By the time they got back to The Three Bells it was late, and all the nervous energy in Alistair’s body had worn off, leaving him with only a numb, ragged feeling, and the dulling effects of the brandy. George actually had to help Alistair out of the coach and up the stairs, for he could barely put on foot in front of the other, he was so tired.
"First thing in the morning, Davenant, you hear me? As soon as the ashes of the houses are cool, I want answers." Alistair hoped he was emitting the words in a convincingly commanding tone. In reality his voice was hoarse from smoke, shouting and his tattered emotions.
George just patted him on the shoulder. He knew what to do.
He flopped him down on the big bed and began to strip off his clothes. "If you want to head down for a bath, I’ll look after him here," he offered Viola.
"No, it’s all right—"
"You stink of smoke. I promise not to slit his throat. Go on, lass, get ready for bed."
Viola glanced at him mistrustfully, but as he reached to remove Alistair’s socks, shoes and then trousers, she grabbed her wrap and ran.
She performed her ablutions quickly, glad to get the smoky stench off her, but not willing to leave Alistair longer than necessary.
Her friend George had been transformed in the space of a few hours from the quiet, steady man who ruled The Three Bells with a fist of steel in a velvet glove, to a mysterious and threatening figure.
Nothing about tonight had been usual, made any sense. Ever since Alistair had come looking for her, her world had spun out of control. Murder, arson, conspiracy... To do what?
That was the question. One thing was sure. A single man, even a pair, could not have got away with all that had occurred this night against Alistair. There might be dozens involved. What had happened to all of Alistair’s neighbours? All three places burning down, his house, that of his assistant, and the chambers they shared together? It was just too insidious for words.
As soon as she was back upstairs she confided her thoughts to George. "Someone must know where they’ve all gone," she said in conclusion. "They can’t all be dead. They were prominent people. Someone is going to start asking questions."
"And they couldn’t control what was happening in Marshall’s street, could they? He was evidently an afterthought. A desperate risk on their part for some reason."
"Alistair has most of the power."
"But Marshall is pretty brilliant in his own right, apparently."
"Oh?"
"Aye,I know from what I hear he spent a lot of time taking depositions. Someone must have got edgy, decided that he was just as dangerous as Grant, if not more so."
"Those poor people. What a way to die." She shook her head.
"Why don’t you try to get some sleep?" he suggested, pushing the door to her room back open.
Alistair was slumbering soundly already.
She gazed at his handsome face for a moment, her heart full almost to bursting. She had only met him a few hours before, but suddenly, helping him had become even more important that finding her own brother.
"You know what to do?" Viola asked quietly.
"I’ll find his friends, I promise."
George had already towed out the trundle bed. He helped her into it, tucking the covers around Viola as if she were a small child.
"I’ll bring up breakfast in the morning," he whispered. "You’re not to talk to anyone except Emma and Tom the serving lad."
"I won’t."
"Night, then, pet. Rest, and try not to worry."
"I can’t help it." She hated herself for appearing weak in front of this man, but she asked with a sniff, "Do you think I’ll ever see Sebastian again?"
"If he’s alive, Viola, count on it," he promised. He stroked her hair back from her brow. "Now sleep."
Viola snuggled down into the blankets and closed her eyes obediently.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Viola had promised she would sleep and leave everything to George regarding finding out if her brother Sebastian were still alive, but as soon as she was sure her friend was safely gone, she reached over to bank up the fire, and sat shivering as she replayed the events of the evening over and over again in her mind.
A soft snoring sound filling the room made her giggle almost hysterically. It was easy for Alistair. She envied him the flask of brandy he had downed. She debated on heading to the bar and getting her own liquid solace.
But no, that would never do. For one thing, George would find her out of bed and rake her over the coals. For another, she needed to keep a clear head. Alcohol did nothing but numb and befuddle the senses. As George had suggested, she and Alistair needed to sift through what they knew, or thought they knew.
She also need to keep her senses about her to try to outwit George. He knew a lot more than he was telling, but thus far she had not been able to get him to reveal anything which she could see as pertinent.
He had gone out, come back in the carriage, had taken only a bit of persuading to get him to come with her to find Alistair before it was too late.
It had been easy enough to find the barrister at Newgate, and fortunately George had been armed to the teeth. She had never seen so many weapons before as had been stashed inside the box seats. Enough for a small army, in fact.
One thing was for certain, she was becoming more and more convinced that her brother’s irregular lifestyle really had very little to do with prostitution.
She sighed. What they had been reduced to, the pair of them? Sebastian out on the street, and her hiding in an attic room sewing for whores.
