfection. Her beauty a beacon in the chaos of blood, bodies, and broken glass.

  Prudence clawed at William’s arm, trying to warn her sister, to scream her name.

  Honoria only shook her head. “William. Is all this really necessary? Could you not have just taken me with you today, instead?”

  “Honoria,” he choked out, his hold slackening a little. “You came.”

  “Of course I did,” she said with a coy roll of her eyes. “You’re my husband. Do you think I would have let you get away?”

  The sound he made was pure anguish and abject joy.

  It disgusted Pru, who couldn’t help but search the doorway for another shadow. For the man who could come put an end to the horror.

  He was here. He’d already leveled the entire field. But…where was he now? What could he do?

  “Go, Honoria,” Pru pleaded. “He’s mad.”

  Her sister never broke eye contact with her husband. “He knows exactly what he’s doing. He always does, don’t you, husband?” She held a hand out, the elegant fingers steady and coaxing. “Now let us leave here, together.”

  “The money,” he said, in the voice of a plaintive boy. “It’s not in the blasted crate it was supposed to be in. I haven’t found it yet.”

  “Because I seized it last night.”

  At the sound of Morley’s seemingly disembodied voice, William cocked the pistol at Prudence’s temple, drawing a shameful whimper from her.

  No, Morley hadn’t seized the money. He’d been with her all night. Why was he lying? Why would he upset the man with the gun to her head?

  “Don’t you dare, Inspector,” William crowed. “I’m taking the boat and crossing the channel. These two are my tickets out of Blighty, do you understand?”

  “That is where you’re wrong,” said the shadows. “You’re not taking one more step.”

  “Or what, eh? Do you want me to paint the floor with her brains?”

  “William, no,” Honoria pleaded, her façade of composure cracking. “She’s pregnant. I know you wouldn’t kill a child.”

  “It seems I picked the wrong sister,” a disgusted William hissed in her ear. “Honoria’s dry and barren as the Sahara, and frigid as the Arctic.”

  “Only toward you,” she said in a voice gone flat as death. “I made certain your seed never took root, but none of my other lovers found me cold.”

  William’s entire body tensed, and for a moment, Prudence knew it was over. Time slowed to a fraction of its pace, and the greatest regret she could muster in her last moment was that she wouldn’t get to see her beloved husband’s face before the end.

  A tear escaped her as she squeezed her eyes shut.

  He jerked, and a shot detonated, the pain lancing the side of her head with a searing agony she’d not expected to feel before the end. Another shot blasted. And another.

  The weight of his arm around her throat immediately released and she screamed in a long breath.

  I’m…alive, was her first thought. But the pain…had she even been shot?

  More puzzled than shocked, Pru opened her eyes in time to witness the immediate aftermath.

  William’s gun was no longer aimed at her head, but forward, before his hand went slack and the weapon clattered to the ground.

  Honoria’s eyes swung to hers and they held for a moment as the only sound Prudence could hear was the air screaming with one insufferable monosyllabic note.

  The pain was only in her ear, because the pistol had discharged next to it.

  A starburst of red appeared on Honoria’s buttercream bodice right above her heart.

  They both stared down at the bullet wound in her sister’s chest as William’s body slumped to the ground, a puddle of blood rushing beneath her boots.

  Her husband had killed him, but not before William had taken a shot at his own wife.

  Prudence’s scream echoed from far away as she launched herself forward, hoping to catch her sister before the woman’s buckling legs failed her.

  Chapter Twenty

  Dorian Blackwell swooped inside, catching Honoria in his arms as she slumped forward.

  Prudence panicked at the dire look he gave her as he lifted Honoria with a grunt and swept her from the warehouse, out onto the planked unloading dock.

  Prudence scrambled after them, daylight blinding her as she seized her sister’s hand and brought it to her cheek.

  “Honoria! No. Oh, please. Can you hear me?” she cried as Blackwell gingerly settled her sister down flat on the planks of the dock and ripped her petticoats to create a bandage. He shoved it into Prudence’s hands and guided her to press down on the bullet wound with brutal pressure.

  “Keep this here,” he ordered before he surged to his feet and left them. “Don’t move.”

