Tempting Danger: Sinclair and Raven series

by Vella, Wendy

  Nicholas hid his smile as he took the seat beside Alice.

  “Cambridge,” she ground out, shooting Nicholas a look. “I am not playing. I am a lady.”

  “I don’t know how you’ve managed it for so long. Wolf said it was a miracle really, considering the hoyden you are. He has doubts it will last but is enjoying the respite. Although, he said yesterday he missed your verbal sparring matches.”

  “Be quiet... please.”

  “Oh, come now. You are like my sisters; they can’t keep their mouths shut or their ladylike behavior in check for more than a few hours. It is not healthy to restrain your natural personality, Alice. Vent your spleen, girl, or it will turn sour.”

  Nicholas ate the scone laden with jam that Mrs. Davey placed before him. Beside it was a large wedge of cake. He consumed that next, watching the interplay between the cousins.

  “Stop provoking me,” she hissed.

  “I am not being provoking, I am being honest.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Tut tut, Alice, that is hardly the proper way for a young lady to speak.”

  “You have been boring lately, Alice. I told Nicholas as much,” Kate chimed in, further increasing her sister’s distress.

  “Wolf wants this of me!” The words exploded from Alice.

  “No. He wanted you to show more caution instead of leaping recklessly into things with no regard to your safety,” Cam said gently.

  “I never leap into things—”

  “You do, and often, cousin.”

  “She didn’t used to,” Kate added. “Alice has lost her sensible Sinclair title.”

  “Kate,” Alice gritted out. “Be quiet.” She looked to where Mrs. Davey stood. “I have no wish to continue this discussion.”

  “Mrs. Davey will say nothing, will you, Mrs. Davey?” Nicholas asked the housekeeper.

  “Who would I tell?” The woman laughed. “Besides, I’m not one to speak out of turn.”

  “Alice, what we love about the women in this family is that they do not conform as others do,” Cam said. “Take you, for instance. You invest in things and have that freakish ability with numbers.”

  “Nicholas has that, and it is not freakish, it’s brilliant.”

  “Here, here.” Nicholas raised his tea to that.

  “Yes, but then he is unusual also, as he is one of us.”

  Nicholas munched on his cake and accepted the compliment—and the warmth in his chest too.

  “Oh, good lord,” she snapped, losing the starch in her spine and rounding on Cam. “I want to fit in! Perhaps I don’t want to be different anymore.”

  Now that surprised him, and her, by the look on her face. “I want to be a better person,” she quickly added. “My actions have hurt others. Now be quiet, I have no wish for anyone to overhear us.”

  “Why would you want to be like everyone else?” Nicholas asked. “You’re special,” he said to the side of her face, as she was focused on her plate. “You live with passion, Alice, and courage. Yes, sometimes they force you to do things that you shouldn’t, but don’t want to be different, I beg of you. Want to be unique. You and your family are so much more than other people. You should embrace that and be proud of the wonderful person you have become.”

  “Does anyone have a handkerchief?” Cam dug about in his pocket as he sniffed.

  “I have hurt my family with my actions,” Alice said softly.

  “We are all fine, and extremely resilient. As you can imagine, it is taxing to have a family member as outspoken as you, but what can we do.”

  Nicholas couldn’t hold back his laughter at Cam’s words. Every member of the Sinclair and Raven families was outspoken, especially him.

  “And as you can see, Nicholas is fine,” Cam said, running a finger over the top of the sugar on the biscuit in his hand. He then stuck it in his mouth and made a small humming sound. “Plus, he has not always been the model of a perfect gentleman.”

  “Also true.” Nicholas did not feel the usual panic at Cam’s mention of his past. “I was a reprobate actually. I had all the vices, but I have explained that to Alice, and that she did me a favor sending me into Bastil’s.”

  “Lilliana said you lost your way briefly,” Kate said.

  “Did she? Well, everything she said is right, and likely, knowing my sister, she attempted to paint me in a good light.”

