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

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “Prudence, don’t you dare move! What have you done?”

  When had her father come in? She should be relieved, shouldn’t she? He’d know what to do.

  She lifted the knife to show him. Someone had stuck it into the place George’s shoulder had met his neck. This long, long, long knife. All the way in. Why would they do that? Where had they gone?

  It was so cold. So cold. And it had been so warm before in the crowded church. Warm enough to complain about it. They were both screaming at her. Making so much noise they could almost be heard over the bells. Wedding bells. Her wedding bells.

  It all clamored so loudly it was deafening, and yet also very far away. Bells and bellows. Her father shouting questions. William calling her every sort of name.

  Prudence tried to speak, but her throat wouldn’t allow it. Her tongue was stuck. Too dry.

  Why was she still holding the knife? Why couldn’t her fingers uncurl?

  George. What happened to you? She stared down at him, unable to blink. His long body remained face down where he’d landed. His skin no longer ruddy from drink, but white. Whiter than hers, even.

  Poor George. He’d been merry this morning. Insufferable and already drunk. And now…

  The door opened. A man entered.

  And the pandemonium stopped.

  Everyone obeyed his command for silence and, for the first time, Pru’s throat relaxed enough to allow a full breath. The sick sense of impending doom released the band around her ribs and her stomach stopped threatening to jump into her esophagus.

  Everything would be all right. He was here now. Even though the world was upside down, he would know how to put it right.

  Except… who was he?

  She couldn’t look away from the blood.

  “Prudence,” her father barked, as if he’d been saying her name for a long time. “This is Chief Inspector Sir Carlton Morley. You tell him everything, do I make myself clear?”

  “I don’t…want to hold this anymore,” she whimpered, unable to peel her fingers from around the knife. God it was so big. It had been stuck in George’s muscles.

  She moaned.

  “Let me have the knife, Miss Goode.” A deep, cultured voice came closer, and a hand covered with a white handkerchief relieved her of the weapon. She’d never been more grateful for anything in her life.

  “That’s one of our daggers!” Reverend Bentham exclaimed. “It’s a holy relic.”

  “It’s evidence, I’m afraid,” the Chief Inspector said. “You can request it back once this affair is settled.”

  That word. Affair. It made her want to cry.

  Gaining some strength, Prudence lifted her head and lost what was left of her breath.

  Those eyes.

  They had once been liquid for her behind a mask. They had watched her come apart.

  He’d made her come.

  Chief Inspector? There must be some mistake. He was…a stag. No, not that. A shadow. Or he had been on a night nearly three months ago.

  Pru gaped at him, dumbfounded, searching a face she’d committed to every corner of her memory.

  He was at once the same and yet vastly altered. His hair a shade lighter than gold in the gleam of the noon sun through the windowpane. His suit a somber grey. His jaw sharp, clean-shaven and locked at a dangerous angle.

  Her lover had been rumpled and dark, his hair the color of honey, or so she’d thought on a moonless night. He’d emanated sex and menace. Hard hunger and brutal masculinity.

  The Chief Inspector was all starch and serenity. A dapper, terse, and proper gentleman clad in a fine cut jacket with an infinite supply of decorum.

  But that strong jaw. The sinfully handsome features cut sharp as crystal and then blunted with the whisper of ruthlessness. All of this slashed clean through with a sardonic mouth.

  It was him.

  She was sure of it… wasn’t she? No one else had eyes so light, so incredibly elemental. Like the color of lightning over the Baltic Sea.

  Those eyes bored into her now. Flat, merciless, and unsympathetic. He regarded her as if she were the last person alive he wanted to see.

  As if she were lower than the earth upon which they’d sinned.

  If she’d any hope that this man would be her ally, it was dashed upon the rocky shards of his glare.

  “What happened here?” he asked her evenly.

  Pru felt her face crumple with confusion. He didn’t sound like himself. Where was the accent from before? Rough and low-born.

