Rebel Dreams

by Patricia Rice

  She stared at him with round eyes, and for the first time he realized they were the same shade of violet blue as Evelyn’s. He felt as if Evelyn had impaled him with one of those outraged glances of hers. Here he was trying to do the decent thing for a change, and all these Wellington women could do was treat him like some kind of lower form of reptile. Be damned to the lot of them!

  “Leave Boston? Don’t be ridiculous. Give me time to find my shawl. If they were down at the wharf with you, then they must have stayed to protect the warehouse. I should have known.”

  Alex couldn’t very well walk off and leave her. He tried to persuade her she was safer here, but she was more stubborn than Evelyn at her worst. Sighing, he restricted his pace to that of his companion as they hurried down the dark street toward the harbor.

  “I don’t think this is a wise idea, Mrs. Wellington. The worst of the mob is in this direction. I was willing to risk it if you wished to sail with your sister, but I cannot believe it is the safe thing to do just to check on your children. Why don’t I take you to Mr. Upton while I go down to the warehouse?”

  “Nonsense.” She stepped briskly alongside him. “George and I have never got along. I wish to see Matilda off, if that is possible. You are very generous to see to her safety. She has never liked it here. I should never have asked her to come. She and Frances will be much better off with our family in England.”

  Alex was starting to feel as if whatever good deeds he had performed tonight were merely parts of a grand plan created by the intrepid Wellington ladies. How convenient that he had a ship waiting to sail for the unhappy Mrs. Upton and her daughter.

  If he didn’t sail with them, they could have his cabin.

  The smell of smoke permeated the air near the town center. Alex deftly led his companion down an alley, away from the drunken revelry at the State House. The Hutchinson house was farther into town, away from the wharf. He feared that palatial mansion was now bearing the brunt of the night’s horrors. Perhaps they were safe in going in this direction.

  That notion was soon dispelled with a roar of voices farther down the road. Mrs. Wellington nervously grasped his arm, and Alex reached for his sword.

  Refusing to be weighed down by the burden of a woman on his arm if he had to face a mob, Alex drew her toward the tavern on the corner. Bewildered, Amanda followed.

  Locating his landlord, Alex released Mrs. Wellington’s arm, and said curtly. “Keep her safe until I return.”

  Without listening to protests, he strode in the direction of the riot on the wharf.

  ***

  Evelyn shoved another crate to the barricade she and Jacob had built in front of the warehouse door and stopped to wipe the perspiration from her brow. Her younger brother peered out of the tiny office window, keeping his head down as another object bounced off the outer wall.

  “It ain’t supposed to be like this,” he whispered, defending the cause that had set this mob in motion. “They weren’t supposed to come down here at all.”

  “That would be Mcintosh’s idea.” Wearily Evelyn sat on a crate and contemplated their next move. All the doors were barricaded, but she had no way of protecting the windows. The crash of splintering glass in the warehouse brought her back to her feet. “Papa fired Eb’s son last year for drunkenness. This is his opportunity to get even.”

  She wished for a weapon, any weapon, but she had none. Most of the windows were too small for easy access, but a determined man of the right stature could do it. She didn’t know what she would do if one tried.

  With all the doors and windows blocked, the building was airless, and the day’s heat had no chance of escape. Evelyn moved with the lethargy of despair as she sought the crowbar they kept for opening crates. Her heart wasn’t in any of this. She was on the wrong side of the wall. The mob wasn’t supposed to turn on her. She was one of them.

  It didn’t help that she kept seeing Alex standing on the wharf, his broad shoulders outlined against the sky when she turned away from him. Now she would never know the magic of standing in his arms again, feel the excitement of his lips on hers one more time. She had known he would be leaving. She just hadn’t expected it to be so abruptly.

  Finding the crowbar, she forced herself to recall the lewd female in his bed. Anger wiped out all trace of sentiment. She should be glad to be rid of the villain. There wasn’t an honorable bone in his body. She didn’t even know why he had followed her to her uncle’s. There had to be some purely selfish motive in it somewhere.

