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

by Kerrigan Byrne

“Do you really feel like this will help clear your name, Pru?” Mercy worried. “I don’t see what father’s business could possibly have had to do with Sutherland’s death.”

  “Probably nothing,” Prudence agreed, carefully filing the papers away in a case. “But if I can provide my husband means with which to further his investigation into the illegal goods being smuggled into the city—to find the truth about father—I think it’ll go a long way to establish trust between us.”

  Mercy sobered, a glimmer of doubt reaching through her eyes. “Pru…what if the truth is that our father is guilty? It would kill poor Mama. And…the rest of us would be ruined.”

  Prudence had abandoned the briefcase to gather her sister close. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that,” she soothed. “Our father is many things, but he is a principled, law-abiding man. I’m hoping the truth clears the Goode name. And, in the unlikely event my husband somehow uncovers his guilt…”

  Mercy stepped away, smoothing her smart plaid frock and adjusting her hair. “Like Detective Inspector Aloysius Frost says in his fourth novel, The Cheapside Strangler, ‘When the guilty escape justice, it is denied the innocent, as well.’” She wistfully locked the briefcase and handed it to her. “No matter how this plays out, Felicity and I will survive it. I mean…what’s the worst that could happen? We’re denied a season and end up as spinsters?” She shrugged. “Considering what you and Honoria are up against…I can’t say either of us are aching to be wed.”

  Pru could have cried, but instead she kissed Mercy on the cheek and rushed to Number Four Whitehall Place.

  She navigated the chaos of the infamous Scotland Yard with her briefcase clutched in hand, asking solicitous clerks, and a few gruff policemen, how to find the Chief Inspector’s office.

  Several minutes and four stories later, she stood in the hall adjacent him, admiring her husband at work.

  Prudence felt rather like an explorer on a safari, watching a magnificent beast in his native habitat.

  Unlike the holding cells and general rank pandemonium of the first and second floors—or the secrets in the basement, one of which she had recently been—men of all sorts and sizes crammed around desks here on the fourth. They filled the room with the bustle of the more intricate and intellectual side of crime enforcement.

  Men with important titles retained the line of offices along the wall, and Morley’s was the grandest.

  He propped the door open to accommodate the tide of active lawmen marching about like worker ants. At the moment, he scanned documents of two uniformed officers standing at attention as if in front of a brigadier general. Oddly enough, he appeared more comfortable and casual than she’d ever seen him. His shirt brilliant white, and cravat tight as ever, but he’d shucked his jacket as a concession to comfort in the crowded and close air of the top floor.

  Absorbed as he was, he didn’t seem to notice the distress of the officers when he reached for his pen, crossed something out, and corrected it in the margin. The younger one, a brawny but baby-faced chap, blinked several times as if he might dissolve into tears as his comrade’s shoulders slumped.

  Prudence sympathized.

  Another man in a somber suit and expensive hat barged into his office and Morley held up a finger, silencing him immediately without looking up.

  Upon finishing, he signed the paperwork at the bottom and handed it back to the officers. “This was excellent. You’re both to be commended.”

  The exaltation of the men brought a pleased smile to her lips as she took a moment to enjoy a triumph some might call trivial but was one she would give a limb for.

  The approval of her husband.

  Retrieving the papers, the officers nearly skipped out of his office and bowled her over as they turned the corner.

  “Begging your pardon,” the young one breathed, unable to contain his brilliant smile.

  She nodded and pardoned him, genuinely happy for the lad as he marched away.

  Her husband now conversed more discreetly with the new man who, she assumed, was a detective inspector as he wore no uniform.

  She took the rare opportunity to study him in a candid moment.

  Chief Inspector Sir Carlton Morley. This man was as different from the Knight of Shadows as chalk from cheese. He would never deign to rendezvous with a woman in a garden beneath the early summer night sky. Not this exemplar with a tidy desk, an army of officers, and sober, restrained manners. He was more machine than man. A cog that couldn’t stop spinning lest the entire apparatus break down.

  How strange that this was her spouse. This leader of men. This workhorse with a tireless back and fiendish reserves of strength and endurance.

  Except. Did no one else note the grooves deepening in branches from his eyes, or the brackets of strain about his mouth? How could they not realize how isolated he was? How exhausted?