  She’d have recognized that accent anywhere.

  This man spoke like his betters. Was she going mad, perhaps? Was her desperation and shock so prescient that she’d summoned a memory and layered it over reality?

  “Prudence, you answer him,” her father barked.

  “I-I was waiting for Father to gather me for the ceremony,” she recounted, wanting to appease him. Needing to explain. It was so important he didn’t think she had anything to do with this. No one would really believe that she would commit murder, would they? “There was a knock on my door and a note pushed under,” she continued. “The note was from George.” She pointed at the dead man at her feet and immediately wished she hadn’t looked down.

  Oh God. She’d thought the wedding was the worst thing that would happen to her today. She’d never been so wrong in her life.

  How did so much blood belong in one body? How would she ever forget the sight of it? She doubted she could even look at her own veins the same way.

  “Look at me,” the inspector ordered. “What did the note say?”

  “That he had to see me. That he had to apologize.”

  “Apologize,” he echoed. “Had you reason to be angry with the Earl of Sutherland?”

  Her brow furrowed and she cast an accusatory look at him. “You know I did.”

  “How would he know?” her father demanded. “You’ve never been introduced.”

  A glint of warning frosted the inspector’s eyes impossibly colder. Don’t. It warned. Don’t ruin us both.

  “I meant…” Pru turned to her father. “Y-you did. I told you George was unfaithful, and you insisted I marry him regardless.”

  Her father, a powerful man with the build of a baker who enjoyed his own work, put up his hands against Morley’s attention. Such large hands for such fine white gloves. “It was little more than wild oats,” he defended George. “And Prudence has always been a romantic, fanciful creature. I wasn’t about to see her future ruined by rumor.”

  “It wasn’t rumor,” she argued, even though everything inside of herself told her not to. “Everyone knows George had bastards. He conducted a very public affair with Lady Jessica Morton. And yet you insisted I invite her to the wedding.”

  Why was she having this discussion covered in blood? When all she wanted to do was flee. Or fling herself into the inspector’s arms.

  She knew how strong they were. How capable they’d be of carrying the weight threatening to drag her beneath the surface of an ocean of despair and desperation.

  She had to tell him—

  “And so, you came to meet him before the ceremony,” the Chief Inspector prompted very gently, as if he were talking to a child. “You came to receive his apology. Then what? What did he say to make you angry?”

  She shook her head with such vehemence her eyes couldn’t keep up. The beautiful Chief Inspector became a golden blur. “Nothing! He said nothing. I opened the door and he was… like this.” She gestured to George’s body, unable to look down again. “Blood poured everywhere, the knife was already in his neck. He was rolling on the floor trying to pull it out, so I ran to him and tried to help. I was thinking if he took it out, it would bleed that much more. That maybe he should keep it in. I was trying to hold it.”

  “Nonsense, you’d put it there!” her brother-in-law accused, jabbing his finger toward her. William’s features were purple with rage, his thinning ashen hair stuck out in disarray. He wasn’t a large man, but he was tall, imposing.
And not for the first time, Pru wanted to shrink away from him.

  How did Honoria stand him?

  “I was trying to stop the bleeding.” She turned to Morley, beseeching him. “I know it was silly, I don’t know why I thought I could. But I had to try, didn’t I? He was dying. And finally, he dislodged the knife and blood sprayed…” She held out her arms to show him. “And he was gone.”

  “That’s not what it looked like when I came in,” William hissed through his disorganized teeth. “She was pushing the knife into his struggling body. He was thrashing about and she was sliding it into his neck.”

  “I never!”

  “If the Earl took the knife out of his own neck, how did you come to be holding it?” The Chief Inspector held his hand up against further comment from William while he assessed her from deep set narrowed eyes.

  His suspicion lancing through her like a spear thrown by an Olympian.

  Don’t you remember me? she wanted to ask him. In the middle of this lake of blood. All she wanted was to go to him. He had to understand why—

  “Honoria told me you hated him,” William continued after an embarrassingly wet sniff. Was he crying? Of course he was, his best friend had just been killed.

