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

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “Unscrupulous cretin.” Morley’s words had no heat as he looked at his name scrawled in flawless feminine script.

  Argent’s shoulder lifted. “I’ve been called worse.” He stalled, lifting his hand to his jaw to rub at some tension there. “Morley…the murder case you handed over to me some months back, the Stags of St. James…”

  He looked up at the uncertain note in Argent’s voice before he’d been able to read the note. The Stags of St. James…a case growing colder by the day.

  The very investigation that’d started this entire thing.

  “What about it?”

  Stoic features arranged themselves carefully, as if Argent knew he was treading on unstable ground. “I interviewed a man recently who intimated one of the Stags of St. James had regularly lain with a high-born, dark-haired beauty. He said she was a, and I quote, ‘Good girl.’”

  Good girl…as in…Goode girl?

  Morley went very still, carefully examining the effect the information had on him.

  It wasn’t his Goode girl. He knew that. He trusted that. His wife had told him it had been a discussion between her friend and her elder sister that’d sent her looking for a stag in the first place.

  “Prudence has a sister with dark hair,” he said. “She’s married, but could have used her maiden name for such purposes. She and her husband, William Mosby, the Viscount Woodhaven, were sent to Italy by the Baron.”

  Agent’s brows made a slow decent as he pondered this. “How does a Baron send a Viscount to Italy, one wonders? Even if he is a son-in-law, I can’t see a man like Woodhaven being easily told what to do.”

  “Impoverished Viscount,” Morley clarified, rifling through some papers to find the slim file he’d made of Woodhaven on a whim. “Honoria’s dowry and monthly upkeep is all that keeps them afloat, I’ve gathered.”

  “Honoria?” Argent echoed, his voice sharp as a blade in the close office. “If she’s in Italy…how can your wife be meeting her at a row house in Gloucester Square?”

  Morley’s skin flushed hot, though his blood felt like ice in his veins as he looked down to scan his wife’s hastily scrawled message.

  Darling,

  My sister has sent a carriage and request for my help. It seems Honoria is ill-treated by William, and has decided to leave him. I’ll be at her residence at Gloucester Square to help her pack and figure out a new temporary living situation. I don’t imagine I’ll be late for dinner, though I warn you we might have a third guest at, what I’ve come to view as, our rather sacred suppers. I apologize in advance.

  Yours,

  Prudence

  His thumb brushed over the word Darling before he stood, buttoned his jacket, and retrieved his hat. A slick of unease oozed between his ribs and he knew in his gut that he needed to go to his wife.

  Puzzled by the strength of the instinct over such a trivial note, he stopped to inform Argent. “Their stay on the continent wasn’t supposed to be indefinite, however…” He rubbed at a queer weight lodged beneath his sternum. “Something’s not right.”

  It was all he needed to say to receive a grim nod from Argent. “I’m accompanying you to Gloucester Square, obviously.”

  They arrived a miraculous half hour later, after galloping through the streets as if the whole of London was Rotten Row.

  The house was handsome, but not what one would expect of a Viscount, and Morley could only imagine what a blowhard like Woodhaven thought of his diminished circumstances.

  Morley unceremoniously shoved past a sputtering butler intent upon denying them entrance, and found Honoria in a dimly lit drawing room, squinting down at a book with a glass of wine in her hand.

  It wasn’t even half one in the afternoon.

  Dark, raptor-keen eyes lifted, advertising that the woman was not yet in her cups.

  “Chief Inspector,” she greeted blithely before snapping the book closed and gathering the voluminous, cream-colored skirts of her dress to stand.

  Morley was given to understand it was widely accepted that Honoria was the great beauty of the Goode daughters, but he couldn’t bring himself to agree. There was a sharpness to the symmetry of her features that he’d never prefer to look upon. Too many pointed angles and dramatic lines. He much preferred his wife’s pleasant, ethereal comeliness.

  “Do come in. I haven’t been able to properly meet dear Prudence’s husband. Please,” she gestured to a piece of furniture that must have been expensive half a century prior, “sit down and I’ll ring for tea.”

  “Where is Prudence?” he queried, eschewing her civil offer. His hand couldn’t seem to release the door latch. He wouldn’t relax until he set eyes on his wife.

  “Certainly not here.” Her features were smooth and cool as tempered glass.

