by Nina Rowan
“For you, of course I can.”
Sally giggled. Talia shook her head in amusement. She’d never cared for the sleek, self-satisfied gentlemen of the ton who tossed compliments about like shiny new pennies, but James was different. James had a way of looking at any woman, young or old, and making her believe he truly meant what he said.
Perhaps because he did.
I’ll never get married, Talia, to you or anyone else.
Talia didn’t know whether to find comfort in that remembered statement or not. Sorrow stung her every time she recalled that James would not marry her…but at least he wouldn’t marry another woman either. There was a small measure of comfort in the knowledge that Talia would be spared the pain of seeing James wed to someone else, though she couldn’t help wishing he wasn’t quite so true to his word. Where she was concerned, at any rate.
“You’re returning home, are you?” James asked Sally. “Allow me to escort you to the foyer and ensure your carriage is available at once.”
He extended his arm toward Sally, who slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and beamed at him. Then James turned a questioning eye to Talia.
Resignation swept through her. She couldn’t very well approach Lord Margate with James here. If he learned she was broaching the subject of aid for juvenile delinquents, he would most certainly make inquiries that could lead him to the truth. And if James knew the truth, Talia’s father and brothers would learn of it as well, and then obstruct her efforts at every turn.
She gave James a nod of assent and followed him and Aunt Sally to the foyer. She might have once considered him a trusted friend, but she knew his loyalties lay with Alexander and Rushton before her. And while that would never make him Talia’s enemy, it certainly meant she could no longer confide in him.
Alice Colston set a cup of coffee in front of her father, then filled a plate with eggs, buttered toast, and two kippers. She placed that next to the coffee and took her seat. Papa’s head was bent as he studied his newspaper, the points of his collar a stark white contrast to his black suit.
Alice tried to remember the last time her father had worn any other color except black and white. Certainly it had been before her mother had died more than a decade ago.
She sipped her coffee, suppressing old pain. She’d been seventeen years old when Mrs. Colston had succumbed to a bout of influenza. Peter was not yet six. Alice still wondered how much Peter remembered of their mother. He hadn’t spoken of her in years. And after he’d attempted to run away from home at nine years of age…well, he hadn’t wanted to talk about anything. Least of all what had set him on such a horrible path.
“I thought I might visit the new panorama in Regent’s Park this Saturday,” Alice remarked, trying to distract herself from the inevitable guilt. She’d all but raised Peter after their mother died, and she still felt somehow to blame for his actions. “Mrs. Richards said it was quite fascinating. I’d also like to make a stop at the library to pick up a book by Mr. Hogg that I haven’t yet read.”
Her father made a noncommittal noise and turned a page of the paper.
“And there’s a charity bazaar near Oxford Street tomorrow, if you’d like to attend,” Alice continued.
“No, but you are welcome to. I shall leave you some pin money, should you wish to make a purchase.” Her father set the paper aside and pulled the plate toward him. “I’ll be home late tonight. We’ve some accounts to set up that Mr. Vickers requires done by the end of the week.”
The thump of footsteps came from the stairs. Alice looked up at Peter and smiled. He shoved a chair away from the table with his foot, his expression set and sullen.
“I’ll get your breakfast, Peter.” Alice rose and fixed a plate of eggs and toast. Once upon a time, she’d have offered him cocoa but in the week he’d been back at home, she’d noticed he preferred strong coffee.
She poured a cup and placed it in front of him, suppressing the urge to run her hand over his thick, black hair. The way her mother used to do with her. She tried to ignore the twinge of pain at the memory of what her brother had been like as a young child—happy, reckless, full of energy.
What had gone so wrong?
Alice still didn’t know what had happened to turn Peter into an angry young man who seemed hell-bent on getting himself into trouble. He’d run away from school and started associating with vagrants who roamed the streets picking pockets and vandalizing storefronts. Twice their father had to pick him up from the police station, and then last year Peter’s arrest had led to his being sentenced to Newhall for nine months.
Edward Colston hadn’t attended the court hearing or tried to visit Peter while he was incarcerated. Edward also hadn’t wanted Peter to return home after his release, but Alice had pleaded with him to allow her brother one more chance.