  Shouldn’t she be crying? She felt tears somewhere, a threat to her distant future when she wasn’t so numb. So cold and confused.

  William continued his relentless assault. “She told me that you wept yourself to sleep last night at the thought of being his wife.”

  Yes, she’d wept plenty over the past few months. Perhaps she was empty now. Honoria had been right, but why had she told her husband? Why did it seem like her sister continuously betrayed her?

  Prudence shook her head again, fearing she looked like a lunatic. “I don’t know. I must have taken it from him. But, I didn’t do this. I didn’t kill him. I needed him! If I had the will or the stomach for murder, I would have poisoned him. I would have been clever. I certainly wouldn’t have waited for my wedding day. I wouldn’t have gotten all this blood on my dress…”

  “Your dress is the least of your problems, you conniving bitch!” William lunged forward and Morley caught him.

  “That’s enough out of you.” Morley’s voice was hard as he flattened his forearm against William’s neck and shoved him against the wall. He jabbed his finger within a breath of William’s eye. “You leave this room and walk one door over to the right. There, you will sit and wait for me, do I make myself clear?”

  William nodded, his anger turning to fear in the face of such authority.

  That dealt with, Morley turned to her father. “Sir, I understand this is delicate, that the suspect is your daughter, but you’re aware you’ll have to be excused from this room, as you cannot be an impartial part of this inquest or this arrest.”

  Arrest? He was going to arrest her?

  Her father ran a trembling hand through his shock of white hair. “I’m going for our solicitor.”

  Morley nodded. “I think that’s best.”

  Her father’s shaking hand followed the length of his beard to his sternum. “For the sake of our department, Morley. Our reputation. If you take her to the Yard, I want it done quietly, do you hear me? I will not be humiliated more than needs be. Her innocence will be proven quickly enough.”

  Tears finally pricked her eyes. Her father. Her stern, distant, self-aggrandizing father believed her at least. Believed in her.

  Morley glared over at her, but this time his gaze lifted no further than the blood on her pearlescent gown. “That remains to be seen.”

  Pru wanted to bury her head in her hands and cry. She almost did. But remembered the blood in time. She might have lost what was left of her wits if she’d smeared it on her face.

  Morley stepped to her father and put a hand on his elbow. “She’ll be taken quietly. You have my word. You should inform the guests of the death, but not the murder… none of the details need be made public. And I think you’ll need to control your son-in-law.”

  “Honoria will see to that,” her father stated with absolute faith.

  Honoria controlled everything she possibly could.

  Her father turned to Pru and she locked eyes with the man she’d desperately tried to please her entire life.

  And she saw what broke her heart.

  Doubt.

  He might claim to believe her, but he didn’t in his heart.

  “What am I going to tell your mother?”

  He left before she could answer, taking the hand-wringing reverend with him.

  And they were alone.

  Pru looked down, locking her knees to keep from going to him. From prostrating herself in front of this stranger.

  So much blood.

  She’d been so proud of this dress. She’d loved it. And now… it was all she could do not to rip the blasted thing off and throw it in the fireplace.

  They stared at each other for a silent eternity, and when she could bear it no longer, she took a step forward.

  “Prudence Goode,” he stated blandly. “I’m arresting you under the suspicion of the murder of George Hamby-Forsyth, Earl of Sutherland.”

  “It’s you. I know it’s you. I’ve been looking everywhere since that night—”

  “I told you to leave him,” he said furiously, stabbing a finger at the body of her would-be husband. “I ordered you that night, and here you are.”

  “I know.” Her miserable heart shriveled away from him.

  “Did you do it?” he asked, his eyes snapping with constrained anger. “Did you kill him?”

  “No! I just told you what happened. He was already—”

  He held a hand up, turning half away as if he couldn’t stand to look at her before he gathered himself and faced her with a greater sense of calm.

