Page 90 of Seducing a Stranger

Morley glanced at his reflection in the window. He didn’t look like himself. Harsh. Mean. Drawn tight and locked down. His eyes gone flat.

Dead.

“I’m going to get my wife,” he said. “You do what you will, I’ll do what I must.”

Argent nodded, leaving him with his departing words. “Wait for us, Morley. Don’t let your fury endanger her life. I made that mistake once and Millie paid for it with blood.”

Morley leapt onto his horse and reached down to pull Honoria up behind him.

“I didn’t know she was with child,” Honoria said into his ear. “Is it…George’s?”

“It’s mine,” he growled, gathering up his reins. “Now, I’m going to ride like hell,” he warned. “Can you hold on?”

“Like hell is the only way we Goode Girls ride,” she said, her voice flinty with an admirable strength.

Morley spurred his horse out into the square, astonishing society matrons and bustling errand staff as he went.

Wherewashis rage? What emotion lived in him now?

Fury was often hot. A constant companion of masculine brutality he assumed every man carried within him.

But not now.Thisemotion was stark. Unutterably bleak. An icy chill that echoed through a vast yawning abyss opening in his chest. This was what caused men to summon demons and sacrifice virgins. This rage. This power. This need to crush and consume. This desperate hope to stop all things beyond his control if only to protect that which was most precious.

Men like Argent. They owned their darkness. They wore it on their skin. He’d always had to hide his behind a badge of gold. Or a black mask. He had to pretend the darkness wasn’t there. Waiting. Breeding. Growing.

His was patient fury. A glowing ember of ever-present wrath.

And now, that fury was about to be unleashed.