  She heard the mob’s roar of triumph at the same time that she heard the hollow thuds of footsteps upstairs. Lud, but she had not worried about the second floor!

  Crying to Jacob, she ran to shove the closest barrels and crates across the door to the stairs. There was little just two of them could do to save the stock on the upper floor. She would have to settle for protecting this one.

  She wanted to cry and scream and berate the mob for their drunken madness, but unlike her uncle, she knew the stupidity of venting her anger on the mindless. The only thing they would understand now was a cannonball.

  “They’re throwing bolts of cloth out the window!” Jacob raced to help her, his wiry frame jerking the heavy crates on top of each other as Evelyn shoved them toward him.

  “That ought to bore them soon enough. They can’t drink cotton.” Furiously Evelyn kicked another crate across the floor in his direction.

  The triumphant yells abruptly turned angry. Worried, she climbed up on a barrel to see out the nearest window. “They’re fighting over the ladder. Someone must have called out the militia! I see swords. Lud, Jacob, there will be bloodshed over this. You said they promised no one would be hurt. Asses! What did they think to accomplish with violence?”

  The peaceful demonstrations she had wholeheartedly supported when they were discussed in the spring had turned into something much more dangerous. From this angle, she couldn’t see much of the fight, but the temper of the mob had changed. Drunken revelry had become ugly curses.

  The ladder crashed into the mob, leaving some sotted fool stranded on the window ledge. Jacob ran from window to window, trying to get a better view of the brawl.

  Perhaps it wasn’t a sword she had seen, but an ax. She heard the unmistakable crunch of metal against wood. Mentally she tried to remember what was in the crates directly in front of the doors. Axes were more lethal than swords against her defenses.

  To her surprise, a man on horseback appeared on the outskirts of the fray. He was shouting and pointing in the direction of the north part of town. His cries diverted the attention of the men on the edges of the crowd. The man on horseback rode from her field of vision, and Evelyn ran to the other side of the warehouse, trying to find him again. There had been something distinctly familiar about that silhouette.

  “They’re still fighting over the ladder!” Jacob screamed, hopping down from his sentry post. “I want to go out there, Evelyn. I can get out the window. Give me a crowbar!”

  “Jacob, you can’t go out there! You’ll be hurt.”

  Jacob ignored her, grabbed a bar from the toolbox, and scrambled up a stack of crates to a broken window. Before Evelyn could say anything more, he was over the ledge.

  That left her little choice. With a sigh of resignation she followed him up the crates, brushed the glass from the ledge, and swung her legs over. No one even noticed her. There was a long drop to the street, and she wished she had chosen the front window, which was at least almost at eye level.

  The mob seemed to be surging in the direction the horseman had pointed. She heard shouts of “Hutchinson!” and “Militia!” Still, there were the diehards fighting over possession of the ladder, professional thieves, more than likely. A night like this must be heaven for criminals.

  Raw curses reached her ears, and steeling herself, Evelyn leapt from the ledge, crowbar in hand. She couldn’t let anything happen to Jacob. She felt guilty enough for letting him become embroiled in this.

  The man suspen
ded in the window screamed vile threats at the brawlers—men were fighting off the thieves!

  She couldn’t figure out who the gallant knights were who had taken the initiative in defending what was, after all, only a warehouse. As she approached, she watched one bully lift a barrel stave over his head, prepared to crack it down over the head of the man demolishing the ladder. Without a second thought, she swung the crowbar at the back of the bully’s legs.

  He screamed in agony and crumpled to the ground. The ax-wielder glanced around in surprise, caught the flash of Evelyn’s white shirt in the darkness, and grinned through the soot on his face. “Thanks, mate.” He saluted her and returned to wrecking the ladder.

  It made no sense at all. She didn’t recognize the man, but in this light she would have had difficulty recognizing her mother. A fistfight a few yards away ended in one contestant sprawling along the street. A small figure immediately leapt out of the darkness, crashing headfirst into the soft belly of the victor. Jacob! The villain went down with a thud, and Evelyn hurried to make certain he stayed down.

  How the devil did one tell the defenders from the thieves?

