Rebel Dreams (45 page)

There were at least ten thousand other subjects to be
addressed sometime in the near future, but the most important had been settled.
Margaret would be staying. Evelyn took the girl’s hand and kissed Alex’s cheek.

“I love you,” she whispered, and he looked quite pleased
with himself as he watched them go. Evelyn’s heart pounded with the pleasure of
knowing she had done something right, even if she was an interfering shrew.

That night when they prepared for bed, Alex was unusually
inattentive, and Evelyn watched him with worry. When he drew his hand through
her hair, she rested her palm against his chest and looked up to him
inquiringly.

He responded almost wistfully. “She is very lovely, is she
not?”

Evelyn’s heart skipped a beat. She began unfastening his
shirt for him. “She looks just like you, Alex. She is so beautiful, I think I’m
jealous.”

“Jealous?” He tugged her hair back to gaze down into her
face. “What has got into your head now?”

Evelyn wrinkled her nose up. “She’s lovely and intelligent
and in a few years she can do all the things for you that I can do: hostess
your dinner parties, entertain the wives and daughters of your friends, and run
the household and probably your estates. You won’t need me at all.”

Alex grinned and tugged her hair until she turned to meet
his gaze. He brushed a kiss beside her mouth, traced another along her lips,
and located the drawstring of her chemise. “Is that what I need you for? I didn’t
know. I knew there must be some reason I took you for wife. I know I can’t
sleep without you. And I have great difficulty breathing without you. And
eating is quite out of the question if you’re not by my side. So I rather
thought you were an aid to my health. And there is the matter of the great
discomfort that occurs when I think of you wearing only a thin chemise, or a
revealing ball gown, or a modest day dress, or only the bubbles in your bath. I
have discovered you are the only relief for that discomfort, little tyrant. So
I rather need you around a lot because I think of you a lot. And I suspect that
means we may have a dozen daughters even more lovely than our Meg because you
will be their mother, and I’d hoped you would stay long enough to help me bring
them up. They’re bound to be a handful, I fear.”

The chemise fell to the floor. Strong arms transported her
to the bed. She tried to remember if she had ever needed a nightgown since
gracing her husband’s bed, but that thought dissipated as he began to kiss her
all over. His words had succeeded in producing an aura of enchantment that was
too beautiful to dispel, and she floated in ecstasy as he came down beside her.

“Do you really think you might need me just a little?” she
asked as his lips found a particularly vulnerable spot.

“I really think I need you a whole lot. I really think I
have needed you all my life. I really think you had better stop doing that or
our dozen daughters will spill all over the sheets.” He moaned this last
against her hair as she stroked him.

Evelyn laughed. “One at a time is quite sufficient. And I
believe the prospects of the next being a son are quite good.”

“The Cranville heir, of course. We will need two or three or
half a dozen of those also,” Alex said as he knelt between her legs and found
his goal. Her welcome momentarily robbed him of the power of speech.

“Your daughter now, a son in September, and maybe another
daughter—” Evelyn quit talking, lost in the frantic rhythm of his movement.

Not until Alex had achieved satisfaction for both of them
did the import of her words sink in. Bracing himself on both arms above her,
their bodies still joined in the melting heat of their lovemaking, Alex stared
down into his wife’s contented expression. “A son when?”

Evelyn’s eyes opened, and a worried look creased her brow. “In
September. Is there something wrong?”

“September.” Alex did mental gymnastics. This was
mid-February. By September. That meant . . . He gave a whoop of
joy and rolled over to release her from his heavy weight— forgetting that he
had been too impatient to seek the center of the bed earlier.

He tumbled to the floor with a crash. His cry brought
worried calls from their servants, and it was Evelyn who whooped as she bent
over the edge of the bed to observe her lordly husband sprawled across the cold
floor, grinning.

The debates in Parliament over the colonial Stamp Act
reached furious proportions, and Alex was gone most of every day and night,
twisting arms and pleading his case. Franklin stopped by a time or two to
congratulate Evelyn on her husband’s valiant efforts, but he could offer no
assurances that past wrongs would be righted. The prospect of putting the upstart
colonists in their place by declaring war seemed to tickle the fancies of the
more militant members of the government.

