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.
Honoria—Nora—had done everything she’d been expected to, including marrying Lord William Mosby, Viscount Woodhaven.
That man was the most disastrous thing to happen to the Goode family. He abused Nora terribly, squandered all their money, and used their father’s shipping company to smuggle illegal goods for none other than the Sauvageau brothers and their Fauves. Ultimately, he stole a crate of gold from the Sauvageaus and made dangerous enemies of them. His escape was foiled when he’d taken Pru hostage and Morley put a bullet through his temple.
My, but last year had been eventful.
Mercy wished for her sister now, wondering how much longer it would take for Pru to return from feeding Charlotte and Caroline.
Morley was like a pendulum of paternal disapproval moving back and forth in front of her as he lectured her about...well, about something or other.
The sermon had begun on the subject of her poking around murder scenes where she didn’t belong, but she’d lost him some ten minutes back when he’d moved on to her arrest.
Here’s why you shouldn’t slap detectives and all that such nonsense.
She was generally inclined to answer back, at least to defend herself, but he’d already mentioned that Detective Trout had been dismissed for his heavy-handed retaliation against her.
Or would be, after he was released from the hospital due to the beating Raphael had inflicted. Now Morley was down one detective—albeit a mediocre one—during a crime wave.
That’s where he’d lost Mercy’s attention.
Her mind drifted from how “the entire situation could have been avoided if she’d not ventured where she ought not to have been in the first place.” Et cetera and so forth.
No, drifted was the wrong word, it evoked the idea of aimlessness.
Her thoughts only ever went in one direction these days.
They were steered, propelled.
Captivated.
Would you let me fuck you, Mercy Goode?
The wicked proposition was a constant, obsessive echo in her mind.
It thrummed through her in Raphael’s velvet voice, snaking its way into her veins and coiling deep in her loins.
Those words from any other man would have repelled her. She was someone who demanded deference. Someone who expected to be treated with the respect due her station. Not only as a gentleman’s daughter, but as a woman—nay—a human being.
But, somehow, Raphael Sauvageau managed to make the profane query sound like a prayer.
A plea.
It was as though he’d asked, Would you let me worship you?
Because of the veneration in his eyes. The reverence that impossibly lived alongside the depravity in his gaze.
The pleasure in his promise.
He hadn’t asked, Would you fuck me? The unspoken question being, would you pleasure me? Would you slake my hunger and fulfill my desires?
No. He’d offered to stroke her. To pleasure her. To teach her what to expect from a lover.
As if he would relish in providing her delight.
Mercy knew enough about lust to have felt the evidence of his desire against her skirts in the alcove where they’d kissed.
He’d been hard. He could have taken her right there.
His singular paradox of wildness and restraint called forth her own undeniable passions.
She’d not relented to his proposition because he’d wanted her.
But because she’d desired to take what he offered.
He was no sort of man to be allowed within miles of her heart, but her body?
His body?
Now there was a hard, rugged terrain she yearned to explore.
Mercy had to duck her head lest Morley read the wicked turn of her thoughts. She could feel her excitement burning hot in her cheeks, the tips of her ears, and...lower. Deep within.
Tonight.
She fought a spurt of panic. She still didn’t know when. Or where. Or how. Or... when.
Would he dare come to Cresthaven? Would he send a message for a clandestine rendezvous somewhere?
What if he didn’t?
She gasped in a breath. What if he changed his mind and didn’t contact her at all?
What if she waited for him like a breathless ninny and he went off to some other strumpet, laughing at the thought of her pathetic virginal eagerness?
He was a degenerate, after all. A professional swindler.
She couldn’t have imagined the intensity of his need, could she? Surely, she’d have seen through any sort of artifice on his part.
Unless he was a better deceiver than she was an observer.
Perish that thought.
The sound of Raphael’s name, a foul word on Morley’s tongue, brought her surging toward the surface from the murky depths of her ponderings.
“Who? What?”
Morley’s brows, a shade darker than his hair, pulled low over his deep-set eyes. “Have you been listening to me?”
“Yes?” Mercy’s eyes moved this way and that as she searched her empty memory for evidence against her lie. What had he just said?
He frowned with his entire face. “Is that a question?”
“No?”
“Mercy.”
“You were...disparaging the leader of the Fauves, yes?”
He rolled his eyes and lifted his hands in a gesture of resignation. “I said, I do not like that you were alone with Raphael Sauvageau.”
At that, she straightened in her seat, her spine suddenly crafted from a steel rod.
“Alone?” she parroted, her voice two octaves higher than usual. “Where did you ever hear such a thing? Utter lies. There were people everywhere. We were not alone.”
Except for when he’d kissed her.
Had someone spied their moment in the alcove?
“In the police carriage, Mercy, do try to keep up.”
“Ohhh.” She relaxed back with a relieved little laugh that ended on a sigh. “Well, yes, there was that time.”
“To think you were locked up with him, right after he’d done Trout such violence...” His electric eyes bored into hers. “After he mercilessly executed Mathilde Archambeau. I promise you, Mercy, heads will roll for this. You should not have been subject to his company. You’re lucky he didn’t do you harm in his escape.”
“You don’t need to worry about that.” Mercy waved away his concern. “Mr. Sauvageau didn’t kill Mathilde.”
With an aggrieved sigh, Morley sunk to her mother’s hideous pink velvet chair, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his hands hang between them. “And just how did the blighter manage to convince you of that?”