Rebel Dreams (18 page)

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Authors: Patricia Rice

Tags: #historical, #romance

BOOK: Rebel Dreams
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“You mean
when
he finds me guilty?” Evelyn didn’t
hide her bitterness. “Thomas says I will most likely be made to pay a fine. The
proceeds from the auction might help, but I’d rather the money went to the men
I owe and who need the funds as much as I. In any case, it is not likely to be
sufficient. That is as far as I get in my thinking.”

The next step after
not
paying the fine was going to jail. He tightened his grip on her arm and offered
the only solution she might accept. “Henderson says it is possible that they
may give you time to collect the money to pay the penalty. I am expecting
another ship in a few weeks. When the contents are sold, I should have
sufficient funds to advance you a loan. Then, when I hear from my cousin with
the names of the smugglers, I will be able to present that as evidence to have
your case appealed. It will be time-consuming. I wish I could think of
something that would end this nonsense now, but short of hanging the judge, I’ve
failed to come to another solution.”

Evelyn strode beside him, contemplating his offer,
increasing Alex’s anxiety with every step. This was worse than chasing his
cousin across the Atlantic and back. At least then he had been able to take
some action in the matter. In this, his hands were tied.

He’d seldom been inclined to bouts of guilt after gambling
his allowance away or being caught with another man’s wife or meeting one
mistress while walking with another. He had found such diversions momentarily
amusing, but he’d been guilty as sin then. Now, when he had no responsibility
whatsoever for this woman’s plight, he felt guilt. He definitely possessed a
perverted conscience, Alex concluded.

“I thank you for the offer, Alex. I will consider it as one
made by a friend and consult with my mother and Jacob about it. Unfortunately,
my family is still under the impression that we are to wed and do not consider
the matter very serious. I think it is time I enlighten them to the truth.”

That jarred Alex from complacency. “Don’t be too hasty in
that, Evelyn. We still have your uncle to deal with, and he could make things
very unpleasant for you if he chose.”

He didn’t understand his reaction to ending their mock
betrothal, but he could think of all sorts of rationalizations. He had grown to
enjoy the comfort and companionship of the Wellington home, for instance. He
would have to move out and endure her mother’s scorn for his deception. He
rather liked her mother.

Evelyn frowned. “I just wish I understood why Uncle George
has not supported me in this. Surely he must know I wouldn’t willingly engage
in smuggling.”

She was still denying her uncle’s involvement. With no
evidence otherwise, Alex kept his silence on the matter.

***

It rained the day of the trial. Evelyn offered platitudes
about being grateful that the downpour had waited until after the auction, but
she was relieved when Alex arrived at the house in the carriage he had
commandeered from her uncle.

She held her head up and refused to resort to tears as she climbed
down from the carriage and entered the building where the trial was to be held.
Her family stood at her side. Alex was behind her, but it wasn’t enough. She
felt icily alone on the planks in front of the wooden podium.

The verdict was a foregone conclusion. Evelyn listened to Alex’s
impassioned testimony on her behalf as if it were a speech made by an orator at
Faneuil Hall, having no connection to her at all. She did not know whether the
judge realized the men filling the benches of the courtroom and the upper
gallery were in all probability the same ones responsible for breaking into his
home during the riots, but it was too late to care. The judge didn’t seem
intimidated by his audience when he found Evelyn guilty without benefit of jury
as suited the charges on which she had been tried—under British law.

She sat still as stone as the court named a fine worth more
than the value of her family’s warehouse and all its contents. Anger simmered
through the courtroom and emerged in shouts of “Outrage!” and obscenities as to
the origins of the judge’s antecedents. The mob had intimidated the governor
into leaving town and the stamp collector into resigning his post, but the
judge obviously considered himself safe. Evelyn scarcely heard as he entered
into complex negotiations with Thomas and Alex over the time needed to gather
the sum.

She couldn’t sell her family’s only source of income. She
would have to go to jail.