  Morley’s heart stalled. “Then where? Where did the carriage take her?”

  The only outward sign of a response was the slight tilt of her head. “Are you telling me you have…lost my sister, Chief Inspector? Because I assure you the last place she would be likely to venture is this…woebegone house.”

  “If not lost.” He shoved the card at her. “Then she’s been taken.”

  “I’ll search the house,” Argent said, neglecting to ask for permission as he began opening every door down the hall of the first floor.

  Honoria scanned the note two full times, her composure crumbling like the walls of an ancient fortress ruin. “Dear God.” She covered her mouth as eyes brimming with moisture flew to his. “William forged this note. I swear it. If she is in one of our carriages then…he has her.”

  “Woodhaven,” Morley said, feeling his muscles harden at the uttered name. He never liked the man’s reaction to Prudence, but he’d dismissed it as the lunacy of grief. A brief investigation of him had him dismissing the man as a coddled milksop dining out on his family’s ancient name. If he’d returned from Italy so soon, could he intend to take revenge on the woman he blamed for his best mate’s death?

  “He was so angry, about so many things,” Honoria revealed in a horrified whisper. “But I didn’t think he’d—” Unable to finish the thought, she rushed forward. “Please. Come with me. I might know where they are.”

  A cold blade of dread slid between his ribs, threatening his own poise. “Would he hurt her because of Sutherland?”

  She caught her lips between her teeth as if biting them could hold back tears. “If I had to guess, it has something to do with me.”

  “What do you have to do with it?”

  “My husband is an obsessive man, Chief Inspector,” she said, revealing the shadows that haunted the façade of serenity as she stepped past him to reach for her shawl in the front entry. “He is vindictive and manipulative. The only thing that controls him, is his need to control me. His need to make me love him. Make me…God. You can’t know what life with him is like.”

  “If he has touched a hair on Prudence’s head, you won’t have to worry about living with him anymore,” Morley said darkly. “Where have they gone?”

  “William told me he and some partners of one of his investment schemes had business at the Chariton’s Dock in Southwark.”

  Morley didn’t know the place. He thought he knew every inch of this city, but that dock didn’t even ring a bell.

  “There’s an old flour storage warehouse there. My father bought it years ago, but he’s done nothing with it. I know William’s been working out of it. I can show you where it is.”

  “How many men would he have with him?” Argent asked from where he glided down the hall. “Would these partners be armed, perchance?”

  The question drew her eyes wide with panic, but she shook her head. “I-I don’t know. I rarely mark my husband when he’s discussing business. You have to understand, he’s never had one of his ventures succeed.” Her brows knit together. “But this one, it’s been profitable. He’s not been able to keep himself from throwing the income in my face but…I don’t have the details.”

  “I’m going.” Morley r
ushed back toward the door.

  “So am I.” Honoria dogged him down the steps and onto the front walk before he turned and seized her by the shoulders.

  His grip gentled when he felt her tense and flinch.

  “You’re staying here,” he fought to keep his voice gentle against the rising tide of his own urgency.

  “She’s my sister. Besides, you just said you don’t know where it is.”

  Argent jogged down the stairs after them. “We might need backup if these associates are as shady as they are likely to be. I’ll go for Dorian and Ash.”

  “Very good.” Morley angled himself in the opposite direction, lamenting how much city lay between Southwark and Mayfair. “I’ll meet you at the docks.”

  Argent stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Is that wise? To go alone?”

  “I don’t give a dusty fuck if it’s wise,” he growled. “It’s what is happening.”

  The large man assessed him with that cold, cold gaze of his. “Are you good, Morley? Where is your rage?”

  “What sort of question is that?” he asked impatiently.

  “An important one,” Argent insisted in that monotonous way of his. “Where is it? Because I can’t see it. Is the fury deep or is it close to the surface? Can you make the decisions that have to be made? Because that is your wife and unborn child. What if you arrive to find the worst—?”

  “Don’t,” Morley snarled, wrenching his arm away and shoving his finger in the assassin’s brutal face. They stood like that for a moment, Morley’s breath sawing in and out of his chest. “Just…don’t.”

  It didn’t bear consideration. It would be the loss that shattered him completely.