Edward had finally relented, but only on the condition that Peter attend the Brick Street school and find worthwhile work. Even now, Alice knew her father hoped that Peter would somehow prove to be the son he had always wanted. That Peter would straighten up, succeed in school, become a solicitor or a doctor…that he would one day become more successful than Edward was.
What father didn’t have such hopes for his only son?
Alice stared at her plate, wondering what hopes, if any, her father had ever had for her. She was well into spinsterhood now, so marriage wasn’t likely…not that she’d ever been in a position to accept an offer. She’d spent the past ten years taking care of her father’s household and contending with her brother’s rebelliousness. Even if she’d wanted to, she could never leave and start her own family.
“Intend to enroll at the school today, do you?” Edward asked Peter. “You ought to be able to work as well.”
The boy shrugged.
“I’ve heard the tailor on Buxton Street might be seeking help,” Alice suggested.
Peter held up one of his big, knobby-fingered hands. “You think these were meant for sewing?”
“The printer, then, whom Papa—”
“Bloody hell, Alice,” Peter snapped. “You need to be able to read to be a printer.”
Anger flashed through Edward. He pushed his chair back so fast, the legs scraped against the floor. Peter cringed. Edward lifted a hand. Though Alice had never in her life seen her father strike Peter, she froze in fear.
Taut silence stretched between the three of them. Peter didn’t raise his head. The clock ticked. Edward stared at his son, then slowly lowered his hand.
Alice’s heartbeat throbbed in her ears. Edward picked up his cup and took another swallow of coffee, seeming to regain control of himself.
“You will not curse in my house,” he told his son, his voice cold. He straightened his lapels, then folded the paper and tucked it beneath his arm. “I suggest you pay a visit to the union offices and enroll at Brick Street first thing this morning. Good day to you, Alice.”
He gave Alice a stiff nod and strode to the door. A minute later the front door closed. Peter shifted and grabbed a fork. Alice opened her mouth to defend their father, then bit the words back for fear of further rancor. Peter stuffed the eggs into his mouth and washed them down with two cups of coffee.
“Did they feed you well at Newhall?” Alice asked.
Peter lifted his shoulders in a shrug. Even confined in prison, he’d grown a good two inches over the past nine months, but he was far thinner than she remembered. He used to be big and muscular. Now he was a tall, awkward boy who didn’t look as if he fit into his lanky frame.
“Would you like to come with me to Oxford Street?” she asked. “We can stop at the union offices en route.”
Peter shook his head.
“What do you plan to do today, then?” She tensed as she awaited his response.
“Not look for work at a tailor’s or print shop,” he muttered.
“Peter, it’s very important that you find suitable work,” Alice said carefully, “and attend school at Brick Street.”
“I ain’t go
ing back to school.”
Irritation crawled down her spine. “Peter, Papa agreed to let you come back home if you either—”
“I didn’t ask to come home, did I?” Peter shoved his plate away so hard it bumped against his cup and spilled the coffee.
Alice jumped up to grab a napkin. “Where else would you have gone?”
“Wherever I bloody well please,” he retorted.
“Peter…”
“I didn’t strike any bargain with him,” Peter snapped. “Bastard’s always been ashamed of me, right?”
Shocked, Alice stared at him. “Peter, do not speak of our father that way!”
“It’s the truth, ain’t it?” He pushed to his feet. “I’ll never be as good as him, and everyone knows it.”
“That is not true.”
“It is true. The only reason he’s letting me stay now is because of you, right? He wouldn’t set foot in Newhall the whole time I was there.”
“Can you blame him?” Alice asked, anger filling her throat. “Papa has always tried to give you everything you could possibly want, especially after Mother died. You repaid him by becoming a vagrant, picking pockets, and thieving. You got arrested, sentenced to prison, and now you won’t consider your future. What is Papa supposed to think?”
“What he’s always thought,” Peter retorted. “That he should have disowned me years ago.”
