Page 47 of The Duke
“For the both of us, I imagine.”
“Do you know what I think, Morley?” The assassin turned to him at the base of the entry stairs.
“No one can quite tell what you think, Argent. Inscrutability is one of your few merits.”
Argent ignored his attempt at levity. “I think you allow people to underestimate you, in fact, I think you encourage it.”
Suddenly uncomfortable, Morley turned toward the steps. “We haven’t time to dally, not when there’s been a murder.”
“Dead bodies keep.” Argent gripped his shoulder, squeezing the muscle found there. “You tailor your jackets to hide the strength in your shoulders. It is the source of much speculation between Blackwell and me, why a powerful man would conceal his power rather than wield it.”
Morley shrugged the big hand off, pulling an air of nonchalance around him like a cloak. “I wield as much influence as I desire,” he hedged. “Besides, elegance is the male fashion, is it not?”
Argent was not amused. “You soften your vowels like a born gentleman, but walk with the light-footed swagger of a thief from the East End. You’ve been a soldier, a killer, the best marksman in the Royal Highland Watch, or so they say. You were no one until the queen knighted you for your bravery,SirCarlton Morley. Your past is as clear as steam in a pall of coal smoke.”
“What are you getting at, Argent?” All levity fled the interaction.
“It’s less about what I’m getting at, and more about what you’re up to…” Argent lifted a skeptical brow. “You’re a walking corpse these days. A man who eats little and sleeps even less. The others are starting to think you’re a man possessed, but I’ve seen that look before. You are a manobsessed. The question is, with what?”
Morley decided to tell the truth. “I’m a man obsessed with justice, Argent.”
“There are many forms of justice.”
Returning the hard stare with one of his own, Morley stepped closer. “So there is.”
“Does your justice have anything to do with the exonerated criminals disappearing with alarming frequency—”
“Leave. It.Alone.” Morley enunciated every syllable in a whisper threaded with steel.
Those eerie arctic eyes narrowed, and the two men stood toe-to-toe, nose to nose, each muscle bunched with tension, blood feeding the essence of violence into each breath.
Most men hadn’t a prayer against Christopher Argent, but the assassin had one thing right… Morley was a man used to being underestimated.
And often used that to his advantage.
What Argent didn’t know could hurt him very badly, indeed.
Eventually, Argent stepped aside, his mild look returning as he swept his hand toward the grand entry. “To the task at hand.”
Morley inspected the exterior of the Anstruther manse, willing the fire in his blood to die. The house was an elegant, eighteen-room dark stone structure that drew the eye away from the uniform white grand houses dominating the aristocratic neighborhood of Belgravia. At this early hour, the lords and ladies of thetonhadn’t yet stirred from their overstuffed beds, many of them having whiled away the night at some useless revelry or other. Most of them would have tucked in at the same early hour he did, but the idle rich needn’t wake until noon.
They placed the safety of their borough in his hands, and that was a responsibility that never slept.
And neither did he.
“Tell me what you know,” he ordered as they mounted the front steps.
“Lady Anstruther hosted a charity event last night which, as her next-door neighbor, I attended. The guest list had more lords and ladies thanBurke’s Peerage.The deceasedviscountess was seated near the head of our table between the Duke of Trenwyth and Dorian Blackwell. If you ask me, she was a tittering, ill-tempered quim.”
“I’ll thank you to bite your vulgar tongue when we’re in the presence of the countess,” Morley admonished.
“You’re welcome to bite my vulgar ass, and I’ll say what I like,” Argent volleyed back tonelessly. “Besides, Lady Anstruther is friends with my wife, and acquainted with my vulgar tongue.”
It was Morley’s turn to lift a brow.
“Not inthatway.” Argent scowled, returning to consult his notes. “The body was found by Lady Anstruther’s younger sister, a Miss Isobel Pritchard, as she came home from some husband-hunting ball right before dawn.”
Pritchard… Why did that name tug at his memory?
