Seducing a Stranger: Goode Girls Book 1 and Victorian Rebels Book 7 (A Goode Girls Romance)

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “Understatement, but go on.” Farah narrowed her eyes.

  He turned to Ash. “Do you remember what Caroline looked like?”

  The man’s lashes swept down. “Yes, but I don’t know what that has to do with—”

  “Face like a fucking saint, she had,” Morley pressed on. “Eyes wide enough to contain all the innocence in the entire world.”

  Ash’s lip twitched at a fond memory. “Yes, and the brilliant girl could steal bacon from a bloodhound and get away with it.”

  “Precisely.” Morley turned back to Farah to elucidate. “My wife is the loveliest creature I may ever have the opportunity to envision in my lifetime. She’s radiant and sweet-natured and wise and I enjoy nothing so much as her presence. But, doesn’t that make for the perfect swindler? How can she ask me to trust her when I don’t know her?”

  Farah’s brow crimped with concern as she contemplated his words. “You’ve lived with her for weeks. Surely you have some idea of her character now.”

  “Do we ever really know anyone?” he asked as defensiveness spilled over into ire. “I’ve arrested criminals who’ve been married for decades, to the absolute astonishment of their spouses. Besides, I’m not one of you idle rich with nothing better to do than lounge and travel and revel in each other. I’m kept rather busy tasked with the safety of the city and all, and then I’ve an entirely different vocation in the evenings. When have I possibly had the time—”

  “Oh please,” Ash snorted with distinctive derision. “I’ve killed men who’ve tried to feed me half the horseshit you just did, Morley.”

  “Make the time,” Farah interjected firmly. “For both your sakes. Because I’ve met your wife all but twice and I’d take the stand to profess her innocence tomorrow. Not only that, but it’s patently clear she might be the loneliest woman I have ever known.”

  Morley jerked, taken aback. “What do you mean?

  Farah regarded him with rank skepticism. “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

  “Pretend I’m an idiot.”

  A chortle erupted from the man at his side. “Why the need for pretense?”

  Forgetting her indignation, or maybe just taking immense pity on him, Farah glided over and placed her hand on arms he hadn’t realized he’d crossed.

  “Morley, she’s lost her entire family and reputation to this scandal. Her father might be a criminal. Her fiancé died in front of her. Her sisters are hardly allowed to speak to her. She was deceived by her best friend and her elder sister. And then… her husband abandons her in a strange home with nothing but stress to occupy her thoughts while she’s pregnant with his child. A stranger’s child. And a stranger you seem determined to remain. How can you make it impossible to get to know each other, and then punish her for it?”

  Sufficiently chastised, he hung his head. “I always wanted to be a husband, but I think I waited so long because a part of me knew I’d mangle it.”

  “Oh, ballocks.” In a rare show of the affection they once shared, Ash bumped his shoulder with his own. “You are the best of us, Morley. Always were. But you’re prioritizing doing the right thing in front of being a good man, and thereby getting in your own way. That’s all.”

  “She loves you, I think,” Farah said.

  Morley’s head snapped up to catch her dimples appearing in a knowing smile. “I don’t believe a woman can be as hurt by mere words unless she’s opened her heart to that pain.”

  It was the second time the word had been uttered tonight. A word he never before dared to contemplate.

  “And we loved her too,” she finished, patting his arm. “I’m glad you came, now home to your wife. She’s desperate to hear from you.”

  At her words he went instantly alert. “Go home? I’m here to take her home.”

  Doubt clouded Farah’s soft grey eyes. “Morley…she left nigh an hour ago.”

  He seized her shoulders, panic landing like a stone in his gut, squeezing the blood from his veins. “An hour? Did you see her leave? Which way did she turn? Did she hire a hansom?”

  “I confess I was busy with other details when she said goodbye.” Anxiety crept into her eyes as well. “Do you have any reason to think she’s in danger?”

  He wanted to say no, but something didn’t allow it. “She’s fainted once already and what with the investigation into her father…the story in the papers today…I don’t know. I sense peril.”