  “Sisters,” Cam sighed. “The very best of us... for the most part.”

  “Indeed,” Nicholas agreed. He loved Lilly very much.

  “But back to Alice,” Cam said.

  “Must we?” She looked in pain.

  “Love yourself, Alice, because we do.”

  Cam’s words were simple and effective, and very much the truth as far as Nicholas was concerned. He was fast coming to the conclusion that in fact his heart may be involved when it came to Alice Sinclair; he was just not ready to acknowledge that yet.

  “Come, Kate, we are leaving.”

  “I thought we might be.” Kate got to her feet.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Davey, and please thank Mr. Davey.”

  Ignoring Cam, Alice curtseyed to Nicholas and left.

  “She’s stubborn, like her brother and mine.” Cam sighed, picking up her uneaten piece of cake. “Once their mind is set, they are unlikely to be swayed. I hadn’t realized she was struggling to fit in, or that she wanted to so desperately.”

  “It cannot be easy, Cam. Being different, hearing everything that is said.”

  “True, that would take some adjustment after living your entire life in a small village. At least the man she marries will be able to speak without the worry of always being overheard,” Cam added.

  “What?”

  “Love dulls the senses. It’s the same with all of us. Eden can’t always hear James.”

  I didn’t hear you? Alice had said those words to Nicholas today. Did that mean she had feelings for him? That didn’t unsettle him as much as it should.

  “Mind you, if her path to true love follows the same pattern as ours, she’ll save a bloody Raven at some stage,” Cam said. “As that has yet to happen....” His words fell away as Nicholas choked on a crumb of cake. When he’d recovered, Cam was staring at him intently.

  “Has Alice saved you?”

  “What?” Nicholas managed to wheeze out.

  “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When did my cousin save you?”

  “I’m not having this discussion with you.”

  Cam’s smile was far too smug for Nicholas’s comfort. “Very well, I will discuss it no more.”

  “Ever again,” Nicholas added.

  “I will say instead that it is good to see the changes in you. You have shed a layer and appear to be rebirthing.”

  “That sounds hellishly uncomfortable,” Nicholas said, to give himself time.

  “And yet true.”

  He sighed loudly. “Why must you Sinclairs dissect everything?”

  “It’s our way, we like to pick at something or someone until we have all the answers, or that something or someone is broken and battered into submission.”

  “You are the most uncomfortable family I’ve ever had the pleasure of being a part of.”

  “Couldn’t have worded it better myself,” Cam said taking the plate from Mrs. Davey and lowering it to the table before him.

  Mr. Davey burst into the kitchen. “Lord Braithwaite, your house is on fire!”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Alice and Kate were in the carriage preparing to depart when Nicholas and Cam ran out the front door of Temple Street. Nicholas roared his address to their driver, then opened the door and jumped in. Alice knew instantly something was very wrong. His face was tight with worry.

  “What has happened?” She reached for him, needing the contact. He took her fingers in his and gripped them hard.

  “My house is on fire. I must use your carriage... to call my horse now would take too much time and—”

  �
��Of course.” Alice moved over, and he sat beside her. The maid took the seat opposite with Cam and Kate. Both were looking at her. She realized why when she looked down. Her hand was clasped in Nicholas’s. She released him and folded them in her lap.

  “Christ, please let my staff be safe.”

  “I’m sure they are. Your butler is a man of action, he will have everyone out,” Cam reassured.

  By the time the carriage pulled up outside the Braithwaite townhouse, the tension inside the carriage was thick.

  Both men leapt from the carriage. Alice and Kate followed. The smell of smoke hit them, and they could see it billowing from the windows of the townhouse. She saw that a water engine was pumping water into the house, but it was such a large place, Alice doubted it could do a great deal.

  Cam and Nicholas were speaking with a group of people gathered to their right.

  “The staff, Hopkins?”