  “Tell me the truth,” he said with more restraint. “And this could be one more secret between us. Tell me now and I’ll do everything in my power to keep you from the gallows…”

  Pru stared at him incredulously. He didn’t believe her. He truly didn’t think she was innocent. Her heart dropped like a stone. This man… this stranger who knew her more intimately than anyone in the world. This dream lover who’d treated her with more care than anyone in her life…

  He thought she was a murderer.

  “I won’t go to the gallows,” she said stoically. “I don’t need your help.”

  “Like hell—”

  “They won’t hang a woman in my condition.” Her hand went to her waist. This had been her secret. Not the murder.

  His mouth opened soundlessly, and his fists curled shut as he stared at her for a multitude of shocked moments. “You’re…pregnant?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “And the child is yours.”

  Chapter 6

  Morley retreated to his office on the third floor of Scotland Yard and stared at nothing for the space of an entire hour. His mind churned almost as sickeningly as his stomach.

  Disbelief warred with distrust over acres of despair within him. And within that bleak, vast landscape a tiny pinprick of light pierced him.

  A child? His child?

  Had he ever dared to hope for such a miracle?

  Did he believe her…about any of it?

  How often had he fantasized about finding her? This goddess he’d met in the night. How many times had he wondered if he’d passed beneath her window without even knowing?

  And, once again, she’d exploded into his life.

  Covered in blood. Quite probably a murderer. And carrying a baby…

  Christ, could this situation get any worse?

  A sound drew his attention to the door, and Morley looked up to see the most vicious, notorious pirate since Blackbeard saunter in with his hat tilted at a jaunty angle.

  The man had come up with him in the East End as Dorian Blackwell, but a brush with death and a bout of amnesia had shucked the identity from him. Since they’d parted after Caroline’s death, he had been christened The Rook on his pirate ship, but had r
ecently married and subsequently shucked his murderous moniker for a brand-new one. Ashton Weatherstoke, the erstwhile Earl of Southbourne.

  Known to his friends simply as Ash.

  “Can you believe that wedding?” Ash tugged at the collar he wore impossibly high to cover the scars left by the lye meant to dissolve his body in the mass grave he’d crawled out of twenty odd years ago.

  Morley stood to shake his hand, grateful for a friendly face on this, the rottenest moment of his adult life. They’d come so far from their days as street rats together, but some things never changed, like the man’s impossible sardonic wit.

  “I wasn’t aware you were invited,” Morley said. “I didn’t see you there.”

  Ash smirked. “Oh, I was and declined the boring invitation, but it’s all over London in the space of three hours. An Earl falling over dead at his own wedding? Whispers of foul play? What a bloody debacle, eh, Cutter?”

  Morley lunged past his friend and slammed his door closed, whirling on the unfashionably tanned and brawny man who wore a smart suit as loosely as his devil-may-care smirk.

  “I told you never to call me that,” he snarled.

  The smile widened to that of a shark’s. “It’s your name, isn’t it?” He held up his hands against the onslaught of irritation burning from Morley’s glare. “I’m sorry, I’ve tried, but I can’t call you Carlton with a straight face.” These last words were strained through a chuckle as if to elucidate his point.

  “Call me Morley, then, everyone else does.” He returned to his desk to straighten the papers he’d upset in his haste, arranging them into tidy piles. One in need of signatures. One in need of written correspondence. One in need of dissemination to his clerk as signatures and replies had already been made.

  Amidst all the chaos, he needed order. He needed it to think. To decide what to do next.

  He needed to control the outcome.

  What he didn’t need was interruptions, even in the form of just-discovered long-lost best mates with murderous reputations of their own.

  “Debacle,” he muttered. “Doesn’t even begin to describe what happened this morning.” Looking up, he leaned on his desk with both fists, too agitated to sit down. What word could he possibly use? Catastrophe? Disaster? Nothing seemed quite strong enough.