“Morley, she’s lost her entire family and reputation to this scandal. Her father might be a criminal. Her fiancé died in front of her. Her sisters are hardly allowed to speak to her. She was deceived by her best friend and her elder sister. And then… her husband abandons her in a strange home with nothing but stress to occupy her thoughts while she’s pregnant with his child. A stranger’s child. And a stranger you seem determined to remain. How can you make it impossible to get to know each other, and then punish her for it?”
Sufficiently chastised, he hung his head. “I always wanted to be a husband, but I think I waited so long because a part of me knew I’d mangle it.”
“Oh, ballocks.” In a rare show of the affection they once shared, Ash bumped his shoulder with his own. “You are the best of us, Morley. Always were. But you’re prioritizing doing the right thing in front of being a good man, and thereby getting in your own way. That’s all.”
“She loves you, I think,” Farah said.
Morley’s head snapped up to catch her dimples appearing in a knowing smile. “I don’t believe a woman can be as hurt by mere words unless she’s opened her heart to that pain.”
It was the second time the word had been uttered tonight. A word he never before dared to contemplate.
“And we loved her too,” she finished, patting his arm. “I’m glad you came, now home to your wife. She’s desperate to hear from you.”
At her words he went instantly alert. “Go home? I’m here to take her home.”
Doubt clouded Farah’s soft grey eyes. “Morley…she left nigh an hour ago.”
He seized her shoulders, panic landing like a stone in his gut, squeezing the blood from his veins. “An hour? Did you see her leave? Which way did she turn? Did she hire a hansom?”
“I confess I was busy with other details when she said goodbye.” Anxiety crept into her eyes as well. “Do you have any reason to think she’s in danger?”
He wanted to say no, but something didn’t allow it. “She’s fainted once already and what with the investigation into her father…the story in the papers today…I don’t know. I sense peril.”
Next to him, Ash’s rangy frame tensed beneath his fine suit. “Those aren’t instincts you should ignore, Cutter. Go back to your house, tear it apart, I’ll look around here and we’ll rally if she’s not found immediately.”
“I’ll ask Dorian,” Farah said, visibly shaken. “He disappeared some time ago; I think he’s hiding with Trenwyth.”
Morley clapped Ash on the shoulder before he launched himself from the landing and down the stairs to the road. He ran the mile home flat out with lung-bursting speed. He juked about pedestrians and dove behind and around carriages to the stunned approbation of many a driver.
He didn’t care. Nothing mattered. He would tear the city apart. Hell, he’d burn it to the ground to find her. He’d dismantle every brick. Scorch every spire. Everything that’d ever mattered to him fell away in her absence, exposing exactly what she’d become to him in this short amount of time.
Did he fear for his unborn child? Of course, he did. But it was her name echoing in every footfall. Prudence. His wife. His woman.
As he rounded the corner to his own street, he allowed himself to slow at the sight of a familiar coach idling in front of the golden brick terraces. He felt the fear leach out of him with each panting breath when he found his wife standing on their porch, staring at him as if he were a wolf loose in the middle of town.
“Morley,” Dorian Blackwell greeted him from the carriage window with the seemingly disembodied head and conceited smile of a Cheshire cat. “I’ve just spent the most entertaining hour with your lovely wife.”
The adrenaline still surging through him mixed with a knee-weakening sense of relief as Morley tried to lock eyes with Prudence. Instead of allowing it, she gave him her back to let herself in the house, closing the door behind her with a fatal click.
Morley fell on Blackwell like a rabid dog. “Where the fuck have the two of you been for an hour? I just came from Trenwyth Place, where Farah is looking for you. If I didn’t know how absolute your devotion to your wife is, I’d pull you out of that carriage and beat you to death for being alone with