  Pru couldn’t imagine how terrible the pain of a bullet was, but Honoria’s eyes merely fluttered, her features draining from pale to a ghostly shade.

  “Don’t go. Don’t go,” Pru pleaded with her sister. “Not when you’re finally safe. Finally rid of him.”

  Honoria’s dark eyes opened and caught hers for a moment, flooded with some awful emotion she couldn’t identify. Her lips moved, but the pressure and ringing in Prudence’s ears still impeded her from hearing such breathy tones.

  “I can’t hear you. Dammit. I can’t hear you,” she lamented.

  Honoria’s bloodless lips moved more deliberately, her porcelain features pinched with pain. “I’m sorry. I should have told you…I…was afraid…”

  “Shh. Shh. Shh.” Prudence wanted to smooth her hair, but she dared not let up on the pressure of her wound. “Honoria, I didn’t know what he was. What he was doing to you. No wonder you strayed. I’m not angry about George. Please don’t blame yourself. Just—Just be well.”

  “I love you,” her sister murmured through her tears, and Prudence was glad to note enough of her hearing had returned that she could make out the words. “We don’t say any of that, do we? We Goodes. But I do. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” Pru said, tears leaking from the tip of her nose. “I will for a long time so don’t start saying that like you mean goodbye.”

  “You are a wonderful sister. And I…I’m not…”

  Prudence looked up at the almost-deserted docks, noting some brave souls began to push themselves away from the places behind which they’d taken shelter. “Send for an ambulance!” she shrieked at them.

  “I’ve done one better,” Dorian said, leading men back toward them. They set down two poles and spread a canvas material between them, presumably erecting a makeshift stretcher. “There’s a sawbones not two streets over I’ve used for a decade to dig bullets out of men who don’t want questions asked at hospitals.”

  “Absolutely not!”

  Despite her near-hysteria, his features softened as he regarded her. “Lady Morley, I’ve seen a lot of wounds like this. It’s unlikely to be fatal if we get her immediate care and cleaning. Allow me to—”

  “I will allow you nothing,” she threw her body over her sister’s, bracing her weight on her hands. “You will get an ambulance and she will be taken to a hospital,
not some underworld sawbones. I’ll not have it!”

  Blackwell made a sound of impatient consternation. “Where is your husband, I wonder?”

  “He was supposed to wait for us.” The man she recognized as Millie LeCour’s husband, Argent, peered into the doorway and took stock of the significant carnage inside. “He didn’t leave aught for us to do but clean up the corpses.” If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought he sounded plaintive.

  As if he were looking forward to the violence.

  “I suggest you get to it then.” A voice from above drew their notice, and they all looked to the roof of the warehouse where Morley stood against the slate grey sky.

  Of course. He hadn’t been shooting in through the windows. At least not the ones on the ground floor. He’d somehow scaled the building to the second or third floors and shot down through the smaller portals above. He’d have had to navigate the sharp angle of the roof and steady himself on precarious perches to shoot from such angles at such distances into the dimness.

  His skill was nothing short of miraculous.

  Morley dropped his rifle down to Argent, and then deftly levered himself over the edge of the roof, controlling his drop with only the strength of his arms until his feet were far enough from the ground to drop into a crouch.

  He scanned the area, his gaze skipping right over Prudence as he stood and adjusted his cravat that had gone only slightly askew through the entire ordeal.

  “Morley,” Blackwell held up his hands helplessly, though he was no longer armed. “You know Conleith; he’s more than an adequate surgeon.”

  “Titus Conleith?” Morley’s sharp jaw hitched as he stalked toward them with the predatory grace of a jungle cat. “That Irish devil dug more bullets out of more soldiers than any man alive. He could do it blindfolded.”

  Prudence didn’t budge, something inside her had snapped. “This is no battlefield surgeon’s tent,” she hissed. “This is my sister and—”

  “Titus Conleith?” Honoria astonished them all by breathing out the name in a ragged sob. She clutched at Prudence with clawlike fingers. “Take me to him,” she begged. “Take me to him, now. You must let them, Pru,” she said, her eyes overflowing with desperate tears. “You must.”