  “All are accounted for, my lord. Some have burns, but all made it out. But I fear we could salvage nothing.”

  “I care little for possessions, only that everyone is safe.” Nicholas dismissed the butler’s words.

  Alice moved forward to comfort a woman seated on the ground. Kate too. Recently she had been studying under Essie, learning all she could about cures and medicines, and like their cousin she had a natural ability with healing.

  “Neckties, Alice. Take them from Cam and Nicholas,” Kate ordered her. “One of the maids appears to have broken her arm hurrying to leave the house.”

  She found the men near the entrance of the house. Nicholas had a piece of paper in his fist, and Cam was looking grim.

  “I’m so sorry, Nicholas.”

  He turned, and the anger in his eyes was fierce.

  “It was deliberate. Someone did this to get at me.”

  Alice went cold at the thought that he may have been inside, caught in the flames.

  “A threat to stop me investigating the missing babies.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He thrust the note at her and walked away. Alice read the black scrawling words out loud.

  “‘This will be your final warning. Stop prying into things that don’t concern you. Next time I will harm someone you care about. You’ve been warned.’ Dear lord, Cam.”

  “I know, love. The note was delivered a few minutes ago by a scraggy little urchin who handed it over and fled.” His arm came around her. “But we will keep him safe, as we will all of us.”

  “But his home, Cam. His life is inside those walls.”

  “Some of it, yes, but he has estates also. Everything in there can be replaced, Alice. People can’t.”

  “Alice!” Kate called her.

  “I need your necktie, cousin.”

  They made the staff as comfortable as they could. The worst injured, Alice took to their carriage.

  “The others have arrived.”

  Suddenly the air was full of galloping horses coming down the street. No easy task on a busy day, with plenty of people stopping to watch the Braithwaite house burn.

  Wolf ran to her and Kate.

  “Thank God you are both all right.” He squeezed them together hard. “I had a feeling you were involved.”

  “Nicholas’s house is burning, Wolf.”

  “But he and the staff are all right?”

  Alice nodded.

  “Then nothing else matters.”

  “Yes, something else matters.” She handed him the note. “It was deliberate.”

  She watched Lilly crying in her brother’s arms. Alice knew that the Braithwaite siblings were watching their memories smolder and burn. Memories of parents and grandparents and childhood escapades.

  “Bastards,” Wolf hissed. He then stormed away to Dev and James, handing the note to them.

  Alice and Kate went with the servants in their carriage back to James and Eden’s townhouse. She didn’t want to leave Nicholas but knew that to stay and comfort him would raise questions she had no idea how to answer.

  What followed was organized chaos as they attempted to help those with burns and find places for everyone to stay. Two hours later, she had not seen Nicholas, but there was nothing more she could do for the staff, who were now all settled in their temporary accommodations.

  “Alice?”

  “Hello, Samantha.” Alice was wandering the floor with no destination in mind; she was simply walking. The duke’s house was large, and there was much to see, and for some reason she felt as if she needed to keep walking.

  “Hello, Whiskers.” She scratched behind a scruffy ear, and the little dog made a whining sound that said he was happy with her actions.

  “Are you all right, Samantha?”

  “It is very sad, what has happened to Nicholas and his staff.”

  “It is, very sad.”

  Samantha was going to break many hearts in a few years, was Alice’s guess. Her hair was the color of wheat, and her lovely blue eyes were set in a pretty face.

  “Where are you walking to?”

  “Just walking, Samantha. I had no destination in mind.”

  “Then you must join us; we are toasting crumpets in the nursery. Even though we are older now, we still like to go there and do this from time to time. Wolf often joins us.”

  “Does he?”

  She took the hand Samantha held out to her, and soon they were taking the stairs up.

  “When he was injured and living at Dev’s, Dorrie, Somer, and Warwick used to toast crumpets with him every morning. He didn’t sleep much... sorry, you probably know this.”

  “I don’t actually, and would love to hear more about Wolf during those days.”

