In Temptation and Damnation with the Earl: A Steamy Historical Regency Romance Novel

by Violet Hamers

  Her manner grew more and more frantic as her head flicked from side to side, searching for the man she had come to see, but he was not there.

  Alexander was missing from the crowd.

  Her eyes darted back to the windows, following the gestures of some of the people that were gathering outside of the house from the neighboring buildings.

  “There truly is, look – someone is in there!” a stranger cried beside her.

  Cleopatra’s eyes found a silhouette behind one of the windows, they were dashing between the flames.

  It is Alexander!

  It had to be.

  The thought that Alexander could die in that fire nearly made her fall to her knees.

  As one of the windows blew outwards, shattering glass to smithereens across the pavement, everyone hurried back, including Cleopatra.

  She leaned on the nearby carriage for support, her eyes dashing between the windows again.

  He cannot die.

  She had lost too many people. Her mother, her father, Robert, and now possibly John, she could not lose the one person left who mattered to her so much.

  It would mean she would never see those gray-blue eyes again, never sit in the windowsill as she had the night before with him, never experience those passionate kisses, or be entwined with him on a bed, gasping and moaning each other’s names.

  The image of Alexander placing the ring on her finger at the wedding came back to her. He had given her that ring knowing its meaning.

  The silhouette moved through the flames beyond the windows.

  “Someone is in there – they will die!” the stranger’s shout urged Cleopatra to action.

  She leaped away from the carriage and ran up the stairs. People were throwing more buckets of water at the doorway.

  She waited until the water had dissipated, the fire abated slightly, and the smoke dispersed, then before anyone could stop her, she ran inside.

  “My Lady!” the cry of the driver went up, but she ignored it as she ran into what felt like the entrance of hell itself.

  The heat was instant, roaring at her. She imagined the fire was the hand of a monster; each flame that licked the wall to her side was its twisted fingers, clawing at the wallpaper.

  She grabbed the petticoats of her skirt and covered her mouth, trying not to breathe in the black smoke that was billowing against the ceiling as she ran in the opposite direction of the flames, toward the side of the house where the fire was not so bad.

  She leaped between the rooms, searching for any sign of the silhouette she had seen, but there was no one.

  The cry of people beyond the windows, calling for her to return, was becoming difficult to hear. The sound of the fire dominated, the wood of the building fracturing and banging, the furnishings crackling as the flames tore across their surface.

  She found herself in the piano room, searching desperately. The flames had not yet reached this room.

  “Alexander!” she screamed his name, but her voice was practically lost in the roar.

  She covered her mouth again and darted around the piano. She made a move to go back through the doorway she had first come through, but as she opened the door, the force of the heat nearly knocked her backwards. The fire had grown.

  She struggled to shut it again, using her whole body to force it back into its frame.

  The handle clicked shut and she sprinted to the other door, holding her skirts high around her legs to allow her to run.

  She ran through the carnage, aware the fire was mounting nearer behind her, almost licking at her heels.

  “Alexander!” she reached the bottom of the stairs and called up to the rafters, but no one replied. Above the steps, the fire was wilder than on the floor she was stood on.

  The steps cracked, the wood snapped loudly, and part of the stairwell began to fall away.

  She hurried back, cowering in the corner of the room as she covered her face.

  The stairs clattered to the floor with a boom, the sound almost explosive as it echoed in her ears.

  She coughed, trying to clear the dust and smoke from her lungs as she circled around the edge of the room, trying to get away from the stairs.

  “Alexander!” she called, realizing now it was futile as her eyes shot up to the new hole in the ceiling.

  If he is upstairs…he is doomed.

  “Cleopatra?” The voice that called to her shocked her, making her clutch at the wall behind her. “Cleopatra!” She briefly thought she imagined it, but her gaze shot to the side, looking to another doorway where a silhouette appeared against a background of orange flames.

  The form was short, the voice squealing in panic.

  “John!?” She had never screamed anything so loudly in her life. She dived across the room, pushing over chairs in her effort to be by his side.

  John ran toward her from the doorway, into her arms.

  She barely had time to notice the soot across his face and the dirt on his clothes. He was crying.

  “Cleopatra, I–”

  “John, we need to get out of here.” She picked him up, clutching him tightly to her chest, she ran down another corridor.

  “I need to tell you something. The fire…it was–”

  “Later, dearest, we need to get out of here now.”

  “But Cleopatra–” John stopped when he saw the fire getting nearer.

  She came to a harsh halt, her heeled shoes digging into the floor, when at the end of the corridor, another doorway blew out, and flames burst through.