  Morley glanced at his reflection in the window. He didn’t look like himself. Harsh. Mean. Drawn tight and locked down. His eyes gone flat.

  Dead.

  “I’m going to get my wife,” he said. “You do what you will, I’ll do what I must.”

  Argent nodded, leaving him with his departing words. “Wait for us, Morley. Don’t let your fury endanger her life. I made that mistake once and Millie paid for it with blood.”

  Morley leapt onto his horse and reached down to pull Honoria up behind him.

  “I didn’t know she was with child,” Honoria said into his ear. “Is it…George’s?”

  “It’s mine,” he growled, gathering up his reins. “Now, I’m going to ride like hell,” he warned. “Can you hold on?”

  “Like hell is the only way we Goode Girls ride,” she said, her voice flinty with an admirable strength.

  Morley spurred his horse out into the square, astonishing society matrons and bustling errand staff as he went.

  Where was his rage? What emotion lived in him now?

  Fury was often hot. A constant companion of masculine brutality he assumed every man carried within him.

  But not now. This emotion was stark. Unutterably bleak. An icy chill that echoed through a vast yawning abyss opening in his chest. This was what caused men to summon demons and sacrifice virgins. This rage. This power. This need to crush and consume. This desperate hope to stop all things beyond his control if only to protect that which was most precious.

  Men like Argent. They owned their darkness. They wore it on their skin. He’d always had to hide his behind a badge of gold. Or a black mask. He had to pretend the darkness wasn’t there. Waiting. Breeding. Growing.

  His was patient fury. A glowing ember of ever-present wrath.

  And now, that fury was about to be unleashed.

  Chapter 19

  Prudence wondered if the fact that she carried a child made her more or less likely to survive her brother-in-law’s madness.

  It was the most awful thing she’d ever had to contemplate.

  He’d shoved her in the corner of a long warehouse with a labyrinth of wooden crates haphazardly strewn about the moldy stone floor. Crates he and his four comrades were now frantically prying apart with crowbars, flinging the lids, and diving into as if they might contain the holy grail.

  The afternoon was grey, but abundant windows filtered light into the two-story warehouse that was little more than an open floor free of landings or offices. One wide wooden gate would open right onto the docks where steam-powered boats unloaded their goods for storage and dissemination out of the wide bay facing Water Street. From the skeleton of a silo taking up nearly the entire street-side entrance and the strange, layered architecture of the roof, Prudence thought maybe this had once been a place to store grain or flour.

  Impossible to tell now.

  She’d suffered the bulk of her paralyzing panic in the carriage, where William had shoved a pistol in her face and screamed at the driver to ride on. Her saving grace was that he had done a horrible job of tying her wrists and ankles.

  Thank God.

  Taking advantage of their distraction, she worked frantically on the bonds. The ones at her hands were loosening, of that she had no doubt, she just had to keep at it.

  It was the only thing that gave her hope. The one reason she kept a tenuous hold on her sanity.

  Because once she was free, she’d have to figure out her next step…

  How to get past five men with pistols tucked into vest holsters or waistbands when she had no weapon at all.

  One thing at a time.

  At least he wouldn’t get away with it, she thought. If the worst happened…her husband would miss her at dinner, and he’d come looking. He’d know who had her.

  Morley…a well of longing surged inside with such visceral desperation, it escaped on a sob.

  William straightened from another fruitless search, slicking his thinning hair back from a sweating brow as he speared her with a pinched glare. A gentleman of leisure like him was unused to such strenuous exertion. Especially one as soft and bloated as he.

  “Your fucking husband,” he sniped, as if reading where her thoughts had just been lingering. “Gave the order for old Goode to send me abroad without so much as a by-your-leave. Just to save your narrow hide.” Thin lips parted in a leer so chock-full of disgust, she could barely look at him. “What did he think, that I would take orders from him? A nobody?”

  She wanted to tell him that her husband wasn’t a nobody. That he was more advantageous a spouse than a dozen viscounts or even a hundred dukes.

  She held her temper, for the sake of her child.

  “He thought you’d help your family in crisis,” she said evenly, trying to keep him calm. “William, if this is about Geor—”

  “This family, so uppity for such low rank.” He shook his head and began to wedge his crowbar into the next waist-high crate. “I’ve done my part for this family, merely by elevating it from the slums of mediocrity.”

  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.