At least she wasn’t one herself, though of course Alistair had jumped to that conclusion straight away. And who could blame him? The point was, why hadn’t she corrected his assumption?
And why hadn’t she slapped his face when he had kissed her?
Because she had loved every minute of it, she admitted to herself with a sigh.
It had been like stepping into a blast furnace. She’d been sure her bones were going to melt from the scorching heat emanating from the centre of his body, his hot hard maleness which he had rubbed against her sinuously until she was sure he had climaxed.
Oh, she wasn’t experienced, but she was no longer ignorant. Living at The Three Bells had taught her much, and as George had said, knowledge was power.
Viola had not been repulsed. Her fiance had tried it once; he hadn’t been nearly as hard or well-endowed, and she had confronted his desire with all the enthusiasm of a woman confronted with a wriggling worm.
He had once kissed her open-mouthed, in what was commonly referred to as the French way. She had had all to do not to spit to cleanse her mouth afterwards.
Alistair was right, he had been a fortune-hunting swine. But did the arrogant barrister have to be right about everything? And even knowing what the chap had been did not make it hurt any less when he had come to tell her that she had been rejected.
Viola now contemplated her own response to Alistair’s kiss. What on earth must he have thought of her? But when he had groaned into her mouth, the sound had reverberated through them both, setting her on fire, evoking a tempestuous sweetness from deep inside her body which simply would not be denied.
She had gone from trying to push against his chest, to locking her arms around him as though she would draw him right into her bosom. Had longed to keep him there forever. Wanted his lips on her nipples, and even lower than that...
Her breasts had crested eagerly as he had brought his hands up to cup them. It was almost as if they fit perfectly together. His hot seeking mouth had dampened her pearl grey gown, and without shame she had let out a groan of pure raw pleasure. She had not made a single protest when he had pulled her up against him, wrapping her legs around his waist.
His hot sex had burnt into the lush cradle of her body, and she had longed to tear their clothes aside and make them one at last. He had crushed her against the wall, and her skirts had started to skim up over her calves, knees....
Only the loud crash and tinkle of broken glass in the bar had brought him to his senses. Viola knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she would have let him do anything to her without protest. She had been nothing more than malleable clay in his masterful hands.
But Alistair had released her, and it had been exquisite torment to slide down his huge aroused body until her feet touched the floor once more.
She had put the back of her hand to her throbbing ruby lips and stared at him, nearly choked by her own desires. Her gaze had been still slightly unfocused as she’d contemplated the incredible thing which had happened between them. But she could have sworn she saw a spark in his silvery eyes which betokened....
What exactly? Apart from raw lust, of course? She could understand that—she could sense what her expression must have revealed, and burned with shame.
Viola shivered again, and tried to get herself more comfortable in the bed. She berated herself now for spending so much time worrying about Alistair when Sebastian was out there, wounded, perhaps even dead.
But her brother was nothing if not a survivor. She still hated the fact that he chose to go with men in order to get more money. But they had all the power in society, and the huge risk yielded greater financial rewards.
It was of course Sebastian’s life. But it would not be the first time he had come back to her wounded. She didn’t understand why he didn’t simply work at The Three Bells, or one of the more reputable molly houses in Town. He would vanish for days, even weeks at a time, and come back more often than not much the worse for wear.
She was also sure George would give him a proper, respectable job in the theatre. She had asked more than once for him to give up the life and for them to find a snug little bedsit somewhere.
She liked the The Three Bells well enough, but it was a brothel, after all, with all the activity that went along with it. While she had had only a couple of close calls, it was really not the kind of place she wanted to consider their family home.
A restless thrashing which creaked the brass bed alarmingly caused Viola to pop her head up out of the covers and turn to her right.
Poor man, he was having a bad dream. She could hardly blame him after seeing his closest colleague and whole family burnt to death, blown to pieces...
Alistair was in the throes of his nightmare again, made worse by the fact that he had actually now lived through it parts of it. Now the faces he had only imagined were fantasy were real, people he actually knew all really in danger.
He looked more carefully in the dream at each person swirling through it. There had to be clues, had to be a reason, he could hear Philip tell him in his head.
His chest was so crushed by grief he gasped for breath. Yet even amid the black despair was the writhing of barely suppressed desire, that incredible smell of a spring meadow, honey, life.
He could feel his erection tenting the bed covers, tried to subdue it with some adjustments, but still he was completely lost in the exquisite vision laid before him.
There was the timbered theatre, which he now knew to be The New Rose. The play was the same, Twelfth Night.
On the stage was Viola, her eyes so glitteringly green they reminded him of the picturesque forest in Millcote near his friend Blake Sanderson Jerome’s old house.
