Rebel Dreams

by Patricia Rice

  REBEL DREAMS

  Patricia Rice

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Edition

  February 3, 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-460-4

  Copyright © 1991 Patricia Rice

  Chapter 1

  July 1765

  Alexander Hampton, heir presumptive to the Earl of Cranville, pulled his snowy cravat loose and propped his buckled shoes on the sea captain’s table in an unlordly manner. Pouring a tumbler of rum from the bottle at his side, he regarded his companion with sardonic amusement.

  “An old smuggler like you dares to lecture me on right and wrong? For shame, Jack. Hypocrisy is as hazardous a fault as theft.”

  Uncomfortable in a proper captain’s uniform, former smuggler Jack Ruggles shrugged off his braided coat. Once in shirtsleeves like his employer, he settled down for a long bout of drinking. “Smugglin’s for them that got no better. You’re a rich man now. You got no reason to risk yourself or your partners.”

  Alex quit smiling as he sipped his drink and contemplated his troublesome partners: the very proper Earl of Cranville and the very improper, Lord Rory Maclean—Jack’s former employer.

  The ship hit a swell broadside and lurched. The lantern on the wall swayed and flickered, while Alex’s thoughts retreated down a melancholy path.

  “Since one of those partners was your companion in crime,” Alex ruminated aloud, “I cannot believe he will frown too heavily on a little extra profit. Jacobite rebel that he is, he’d find it amusing to ignore the lazy nabobs in the West Indies. It’s the nabobs’ fault that the Yanks must pay through the nose for sugar. It’s a wonder the Yanks don’t shoot the customs officers and take matters in their own hands. I can buy the sugar cheap from the French, skip the return trip to our fair shores, sell the load in the colonies at a decent profit, give the tax collectors their tariff, and we all still come out ahead. Where’s the harm?”

  “You might have a reputation as a rakehell who pursues heiresses to pay your debts, but smuggling ain’t your style. So what maggot’s in your head now?” Jack asked, taking advantage of old acquaintance. “Rory might close his eyes for politics, but not Cranville. He’d not take kindly to his heir’s venture into crime. And he’d want no part of the profits.”

  Stretching his legs in their tight buckled breeches and stockings, Alex tilted his chair back at a precarious angle and carelessly tossed back the rest of the rum. With his coarse black hair tightly bound at the nape, unadorned by wig or powder, his valet would have a choking fit if he could see him now.

  The earl. The damned righteous, arrogant Earl of Cranville, holder of the title, estates, and purse strings that Alex had once thought were his. He owed his current fortune to his cousin the earl, and to the earl’s daughter, and to the daughter’s husband, Rory Maclean. He wasn’t quite certain yet whether to be resentful or grateful. He returned the chair to the floor and poured another cup.

  “How do the colonists survive without the damned nobility breathing down their necks and telling them what to do? Isn’t it about time his majesty considered giving peerages in America? The Duke of New York, the Marquess of Boston—look at all the younger sons that could be granted earldoms. Why, in no time we’d bring the savages under a noble yoke, and all would be as peaceful as it is in merry old England.”

  Jack snorted, finally recognizing Alex’s boredom. “You found the wrong drinking partner for your flights of fancy, my lord. Seein’ as how the Yanks think they already own the land, they might protest a wee bit at the king giving them away. But you’re welcome to the task of claiming it if you like. It makes about as much sense as smuggling.”

  Alex grinned at this grudging reply.

  In the summer heat of the cabin, he had shrugged off his tailored coat, deciding he might as well shoot his noble image all to hell. But he was restless, and even in shirtsleeves, he couldn’t make himself comfortable.

  “You’re dead set against the Indies, then? That’s a shame. Think of what your percentage would be on profits like that.” Despite his nonchalance, he watched the captain shrewdly. It wasn’t just boredom that made him tempt the ex-smuggler. Disgruntled employees had been known to involve themselves in worse crimes than padding profits.

  The letter of complaint in his vest pocket crackled.