  Gradually the combatants melted from the scene. Several bodies lay scattered along the walk, but judging by the fumes with which they reeked, drunkenness had as much to do with their unconscious state as anything. The ax-wielder had disappeared, leaving the ladder in splinters. Evelyn swung around, looking for someone else to fight, but the night had grown quiet. Even the man on the ledge had given up screaming and retreated to the interior. She would have to send someone up there to have him arrested.

  She exchanged glances with a weary Jacob, then looked up at the sound of a frustrated maternal voice coming toward them. “Thank goodness! You’re both all right. Now, where’s Alex? I have a thing or two to say to that man.”

  Evelyn stared in astonishment as her mother hurried toward them, her petticoats whispering against the stones. Her mother never came down to the wharf anymore. And Alex? Had she lost her mind?

  “Alex left with Aunt Matilda, Mama.” She glanced toward the harbor where the Minerva had once been anchored. The ship’s lights had sailed away when the first of the mob poured onto the wharf. Alex was gone. “I’ll tell you about it when we get home.”

  Exhausted, Evelyn wiped her grimy face with her sleeve. She would have to send Jacob home with her mother, then find someone to remove the thief from the warehouse.

  “He can’t be,” her mother argued. “He’s here somewhere. I saw him ride this way, and that’s his horse over by Dennison’s. I hope he hasn’t been hurt.”

  Evelyn didn’t try to identify the emotions washing over her. Feeling a weight lift from her shoulders, she sent Jacob in one direction, and she hastened in another. A man the size of Alex couldn’t easily disappear.

  She found him lying deathly still in the alley beside the warehouse. Crying out, Evelyn dropped to her knees and searched for some sign of life.

  His flesh was warm as her fingers skimmed over the rough stubble of his beard, finding the pressure point beneath his ear. The throb of life beneath her fingers knotted her insides. She had never caressed him so intimately before. As others ran up to help, she slid her hand through his thick dark hair, finding the stickiness of blood along his scalp. She cursed and scarcely acknowledged the men scurrying to act upon her mother’s orders.

  “Find a wagon! We’ll need to take him back to the house. Jacob, find the doctor. Quickly!”

  Alex shouldn’t still be here, she mentally shouted. He should be on the Minerva, sailing out of her life, back to the fashionable glitter of London. He had no business in this filthy back alley of Boston.

  When the wagon arrived, she clambered up and helped ease Alex’s shoulders as the men lifted him into the bed. She crossed her legs and pillowed his injured head on her lap as they jolted away. Her fingers wound through his hair, and she held herself still, as still as the man sprawled across her lap, the man who shouldn’t be here.

  Chapter 10

  “Bloody, thrice-damned idiot!” Alex grabbed his aching head and sank back upon the pillow, squeezing his eyes closed against the throbbing pain. “Damnation!” he muttered, cursing under his breath while groping for the brandy that was usually on the table when he woke with a head like this.

  He hadn’t had a headache like this since the morning he had woken to remember hiring a band of thieves to kidnap his cousin Alyson. One of the low points of his life, admittedly, although his intentions had been honorable. He thought.

  He squeezed his eyes tighter, trying to remember the train of events that had set off this spree. He had a high tolerance for alcohol and always remembered the night before. Humiliating memories were the only thing that kept him from going off the deep end. The headache was degrading enough.

  Oddly, he had no recollection of so much as taking a drop. That was a bad sign.

  “Are you awake yet or do you always grimace in your sleep?”

  Bigad, that seductive voice was unforgettable. Alex groaned again, remembering Evelyn’s shocked face in the door of his room last night. Devil take it, surely he hadn’t dragged her in with his doxie. The thought of the hell to pay had he done the unpardonable caused Alex to grope across the bed in search of her.

  His hand found only the bed edge. He pried his eyes open again and met concerned violet eyes. His breath caught at the sight. He quickly ascertained that she was dressed and didn’t appear prepared to kill him, and he let out his breath again.

  She set the tray down on the table beside the bed. “I’ve brought you some apple juice. I wasn’t sure if you would be ready to eat yet.”

