Titus’s heart kicked up plenty now, his hands and feet blanching cold while his ears burned, and his lungs tightened. “A town at the mouth of the Thames? I can’t begin to guess—”
He broke away, as logic threaded through his whisky-soaked thoughts. He knew her. Even though they’d spent so much of their lives apart. He still knew her. Knew what drove her decisions and desires. She wanted to make amends. To free her sisters from her tainted reputation, possibly by untainting it.
“What is in Sheerness?” he demanded.
Dorian shrugged, searching his near perfect memory. “Oh, a few hotels, an estuary, a fishing and shipping port, mostly.”
“Shipping, you say?” Morley clipped, cutting a look across to Titus as Dorian’s carriage pulled to the curb. “If they’re after what I think they are, let’s hope they took a bloody army with them, because they’re going to need it.”
“Why do you say that?” Titus asked. “I thought she was no longer being followed.”
The Chief Inspector glanced through the darkened streets as if searching for a tail. “If Blackwell knows where she’s gone, there’s a good chance Sauvageau does, as well. The messenger network in this city might be fast and reliable, but serves any master with coin. They know no such thing as loyalty.”
Blackwell nodded grimly as he called the footman down from his carriage. “Tell Farah I’ll be home in the morning… we have wild beasts to hunt tonight.”
That Afternoon of
Though her shoulder was healing nicely, the rest of Nora remained one jagged, bleeding wound. And only one doctor in the world could hope to stitch her back together.
She’d eaten more crow in the past couple of weeks than she’d prepared to, and suffered a multitude of indignities. The worst of which was clearing what was left of her things from the home that would be occupied by Adrian McKendrick, the new Viscount Woodhaven.
It wasn’t that she was at all attached to the home she’d shared with William. Merely that she was convinced that by the time she married the son of a duke, she’d not have a shred of dignity to offer anyone.
It was worth it, she kept reminding herself. To once again secure Titus’s future, along with—
A loud crash from below broke her reverie, and she called down the stairs to where Mercy and Felicity argued in the parlor. “Is everything all right?”
“It’s splendid!” Mercy sang back. “Nothing amiss down here!”
“A vase tipped.” Felicity emerged from the parlor to the hall where Nora could see her from the second floor. She was holding two larger shards of pottery and wearing a chagrined expression. “We were packing the library when a spirited debate over the superiority of romances or mysteries turned into a fencing match with the fireplace implements. Mercy cut her hand.”
“Don’t be cross!” Mercy’s plea sounded more like a command, though she still hid out of view.
“I’ll be right down.” Nora checked out the window for the guards her father had hired to stand sentinel against either gangsters or reporters. She wondered if any of them knew a wit about doctoring wounds.
They stood on the walk, looking much too brutish and conspicuous for such a quiet square.
She hurried to fetch a kit of bandages and iodine from the washroom and flew downstairs to the parlor.
Felicity swept up the vase and Mercy was sitting like a child about to be scolded, her fist curled around a handkerchief.
“I’m not cross, it’s only a vase,” Nora said with a fond smile, holding her hand out. “Where are you hurt?”
“It’s a trifle.” Mercy unclenched her hand and pulled back a handkerchief, revealing a cut on her palm that still welled with blood. “When the vase fell, I lunged for it and, clumsy dolt that I am, I fell right on top of it.”
“It’s bleeding so much,” Felicity said with a delicate, dyspeptic burp. “I can’t look, or I’ll be sick. Or faint.”
“It appears worse than it is.” Mercy inspected it. “So superficial, I can’t imagine it’ll even need stitches.”
“A small mercy that,” Nora murmured, dabbing a ball of cotton with the iodine and pressing it gently to the cut.
“Why?” Mercy queried. “Because the closest clinic happens to be Dr. Conleith’s surgery?” She waggled expressive brows, her wide, mischievous mouth twisting in a suggestive grin. “I still can’t believe he broke father’s nose.”
“I’d have given anything to have seen it,” Felicity sighed.
At that, Nora shoved a bandage into Mercy’s wounded hand, and promptly burst into tears.