like without worrying about their resulting emotions. Morley was a perfect recipient of such information. He wasn’t a squeamish man. He dealt with the worst humanity had to offer on a daily basis. And he’d secret shadows in his eyes that had been put there by someone volatile. Though it was difficult to imagine what could strike fear into a dominant, confident man like him, she knew he understood her sense of helplessness.
“William used to tell me he would someday disfigure me, but he never so much as slapped my face. He would throw things. Break things. He tripped me a few times, once halfway down the stairs. He’d push me into the sharp side of a table or a doorframe. It was all so childish, so retributive.” She swallowed a familiar rise of revulsion. “Sometimes, he would hurt me at night…when we were together. If only to elicit a response from me, he’d say. It was the guilt he felt later that disgusted me the most. The weeping. The begging of my forgiveness.”
“Christ,” Morley hissed, his fists tightening at his sides. “It’s no wonder to me, that you sought comfort in the arms of other men.”
“Comfort was always elusive,” she sighed. “But sometimes I found escape.”
Her surprise at his easy acceptance of her scandalous behavior caused her to study him more closely. “How very progressive of you, Chief Inspector, to be so compassionate, even when my shame is another mark on your own wife’s reputation. All of England knows I paid the Stags of St. James for pleasure. Even though innumerable men openly keep mistresses and courtesans at their disposal or wile their nights away in brothels, it seems a woman’s desire is not to be tolerated.”
He let out a rather undignified snort, a ribbon of color peeking above his collar and crawling toward his cheeks. “I’m hardly one to throw stones, my lady, glass houses and all that. Surely you know how Prudence and I met.”
As if summoned by her name on his lips, Prudence threw the parlor door wide and swept in like an errant ray of sunshine in her buttercup yellow gown. “Look who I found lurking outside of the door,” she said airily, leading an obviously reluctant Titus into the room by his elbow. “He said your stitches come out today, isn’t that marvelous?”
“I was waiting for your conversation with Morley to finish,” he muttered.
It only took one look into his blazing eyes to know that he’d overheard everything.
“I wish I had more to report,” Morley lamented. “Raphael Sauvageau is in the wind as far as we know, but I have my best men on it.”
“I have it on good authority that even the Knight of Shadows is searching for him,” Prudence said with a conspiratorial gesture.
Morley sent his wife a quelling look. “We have no reason to believe that you’re in immediate danger, as you are not spending a gangster’s gold. However, it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to remain here for the foreseeable future, if we might prevail upon the good doctor’s generosity for a few days more.” He turned to Titus with a familiar smile, one that stalled when he glimpsed his high color, tense jaw, and the dangerous gleam in his eye. “Unless…”
“Consider my generosity extended,” Titus clipped, setting his medical bag on a decorative table with more force than was necessary.
Morley glanced back and forth between them for a moment, his shrewd gaze narrowing with suspicion and no little amount of concern. “Are you quite certain that—?”
“She stays.” The way Titus stated the directive stirred something low in Nora’s belly. He was a man of unfailing consistency, but something masculine and fierce shimmered in the air around him, even as he stood unnaturally still and contained.
For the first time she could remember, he seemed unpredictable.
It occurred to Nora to be afraid, but the fear never rose within her.
Not of him. Never of him.
Prudence went to her husband and took the arm he offered. “Best we take our leave, darling, so Nora can prepare to have her wound seen to.” She bustled Morley toward the door, but not before arching a meaningful brow at Nora that said she would be asking questions about Doctor Titus Conleith at the first available moment.
“Yes, well, I’ll be in touch.” Morley slapped Titus’s shoulder on the way out, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He just stared at her without blinking, looking for all the world like a man who’d been punched out of the blue,