Alex's Angel (10 page)

No—she needed to keep her mind on the matter at hand and think positively. Be proactive. This was business. She couldn’t let herself become intimidated. She couldn’t know if Mr Dalton might still be interested or not until she asked. She needed to find out where he lived and go and ask him. Mr Porter would know.

 
* * * *

Her empty stomach growled as she walked from her Water Street boarding house to the Blue Duck on Race Street. In the frigid air, she pulled the edges of the old blanket together over her body as a few early morning stragglers gazed curiously at her. Finally, she reached the Blue Duck and sat on the stoop. Yearning for a cup of steaming coffee, she waited for Porter to show.

Two hours later, Porter came, whistling and jangling his keys as he ambled down the sidewalk. “Good morning, Miss Eliot,” he said, as if he were used to finding young women huddled in his doorway.

“Good morning,” she replied, through chattering teeth.

“Well, doll, what brings you here so early?” His coffee-scented breath nauseated her as weakness assailed her. She needed something very sweet to eat. Badly. She always did now in the mornings. It seemed to be a lingering effect of the fever. She swallowed hard.

“I have been evicted from my lodgings.”

“Have you?” He flicked his eyes over her and rolled his tongue in his cheek. “You’d better come inside.”

She stepped out of the way as he approached the door. As he slipped his key into the lock, the anticipation of getting indoors proved too much and she shivered violently.

“Your gentleman woke me up very late—or should I say early?” Porter laughed, turning his key in the lock. “Asking all about you, where you live… You certainly worked him up and left him guessing.”

She sucked in her breath. Alex had asked about
her
? Maybe he was still interested…

“I must say I’m surprised to hear of your current state of affairs,” Porter said as he opened the door. “Dalton definitely seemed interested. Granted, his interest seldom lasts, but he is very generous while it does.”

Porter’s words put a chill into her heart. But why? She only needed a little money from Dalton. She certainly didn’t expect to hold his interest for long. Nor would she want to hold any man’s interest for long. She wanted her freedom.

 
“I am sorry Mr Dalton woke you,” she said as they entered the tavern.

 
“Naw, it’s fine—I just got up, got dressed and went for a very good shoofly pie at my brother’s.” He grinned, rolling his eyes. “The other girls were set to claw your eyes out last night. Dalton is disgustingly rich and unwed—wildly popular with my girls, but he’s never taken any of them off the premises.” He laughed wickedly.

 
“Well, I was actually hoping you could tell me something more…er, geographic about him.”

“He lives on Chestnut, between Second and Third.” He described the house and gave her the number. “Knew him years ago, during our privateering days. He’s never grown too successful to remember an old friend. A fine gentleman, is Alex Dalton.”

 
* * * *

A sharp clapping sound cut into his sleep and dragged him from the most pleasurable erotic dream he’d ever had. Alex open his eyes. Brilliant light flooded his bedchamber. He closed his eyes against it.

“What the devil?” he asked.

Zachariah knew better than to throw the curtains open this early.

“Alex, it’s already half past eleven, wake up.”

He opened one eye. Halfway.

Peter van Moerdijk, his cousin, stood there, his silver-blond hair glowing in the sunlight, with his arms crossed over his chest, a grin lighting up his angelic features. “James sent me to come and fetch you.”

Beneath the heavy, all-obscuring coverlet, Alex released his grip from his hard, hungry cock. Then he rolled from his side to a sitting position in the bed. Slowly, he opened his other eye. “If you don’t close those damned curtains and get your cheerful arse out of here, I am going to thrash you through the floor.”

And Alex had done it. Countless times. Even though Peter was older and smarter in a bookish sense, Alex had always had the upper hand between them and it was just something they accepted.

But Peter shook his head. “Alex, you can’t miss the meeting with the congressmen today.”

Oh, damn.

The meeting. He had promised James.

Sensation vibrated through him. A memory of her body, shaking in his arms. God, she’d been so abandoned, taking her pleasure from him. He would have adored exploring that shattering sensuality of hers, discovering her depths—

Peter laughed. “Oh yes, I heard about her. The whole city—well at least the men—are spreading the buzz about how you knocked Richard Green to the floor of the Blue Duck over some pretty, petite little harlot.”

Alex rubbed his eyes.

“Does she look like Alice? They made her sound very much like Alice. Petite and delicate with large eyes. Is she?” Peter’s voice held an urgent interest that settled cold in Alex’s guts.

They had always shared everything since boyhood. And that included the details of their erotic conquests.

Alex wasn’t in the mood to share.

“She’s not like Alicia.”

“Ah, Alicia.” Peter laughed softly. “You always did indulge her airs.”

Alex dropped his hand from his face and stared at Peter levelly. “If she wanted to be Alicia, then why shouldn’t she be Alicia?” Alex shook his head, trying to clear the sleep—and the lust—away. “I don’t want to talk about Alicia today.”

Peter chuckled. “Your problem, oh cousin of mine, is that you must convince yourself that you are in love with all your women. Even after this brief, manufactured love ends, you insist on remaining friendly with them, forever letting them bend your ear and opening your purse to their little troubles.”

 
Alex arose from the bed, grimacing at the shock of chilly air on his naked body as he left the warm bubble under the coverlet. He found his banyan and donned it, tying the belt. He pulled the bell cord to signal his morning coffee and then turned back to Peter. “Your problem is you never care about your women one way or the other.”

Peter’s mouth dropped open and he placed his hand over his left lapel. “I loved Jacobine—and to the very devil with anyone who dare suggest otherwise.”

Alex nodded. He loved his cousin more than he cared for anyone else in his entire family, but he knew his faults as well. Peter was careless with his women. Sometimes fatally so.