  Jack favored his employer with a scornful look. “I wouldn’t want to come up against the Maclean should he ever find out I risked his wife’s ship in such a scheme. Buy your own ship if that’s the trade you seek. That bloody Revenue Act made smuggling a fool’s game. I don’t want to be hauled up before no Admiralty judge.”

  Satisfied, Hampton found another topic to antagonize the old tar. “His wife’s ship! How noble-minded my cousin’s husband is. Alyson hasn’t the vaguest notion which end of the ship goes forward, much less how many ships her grandfather left her. Women are a feather-headed, worthless lot, good for only one thing. Why in the name of Old Nick the Maclean insists on treating the fortune as hers is beyond my comprehension. By law, she can’t own a thing, and rightly so, I might add.”

  Jack rubbed the rum from his mustache with the back of his hand before taking another gulp. “The Lady Alyson is a fine, bonnie lass, as the captain would say. She needn’t know which end of a ship is up. That’s not for her to know. She’s made the Maclean happy and given him two brawny boys. If he wants to call the ship hers, he has that right.”

  Alex agreed grudgingly. “Acquiring a fortune is one good reason for the chains of marriage, I daresay, but I’ll be deviled if I can think of any other. Old age, mayhap. The earl in his senility might appreciate a winsome wench like Lady Cranville, but the man’s been leg-shackled over half his life. You’d think he’d know better than to try it again. I’ll be bound if I can find any reason to give a woman the power to carp at me night and day. Just think what a wife would have to say when I decide to go on voyages like this! I shudder to think of it.” He shook his head in dismay and sipped at his cup.

  “Aye, Dougall and Maclean both retired from the sea when they took wives, but I can’t see they suffer for it. Whenever the Maclean gets the itch to sail, Lady Alyson goes with him. I wouldn’t mind having a woman in my bed right now if I could find one willing to do the same.”

  Since his thoughts were on the same subject—the lack of woman in his bed, not marriage—Alex growled a non-reply. As much as he detested the wiles of deceitful females, he regretted not having a light-skirt aboard. Six weeks was a long time. If only he could keep a woman’s material wants as satisfied as her physical ones, he wouldn’t be quite so discontented with his bachelor state. But he’d be damned if he’d go into debt again to supply the whores with their expensive trinkets.

  Alex refilled his cup and raised it in a salute. “Here’s to our lovely colonial ladies, may they lift their skirts as freely as the London ones!”

  Jack frowned at this disrespect. “You’ll be in for a bit of a surprise when you meet the Boston ladies,” he warned.

  ***

  Elegantly garbed in a navy silk frock coat and buff breeches, but with a head pounding like all the hammers of hell, Alex leaned his arms against the ship’s railing and watched the wharf below as the ship anchored.

  He had never been to Boston before. He hoped this wasn’t a typical arrival scene. He might have to recommend that Cranville Enterprises find other, less dangerous ports for their wares, if so.

  A vociferous argument had erupted between the plainly clad captain leaning over the side of a colonial sloop and a gaudily garbed official on the wharf. Two red-coated soldiers stiffly held back a crowd of angry bystanders, who yelled and cursed and drowned out any chance of following the argument.

  Alex examined the motley throng below. Well-dressed gentlemen in dark b
roadcloth and tricornes, who were quite likely merchants, mixed with tradesmen in long jerkins and leather breeches, right alongside of a gang of ruffians in tattered shirts and worn sailor’s garb. Despite their differences in station, the entire mob seemed to be in general agreement on the topic of the gaudily dressed gentleman’s ancestry. Interesting, but not worth more of his time.

  He went in search of Jack and found him staring down at the crowd with a frown of concern. “What’s the racket about down there? Are the natives always this restless?” Alex demanded.

  “See that gent in the bright coat?” Jack pointed out the well-fed, elegantly-clad fellow. “That’s the customs officer. It looks like he’ll be tied up for a while. We can’t unload until he approves our papers.”

  Hampton grimaced. “In that case, lower the plank. I’m going ashore. I’ll leave the unloading in your expert hands.”

