Forever My Love (Berkeley-Faulkner #2)(111)

“I don’t know.” Memmery leaned against the wall, looking curiously gray. “I don’t know.”

“Not good enough,” Alec said heartlessly. “Unless you can give me something else, I’m afraid your voyage to Australia is in danger of being canceled.”

“Wait. Wait, I can tell you ‘ow to find ‘im.” The convict pulled a few ragged playing cards out of his shirt and handed them to Alec. “You got to look for ‘im in the flash ‘ouses… Tilter will be in one of ‘em. Show the seven; it lets y’ in anywhere you want to go. Show the jack, it means y’re lookin’ for information. The king… y’ want to talk to one o’ the ‘igher-ups.”

“Call the guard,” Alec told Carr, who obeyed withalacrity. The door was opened, and Alec handed a hefty pouch to the guard. “Get him to the west docks,” he said quietly. “If I hear from the Berkeley officials that Memmery didn’t make it on board tonight, I’ll have your hide nailed to the wall and left to dry in the sun.”

“Yes, sir.”

Carr followed Alec out of Newgate, and when they were out, they both took deep, reviving breaths of clean air. “I never knew it smelled so sweet out here,” Carr said, forcing a smile to his face, though his green eyes looked curiously stricken.

“Yes.”

“How did Holt do it?” Carr suddenly burst out. “How did he bring himself to associate with scum like that and not tell anyone?” Facing the prisoners at Newgate had given him a sense of what kind of people Holt had been bargaining and dealing with in order to find Leila. For the first time, he realized what type of men had murdered his brother.- Any one of the wretches he had just walked past could have done it, would have done it had they seen something to gain by it.

As Alec looked at the young man, who was losing his idealism so fast, the frightening coldness left his gray gaze, to be replaced by a subtle glow of sympathy. “He did what he had to do. He did it because he was capable of great loyalty to those he loved. And he would have done anything to get Leila back.”

“It wasn’t worth it. Trying to get her back wasn’t worth his life,” Carr said in a raw voice.

Alec thought of Mira. He would go to the same lengths to find her that Holt had gone to in order to find Leila. There was no doubt, no question of that in his mind. Had Holt really loved Leila Holburn in such a way, that he would rather die than forget her or try to live without her?

Before Mira, he would not have understood any of this. Like Carr, he would have been confused andresentful of the emotion that had indirectly led Holt to his death. But how could he make Carr understand that having a few months of that kind of love was worth a lifetime? His cousin was too young to regard such a statement as anything but banal. Alec lifted his shoulders and let them drop in a slight shrug. “To Holt, Leila was worth it,” he said matter-of-factly.

“What are we going to do?”

“Find Tilter.”

“Why? We’re not looking for Leila, we want to know what happened to Holt.”

“By following in Holt’s tracks and making inquiries about Leila, we’ll find out what happened to him.” Alec smiled bleakly. “Though preferably not through firsthand experience.”

Mira stirred drowsily, her eyes squinting against the brilliant sun, which had warmed her skin and filled her with languor. After reading in the garden for the better part of an hour, she had shifted from her seat on the giant sundial to the thick grass that bordered one of the many garden paths that wound around Berkeley Hall. Nearby, birds fluttered around a small stone pool filled with star-shaped flowers. Smiling sleepily at the sounds of tiny flapping wings, trickling water, and indignant chirps, Mira slipped an arm behind her head and sprawled more comfortably on the grass, drifting in and out of a light sleep. But then there was an abrupt flapping and a chorus of cries from the birds as they flew away. Although she had heard no other sound, Mira knew that someone or something had approached, and she opened her eyes quizzically. Alec was there, his hair shining as sleek and black as a raven’s wing, a slow smile pulling at his mouth. He was back, she thought, and it brought her a sense of wholeness. He was so carelessly handsome as he stood there that Mira felt her heart clench in an instant of pure pleasure. Though she would love him equallyeven if he were far less agreeable to the eye, she could not deny that his attractiveness was something she took a certain measure of pride in.

“How unfair it is,” she said softly, and Alec lowered himself beside her in a lithe movement.

“What is unfair?” He braced an elbow on either side of her head and looked down at her intently.

“That you received such an overabundance of handsomeness, and left all others only a little bit to share among themselves.”

“Mira…” he whispered, his eyes caressing her. “How are the wedding plans progressing?”

“Marvelously. I have ordered the most wonderful gown to be made—chartreuse, black, and purple—and we are going to decorate the church with lovely green weeds, and you won’t mind at all that you weren’t here to help me decide everyth—”

He smothered the rest of her statement with an ardent kiss, a deep purr vibrating in his throat. When he lifted his head, they stared into each other’s eyes with a new understanding. The separation of the past week had been different from the other separations which had preceded it, and they both knew why.