Somehow she made it home that evening and retired to her
room without speaking more than two syllables to anyone. She heard Alex go out.
She heard her uncle arrive and begin shouting, most likely with frustration,
when he found only her implacable mother available to bully. She heard Alex
return at a late hour and hesitate outside her door. She wasn’t certain whether
she wanted him to enter or not. She didn’t think it would be possible to ever
sleep again. If she could just get some rest, she might think of some way out
of this predicament. As it was, her brain had ceased functioning.

Like an automaton, Evelyn rose and went to the warehouse the
next day. On the way, she heard the judge had been hanged in effigy last night
and demonstrators had surrounded his home and harassed him with shouts and
stones, but that didn’t improve her situation.

She felt the presence of British troops like an invasion of
privacy as they passed her in the streets. In six weeks, the Stamp Act would go
into effect, and she dreaded the conflict that was building. Her case was just
a pebble in a riverbed.

When she returned home that night, she heard Alex and her
uncle arguing furiously in the front room, but she saw no point in joining
them. Somehow she must make her family understand that she and Alex had never
meant to marry, but it seemed a minor concern in face of the much larger
problem.

There really was nothing Alex could do. The judge had given
her six weeks to pay the fine. Even if Alex’s ship should arrive, it might not
be in time to save her.

She wasn’t at all certain she could accept Alex’s generous
offer in any case. She suspected he owned neither ship nor contents. Whatever
his relationship with the powerful earl, it could not be enhanced by selling
what was not his.

Her thoughts constantly turned to flight, but that would
leave her mother and Jacob in Uncle George’s unforgiving hands. If she could
sell the warehouse and its contents and add the proceeds to the amount gained
in the auction, she might come close to the fine needed to keep her from jail.
Their other debts wouldn’t be paid; they would be bankrupt and without a means
to make a living, but she would be free to look for work.

That thought did not lighten Evelyn’s mood. She doubted that
there was a man in Boston willing to hire her as more than tavern maid or
housekeeper. Her father had needed her help and accepted the practicality of
her working by his side until Jacob was old enough to learn the business. No
other man had that incentive.

She should have married. That was the only respectable
occupation for a woman. Then she would have a husband to protect her and her
family. Not that any of the men who had offered would be of much use in this
situation.

Despising her weakness, Evelyn avoided Alex. He had told her
in no uncertain terms of his opinion of marriage. She could not look for help
from that quarter, and she would not let him think she expected it. After all,
he was little more than a stranger who had somehow become entrapped in her life
and would soon fight his way free.

***

Irritated by Evelyn’s refusal to give him so much as the
time of day, and frustrated by his helplessness, Alex threw himself into the
volatile politics of Boston as a distraction. He met the wealthy John Hancock
and contemplated seeking his help for Evelyn’s future, but he disliked the man’s
ineffectual weakness and hypochondria and didn’t further the acquaintance.

He listened to impassioned speeches and conceded the
colonists had some reason for complaint, but they were better off making their
speeches to Parliament and not to each other. They argued so bitterly over ways
and means that Alex felt it unlikely they would ever accomplish anything.

In the back rooms, out of the public speechifying, Alex
found more concrete issues discussed. As much as he disliked the crotchety Sam
Adams, he had to admire his thinking. The man knew how to get things done. If
all the colonies could be made to defy the Stamp Act, as he claimed, there
would be very little Parliament could do short of war to enforce it. Alex
prayed sensible heads would prevail in England if it should come to that stage.

Each night he returned late to the Wellington home and
hesitated outside Evelyn’s bedroom door. He wanted to discuss what he had heard
with her, to bring the issues into perspective with her commonsensical views,
but she no longer seemed interested. In any case, he would forget talk once he
was in her bedroom. He hadn’t been with a woman since the night of the riot,
and his physical needs were unaccustomed to neglect.

He knew she was awake. He could see the candlelight beneath
her door and hear the pages of her book turning. He could stand there forever
and imagine how she would look in a thin muslin nightdress with her hair
tumbling down about her shoulders and breasts. The picture of a virgin queen,
he grimaced to himself. That thought drove him down the hall to his own room.

