Dancing With Danger (Goode Girls #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,26

to explore.

Mercy had to duck her head lest Morley read the wicked turn of her thoughts. She could feel her excitement burning hot in her cheeks, the tips of her ears, and...lower. Deep within.

Tonight.

She fought a spurt of panic. She still didn’t know when. Or where. Or how. Or... when.

Would he dare come to Cresthaven? Would he send a message for a clandestine rendezvous somewhere?

What if he didn’t?

She gasped in a breath. What if he changed his mind and didn’t contact her at all?

What if she waited for him like a breathless ninny and he went off to some other strumpet, laughing at the thought of her pathetic virginal eagerness?

He was a degenerate, after all. A professional swindler.

She couldn’t have imagined the intensity of his need, could she? Surely, she’d have seen through any sort of artifice on his part.

Unless he was a better deceiver than she was an observer.

Perish that thought.

The sound of Raphael’s name, a foul word on Morley’s tongue, brought her surging toward the surface from the murky depths of her ponderings.

“Who? What?”

Morley’s brows, a shade darker than his hair, pulled low over his deep-set eyes. “Have you been listening to me?”

“Yes?” Mercy’s eyes moved this way and that as she searched her empty memory for evidence against her lie. What had he just said?

He frowned with his entire face. “Is that a question?”

“No?”

“Mercy.”

“You were...disparaging the leader of the Fauves, yes?”

He rolled his eyes and lifted his hands in a gesture of resignation. “I said, I do not like that you were alone with Raphael Sauvageau.”

At that, she straightened in her seat, her spine suddenly crafted from a steel rod.

“Alone?” she parroted, her voice two octaves higher than usual. “Where did you ever hear such a thing? Utter lies. There were people everywhere. We were not alone.”

Except for when he’d kissed her.

Had someone spied their moment in the alcove?

“In the police carriage, Mercy, do try to keep up.”

“Ohhh.” She relaxed back with a relieved little laugh that ended on a sigh. “Well, yes, there was that time.”

“To think you were locked up with him, right after he’d done Trout such violence...” His electric eyes bored into hers. “After he mercilessly executed Mathilde Archambeau. I promise you, Mercy, heads will roll for this. You should not have been subject to his company. You’re lucky he didn’t do you harm in his escape.”

“You don’t need to worry about that.” Mercy waved away his concern. “Mr. Sauvageau didn’t kill Mathilde.”

With an aggrieved sigh, Morley sunk to her mother’s hideous pink velvet chair, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his hands hang between them. “And just how did the blighter manage to convince you of that?”

“He didn’t,” she informed him archly. “I deduced it.”

“Deduced?”

“Yes. Deduced. A verb. It means to arrive at a logical conclusion by—”

“I know what it bloody means, Mercy, I’m simply trying to imagine how you could possibly have inferred evidence that my investigators had not.”

Doing her best to keep her animation to a minimum, Mercy informed him about the open window, the boot print, the angle of poor Mathilde’s neck and Raphael’s right-handedness. She even drew diagrams, which—to Morley’s credit—he studied very carefully before he looked up to regard her with new appreciation.

“I’m going to have to consult the coroner’s report, but if all is as you say, I think Raphael Sauvageau owes you a debt of gratitude.”

Nothing could have dimmed the brilliance of Mercy’s smile. Not only because her investigative skills had assisted in exonerating an innocent man—well, perhaps innocent was not an apropos word to use in reference to Raphael Sauvageau—but also because she’d have the pleasure of informing said gangster later that night.

Probably.

If he showed up.

“I’m given to understand that Mathilde had an enemy in the Duchesse de la Cour over a theft back in France,” she continued, holding up a finger as if to tap an idea out of the sky. “Perhaps the Duchesse and Mathilde’s dastardly husband, Gregoire, were in cahoots.”

“Cahoots,” Morley chuckled.

“What?”

“No one uses that word.”

“I use that word.” Detective Eddard Sharpe used that word.

“You’d have made an excellent detective,” he said with gentle fondness.

“Thank you.” She primly smoothed her skirts over her thighs and rested her gloved hands on her knees. I was high time someone recognized that.

Someone other than Raphael, that is. He’d been the first to compliment her on her sleuthing skills.

Sucking in a deep breath, Morley heaved himself to his feet with the vital exhaustion of a new father and the responsibility