  If he directed the force by day, and was a force unto himself at night… when did he rest? He’d no hobbies to speak of. He expressed no desires nor particular joys. She’d found nothing in their house to suggest any to her. No periodicals about riding or hounds. No cigars or much alcohol to speak of. Not even sporting outfits or antique weaponry.

  His identity, both his identities, were dedicated to justice.

  It was why the truth mattered so much to him. He’d devoted his life to it.

  The conversation with his subordinate ended efficiently, and the detective was given his marching orders.

  The veritable giant of a man glanced down at where she hovered just beyond the doorway as he left, and his astonishing russet mustache parted in a yellow-toothed smile filled with appreciative charm.

  “Can I ‘elp you, miss?”

  She smoothed her hand down the front of her cobalt silk gown and touched her glove to the absurd little cap that sat atop her coiffure. “I’m next in line for the Chief Inspector, I believe.”

  “Lucky ‘im,” The detective gave a cheeky wink and swept his arm toward the door.

  It was in that moment she noticed the floor had become much quieter than before as she felt more than a few speculative gazes following her.

  This didn’t exactly surprise her, as she was the only woman in sight.

  Bobbing a quick curtsy, she stepped into the doorway.

  Morley didn’t seem to register who she was at first glance, but then he started in his chair as he gaped back up at her.

  She imagined a ripple of pleasure in the liquid blue of his eyes before a frown furrowed his brow and deepened the grooves beside his mouth.

  No. The glaciers of his gaze made it astoundingly clear he was distinctly displeased to find her here.

  Both hands splayed on his desk as if he had to keep an eye on them. “Prudence. What are you doing here? Did you come through the front?”

  Right. While he was an asset to her, she was only a liability to him. But she worked so hard to change that and had to bring the fruit of her labors straightaway.

  Hurrying into his office, she took one of the leather chairs in front of his desk without being offered. “I found something, and I couldn’t wait a moment longer to give it to you,” she revealed, unable to contain her enthusiasm as she handed him the briefcase she’d been clutching. “The registers from my father’s shipping company. Well, one of the triplicate copies on carbon paper. You’re looking for evidence of smuggling, are you not? I believe, if you cross-reference it with the shipping records from the docks you’ll find what you need to condemn or exonerate—”

  He held up a hand for her silence, and something in the gesture drove her heart to jump into her stomach as he regarded her as one would a troubling puzzle.

  “You realize…” he hesitated. “Prudence, where did you get these?”

  “From the safe in his study,” she said. “Felicity came out with me this morning to attend an appointment and then Mercy helped to search—”

  “Have you considered what would happen if your father is convicted of a crime?” he flicked a careful look to h
is office door, but it seemed no one lurked close enough to listen. “If he is guilty, he’ll be thrown in prison. Are you ready to facilitate that?”

  Prudence had felt the weight of that since the moment he’d informed her of his suspicions toward her family. “My father is in a position of power, and I’d not have him exploit that at the expense of the health of the people he’s sworn to protect. These documents have the ability to exonerate him just as easily as condemn him. I’m ready to facilitate you finding the truth, as soon as possible.”

  She’d the suspicion his silence was more intense than contemplative as he considered the briefcase for a protracted moment before spearing her with a look so full of possible meaning, her heart leapt from her stomach to her throat.

  “If he is guilty…” she preempted his response. “Might you have mercy on him for the sake of my sisters?”

  His lips compressed into a tight line. “The law is justice, and justice doesn’t often reside with mercy.”

  “Yes, but…you have made yourself more than the law, have you not? You conduct half your life in darkness.”

  Again, he checked the open door, his jaw tightening as he tilted his head in a warning gesture. “Let’s not discuss that here.”

  “I’m not asking you to overlook a crime,” she said with a furtive lean toward him. “Only to allow my sisters and my mother to retain their money and property should he be sent away.” She pressed her hands together in a supplicant gesture. “I’m asking you to show them the mercy you’ve shown me.”

  “You’re different,” he said with a terse annunciation.

  “Why?”

  “You know why.” He shoved back from the desk and stood. “Besides, that sort of decision would be up to a judge.” Pacing the length of the window behind him he glared at the briefcase. “I didn’t know you were going to your father’s house today. You shouldn’t have procured this, it’s too dangerous. What if you’d been caught?”