Evelyn carried her pregnancy easily. The heart-stopping
smile that only Evelyn knew her husband was capable of appeared more frequently
now, even when he returned to his home to find it in an uproar.

And uproars were more common than not. The plumbers were
still piecing together the bathing room in Alex’s suite, while carpenters began
to tear apart a room in Deirdre’s suite to provide the same for her. Evelyn
discreetly entertained politicians and their families throughout the confusion,
providing a forum to discuss the issues at stake.

And in and around this mass confusion, Margaret made her
presence felt, volubly protesting the stays required for her fashionable new
attire, exuberantly racing through the halls after a stray cat she acquired,
and throwing a tantrum to match Alex’s when confronted with Lady Barton’s
spiteful ill humor. Alex’s mother had refused to leave the comfort of the
earl’s home.

Alex rolled his eyes heavenward and clutched his walking
stick like a weapon when entering one evening to the less-than-musical
harmonies of grandmother and granddaughter sharpening their tongues on each
other. But he smiled as Evelyn hurried toward him, her arms outstretched to
take the hug he offered. He wrapped her in his embrace, and ignoring the stares
of servants, his weariness, and the harsh sounds of discord, he plied her face
with kisses.

“Let’s hide upstairs where no one will find us. I want to
see how baby tyrant is growing, and then I want to take mama tyrant and…” He whispered
suggestive phrases that caused his wife to blush and whisk from his grasp.

She headed for the steps, however, and threw a knowing smile
over her shoulder. “You’re no gentleman, Alexander Hampton. I’ll have your
dinner brought to your room, but I’ll not be on the menu.”

He strode after her, swinging her up in his arms “That’s ‘Lord
Cranville’ to you, wench. Has no one warned you that we noble dragons devour
saucy Yankees for supper? You will be nothing more than a pleasant memory and a
full stomach by morning.”

His growl brought shrieks of laughter as he ran up the
stairs with her. The argument in the upstairs library halted at the sound.
Servants once terrified of Alex’s uncertain moods grinned.

Reaching the second-floor landing, Alex ignored the urgent
knock at the front door. The naughty creature in his arms had pushed aside his vest,
unfastened his jabot and part of his shirt, and was tweaking the hairs on his
chest. His weariness had fled beneath a surge of lust.

Alex blithely disregarded the opening front door, the shout
of the butler, and Deirdre’s anxious inquiries. Only Evelyn tensing in his arms
registered sufficiently for him to notice that a footman dared to stand in his
way.

His black glare would have sent the man scurrying at another
time. Evelyn’s presence gave the servant courage to stand at attention before Alex’s
most forbidding stare.

Shirt gaping, Alex lowered his wife but kept a possessive
arm about her waist. “By Jove, I’ll have you hanged from the chandelier, Ames,
if this is not important.”

“The messenger said it was urgent, m-my lord,” he stuttered.
“It just came from the colonies. He carried it from Plymouth direct from the
captain of a colonial ship.”

Evelyn caught her breath.

Alex took the sealed paper from the platter. “Is a reply
requested?” He didn’t open the letter, but waited for an answer.

“No, my lord. The messenger has already gone.”

“Thank you.” Dismissing the footman by simply walking past
him, Alex steered Evelyn toward their chambers.

“Are you not going to open it?” Evelyn demanded.

“You are so eager to hear bad news that you would deny me
the comforts of my home to have it? Fie on you, my lady. What can a few more
hours matter when it has already taken weeks to reach here?”

Alex entered their chamber and bolted the door behind them.
He threw the letter on his desk and began to divest himself of coat and vest.
Evelyn kept glancing at the letter.

Alex stalked across the carpet and located the lacing of her
bodice. In a few short minutes he had the velvet off her shoulders and was
untying the tiers of skirts and petticoats and hoops. His fingers impatiently grazed
her stays. “You will have to stop wearing that damned contraption, my dear. I’ll
not have my child born with his head bent in the middle to please your vanity.”