***

Alex wasn’t there when George Upton finally caught Evelyn
alone at the warehouse. She watched his approach without emotion. Now that she
had made a decision of sorts, she had to cling to it and forget all the negative
emotions that protested the unfairness of life.

Her uncle tried to look concerned. He tried to look
sympathetic, but she saw only triumph in his eyes. She had been a thorn in his
side ever since he married her aunt, although she didn’t know why. She held
nothing against her uncle but the fact that he was obnoxious and arrogant.
Gradually his nattering pierced the fog of her brain.

“I have found a few friends who are willing to buy the
warehouse at what I consider a very fair price. It’s not sufficient to pay the
fine, of course, but I might possibly have enough to lend whatever difference
you might need. Your fiancé can pay me back when you are married.”

Her uncle made it sound so easy that Evelyn almost smiled.
She didn’t, however. Instead, she broke the news with no emotion at all. “There
will be no marriage, Uncle George. I’d rather go to jail than sell my family to
the damned British courts. Your offer is appreciated, but tell your friends I
will not sell.”

It was almost worth going to jail to see the stunned look on
her uncle’s face. It quickly turned purple. “Not marry! You will disgrace your
family and your father’s name! You must be mad! I have offered you the easiest
possible solution. You need only sail away with your new husband to leave all
this shame behind. What on earth possesses you, child? I am only trying to look
out for your best interests.”

Perhaps he was, but he didn’t know she had no husband to go
to. Even if Alex offered, she couldn’t marry him. Jail was a simpler solution
than wife of an English aristocrat. Evelyn didn’t even attempt to explain that
to her uncle, and he left in a huff.

***

A week after the trial, Alex sat at a tavern discussing
plans for the upcoming congress when a small boy ran up with a message from
Evelyn. He asked the boy to repeat it, and thought it odd that she wouldn’t
have written such an urgent request. It had been so long since he had made
other than polite conversation with her that he couldn’t be certain of her
mood, however.

Cursing that she dared continue their investigation without
him, he handed the boy one of his small store of coins and excused himself from
his companions. The damn proud woman wouldn’t have requested his aid unless it
were truly serious.

Alex hurried toward the livery housing his horse. How in
hell had she got to Sudbury, and what was she doing there? She knew better than
to return to that smuggler’s hideout. It didn’t make sense, and he didn’t like
things that didn’t make sense.

Alex rode by the warehouse and stopped at Evelyn’s home to
verify she was in neither place. He could think of no good reasons for her to
be in Sudbury. That she was free to send a message could be considered reason
not to fear, but his bones told him otherwise. Something was wrong.

Adding pistol and rifle to his saddle, Alex galloped his horse
out of the city. While he lived, no man other than himself would lay a hand on
Evelyn Wellington.

Chapter 14

Having worked himself into an overwrought state by the
time he reached the Wayside Inn, Alex suffered a letdown when he discovered no
more than an old swaybacked nag in the inn yard. If Evelyn were being held
captive by dangerous rogues, they certainly had a sorry taste in mounts.

Feeling a trifle foolish trailing into the sleepy inn with
pistol and rifle in hand, he tucked the pistol out of sight in his trouser band
and prayed nothing would disturb it into exploding while in such a position. He
rather treasured that part of him that would be removed by such an untimely
incident.

Shouldering his rifle, Alex sauntered into the tavern. He
heard no screams or moans, but he did not trust the peace any more than he
trusted the inn’s owner. When the same laconic fellow appeared as before, Alex’s
grip tightened on the rifle.

To his surprise, the narrow-faced proprietor nodded in
recognition and gestured toward the stairs. “Hampton? The lady’s waiting for
you upstairs. Room on the right.”

He didn’t like this set-up. He didn’t trust a man who stored
illegal brandy. But the man didn’t take his weapons, and he wasn’t leaving
without Evelyn. Alex took the worn pine stairs two at a time. What in hell
would Evelyn be doing in this out-of-the-way hole alone and waiting for him?
Nothing that he could think of would induce the prim-and-proper Miss Wellington
to such compromising circumstances.

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