Forever My Love (Berkeley-Faulkner #2)(120)

The hours passed slowly. In accord with a previous agreement, Alec and Carr never completely left each other’s sight. Carr threw himself into his role, drinking and spouting forth foul language and ribald curses, exchanging colorful stories with those closest to his own age, flirting cheekily with the women. He kept his ears and eyes open, latching on to certain fragments of conversation here and there, asking casual questions. Halfway through the evening, Carr glanced across theroom and noticed that something was different from usual. Instead of carrying on in a similar manner, drinking and carousing, Alec had struck up a quiet conversation in the corner, propping his feet up on the table in a relaxed attitude. Next to him sat a grizzled older man whose face had the green-white tinge of someone who rarely ventured out-of-doors.

As Carr watched covertly, Alec slipped a leather pouch to his table companion and bent his dark head low to hear a short whisper. Even from a vantage point so far away, Carr could see the sudden absence of color in Alec’s face. Carr’s ears roared as his blood rushed in excitement.

He got something. Alec must have found out something, he thought, and carefully managed to extricate himself from the drunken group he had been talking with. Affecting an intoxicated stagger, Carr sauntered over to the table and braced his hand on it as he stared down at Alec. Their gazes locked, and Carr saw with a start of unease that the pale gray eyes were blank with shock. “I’m gettin’ awful boozy, cuz,” Carr announced. “Well into my altitudes.” His voice seemed to snap Alec out of his frozen trance.

“We’re leaving,” Alec said curtly.

Eagerly Carr followed him out of the place.

The open air seemed unnaturally quiet after the suffocating din they had just left. Alec glanced up and down the empty street. “We need a hackney,” he said emotionlessly.

“Alec, are you ill?”

“No.”

“You talked to that bounder about Tilter?”

Alec laughed softly, and it was not a pleasant sound. “Yes.”

“Was he Tilter?”

“No. But he confirmed what Memmery said, and more.”

“More? What more? What else?” Carr demanded in excitement.”Tilter is a member of Stop Hole Abbey,” Alec said stiffly. “He has a high position in their white-slavery racket. He also has the responsibility of taking care of anyone who finds out too much about it—which means that he was probably the one who killed Holt.”

“The bastard!” Carr exclaimed. “I can’t wait to find him and tear out his… Wait a minute—why do you look so strange?”

Alec walked over to the wall of the building and braced his forearm against it. Slowly he leaned his forehead against his arm and sighed tiredly.

“Well, how can we find him?” Carr continued. “Did you manage to get his real name? If we can find out who he really is, then—”

There was something like a gasping laugh, and then Alec turned around with a pale face, his eyes gleaming oddly. “Do you want to know who Fate is, Carr? He’s a malevolent little jester sitting up there in the heavens and pondering over how ridiculous we humans are.”

“What does that have to do with—?”

“—and he does his best to make fools out of all of us. And sooner or later he succeeds.”

Carr was annoyed and bewildered by the obscure comment. “Alec, I don’t give a damn about fate. I just .want to know who Tilter is, so I can find him and make him pay for what he did to—”

“His name,” Alec said softly, “is Guillaume Germain.”

“Germain…”

“Yes. The name should sound familiar. He’s my brother-in-law.”

Chapter Fifteen

A s the carriage headed back to Staffordshire, the silence inside was crushing. Alec was barely aware of Carr’s presence, so intent was he on sorting through the questions in his mind. Mira and the nameless ghosts of her past—whatever they were, they had almost prevented her from marrying him. The past was so frightening to her that she would not tell him anything about it. Did she know that her brother had killed Holt? Had she known it all along?

He closed his eyes tightly, shaking his head as if to deny everything he had found out. He could see Mira’s face as if she were there in front of him, her cheeks glistening with tears, her eyes haunted… she had tried to keep him from going to London, had seemed afraid when he told her that he was searching for Holt’s killer. Had she been afraid that he would discover it was her own brother? He was appalled at his own thoughts but couldn’t suppress them, and his ears rang with echoes of things she had said to him.

“You’re seeking revenge for something that should be left in the past.”

“Your feelings about me are going to change.”

“Not again… I can’t live through having you and losing you again.”

“Do you think there’s a chance that Mireille knows?” Carr asked hesitantly, and Alec kept his eyes closed to hide the pain the question had caused.

“God, I don’t know. I don’t know.”Alec tried to remember Holt, tried to recall the picture of Holt he had carried in his mind ever since the murder… the darkness, the alley, the blood… but no, it wasn’t very clear… it was indistinct now. Holt was gone and the past was over—he was free of it, and nothing was as important to him as what he had with Mira, the future they would share, the children they would have, the memories they would make together. And if she had known about what Guillaume had done to Holt?... she had loved Alec enough to gamble that he would never find out. Alec hoped that Mira knew nothing about Guillaume. If she did, she was undoubtedly afraid, and it was something that he could never reassure her about; she would never approach him with it.