  Once more the fire appeared a monster to her, but this time it was crawling across the floor toward her, its flame like hands pulling at the floorboards.

  “Cleopatra,” John said miserably, his fingers buried in the shoulders of her dress.

  “We will get out of here, don’t you worry, dearest,” she turned and ran back in the other direction, feeling her limbs burning with the exertion.

  As she reached the main game room, she found the door in that direction was blocked by the fallen stairs.

  Her eyes shot to the window. It would be a small jump from that window down to the pavement, but they were left with little choice.

  She darted toward it and propped John back on his feet. Her hands went to the window, trying to lift it, but the wood was hot and sticking against the frame. She strained against it, growling in the back of her throat as John began to pull on her skirt at her side.

  “Cleopatra!”

  “What, John?”

  She did not turn her head in time. Something struck her across her temple, and she fell to the floor.

  She hit her head a second time, feeling it strike the floorboards with a thud. Her eyes were just about open, bleary and befuddled.

  She could see John’s feet; they were scrambling beside her. He had the window open and he was jumping through.

  He was calling something to her, but she was fighting a darkness that was trying to consume her. Her body was fighting with the want to faint. She could only discern a few words that he said.

  “I will find help, Cleopatra–”

  She reached out a hand, trying to pull herself upwards, but her vision turned black.

  An arm pulled at her; someone was lifting her from the ground.

  Cleopatra’s eyes blinked open. The brown orbs were flickering, struggling to stay awake.

  She could just make out her lap. She was bent over it. There was a rope around her waist and her chest, stopping her from capitulating and leaning completely over her knees. Her hands were pulled back, with a rope knotted tightly around her wrists.

  She was tied to a chair.

  Her eyes shot wide open, and she jerked her head up so sharply that she cricked her neck, wincing at the pain.

  Her gaze danced around the room, trying to understand where she was.

  There was the taste of smoke in her mouth from the fire, and there was ash across her dress. Something cold was trickling down her temple, that was when she remembered the strike across
her head. It had to be blood.

  Where is John? Where am I? How did I get out of the fire?

  Her mind raced with questions, but she had nothing to answer them with.

  The room was cast in shadows, so dark that it was difficult to discern any shapes or furniture around her.

  As she swallowed, attempting to return some moisture to her mouth, the sound of a tinderbox crackled at the side of the room.

  She flicked her head toward it, just in time to see the flame dance to light. Someone was lifting the tinder to light a candle, once lit, it cast the softest of orange glows across the room.

  The light was so poor, and she could not see the face of the person, nor the furniture around him. The bearer picked up the candle and moved in her direction. He kept stopping on the way, lighting more candles that he passed. As more and more of the room came into view, Cleopatra realized there was something familiar about it.

  There were gaming tables with chairs nearby, packs of cards and other games littered across them. Yet, it was not Alexander’s gaming hall.

  The figure placed the candle on the table beside her and pulled out another chair.

  She was breathing heavily, panicking, fearful of what was to happen.

  The man placed the chair in front of her and took a seat. He sat down at his leisure, a small smile playing around his lips as though he did not have a woman strapped to a chair sat before him.

  It was the eyes that astonished Cleopatra. They were almost black. With eyes like a cat, the black depths stared at her.

  His face betrayed his youth, he could not have been much older than Alexander, yet his dark hair was speckled with gray. He folded his arms as his black eyes appraised her, his smile growing impossibly wider.

  He watched her squirm in the chair; she was trying to test her restraints, see how tightly she was bound. Her wrists brushed painfully against the rope, causing new scratches across her skin.

  “Welcome, Cleopatra,” the voice was deep, laced with enjoyment.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Alexander had hired the same private investigator that had found him all those years before. The man was aging now, but he had proved he could do the job before.

  Alexander left the man’s office with a little hope beginning to bloom in him, but as his feet took him toward the Seven Sins, that hope began to vanish.

  The strange anonymous note was playing on his mind. He could not go home without talking to Demian about it. There was still the possibility that he had something to do with John’s disappearance, even if Alexander did not want to believe the possibility.

  He struck loudly on the door of the Seven Sins, surprised it had closed for business for the night. As he waited, he looked down at the steps beneath his feet, remembering how he had first come across the gaming hall.

  He had been sitting on these very steps when he had met Marcus. He had sat down briefly, trying to eat the scraps from the bones of a chicken that had been thrown out in a nearby bin. Instead of brushing Alexander off his property, Marcus had sat down beside him and remarked how the chicken bone did not appear an exceptionally good meal.

