Upton just glared at him, then turned to scream for the
servants. Alex shrugged, set down his glass, and departed by the gaping hole
that had once been the front door. He could follow the trail of broken bottles
and locate the mob. He could hear the weird echo of their voices from a
distance, but his interest wasn’t with them. He wasn’t sure what he sought out
of this night, but he knew where his duty lay next.
He made his way to the modest house on Treamount. The entire
street was dark and quiet, and he had an odd premonition that he wouldn’t find
what he sought there. Still, he needed to speak with the lady of the house.
Amanda answered the door, her face pale with worry, her
hands wrapped in frustration in the wrinkled folds of her apron. At sight of
Alex, she gave a cry of relief.
“Tell me where they are! I have been in torment not knowing
whether to go look or stay here in case they needed me. Bless you for coming,
Mr. Hampton.”
He felt a cad for coming without answers to her questions.
He had no hat to remove, and he stood awkwardly on the step, searching for lost
words. “Alex, ma’am, the name’s Alex. Jacob and Miss Wellington were with me
when we put your sister and Miss Upton on the
Minerva.
I thought perhaps
they came back here for you. I’ve ordered the ship to sail if there’s any
increase in the violence. I thought you might want to go with it. Mr. Upton is
staying here. He can ship your possessions later, if you wish.”
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 suspended 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.