  She’d known, of course, that her brother was wounded. Family had written to tell her that. They’d said he was being cared for. Alice and Kate had wanted to come to London to be with him, but their mother would not allow it as she was not fit to travel at that stage, suffering from a digestion complaint.

  They entered the nursery to find Warwick, the twins, and Isabella and Simon, Eden and James’s children.

  “Alice wants to hear about when Wolf was injured. You should tell her,” Samantha said bluntly as they settled on the floor before the fire. It wasn’t especially cold, but the day’s events had put a chill inside her.

  “He was broken when he got home, Alice, but we put him back together,” Somer said.

  Alice wasn’t sure how long she sat there listening to the stories and eating crumpets slathered in jam, but what she learned during that time broke her heart into a million pieces.

  “We didn’t know,” she whispered.

  Whiskers, hearing the sadness in her words, climbed onto her lap for a cuddle.

  “He didn’t want you to know,” Warwick said. “But he talked about you and Kate a lot.”

  “I wish we’d been here too.” Alice wiped her eyes. “But thank you for sharing this with me. I understand so much more about why he didn’t communicate with us now. And thank you for watching over him when we could not.”

  When she and Kate finally arrived home, there was not much left of the day, so the sisters retired early, both exhausted. Wolf and Rose had gone to their rooms also.

  “Good night, Kate.”

  “Good night, Alice. Are you all right?”

  They were climbing the stairs to the second floor. Alice’s room was at the rear overlooking the gardens, Kate at the front.

  “I am of course sad for Nicholas.”

  “I watched you comfort him in the carriage, Alice. You care for him.”

  “Kate” was all Alice sighed. “It has been a trying day, please don’t make it more so.”

  Her sister merely kissed her cheek and went to her room. Alice closed her door and dressed for bed, then lay staring into the darkness, thinking about everything. How her brother had suffered, and how Nicholas was still suffering. Sleep began to pull her under, and her last thought was for him.

  Where was he now?

  Something woke her several hours later.
Alice wasn’t sure what. Getting out of bed, she slipped her feet into slippers and grabbed her shawl. The windows drew her. Pulling back the curtains, she saw the moon was high.

  What had disturbed her? Searching the grounds, she saw nothing, and then there he was. Alice wasn’t sure how she knew it was Nicholas, but it was. Walking through her brother’s grounds.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Nicholas had slept for a few hours, rolling from side to side in a bed that was not his. He’d then risen, pulled on his clothes, and quietly left the house to check his family was safe. He’d walked around the interior of Dev’s house, then gone outside to walk the grounds. He’d then made his way up the street to each of the houses a family member resided in.

  “I’m clearly mad,” Nicholas muttered, leaving the Raven townhouse.

  The fire and the note had scared him. He’d never had to worry about anyone else before. By the time he’d come to his senses and sobered up, Dev was there to care for Lilly. Yes, he still worried about her, but she was safe... or had been. Now he’d put a threat over them all.

  It wasn’t his fault, he understood that, but he was still tense at the thought someone may do something to harm one of them. Looking at Wolf’s house, he closed his eyes and imagined Alice slumbering. Her lovely hair free, body soft and warm with sleep.

  What was he to do about her? Not that he could do anything now with the danger hanging over him, but the fact was, he wanted to.

  Letting himself in through the iron gate, he saw no one lurking around the front of the house, so he slipped down the side.

  If any of his family saw him doing this, they would not be pleased. The men would protest they were more than capable of protecting them and theirs, but Nicholas was driven to do this; something inside him told him he must.

  Walking to the rear, he moved deeper into the gardens that lay between Wolf’s house and the manor. The smaller home he was standing behind was set up by Lord Chartley to house his mistresses. Wolf had told him that one, and it still made Nicholas shake his head. Taking the path to his left, he checked for any suspicious activities, and it was there he found the charming gazebo nestled in a stand of trees.

  It seemed Chartley had thought of everything.