  “No one else was home.” She wrinkled her nose. “My father isn’t the most scrupulous of men, but he wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “You don’t know what men will do when threatened,” he lectured. “And you can’t understand how you’ve complicated things. To procure evidence like this, I must go through the proper channels. If anything is to hold up in court then—”

  She stood also, his reaction to her gesture crushing any exuberance she’d felt. “You forget I’ve been a Commissioner’s daughter for as long as I can remember. Why do you think I didn’t bring you the original copies? Surely you could come up with a reason for a warrant, and then procure the real thing.”

  At that, he froze, regarding her as if he’d never seen her before. “Yes. I suppose I could.” His gaze warmed to something that looked like admiration as he drifted around his desk. “Forgive me…” He paused, suddenly distracted as his notice drifted over her, lingering at the swells of her breasts hugged by her fine high-necked gown, the curves of her hips accentuated by gathers of silk.

  She’d dressed for him. To please him. And she found a giddy satisfaction that her endeavor had been successful.

  “You didn’t have to bring them all this way,” he said in a voice roughened with a darker, more primitive emotion. “This isn’t an agreeable atmosphere for you. You could have given it to me at home.”

  She shrugged and looked around curiously. “I wasn’t worried about being recognized, as I’ve never been here before, and I was already in town at the doctor’s so—”

  “The doctor?” He tensed. “Are you all right? Is the child—did something happen? You sit and rest.” He grasped her shoulders and pressed her back into the chair before striding to the doorframe. “Dunleavy, get my wife something to drink, and if it’s that swill that passes for tea on the sideboard, I’ll demote you.”

  Prudence twisted in her chair in time to see the lumbering man with the red mustache pop his head around the doorjamb to gape at her. “That was…I mean…you’ve a wife?”

  One look at the wrath on his boss’s face, and the big man scampered away, reminding her of a dog needing to find purchase on a smooth marble floor.

  Prudence stood again. “Nothing is amiss. I had an appointment with Lady Northwalk’s doctor and midwife, that’s all.”

  “Yes, but why?” he demanded, his muscles bunched with agitation.

  “Well, it is common to be checked by doctors regularly when in my condition.”

  His lips twisted with grim approbation. “You didn’t inform me of any appointment you had with a doctor.”

  “Why would I? Men don’t usually bother with such matters.”

  “When have I ever given you the impression I’m like most other men?”

  “Here you are, Mrs. Morley! I found you some of the good stuff fresh-brewed by that fancy ponce DI Calhoun.” Dunleavy appeared with a clattering porcelain tea set on a tray that looked patently ridiculous in his mallet-sized hands. He walked like a man on a tightrope, his tongue out in concentration. “Swiped it right out from under ‘is nose afore he had a chance to taste it.”

  “I don’t mean to conscript someone’s tea,” Pru protested.

  “’E were right chuffed when I told him who it were for.”

  “It’s Lady Morley,” her husband corrected with a sharp edge as he relieved the man of his tray and set it on the edge of his desk before pouring her a cup.

  “Right, right, and a fine lady you are!” Dunleavy looked back and forth from her to his boss with a smile so wide it shoved his apple cheeks so high his eyes half closed. “Sir and Lady Morley, as I live and breathe! ‘Andsomest couple in the whole of the city, I’d wager. I don’t know why we always just assumed ya were a bachelor, din’t we, Sampson?”

  A little fellow poked his head around the mountain of a man, his checkered wool suit hanging on him like it would a spindle of limbs.

  “We always just assumed,” he agreed in a voice as reedy as he was.

  “No wonder the Chief Inspector din’t tell us of ya, my lady,” Dunleavy went on, swiping off his hat. “You’re much too young and beautiful for the likes of ‘im, in’nt ya?”

  “You’re too kind. I’m Prudence Morley, it’s a thorough pleasure to meet you both.” She extended her hand to them, receiving their deferential accolades as she enjoyed using her new surname in her introduction more than she’d expected.

  Suddenly the two of them were three, and then four, the company in the office multiplying exponentially until Prudence felt as if she’d been introduced to every detective, sergeant, constable, and clerk on the entire floor.

  Unsurprisingly, no one recognized her as Prudence Goode. Her picture never made it next to George’s in the papers, as she wasn’t high enough in rank to be a socialite nor low enough to be in their social class. Nor would these working men have aught to do with her father who held his offices in a separate government building.

  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…”