“Not here,” Garrick said. “I’ll take you to him if you come with me.”
“I will absolutely not be going anywhere with you.”
“I imagine your husband is nearby,” Garrick said, looking around the shipping containers.
“He might be. He might not be,” Minnie said. “Now, this is the last chance you have to answer my question.”
“No need,” came a cold, strong voice from the other side of the docks. “You want an audience, Miss Draper? Here I am.”
“Mrs. Ward,” Minnie repeated, and Tommy couldn’t help but smile again at the insistent annoyance in her tone.
“What can I do for you tonight, Mrs. Ward? Have you come to uphold your father’s end of my bargain with him? Or perhaps make apologies for your husband, who also failed to follow through as he was supposed to?”
Minnie straightened her shoulders.
“You must stop coming after me, Mr. Blackwood. I am married now.”
“I am not sure what you mean, Miss Draper.”
“The attempted kidnapping last week when we visited the customs officer? Sending Garrick to Tommy’s game? The man who came to speak to me at the tavern? It all must stop.”
“At the tavern?” Blackwood said with a frown. “I sent no one to the tavern.”
“Alexander Bellinghamthe Third?” Minnie said, and Tommy tensed. Like Minnie, he had sensed something off about the man.
“Bellingham came to meet you?” Blackwood said, scratching his beard. “Interesting. And not good for my business.” He looked toward Garrick. “Why is Bellingham involving himself?”
“Said he was done waiting for you to deliver the girl. That he was going to go after her himself.”
Ice began to creep up Minnie’s spine, as she inherently knew, without being told, exactly why Arthur Bellingham the Third had shown up at the tavern.
He was the one who wanted to buy her.
“I am married now,” she said. “I am no one’s woman but my husband’s.”
Blackwood shrugged. “Just a piece of paper. One easily remedied. Now, Miss Draper?—”
“Mrs. Ward.”
“—you have two choices. You can make this easy. Come with us and we will leave your father and your husband be. They can live their lives, operate their businesses as they choose, without our interference. Unless they request it of course. Or you can make this difficult. If you don’t honor the agreements they made, I will have no choice but to come after them. To take over their businesses. To see that they are, effectively, ruined. And you, my dear, well, you will find yourself in the same fate one way or another.”
Tommy’s heart pounded fast at the man’s words. He wanted nothing more than to rush out from his hiding place behind the boxes and to show this man what true justice meant. To protect his wife and see that she was safe.
But he knew to do so would ruin everything.
He could see shadows beyond, heard one sharp cry that he hoped Blackwood and Garrick had missed, as his friends and the police were at work discovering what was in the crates. Minnie just had to keep Blackwood talking, to get him to admit what he was doing, and it would have to be enough for the inspector to arrest him. He had already threatened Minnie, her father, and him. That should be enough—but smuggling, on top of kidnapping? That would take things much further.
“What do you prefer trading? Goods or lives?” Minnieasked, waving her arms around. Smart girl, to get him talking, even though it just might put her in further danger, giving her no option to escape. “That’s what all of this is, right? Smuggled goods?”
“What does it matter to you?”
“Considering my father runs alegalshipping business, it matters a great deal as you are taking profits away from him.”
“Trust me, that is the least of your father’s worries at the moment,” Blackwood said with a snort. “He thought he could outsmart me. Well, he thought wrong. No one is out of my reach. No one. Married or not, you will do what I ask, Mrs. Ward.”
“My marriage willnotbe annulled.”
Even though she had assured Tommy of this fact time and again, it still felt good to hear.
