Morley flicked an uncomfortable glance at Gemma Warlow before he said, “You could have come to me. I would have kept you safe.”
Farah realized she must tread these waters carefully, for the sake of everyone involved. “I wasn’t given that option. And I’m not sure that you could have, given the circumstances.”
“But—Dorian Blackwell? You belong to him now? The marriage is legitimate?”
Farah knew he was asking if it was consummated and she blushed as she nodded, unable to say a word.
“Why? He’s a monster. A murderer. I thought you were smarter than this. Better than the likes of him.”
A surprising protective defensiveness swelled in her breast for her criminal of a husband. “You don’t know him, Carlton.”
The disgust returned to the inspector’s clear eyes. “God, Farah, listen to yourself! You sound like a bad cliché.”
The words hurt because he meant them. Farah didn’t mind losing Morley’s romantic attentions, but losing his respect was one of the hardest things she’d had to face in a long time.
“Maybe I do,” she murmured. “Maybe I am. But you don’t understand what’s at stake here, Carlton. Through Blackwell, I have the chance to regain something very precious that was taken from me a long time ago.”
“And what’s that?”
“My past.”
He snorted, circling behind his desk and buttoning his collar. “Be a little less vague, if you please,” he asked crisply.
“It will all make sense in time,” Farah said gently. “But time is something you must grant us. You have no legal call to keep us here. If Dorian hadn’t fought off those river pirates I’d probably be dead, or worse.” The truth in her words sent a cold shudder down Farah’s spine.
Anger seemed to drain from Morley’s shoulders and he paused in the middle of retying his necktie, looking nothing more than tired and sad. “Do you love him?”
Farah had to look away. Her eyes found Gemma, who seemed just as interested in the answer. Her feelings for Dorian had become increasingly complex and opaque. But, as Morley had pointed out, she’d only known him four days. She’d begun to care for Dorian. To understand him. No. They were a long way from understanding each other. She was grateful to him. Wanted to help him and heal him. The desire to know and understand the enigma that was her husband drove her to hope for good things to come of whatever future they were to have together. Though he’d barely touched her body, he’d definitely left a mark on her heart. But … Love?
“I couldn’t say.” It was the most honest answer Farah could give him. “But I do know that although I like and respect you a great deal, I don’t love you, and that you don’t love me.” She said this gently, the words devoid of cruelty or pity. “Accepting your proposal would have been a mistake. We both would have come to regret it, in time.”
Morley finished tying his cravat and shrugged into his suit jacket, his attention on the discarded certificate of marriage on his desk. Picking it up, he studied it once more. “Perhaps you’re right. You are a woman with more secrets and shadows than a man in my position could live down.”
Distressed, Farah frowned. She’d never thought of herself in that way. It was Dorian Blackwell who owned the secrets and shadows, not she. Though, thinking back, she could count more than a few rather large secrets. They’d just been a part of her for so long, she’d begun to think of them as the truth.
Because the real truth had been not only painful, but dangerous.
Somewhere along the way, she’d lost Farah Townsend completely, and had become Mrs. Dougan Mackenzie.
Morley stepped around his desk and pushed the paper into her hands, slapping his finger against her name on the certificate. “Townsend?” He cocked a disbelieving eyebrow. “As in, the about-to-be-inaugurated Countess Farah Leigh Townsend? What is all this about? Some scheme you cooked up with your delinquent of a husband?”
“Don’t be cruel, Carlton,” Farah reprimanded sharply. “You’ll lose the moral high ground.”
“It would still be a long way to fall to reach his position.”
“Maybe so,” Farah conceded. “But regardless of all that, I was born Farah Leigh Townsend, and through the name of Blackwell, I’ll be able to reclaim my title and my birthright.”
“Do you realize how impossible that sounds? They found the missing Farah Townsend weeks ago. She’s already met the Queen of England.”
A familiar fear bubbled in Farah’s middle. She wrapped one arm around herself as though to contain it, and met Morley square in the eye. What if this was a mistake? What if they failed? “The woman everyone knows as Farah Leigh Townsend is an imposter.”
“Prove it.”
“That’ll be easy,” Gemma cut in with a lift of her dirty shoulder. “Every whore in East London knows she’s Lucy Boggs from ’er picture in the paper. More’n a few of us planned to blackmail ’er when she came into ’er money.” Gemma cut off when she noticed both Farah and Morley were staring at her with twin expressions of incredulity.
Farah regained her voice first. “What—what did you say her name was?”
“Lucy Boggs. She’s a whore, same as I, only younger and prettier. Was picked from the streets to work at some uppity place on the Strand called Regina’s. Next thing we ’ear, she’s a bloomin’ countess in all the society papers.” The wounded prostitute guffawed a few times, not appearing to feel the pain in her swollen lips and cheeks. “If Lucy Boggs is nobility, I’m the bloody Virgin Mary.”