Viola’s long honey-blond hair flowed down her back in rivulets. She complained of having been shipwrecked. Even worse than having lost all of her gowns and jewels was the fact that she had lost her twin brother, and was now at the mercy of a cold, cruel world. Sebastian. The twin brother. The man who had been stabbed in jail.
The man she addressed her comments to was huge, with the blackest hair and darkest eyes he had ever seen, and he too seemed to be looking for her brother. It was George Davenant. Alistair could see him plainly as he turned to look around.
Now Sebastian came on stage, searching for something, though not his sister, for he could see her quite clearly. And George. He gave George a wave and nod, and whispered something unintelligible that Alistair struggled desperately to catch. One word. Castle.... A second word, ray? Fields. Henry.
Alistair only knew one Henry, his friend Clifford Stone’s brother, and he too lived in Somerset, not far from the forest he kept seeing in his mind’s eye. The one his friend Randall had painted in the watercolour...
Sebastian was equally bedraggled as his sister, and he too bewailed his fate. Once again, he unsheathed his sword and vowed he would survive in this hard world, and help his sister. Not find, as in the play, but help.
This was the second sign that the action was changing, no longer running parallel to the actual play. As before, several men dragged away the young man, and Alistair could not tell if they meant to harm him.
He kicked and screamed, and uttered some fairly foul curses as they tried to gag and bind him. He fought like a lion, and they resorted to pointing their pistols at Viola to get him to cooperate.
Alistair could feel the perspiration trickling down his back, pooling in his underarms, even dampening the soles of his feet. He had never been so frightened in his life.
George stood blocking their shot, and several other men now stood along side him. The men who had been tying up Sebastian now released him, and flung him at George’s feet.
Alistair tried to reach out to help the young man up, but instead of grasping the young man’s hand to tug him up off the ground, he found himself grasping Viola’s hand.
Suddenly they were alone on a beach. She was holding his arm cradled to her breast, and she smiled and looked up at him as she had done when he had kissed her in the kitchen at The Three Bells.
He could feel the wind on his face, the sun on his back, and the lovely fragrance of the meadow, even though by rights he ought to have smelled the salty tang of the sea.
He swung her around and around joyously, and she slid down his body and almost impaled herself on his manhood as their clothes fell away and they were naked and alone.
He was about to bear her down onto the sand, spreading her legs wide as he drove into her hot tight wet centre. He could feel himself being brought back to life at last by her vibrant, pulsating flesh which caressed every inch of him until he thought he would scream with the joy of it all.
But all too soon the beach transmogrified into the clogged docks along the Thames. One minute they were in each other’s arms driving each other to the most ecstatic climax. The next they were in enveloping cloaks and masks, and he felt someone kick his legs out from under him, and a sharp stabbing pain in his back.
He saw Viola’s beautiful face marred by a frown and look of alarm. He could feel himself plunging into the chill, stagnant water. Could almost feel huge weights dragging him down. His cloak stifled him, wrapping around his arms and legs so that he could not even attempt to swim to the surface.
He could sense himself helplessly sinking, and with his last dying breath opened his mouth and screamed for Viola to help him.
He could see the bottom of the ocean, the jewels and gold winking at him, a pile of skulls and bones attesting to the fact that many others had met this same fate.
He closed his eyes and resigned himself to drowning, burdened only by the huge crushing sense of regret, that he had met Viola far too late...
But instead of a watery grave, he found himself in a lake of fire. The flames seemed to have a life of their own, twisting and writhing, hissing like angry snakes. Penetrating with their fangs. He screamed in terror and pain.
Even worse than the agony he was enduring though, was the certain conviction he felt in his breast that this truly was the end. He really was dying. And worse still, there was no one to help. No one to hear him scream.
Viola and George and Sebastian were nowhere to be found. He was naked and alone, scorched almost beyond endurance.
Just as Alistair was about to abandon all hope, he could sense George nearby, his dark eyes impassively gazing upon him as always.
A tiny little hand pulled him out of the pool of fire. He was
scorched and blackened all over his naked body. As she stepped into the pool and pulled him out, he could see her gown was pristine, snow white, with lovely embroidery. Roses. And bells. And a sundial.
He blinked, drinking in Viola’s beauty. For never had he seen her looking so lovely. As if she loved him, came the startling thought. He focused upon her lush lips, her mouth just made for kissing...
She offered her lips up to him shyly, and he kissed her lustily. He tasted honey, spring flowers, and a spark of the divine as his lips glided along hers.
He peeped his tongue into her mouth, deepening the kiss, yet knowing ever as he did so that it would be impossible to stop. That he wanted and needed so much more. That he simply had to possess Viola utterly, or die.
The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 5 Page 77