  Next to him, Ash’s rangy frame tensed beneath his fine suit. “Those aren’t instincts you should ignore, Cutter. Go back to your house, tear it apart, I’ll look around here and we’ll rally if she’s not found immediately.”

  “I’ll ask Dorian,” Farah said, visibly shaken. “He disappeared some time ago; I think he’s hiding with Trenwyth.”

  Morley clapped Ash on the shoulder before he launched himself from the landing and down the stairs to the road. He ran the mile home flat out with lung-bursting speed. He juked about pedestrians and dove behind and around carriages to the stunned approbation of many a driver.

  He didn’t care. Nothing mattered. He would tear the city apart. Hell, he’d burn it to the ground to find her. He’d dismantle every brick. Scorch every spire. Everything that’d ever mattered to him fell away in her absence, exposing exactly what she’d become to him in this short amount of time.

  Did he fear for his unborn child? Of course, he did. But it was her name echoing in every footfall. Prudence. His wife. His woman.

  As he rounded the corner to his own street, he allowed himself to slow at the sight of a familiar coach idling in front of the golden brick terraces. He felt the fear leach out of him with each panting breath when he found his wife standing on their porch, staring at him as if he were a wolf loose in the middle of town.

  “Morley,” Dorian Blackwell greeted him from the carriage window with the seemingly disembodied head and conceited smile of a Cheshire cat. “I’ve just spent the most entertaining hour with your lovely wife.”

  The adrenaline still surging through him mixed with a knee-weakening sense of relief as Morley tried to lock eyes with Prudence. Instead of allowing it, she gave him her back to let herself in the house, closing the door behind her with a fatal click.

  Morley fell on Blackwell like a rabid dog. “Where the fuck have the two of you been for an hour? I just came from Trenwyth Place, where Farah is looking for you. If I didn’t know how absolute your devotion to your wife is, I’d pull you out of that carriage and beat you to death for being alone with mine.”

  To his surprise, Blackwell’s smile widened as he held up his hands. “Hardly alone, I conducted my sisters-in-law, Lady Ravencroft and Lady Thorne, to the Savoy where they are staying while in town from Scotland. I informed Farah thusly before we left.”

  The very plausible explanation stole the wind from his sails.

  “Yes, well…she did not mark you.”

  “We’ll blame that on her third glass of wine,” Blackwell chuckled fondly.

  Morley scowled, rippling with displeasure. “Why didn’t you drop Prudence here first? This is rather out of your way.”

  “It was upon her request.” Blackwell’s one uncovered eye flicked a meaning-laden glance toward the ominously closed door. “If I’m honest, she wasn’t in any great haste to go home.”

  Morley stood on his walk feeling like the war banner of a defeated army. Trampled. Torn asunder. And rather pointless anymore. He nodded his thanks to Blackwell, not feeling capable of forming kind words. “You might want to hurry back and tell Ash and your wife all is well,” he muttered.

  “Certainly.” After a hesitation, Blackwell leaned out the window. “I know killers, Morley. I am one. You are one. We can sense each other, I think. Surely you already know she is not.”

  The moment when the truth collided inside of him felt as though a thunderbolt had reached out of the sky and touched him. He suddenly knew what to do. He knew what to say.

  Blackwell continued, “If you want my advice—”

  �
�I don’t.” Morley pulled an abrupt about-face, and marched up the stairs to his home, hoping his wife hadn’t locked him out for good.

  Chapter 17

  Prudence had known he’d follow her. That he’d have much to say. She didn’t bother readying for bed as she felt no great need to confront him in a state of undress.

  She felt vulnerable enough.

  An acid taste crawled up the back of her throat, as she perched on the very edge of the mattress and laced her own fingers together in a painful clench at the sound of his footsteps coming down the hall.

  She regretted how she’d acted before. Even after the Ladies’ Aid Society had supported and encouraged her position…she still wished she’d have not lost her temper.

