Page 33 of Seducing a Stranger

“The one whose wedding was interrupted by a murder,” he muttered.

“Swift work, Morley,” Ash exclaimed. “That was only what, threeminutesago?”

“Hours—”

Ash didn’t appear to listen. “She’s nottechnicallya widow, so you don’t have to wait the requisite year—”

Morley interjected. “No, you idiot, it wasbefore today. Three months before.”

Dorian gave an exaggerated gasp and clutched at his lapels, adopting an overwrought conservative, blustery affect. “Anaffair, Morley? A Chief Inspector and a knight of the realm. How utterly reprehensible.”

“Morally derelict, I dare say,” Ash added with a lopsided grin.

“Quite right,” Dorian thumped him. “Whatwillthey think at church?”

Morley didn’t even have it in him to rise to their japes as he buried his head in his hands. “It’s worse than that, I’m afraid. I’ve locked her in one of the cells downstairs.”

A protracted silence caused him to look up, but he didn’t find the astonishment he’d expected.

In fact, these hard men with terrible reputations seemed to be fighting back almost proud smiles. “If I’m honest, Morley, a bit of kidnapping is no insurmountable impediment,” Ash shrugged. “Show us a man in this room who hasn’t had to lock his lady-love in some form of prison before she’d consent to be his wife.”

“It was a Scottish castle for me,” Dorian said with no little nostalgia.

“I’ll see your Scottish tower, and raise you a pirate ship,” Ash bragged.

“Closet,” the monosyllabic Argent added.

Each of them shared a chuckle and, not for the first time, Morley was hit by a wave of sympathy for their wives.

“What happened?” Ash asked Morley, after wiping his smile from his lips with the back of his hand.

Morley pressed two fingers to each temple and worked in circles. He was about to regret this, but he needed to confess. To purge the sin that’d been weighing on him for so many weeks.

Because it’d been so long since he’d been so lost.

“Have any of you heard of the Stags of St. James?”

Ash and Argent shook their heads, but Dorian nodded. “Noble women pay fortunes for their sexual services. Madame Regina, who runs my brothel, suggested we recruit a few from Henrietta Thistledown.”

Morley cleared a gather of shame from his throat. “Well, I was out one night, just about three months ago…”

“Being a vigilante?” Dorain asked.

“Investigating,” he corrected.

“No one else investigates with a mask, but do go on.”

Once again, he let that go. “Myinvestigationof some murdered men took me to Miss Henrietta’s, where they’d worked as stags. I was in the garden and Miss Goode sort of…mistook me for…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the bloody word.

Ash’s mouth fell open. “A prostitute?”

“Is she blind?” Dorian’s nose wrinkled as he raked him with a disbelieving glare.

Morley sat back in his chair, cursing himself for saying a damned word to any of them.

It was Argent who leaned forward, his expression fascinated. “And?”

“And…we…” Morley flicked his hand out in a gesture that could have meant anything.