Morgan and Archer: A Novella by Grace Burrowes Page B

the case, and sooner rather than later.”
    “You have my undivided attention.”
    ***
    To sit among the Moreland roses without staring at Morgan’s balcony, to make awkward confessions to His Grace, and to convince the duke to comply with an outlandish scheme had taken the last ounce of Archer’s resolve.
    He was beyond tired, beyond exhausted, and into that state soldiers knew well, of curiously detached, deliberate functioning. He was no longer a man, he was a mechanical toy in human form, and he liked it that way.
    Mechanical toys did not have broken hearts—they had no hearts at all.
    As Moreland sauntered off toward the mews, Archer permitted himself one more glance at Morgan’s balcony. He saw her there as she’d been last week, her nightgown a pale splash against the moonlight when Archer had taken his leave.
    She’d been crying silently and trying to ignore her own tears. Even in his anger at her rejection, he’d hurt for her.
    Her explanation had been baffling: she could not marry him, and she could not trust herself to behave decorously around him in the future. She was sorry for having used him shamelessly, but further dealings would only put off an inevitable parting.
    She had begged him to leave, and thus had begun a week of flitting from ball to musicale to wherever Morgan James was not. Archer listened at keyholes, drowsed in smoking rooms, lurked in gardens, and followed up every hint of a wisp of a ghost of a possible lead.
    Until two things became clear to him.
    First, he needed to dispatch the threat to the Crown.
    Second, he had better execute that task with all possible haste, for if longing for Morgan didn’t kill him, his enemies well might.

Five
    “If you call me poppet, I shall kill you.” Morgan surprised herself with both the sincerity of her threat and the fact that she’d made it to the man she’d once believed herself fated to love for all time—and in his own father’s library.
    Valentine Windham lowered himself to a rocking chair at right angles to Morgan’s perch on the sofa. “I haven’t called you poppet for three years, but it’s generally considered a term of endearment. What are you reading?”
    She didn’t know. She glanced at the book she’d been holding. “Byron, the silly twit.”
    “Naughty twit, in any case. I might set his poetry to music one day.”
    Which was relevant to the price of tea in China, how?
    “I suspect you think of music at times most people can’t hold a coherent thought in their heads.” She hadn’t meant to glower at him, but really, how did Ellen stand him? When Archer Portmaine kissed a woman, he wasn’t humming some theme under his breath as Morgan suspected Valentine did. When Archer watched Morgan, his fingers weren’t twitching with a melody known only to him as Valentine’s had on many occasions.
    “Your mood is off, my dear.”
    The very words Archer had used. Morgan got up and shoved the book onto a random shelf.
    Valentine’s dark eyebrow arched in a gesture that put Morgan in mind of His Grace, and he remained seated, the picture of calm, which was also a ploy favored by His Grace. “Are you in a taking because of Archer Portmaine’s absence from your dance card?”
    She threatened murder, and her dearest friend said she was in a taking . “Mr. Portmaine is a very amiable fellow. I’m sure the other ladies are enjoying his attentions.”
    Though given the stricken expression Morgan had seen on Archer’s face in her bedroom a week ago, she doubted Archer had mustered his Ballroom Bachelor Smile yet. His ability to dissemble was good, but not good enough to hide the terrible hurt Morgan had dealt him.
    “Morgan, what’s wrong?”
    Morgan whirled around to find Valentine Windham had silently crossed the room and stood staring down at her, his expression not the least distracted.
    “Nothing is wrong, except certain men think they can drop in of a weekday afternoon and pry into my affairs at will.”
    “Shall I call