  Several of the mob turned to stare as Alex descended from the Cranville Enterprises frigate. Apparently deciding he was no danger, they returned to their shouting. Alex elbowed his way through the crowd without interference.

  He eyed the row of tidy brick structures along the wharf with irritation. Somewhere amid those unimposing structures worked an expert troublemaker. He would locate the crotchety old gentleman, demand an explanation, maybe even have him sign an affidavit to the effect that it was all a mistake, and then he would find the nearest promising tavern and a good whore.

  He trudged along the wharf searching for a name to match the letter in his pocket. He cursed the heat, the noisy mob, and the wretch who had forced him to leave his creature comforts to make the interminable journey to this forsaken hole.

  His partners had insisted the man was a trusted merchant and that any complaint must be taken seriously. But Alex had personally overseen the loading of the ships in question. He would have bloody well known if there were any illegal goods in that hold before they sailed. He’d swear Jack Ruggles was an honest man. Someone was trying to stir trouble, and he damned well intended to know why.

  The warehouse with “Wellington Storage” emblazoned in bold letters above the office door was not difficult to locate. From the size of the structure, this was no small operation. No wonder his partners had insisted on investigating. Still, men were known to get senile.

  Alex stepped into the dusky interior without hesitation. A long counter separated the office from the lobby. He admired the neatness of the small room in comparison to his dust-and-cobweb-infested offices back in England.

  A clerk appeared from a hidden doorway. With only one small window over the high account desk, the room relied on a single lamp for illumination. Alex could discern little of the clerk but slim height and an unusual smock. Peremptorily removing the letter from his pocket, he consulted the signature to verify his memory.

  “I have come to see E. A. Wellington. Is he here?”

  “I am E. A. Wellington. May I help you?”

  He started at the husky, sensual timbre of that voice. As the clerk strode forward, the sun caught a copper glint in long, glossy, chestnut hair pulled back in a single black ribbon.

  Alex skeptically raked his gaze over E. A. Wellington’s odd garb. Breeches and stockings appeared beneath the smock, but the shoes were much too small to be a man’s. His gaze probed the contours of the flowing blue muslin without success.

  He finally settled on the unmistakably feminine features above the uncollared cloth. Large, haughty eyes regarded him with dislike from beneath arched brows.

  He met the dislike with coldness. “I’m not inclined to deal with females or underlings. I wish to speak with the E. A. Wellington who wrote this letter, and I wish to do it immediately. I haven’t journeyed here from London to be fobbed off by charades.”

  The clerk stepped to the counter and removed the letter from his hand. She was above middle height, but not so tall that he couldn’t look down on her lustrous hair. A woman with hair that thick could drive a man to distraction wondering what it would look like if the ribbon came untied. Alex held his lust rigidly reined as she regarded the letter.

  She returned it to the counter and met his furious eyes. “I am Evelyn Amanda Wellington, and I wrote that letter. I will assume you are not Lord Cranville. Does this mean I am dealing with an underling?”

  Alex’s temperature shot up another few degrees. He had known men to quake in their shoes when he regarded them with less fury than he did this female now. His own cousin used to run at the sight of him, and even now regarded him with caution when he went into a temper. How dared this impertinent female keep up this game and make veiled insults?

  “I am Alexander Hampton, Miss Wellington, if Wellington you truly are. Lord Cranville is a silent partner in Cranville Enterprises. He has no interest in the shipping line. That is my territory. Perhaps I would do better to ask to see your father.”

  Spots of red colored her high cheeks. Generous lips compressed above an obstinate chin. “You may ask as you wish. He died last autumn, well before this letter was written. In any case, I always handled his correspondence when he was alive. If you have come to answer the charges in that letter, you will have to deal with me.”

  ***

  Evelyn met the stranger’s thick-lashed eyes with as much ferocity as she could summon. She was accustomed to dealing with blustering ships’ captains, irate merchants, and lecherous delivery boys. She was not accustomed to the impact of furious square-jawed giants with eyes she would give gold for. Lud, but a person would have to be a saint to look into those eyes without quivering. She had to remember her anger before she could catch what he was saying.