“I do not even have a belly yet, Alex. There is time before
I have to hide myself behind closed doors.” She took over the task of unhooking
and untying.

“I’ll not hide you behind closed doors. I want you in the
gallery when the vote comes on the Stamp Act tomorrow or the next day. I want
you by my side when we go to Cornwall to direct the spring planting. I am quite
prepared to display you before half the population of England between now and
September. That’s my child you’re carrying, and I’m damned proud of the fact.”

He accompanied his words with the shedding of his own clothes
while Evelyn extracted herself from the complexities of hers. Throwing aside
his boots, Alex swept her unencumbered figure into his arms again. Only his
breeches and her chemise protected their decency.

Evelyn wrapped her arms around his shoulders and laughed low
in her throat. “I should be a pretty sight walking the fields with my stomach
protruding past my feet. Perhaps I should have forced you to earn the profit I
so readily give you.”

“I have a feeling I’ll spend the rest of my life earning it.”
Alex laid her back against the sheets. Sprawling beside her, he propped his
head on one arm and ran a proprietary hand over her still-slender curves. “Do
you have any regrets, Evelyn? I tried to offer you a choice, but I fear my need
for you did not make that very clear.”

Evelyn stroked his hair from his forehead with one hand
while holding his palm over her belly with the other. The spread of his fingers
encompassed the whole of her abdomen and the life within. She would give him
what others had not, and she smiled up at him.

“I have no regrets. I’m no fool, Alex. I knew my choices. My
only concern was that I make the right one for you. I didn’t want you saddled
with a wife you didn’t want. There never was any question of your being the
husband I have always desired. I just didn’t know if I could be strong enough
to make you love me too.”

Alex didn’t smile. He wanted to believe she had chosen him
above all others, that she would have continued to refuse him against all odds
had she not loved him. This was what she was saying to him, and softened by the
knowledge that she had come to him first, his heart opened enough to trust her
words. Their nights together could not be a lie. The child between them might
be proof of his prowess in bed, but Evelyn’s promises of a life together were
the proof of her love. He needed no more than that.

Bending over, Alex kissed her cheek, then her brow, then
nuzzled softly at her ear. “Heaven help me, but I think I believe you, little
tyrant. I cannot imagine what you see in an ogre like me, but for what it’s
worth, I love you too much to ever believe otherwise. Make a fool of me as you
will, my lady, you have the power. My love is too mad to believe any ill of
you.”

Evelyn closed her eyes in an expression of relief. Then a
smile formed as she touched his jaw and arched to welcome him.

They succumbed to temptation, no longer fighting the love
and the need that had brought them together. It was a long time before either
one of them remembered the unopened letter on the desk.

Lying with one hand behind his head and the other around his
wife, Alex stared up at the posts of his Yankee bed and wondered if he must
open the missive before morning. For the first time in his life, he felt
complete, and he had no desire to disturb this sense of belonging. He rubbed at
Evelyn’s soft breast, and she sighed and snuggled closer to him.

Only the memory of the charges against her and the
retribution they had defied by running away kept him uneasy. Justice was slow,
and he had not yet succeeded in forcing a court of appeal to consider the case.
What if the letter were some kind of warning?

Evelyn grumbled when Alex extricated himself from the
covers. Pulling the cover to her chin, she propped herself on one arm and
watched as he lit a branch of candles and perused the letter. He passed the
letter to her. “I’m sorry, Evelyn,” was all he said.

The words blurred and jumbled together at she read them. She
forced herself to reread the warehouse manager’s meticulous penmanship until
she better grasped the missive’s contents. Then she folded the letter and laid
it beside the candles.

“Why, Alex? My uncle never liked me. Why would he stand
before a troop of his majesty’s soldiers and refuse to let them confiscate my
warehouse?”

In answer, Alex crossed the room to the desk, pushed a
hidden mechanism, and opened a concealed panel. Producing a packet of papers,
he returned to the bed and handed them to her before climbing back in bed and wrapping
his arms around her.