  When Marcus eventually stood, it was to call the butler in his gaming hall and order him to bring some food for Alexander while he sat on the steps. Marcus had been the kindest man he had ever known. His thoughts were disturbed as the door opened before him.

  It was the same butler. Though he had been a young man when Alexander arrived at just ten years of age, he was now much older, his hair white.

  “The master has been expecting you, My Lord.” The butler bowed and stepped away from the door.

  “Has he?” Alexander stepped in with surprise. It showed his suspicion was right, Demian had to be the one who had left the note.

  Alexander’s first introduction to Demian had been an awkward one. At that point, he had already been living in the gaming hall for a week when Marcus took him to see the older boy. It had been a stiff and strange exchange, but they had relaxed soon enough and become friends.

  “This way, My Lord,” the butler closed the front door and gestured for Alexander to follow behind him.

  He trailed the butler as his eyes danced around the entrance of the gaming hall. It had changed much since he had last been there. Around the edges, the fine décor was beginning to wither. Demian had not given it the money and attention Marcus would have wanted. The thought bothered Alexander.

  As the butler led him toward the main gaming room, the smell of smoke greeted him. As though there had been a fire. He wrinkled his nose against it as he stepped into the room.

  “The Earl of Larson, Sir,” the butler announced him, bowed and took his leave. As the butler left, he revealed a sight that had Alexander’s blood running cold.

  In the center of the room was Cleopatra, his Cleopatra, tied to a chair and sprinkled with ash. Beside her was Demian, with a pistol pressed to her head.

  “Cleopatra?” The shock and panic on Alexander’s face were evident.

  Cleopatra strained against the rope holding her to the chair again, desperate to be at his side. As she moved, the man beside her pushed the pistol flat to her temple; it made her recoil and fall still, startled by how cold the metal was.

  “Demian!” Alexander almost barked across the room.

  Cleopatra quickly put together the clues, remembering Alexander’s story of his past. Demian was the son of Marcus; he was the current owner of the Seven Sins. That had to be where she was.

  “What is the meaning of this?” As Alexander marched toward her, the metal got thrust harder.

  “Ah, ah! I would stop there, Alexander,” the deep voice ordered, “or I shoot.”

  Alexander fell still. She could see his gray-blue eyes dancing between her and Demian; his pallor was pale with fear.

  Her own fear was incalculable. It was fizzing through her body, her mind imagining how horrible it would be if Demian were to pull the trigger.

  “As you wish,” Alexander held out his hands, trying to placate him. “I will not take another step but tell me. What is this about?”

  “You do not know?”

  “Why you have my wife tied to a chair? No!” Alexander cried. At the harsh tone, Demian gestured with the pistol again. Cleopatra flinched and Alexander softened his tone once more. “What is it you want, Demian?”

  “You owe me something, Alexander.” Demian’s words had her straining beyond the silver metal of the pistol to look up at him. His cat-like eyes were glaring at Alexander with defiance.

  “What do I owe you?”

  “Many things but let us start with the debt you need to pay me.”

  “I owe you no debt.” Alexander took a small step forward.

  “Oh, you were not the orchestrator of the debt.” He shook his head, the black-and-gray hair danced across his forehead. “That was this lady’s brother.”

  Robert–

  “He owed me a substantial amount; he even gambled her dowry too.” His words had her closing her eyes briefly, the horridness of the realization almost too much to bear. “But he lost it all and when he gambled what he did not have, he racked up quite a debt.”

  Robert…what a mess you got yourself in.

  “That is what you want?” Alexander asked, forcing her eyes open to turn at him again. His hands were clenching and unclenching from fists. “Money?”

  “Quite so, to start with,” Demian gestured to her with the pistol again. “Imagine my delight when I heard you had married Robert’s sister. So, you obtained her estate and you must resolve the debt too.”

  “If I pay you the money, you will release her?” Alexander pointed to her. “That is the deal?”

  “Not exactly,” Demian winced at the idea, “I have more in mind.”

  “Did you kill him?” Cleopatra’s voice was small as she looked back up to him. “My Robert, did you kill him?”

  She had spent so long in the dark about Robert’s death, and just as long blaming Alexander for it. With a pistol pressed t
o her head, the real culprit looked more and more evident.

  “Well, he was refusing to pay, My Lady,” Demian shrugged as if it hardly mattered. “He even offered you as collateral, did you know that?”

  She refused to recoil any more, despite the thought of it tearing her in two. She lifted her chin, her defiance against him.

  “He would not do that.”