  “. . . answer the charges! I came here to demand you retract them before my partners believe I have taken up a life of crime. Cranville Enterprises does not and never will engage in the practice of smuggling. I, personally, have no desire to hang for French brandy. I trust you are prepared to give evidence of your charges.”

  “The best evidence will be the contents of your current shipment.” Evelyn kept her simmering temper in check. That he had actually come in person to answer her letter threw doubt on the charges, but his scornful attitude rubbed salt in open sores. She was tired of being treated as less than a person because she was female. She could run this warehouse as competently as her father had, as she had in fact helped him to do these last years. This man had no right to look at her as if she were lower than a snail.

  “Then find someone to send with me, and he’s free to inspect every damned crate and keg addressed to Wellington Storage. Then I expect a written letter of apology to pacify my partners in this matter.”

  “It would be very surprising if the smuggling continued after that letter was received, but on the possibility that you kept the letter quiet and are not involved, I will accompany you. Give me a minute to find someone to mind the desk.”

  Striding toward the back room and untying her smock, Evelyn was startled into halting by her visitor’s irate reply.

  “I refuse to take a fool female into the hold of a ship to faint at the first rat she encounters! Give me someone with a little experience and a stout stomach.”

  Evelyn glared at the arrogant London gentleman with his clipped, haughty accents and narrow mind. “I have been visiting the holds of ships since I was ten. How many years have you spent in them, Mr. Hampton?”

  She could tell she’d hit her target. Hampton gave her a curt nod. “Very well, if that’s your wish.”

  Satisfied she had pierced his thick hide, Evelyn hurried to the back room, where she removed her smock and pinned her hair up in a thick swirl. Generally she wore breeches only when she was working with the stock in back, but she saw no reason to change to go into a ship’s hold. The men who worked on the wharf were accustomed to her unusual garb.

  She called to Jacob to mind the front, and he popped from behind the stacks. “You’re going to leave me here alone?” her brother asked in incredulity.

  Evelyn grinned and tugged at a long curly lock escaping from his queue
. “You keep telling me you’re eleven going on twelve. That should be old enough to stand out there and tell anyone who asks that I’ll be right back.”

  Jacob jerked his head away from his sister’s undignified caress. “I can do that, easy,” he said scornfully, following her to the front.

  He studied their fashionably dressed visitor with evident interest. Like Jacob, Evelyn couldn’t help but notice that Hampton’s expensive attire clung naturally to wide shoulders and flared neatly at the waist. The immaculate lace at his wrist and throat bespoke wealth, the black satin bow at his nape reflected simplicity, but the short vest revealing the Englishman’s trouser buttons held both of them fascinated, for different reasons. Jacob always complained about the long vest hitting him above the knees. Evelyn thought long vests far more decent than short, especially if all men were built as… formidably… as Mr. Hampton.

  “Mr. Hampton, this is my brother, Jacob. Jacob, mind your manners!” Evelyn scolded as she turned to find him standing on his toes in an attempt to see over the counter.

  The man’s coldly chiseled features exhibited no amusement at her brother’s obvious fascination. Irritated at her own interest, she hurried out of the dim office into the bright light of day.

  Hampton seemed uncertain whether to offer a lady in breeches his arm. Scorning any hint that she might not be able to walk the wharf unaided, Evelyn solved his dilemma by striding toward the crowded ramp ahead of him.

  She frowned at the mob screaming curses, but it wasn’t an unusual sight anymore. Everyone’s temper had mounted since the rumors of Parliament’s newest attempt to draw blood from a turnip. Things would go back to normal once sensible heads in his majesty’s cabinet listened to reason. She couldn’t believe an entire government could be so dunderheaded as not to realize that there weren’t enough coins in all the colonies to pay what the Stamp Act required if it were put into law.

  As they reached the nearly impassable region between the ships, Hampton grabbed her arm and blocked her from the overheated, unwashed bodies closing around them. Unconcerned by the half-dressed state of the sailors and deaf to their familiar obscenities, she shook free of his hold and walked up the loading plank with the same ease as if it were a grassy hillside.