Page 27 of Seducing a Stranger

“Let me have the knife, Miss Goode.” A deep, cultured voice came closer, and a hand covered with a white handkerchief relieved her of the weapon. She’d never been more grateful for anything in her life.

“That’s one of our daggers!” Reverend Bentham exclaimed. “It’s a holy relic.”

“It’s evidence, I’m afraid,” the Chief Inspector said. “You can request it back once this affair is settled.”

That word.Affair.It made her want to cry.

Gaining some strength, Prudence lifted her head and lost what was left of her breath.

Those eyes.

They had once been liquid for her behind a mask. They had watched her come apart.

He’dmade her come.

Chief Inspector?There must be some mistake. He was…a stag. No, not that. A shadow. Or he had been on a night nearly three months ago.

Pru gaped at him, dumbfounded, searching a face she’d committed to every corner of her memory.

He was at once the same and yet vastly altered. His hair a shade lighter than gold in the gleam of the noon sun through the windowpane. His suit a somber grey. His jaw sharp, clean-shaven and locked at a dangerous angle.

Her lover had been rumpled and dark, his hair the color of honey, or so she’d thought on a moonless night. He’d emanated sex and menace. Hard hunger and brutal masculinity.

The Chief Inspector was all starch and serenity. A dapper, terse, and proper gentleman clad in a fine cut jacket with an infinite supply of decorum.

But that strong jaw. The sinfully handsome features cut sharp as crystal and then blunted with the whisper of ruthlessness. All of this slashed clean through with a sardonic mouth.

Itwashim.

She was sure of it… wasn’t she? No one else had eyes so light, so incredibly elemental. Like the color of lightning over the Baltic Sea.

Those eyes bored into her now. Flat, merciless, and unsympathetic. He regarded her as if she were the last personalivehe wanted to see.

As if she were lower than the earth upon which they’d sinned.

If she’d any hope that this man would be her ally, it was dashed upon the rocky shards of his glare.

“What happened here?” he asked her evenly.

Pru felt her face crumple with confusion. He didn’t sound like himself. Where was the accent from before? Rough and low-born.

She’d have recognizedthataccent anywhere.

Thisman spoke like his betters. Was she going mad, perhaps? Was her desperation and shock so prescient that she’d summoned a memory and layered it over reality?

“Prudence, you answer him,” her father barked.

“I-I was waiting for Father to gather me for the ceremony,” she recounted, wanting to appease him.Needingto explain. It was so important he didn’t think she had anything to do with this. No one wouldreallybelieve that she would commit murder, would they? “There was a knock on my door and a note pushed under,” she continued. “The note was from George.” She pointed at the dead man at her feet and immediately wished she hadn’t looked down.

Oh God. She’d thought the wedding was the worst thing that would happen to her today. She’d never been so wrong in her life.

How did so much blood belong in one body? How would she ever forget the sight of it? She doubted she could even look at her own veins the same way.

“Look at me,” the inspector ordered. “What did the note say?”

“That he had to see me. That he had to apologize.”

“Apologize,” he echoed. “Had you reason to be angry with the Earl of Sutherland?”