approval to go to the courts. He had half a dozen active crime scenes in this borough, alone, and an iron worker’s strike waiting to happen right on London Bridge.
He signed the correct papers, assigned the appropriate investigators, listened as best he could to debriefings and such. But now, as he waded through reports, he realized he’d read the same paragraph going on fifteen times now.
He wanted to just send it all to the devil and climb back into bed with his wife.
He’d been late to work for the first time in fifteen years this morning, because he’d lost track of time just watching her sleep.
Though he usually kept the blinds pulled dark and tight, Prudence preferred to sleep with them thrown open so she would appreciate the light as it played across the city, and wake to the sunshine beckoning her out of bed.
He balked at the idea, at first, but then he’d woken to the pillars of dawn painting the lavish dark waves of her hair with the beautiful iridescence of a raven’s wing as it trailed across the white silk of the pillow. She might have been some mythical heroine of a fairy tale, locked away in a torpor spell, awaiting him to slay her dragons and kiss her awake.
He might have done it, too, if little smudges of shadow hadn’t lurked beneath her fluttering eyes. Her breaths had been so soft and deep, her onyx lashes a stark contrast over cheeks paler than he liked.
Instead, he propped himself on his elbow and simply studied her in a rare, unguarded moment. It only seemed fair. She’d stripped him bare, laid him wide open and dangerously close to defenseless. The intimacy he felt forming between them, the bond that wove between his ribs and hers, stitching their ticking hearts together, was made of some stronger material than the steel and ice he’d encased around his heart.
Something magical, probably, if one believed in that sort of ridiculous thing.
Which he didn’t.
And yet, when had he ever slept so well? When had he ever been on the precipice of such a sheer and infinite ledge, and felt so safe?
She really did sleep the sleep of the innocent. Even after all the wicked things they’d done together.
And the ones he still wanted to do.
Christ, they’d need weeks. Perhaps longer. Honeymoons made so much sense now.
He could take her to Antigua to swim in a warm ocean as blue as her eyes. Or maybe closer, somewhere continental? They could cosset themselves in the far north beneath ceilings of glass, watching the Northern Lights snap overhead as he made love to her on soft furs like a Viking lord. Or they could visit a Moroccan spice market or Turkish bazaar and sleep beneath lattices of flowing silk with air spiced with exotic blossoms.
He’d let her decide, of course. He didn’t care.
For the first time in…maybe ever…the idea of doing a bit of nothing actually appealed to him. So long as it was with her. He would lounge like an Olympian, feeding his goddess any ambrosia she desired. Learning her, consuming her. Mind, body, and soul.
“Wherever your mind is, I want to be there too.”
Morley jolted back to the present to see a smirking Christopher Argent lounging against his office doorframe.
“You’re not invited,” he said irritably.
“Ah.” A sly understanding sparked in the man’s clear eyes. “Speaking of your wife. A messenger boy came to deliver this. She’s gone to her sister’s to help pack some things.”
Morley snatched it from his hand, his ire spilling over to impatience. “You read it?”
“It was on a card, not in an envelope,” Argent remonstrated, not a man used to defending himself. “How could I help myself?”
“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