He went about laying his shaving things out. He never could stand to be hovered over in the mornings by his valet. There had been a time when he’d been forced to allow others to bathe and groom him. He never would ever again.

“I did love my wife.” Peter’s voice held a hard edge of defence.

“Of course you did.” Alex didn’t want to talk about wives and lovers. Where the devil was his coffee?

“I know you, you romanticise everything, including marriage, but you have no real experience of what it is truly like.” Peter chuckled, a deep, cynical sound. “Do you think one day you meet some lovely thing and that initial rush of feeling, the heated lust just never dies and that’s how you decide—that’s the one you marry?”

“I don’t know, Peter, you tell me,” Alex said, his voice trailing off as a political cartoon on a leaflet that lay on his washstand caught his attention.

“It’s like this, Alex, you meet someone and she’s…an angel, pure and good. You want to protect her, to shelter her and give her everything. Her happiness is all. And she’s beautiful, you want her but you can’t just take her like you do other, lesser women. How can you do something you’d kill another man for? So you marry her. The love, the desire to cherish and protect her, to provide for her only grows stronger. But the heated ardour fades. You don’t want it to. But it does anyway. It’s not the same as love. And nothing can replace the thrill of chasing fresh petticoat.”

How could he judge Peter? He knew he’d be the exact same way if he married. Still, it was an extreme annoyance to see his own faults mirrored so closely in another person. Alex cut Peter an irritated glance. “You needn’t explain yourself to me, of all people.”

Peter blinked several times and rubbed the back of his neck. “So, does she look like Alice?”

“I. Don’t. Want. To. Talk. About. It.”

Peter gaped at him for a moment, then shrugged and went to sit in the wingchair near the bed. Stretching his long legs out, he laced his hands together over his lap and grinned at Alex. “I simply asked what she was like. She must have been something for you to thrash poor Richard Green like that.”

Alex turned back to his washstand and rubbed his hands over the bristle on his cheeks. “You should have known long ere now it takes very little for me to want to thrash Richard Green.”

“James will be fit to be tied—fit to be tied.” Peter’s voice rang with of touch of smug amusement. “You promised him no girling—no scandals, no troubles during this business about the national navy.”

“I only promised him I would devote my time and energy to the naval cause this winter. I made no vows beyond that.”

A knock sounded on the door. His morning coffee. He answered the door and let Zachariah in.

As the tall, thin black man set up the little table with the coffee service, Alex motioned Peter out.

Peter shrugged and stalked out of the chamber. Zachariah followed soon after for he knew his employer’s preferences.

Alex stood alone, sipping coffee prepared in the Turkish fashion.

He’d had taste enough of the troublesome chit to know he was better off not exploring those depths. He ought be breathing a sigh of relief, like one just given a reprieve.

She was just another harlot. In a city full of them.

She was too young. Too thin. Too tart-tongued. Unsophisticated. Probably illiterate as well. She’d likely bore him to tears.

She didn’t even have a respectable bosom.

Yet her memory lingered. The way her chatter had lightened his spirits. The way her body had trembled in his arms and the taste of her breath as she’d cried her release into his mouth. Her sensual response had been stunning, like nothing he’d ever known.

 
* * * *

Finding the gate open, Emily wandered through and walked up the drive. Her heartbeat increased with each step, for she was intimidated by the stately Georgian house’s red brick elegance. The driver from the night before was busy polishing the carriage’s brass accents. He looked up, his brown eyes wide with shock. She half expected him to demand that she leave, but he merely tipped his hat, then returned to his work.

 
It was noon. She knew enough about the better sort to wait until at least ten to go calling. But after the breakfast of bread and cheese that Mr Porter had so thoughtfully provided, she’d spent a few hours sleeping in the back room of the Blue Duck and hadn’t awoken until nearly half past eleven.

She walked up the marble steps, then paused. She’d made it this far—she gathered confidence that she could achieve her goal. While her heart slowed, she reviewed the story she planned to tell whoever answered the door. She was here on behalf of her brother, to seek a loan. It seemed as likely a story as any. Drawing a deep inhalation, she approached the three-panelled dark green door crowned by an elegant fanlight and a Palladian window embellished with delicate white mouldings.

She hesitated again. Should she go around to the servants’ entrance?

Sudden raucous barking broke into her thoughts and sent her heart pounding all over again. A little pug scratched its front paws on the left hand pane of the sidelight. Definitely—she should definitely go around to the servants’ entrance. She started shaking all over. Alex might not even be home.

Run—just run! Run before you’re caught and someone sends for the watch.

But before she could flee, the door was opened by a tall, thin woman of about thirty. A coal-black plait of hair lay over one shoulder and dark blue, heavily lashed eyes peered over her wire-rimmed spectacles with curious detachment.

“Mrs Kimble should have told you—pick the laundry up at the back entrance,” the young woman said in a hoarse voice. Sniffing, she moved to close the door.

“Wait,” Emily said.

The woman paused with her brows lifted. “Yes?”

Emily drew on all of her nerve. “Is Mr Alexander Dalton home?”

Like a cat that suddenly spies prey, the woman narrowed her dark blue gaze on Emily. A small smile crossed her rosebud mouth and her eyes twinkled with an almost mischievous mirth. She turned her head, shouting, “Mama—come here!”

The loud voice nearly split Emily’s eardrums and she flinched involuntarily.

“Mama,
please!
” the woman shouted, staring at Emily as though she were trying to pierce through her, as if she would uncover all her secrets if she could.

Emily shifted on her feet as she tried not to sway with the fatigue that once again threatened to overwhelm her. Her head began to ache slightly. The fever had left her weak, delicate in a way she’d never been before. How long would it continue to affect her life?