Page 297 of From Rakes to Riches

Trying to string her thoughts together, she stammered, “How would we...? Where will we? I mean...”

Her questions never found him she realized, as she turned back to clarify.

He’d disappeared.

7

Mercy had often thought that for such a fair-complected man, Chief Inspector Carlton Morley was a bit of a dark horse.

Even as he paced the plush Persian carpets of her parents’ solarium, his every movement was measured and controlled.

Carefully contained.

He was more compelling than handsome, she thought. His brow stern and the set of his jaw arrogant.

No, authoritarian. That was it.

A man who expected to be obeyed without question, likely because he was in charge of the entire London Metropolitan Police.

Which was why his choice of wife was so confounding. Her elder sister Prudence was ironically impetuous. But, Mercy supposed, her habitualimprudenceaccompanied a beauty of demeanor only matched by that of her soul, so it was impossible not to love her.

At least, in Morley’s case.

They were ridiculously—disgustingly—happy.

For her part, Mercy couldn’t begin to imagine being in love with a fellow who rarely relaxed and was always right.

And not in the way that most menassumedthey were always right based on little more than their hubris and trumped-up opinions.

Morley was unfailingly well-informed and infuriatingly correct, more often than not. When he spoke, people leaned in to mark him because he was possessed of both power and practicality.

And that, Mercy was given to understand, was a rare combination of virtues.

Objectively, she supposed she understood why Prudence found him attractive, what with his corona of elegantly styled pale hair and eyes so cold and blue they might have been chipped from a glacier.

They only melted for Pru and the twins, becoming liquid and warm.

Mercy liked to watch the transformation her sister brought about in him, how his wide shoulders peeled away from his ears and every part of him seemed to exhale.

With his family, he could be charming. Cavalier, even.

He was protective and useful, honorable to a fault, and Mercy knew that beneath the furrow of disapproval on his brow was a wrinkle of worry for her. He watched them with the passionate overprotectiveness belonging to a man who’d once lost his own sister to tragedy.

It was why Mercy would suffer his warnings and lectures.

Because she knew that behind the bluster was a brother.

One who cared.

The Goode sisters were unused to compassionate men in their lives, having a staunch, religious father who maintained two demeanors where his family was concerned.

Critical or indifferent.

His greatest disappointment was not having a son, and he used his daughters like pawns in medieval land disputes, leveraging their reputations, fortunes, and beauty to garner him more prestige and power.

It entertained Mercy to an endless degree how often he’d been thwarted.

First by Pru, whose fiancé, the Earl of Sutherland, had been murdered moments before they were to walk down the aisle. She’d been arrested for the deed by Morley himself, and then rescued from the hangman’s rope by a hasty marriage to the selfsame Chief Inspector.

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