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