Page 26 of Courting Trouble
“Apparently, Woodhaven was using his father-in-law’s shipping company to smuggle the drug into the city, and some corrupt police officers to deal to the public,” Blackwell answered.
Titus’s brow crimped as he tried to work out the angle of a lunatic. “Why smuggle? It’s not as if cocaine is illegal. Many of my associates use it as medicine.”
From beside him, Blackwell made a derisive sound. “And you don’t?”
Titus shook his head, then steadied himself over a more complicated stitch. “I don’t like the side effects. Nor the addictive properties. There are more effective treatments that have been more thoroughly studied.”
“I approve,” Blackwell announced. “I predict that, like opium, more ill will come of it than good. However, it is addictive, inexpensive, and abundant on the black market. Men are making fortunes.”
“Did Woodhaven?”
Titus had the sense that Dorian shrugged, but he couldn’t look over just now to check.
“I believe he was beginning to, though no one knows how deep his cocaine smuggling reaches, and he’ll never tell, seeing as how they’re scraping his teeth off the wall of the warehouse where Morley’s bullet planted them.”
Titus dared a glance at Nora’s face, glad it was currently covered by the anesthesia mask. “Do they suspect she had anything to do with it?”
Blackwell hesitated. “That I don’t know. Whatever she’s done, she was bloody brave, trading her life for her sister’s at the warehouse.”
Suddenly, it occurred to Titus to ask about the Black Heart of Ben More’s involvement in all this. “Was he smuggling for you?”
Blackwell’s incensed gasp was too overdone to be serious. “He was smuggling for the Fauves, I’ll have you know. Something of a rival, once upon a time.”
“The Fauves?” Titus searched his extremely limited French vocabulary. “Beasts?”
“Wild beasts, technically.” He felt more than watched Blackwell roll his eyes. “Fucking smugglers with delusions of grandeur.”
“Did they ever have children?” Titus didn’t know the question was about to leave his lips until it materialized.
“How should I know? I don’t socialize with Fauves.”
“No, I mean she and Woodhaven.”
“Evidently not,” Blackwell said with no small amount of pity. “With no heir, she effectively has nothing. Perhaps a stipend, if her father is kind.”
He knew that bastard was anything but kind.
Not wanting to hear any more, Titus worked in silence for a while as he looked down at her, wondering what tomorrow would bring in either of their lives.
He could feel Dorian’s eyes on him with a niggling prickle long before the man spoke. “Before she lost consciousness, she acted like she knew you. She—beggedus to bring her here. Demanded it.”
God.He didn’t want to know that. He didn’t want to feel the extra beats that information threaded into his heart.
“I—worked in the Goode household as a lad,” he said by way of explanation.
“Did you know her well?” Blackwell ventured.
The question caused an explosion of rage and wrath to tumble through his chest. He wasn’tthisman. He didn’t havethesefeelings. He’d ruthlessly stuffed any sort of sentiment he had for her down into the deepest recesses of that clear, glass lake. Somewhere in the reeds and the shadows that no one could dredge up. That was where she lived. He’d never even looked twice at a dark-haired woman.
In fact, his current lover was a buxom girl with generous breasts, copper-gold hair, and a giving mouth.
Nora—Lady Woodhaven.
She was ancient history. And yet something stirred within him. An echo of intensity he’d suffered on her behalf as a boy. Did he know her well? He’d thought so.
And then she’d proven him wrong.
Blackwell inspected his work with an appreciative sound. “Did she mean something to you?” he prodded.