  She hadn’t exactly meant to tell the Ladies’ Aid Society matrons her story, but Farah Blackwell had taken one look at her upon arrival and swept her into a circle of the warmest and most extraordinary women, who all demanded to know what was wrong so they could help.

  Once she’d recounted everything in various shades of detail, Pru became surprised at just how eventful the past three or so months had been. No wonder she felt as deflated as a collapsed souffle. No wonder she’d been so unaccountably upset this afternoon.

  Shame oiled her insides as she thought about the intimacy of the confession Morley had shared before their row. His sister was a protected and painful secret. His avenging of her death a susceptible concession for a man such as he.

  He’d handed her the power to destroy him, and she’d whipped him with it.

  After her ire had cooled…she’d had to admit he’d made some salient points. Even though the points skewered her through with injustice and agonizing distress.

  She knew they needed to have a discussion, that she needed to make concessions just as much as he did. However, she couldn’t bring herself to do it tonight. Not now, when she felt as though her entire being, both inside and out, was just one taut, brittle nerve flayed open and exposed.

  Though she expected it, she still jumped at his gentle knock.

  Closing her eyes against the dread, she silently pled. Please, I can take no more. Not tonight.

  The door opened, and she knew she should stand and face him, that she should gather up her reserves of strength and determination, notch her chin high, and meet him will for strong will until they overcame their problem.

  But, everything at the moment seemed as insurmountable as Mount Kilimanjaro. Producing tears would be a chore, let alone peeling herself off the bed.

  She tensed as he neared, her eyes unable to lift above the carpet as she focused on steeling what was left of herself for this. For him.

  He stood in front of her for a fraught and silent moment, and when she couldn’t bring herself to lift her head, he did something that took her breath.

  He knelt like a penitent on the carpet before her, reached out, and covered her clenched hands with his own. The contact thawed her frigid fingers, unleashing tendrils of warmth that radiated up her arms to ignite the tiniest glow of hope into her shivering heart.

  “I’m going to tell you something, Prudence, and I don’t require a response. In fact…” he hesitated. “It would be better if you just let me bungle through it, as we both know I will.”

  She swallowed in reply, staring down at his large hands. At once so masculine and elegant, so capable and so brutal.

  His voice was paradoxically decisive and uncertain, but it lacked the harshness of before. It contained a hoarse note too tame for desperation and too bleak for nonchalance.

  Composure, it seemed, eluded them both.

  “Deceit has been a relentless part of my entire life,” he began, dousing a bit of her hopes. Tempting her to curl in upon herself like a salted snail.

  But she didn’t move.

  And he didn’t stop.

  “The only things I remember of my parents, are the lies they used to hurt each other with. When my father died, Caroline and I survived only through dishonest means. Everything we had could be taken by a craftier thief, a better con artist. It was the game we learned to play on the streets. After she…after I…” He broke off, filling his chest with an endless inhale as he pressed his thumbs into the grip of her fists as if he could likewise penetrate her closed heart.

  Prudence relaxed her grip incrementally, doing her best to allow her insides to mirror the action. To open. To hear him.

  “My parents never documented our birth, so I had no papers. I read the name Carlton off an advertisement for the Carlton Football Club posted on the building next to the military office where I joined up.” He made a rueful noise, shaking his head at the younger man. “Another lie I told, one I thought would have no consequences because I fully intended to die in some hole on another continent somewhere. I never thought I’d live to see England again. Instead, I shot a swath through entire countries. Killing for an empire that fabricates falsehoods and misrepresentations to the world as if words like humanity and honor do not exist in the face of progress and expansion. And then…”

  He turned her hands palm up to caress the delicate lines there with his thumbs as he continued. “I became a police officer, of all things. And I implore you to find me a vocation wherein someone is confronted with more deception. Not only do criminals lie to me for every kind of reason, but regular, frightened, generally honest people do as well, merely for what I am and the authority I wield. My subordinates consistently report errors and embellishments, and many of them, apparently, use the uniform for criminal enterprise.”