  Alex covered his eyes with his hand and felt the coarseness of a day’s worth of whiskers on his cheeks. “I don’t suppose it’s fermented?” he muttered with little hope.

  “Not yet. It’s too early in the season.” She poured the juice and stood uncertainly at his bedside. “The doctor said we must keep waking you every few hours. I’m sorry if it hurts your head. He left some powder for the pain. Shall I mix it in the juice for you?”

  Doctor. Alex tested his head, finding the bandage held to his forehead by strips of cloth. Things were clearer, if not better. “What the hell happened?”

  Evelyn lowered herself to the edge of his covers. “From what I’ve been able to determine, you and some friends of yours attacked a mob. It wasn’t particularly sensible, but I thank you for it. They would have carried off half my warehouse if you hadn’t arrived when you did.”

  He remembered now, and he groaned. The Minerva had sailed without him. More fool he. The soft scent of a summery fragrance enveloped him as Evelyn nervously rearranged his covers. He felt the familiar stirring in his loins that had got him into more trouble in his lifetime than he dared admit.

  Alex caught her arm and held it as he tried opening his eyes again. His thoughts couldn’t focus on anything but the incredible discovery that they were alone and he was decidedly naked beneath this sheet. If his head didn’t hurt so damned much, he’d take advantage of the situation, but he didn’t think his proper Evelyn would willingly undress and accommodate him. Rather than endure the pain from two locations, he chose to get rid of the source of one.

  “Well, if you have come to reward me for my bravery, you’ll have to find a better time. My head hurts like hell.”

  “I wouldn’t want to spoil your reputation by commending you,” she replied tartly. “I just thought I’d keep you from dying on our hands and having to dispose of the body. The juice is on the table should you wish it. I’ll be going now.”

  She tried to shake off his imprisoning hand, but Alex couldn’t seem to send her on her way. He wondered if she always looked this good in the early morning or if he were receiving special treatment. Deciding the latter was unlikely, he banished the image of how she would look with that roll of lovely hair loose and tumbling about her shoulders.

  “Where are we?” he demanded.

  “My mother had you brought to our house s
o we could look after you until you’re well. Are you well yet, Mr. Hampton?”

  The note of irritation almost made him smile. Almost. His testy Evelyn wasn’t out to win any awards for congeniality, but she couldn’t disguise the worry in her eyes, nor her nervousness as his fingers circled her wrist. He hadn’t had anyone look at him with concern since he was a lad in leading strings. He rather liked the feeling, actually. Closing his eyes, he kept her wrist caught in the circle of his hand.

  “Not yet, Miss Wellington. I think it may well be a long time before I recover. I don’t suppose you sing lullabies, do you?”

  ***

  Evelyn stifled a laugh at her patient’s outrageousness. She didn’t understand why he did most of the things he did, but she knew a play for sympathy when she heard one. Daringly she pressed a kiss against his bristly cheek and whispered next to his ear, “If you don’t recover soon, I’ll have to marry you just to protect my reputation. I wish you speedy recovery, Mr. Hampton.”

  She freed herself and made a strategic retreat. She would not so easily forget what kind of rake he was after last night’s unpleasantry at the inn, but she had to forgive a man who had saved her livelihood.

  After that early-morning visit, Evelyn walked down to the wharf to start the task of cleaning up the debris from the prior night, leaving her mother to tend to Alex. Troops of militia with grim expressions patrolled the streets, surveying the damage. Evelyn contemplated checking on her uncle but didn’t have the heart for it.

  Everyone was eager to gossip, and before she reached the wharf she had a good grasp of the extent of the destruction. After emptying the wine cellars at her uncle’s and the judge’s, the mob had congregated at Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson’s. They had torn his exquisite home to the ground, complete to the manuscript he had been working on. The house where she and Alex had danced not many nights before no longer existed.

  Shuddering at the thought of what might have happened had Alex not drawn off the small mob at the warehouse, Evelyn set to work with a will. There was no sign that the Minerva meant to return for Alex. She wondered about that, but until he was in some condition to speak sensibly, she would not know.