The Affair of the Porcelain Dog Read Online Free PDF

right now. Please trust me."
    His hands wandered down, over my shoulder, over my chest, drawing back the edges of the silk pajama top. Gently, his fingers began investigating my bruise. He pulled back quickly when I gasped.
    "I don't like this," he said. "I'll summon my physician in the morning."
    "'S just a bruise," I said sleepily.
    "No arguments. Will you have a drop of laudanum for the pain?"
    "I think I've had enough already," I mumbled.
    I'd have refused even if I hadn't choked down my weight in pulvis opii that evening. Laudanum was safe enough, but I'd seen enough of the damage opium could do during my Whitechapel years. I wanted nothing to do with it in any form.
    What the devil would have inspired someone to pack those statues with opium powder, anyway, I wondered. The obvious reason would be to smuggle it somewhere. But why--when even a child could walk into a chemist's shop and purchase the stuff in any of a hundred different forms?
    "Cain," I said. "Who does that storeroom belong to?"
    "The owner of the pawn shop, I'd imagine," he said.
    "And the statues?"
    "Why?"
    "Because some of them were filled with opium powder."
    For several moments, he was absolutely silent. "That is curious," he eventually said.
    His tone gave nothing away, except for the fact he'd nothing more to say to me on the matter. There was a bit of jostling as he arranged our pillows between his back and the iron headboard. He turned the bedside lamp on very low, and I heard him shake out the pages of his trusty Literary Quarterly .
    As I drifted off in the warmth of his lap, my thoughts turned to the Chinese woman who had accosted me in Miller's Court. The Chinese dealt in opium, as did Goddard. Could the blackmailer be one of his rivals? Goddard guarded his personal life so meticulously I couldn't imagine it. And what had he said about "mistakes of youth"?
    I rubbed my eyes, trying to clear away the fog of fatigue and lotus. Goddard stroked my hair.
    "Whatever you're thinking will keep until morning," he said. "Sleep now."

Chapter Four
    Morning arrived all too soon. From Goddard's expression, I could tell that he was thinking the same thing. The Duke of Dorset Street typically greeted daybreak with more enthusiasm than a crime lord reasonably should. In the gray light streaming through our bedroom window, I could see the wee hours had treated Goddard even more miserably than they had treated me. His face was pale and his dressing gown hung heavily from his compact, muscular frame. He was clutching the curtain so tightly that even from across the room I could see that his knuckles had gone white. This quiet vigilance was as close to panic as the Duke of Dorset Street ever got.
    It didn't suit him in the least.
    Outside the sanctuary of our chamber, the manservant's footsteps creaked up the stairs, stopping outside our door.
    "Coffee, Collins," Goddard called through the door. "And summon my physician as soon as is decent."
    "Yes, sir."
    Down on York Street, the day's first carriage rattled by. Goddard pulled back from the window as if the carriage were a police wagon coming to take him away for the crime of lying with a willing man in the privacy of his own chamber. I wanted to put a hand on his shoulder and tell him that it would all work out in the end--even if I couldn't see how it would.
    "So Lazarus doesn't have the dog," he said once the carriage had passed.
    "No," I replied.
    "Bloody hell."
    Goddard let the curtain drop with a worrisome resignation, considering he believed every man to be the captain of his own fate. He turned from the window. His gaze wandered from the bed where I was sitting to the spindly bedside table to the wardrobe on the opposite wall. As far as furniture went, Goddard favored clean lines and unvarnished wood, with a few discreet Oriental flourishes. He had commissioned all of his furniture to reflect these tastes, giving the house an elegant, masculine feel I adored.
    Footsteps shuffled by along the sidewalk on