  He crept closer on his knees, powerful thighs bunching and straining against his trousers as he entreated her to hear him. “So much of my day-to-day life is spent unraveling untruths and investigating inaccuracies. I see them everywhere, and because of that, I think I’ve come to expect them from everyone.”

  “I understand,” she murmured, as a sense of sympathy infiltrated her gloom. Such a life was not easy, such a mindset awfully arduous and burdensome. “You’re telling me this is why you are unable to trust.”

  He gathered her hands to his chest as he brought their gazes even. Anchoring them against his pounding heart, he placed a fingertip beneath her jaw, nudging her to look up at him. Something shone in his gaze she’d never marked before. A gentle contrition. The glimmer of vulnerability. “Sweetheart. I’m telling you why I’ve been a fool. An unmitigated bastard. Prudence…I’m sorry.”

  She would have sworn her heart ceased beating if not for the thrumming in her ears. Had she heard him correctly? Or was she fantasizing this?

  Had she fainted again?

  Her gaze flew to his, searching for signs that she was truly going mad.

  “You…don’t have to—”

  “I do,” he insisted, his visage claimed by an emotion both desolate and resolute. “The truth is, I don’t know you like a man should know his wife, but that is my failing, not yours. Beyond that, I think you are an honest person, possessed of integrity I’ve only ever pretended to have.”

  She stalled, blinking over at him in wonder. “You do?”

  His features softened as he regarded her with such infinite tenderness, she felt as though it might melt her completely. “Yes. You’re so open and vulnerable. You tell me everything you’re thinking. You tell me what you want, and what you feel and what you know to be true. Hell, that very first night, your shocking candidness was the first thing that drew me to you. From the beginning of it all…I’ve been inclined to believe every word from your mouth.”

  The mouth he referred to fell open in abject incredulity. “Then…why?”

  “Because everyone—literally everyone else—is a liar, including me, and with that, I have made my peace. But Prudence,” he brushed his thumb up her jaw, his eyes touching her face everywhere, searching for something. “You are the one person who can truly betray me, do you understand?”

  She tilted her neck, pulling away from his distracting touch to shake her head with incomprehension.

  “You’re going to ma
ke me say it,” he realized wryly, giving the impression of a boy squirming beneath a scolding adult’s insistence he explain himself. The electric blue of his eyes disappeared as he hid his expression behind his lids. “You are the epitome of every desire or dream I’ve conceived of since before I can remember, and that is a very specific kind of torment. An unparalleled beauty, a superb lover, a woman of grace and kindness and intellect whom I can only respect and admire. A fantasy in the flesh, here in my house. With my name.”

  He lifted his empty hand to swipe it through his hair. “Christ, sometimes I have to just stand in the hall and stare at the door you sleep behind because I cannot believe my luck, my undeserved good fortune. You are here. You are real. And so is our child.”

  A sob escaped her. Not one adorned by tears, but disbelief. “But…” She didn’t even know where to start. A part of her had awakened at his words, the part made of need and love and hope and happiness. “But…only this morning you thought that I—You said—”

  “I know what I said.” His jaw tightened before he continued, his brow crimping with earnest anguish. “Trust is not a word I understand. Faith is a foreign concept to me. Despite that, my instincts have screamed at me to trust you.” His gaze cast down as his jaw worked over powerful emotion.

  “And then that insidious voice inside of me warns that if I did believe you, and then discovered you lied? That you’d somehow swindled me, possibly the most incredulous man alive. Well…I’ve survived any number of disappointments, treacheries, and sorrows. But I don’t see the way back from that. You could break me, Prudence, don’t you see? It’s why I’ve been pushing you so hard. Why I almost needed you to be guilty, so the terrible truth—if it was a truth—would be out. So it was safe to fall for you because you were just as dishonest as the entire world. Just as deceitful as me.”

  Prudence yearned to say so many things. To ask so many questions. To soothe him and set his churning mind at rest, but now that he’d begun, his torrent of words tumbled out in escape, like the freed captives of a heavily fortified prison.