“Why, Peter?” Alice hurried after him as he stomped to the foyer. “Why are you doing this? If you don’t want to go to Brick Street, perhaps we can talk to Papa about going to stay with Uncle Benjamin in Surrey. He’s got a farm, you know, and…”
“I ain’t going to live on a damned farm.” Peter pushed his arms into the sleeves of his coat.
“Where are you going to go, then?” Alice’s heart clenched like a fist as she thought of him back among the denizens of London’s slums. He didn’t belong there. He never had. And she hated the thought that her brother believed that he did.
Thank heavens for Lady Talia Hall, at least. She’d come to Alice after Peter was arrested, offering her assistance. She’d explained about her work with the ragged schools and the founding of the Brick Street reformatory school, which sounded to Alice like a much better place for Peter than Newhall prison, no matter what crime he had committed.
Unfortunately, the judge hadn’t agreed. Lady Talia had been a blessing, though, calling upon Alice regularly, arranging for letters to be delivered to Newhall by courier, keeping Alice informed of the progress of Brick Street and the possibility of Peter attending upon his release.
“Peter helped me,” Lady Talia had told Alice. “I’d like to do the same for him and you.”
Alice had even begun to consider the other woman a friend, even if she was the daughter of an earl. And it was comforting to have someone to talk to about Peter’s situation, especially since Papa wanted so little to do with it.
“Peter, please.” Alice tried to grab her brother’s sleeve, but he evaded her grasp.
Peter smashed his hat onto his head and stalked out the door. Alice knew nothing she said or did would stop him.
She pressed her hands to her face and tried to stanch the inevitable tears. Guilt and dismay rolled through her in an overwhelming wave. The tears spilled over, and she choked back a sob. She couldn’t bear to imagine how horrified her mother would be to learn that her only son had been branded a murderer.
Chapter Four
He’s back.
The thought, which had coursed through Talia’s mind endlessly after seeing James at Lady Bentworth’s ball last night, elicited a combination of both pleasure and apprehension.
How many times during the last twenty years had Talia thought those very words? First when James was away at school, then after he’d gone off traveling with Alexander and Sebastian before Cambridge and his eventual work with the Royal Geographical Society. Not even his father’s death and James’s inheritance of the barony had slowed his desire to explore.
To leave. To run.
Talia shook her head to rid herself of the uncharitable whispers that had plagued her for years, ever since she began seeing James as a man. She had always disliked her nagging suspicion that he was running from something, for that implied cowardice. Certainly there was nothing cowardly about battling stormy seas and trekking through crocodile-infested swamps. Talia, after all, had spent a secret part of her life wishing she too could be part of such adventures.
James is back. James is leaving again. The two thoughts were like a confluence, two rivers inevitably leading to the same point.
Once upon a time Talia would have liked to think: James is staying.
She no longer believed such a thought would become truth. With a sigh, she settled back into the chair and opened the book. Across from her, Aunt Sally worked a needle through a piece of cloth.
“‘Camels and California, says the critic,’” Talia read. “‘Two words that are not often used in one breath.’”
“Rather.” Aunt Sally chuckled and snapped off a length of thread. “Didn’t you once ride a camel when your father took you to Egypt?”
Talia nodded. Memories sparked like fireflies—the raucous sound of her brothers’ laughter as they tottered in time with the camels’ odd gait, the sun cascading over the sugar-fine sand, dark-skinned men with wide smiles, her mother watching from beneath a lace-edged parasol.
She gazed unseeing at the latest adventure story sent by her brother Nicholas. Ever since she’d read a copy of James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, Talia had loved the tales of the American wilderness, which were always so fraught with tension and danger. She found some copies in libraries, but over the past few years most of her books came in packages from Nicholas.
Hardly appropriate for the daughter of an earl, Talia thought. Her governesses had schooled her well on all the appropriate literature for a young woman of the peerage—Shakespeare, Petrarch, Dante, poetry—but Talia had been captivated by her brothers’ stores of reading material, especially the Parley’s Magazine that came from America and was filled with the most wonderful stories of Persian mountains and strange creatures. And the boys’ books of sports and pastimes that were always showing her brothers how to do something—make a kite, construct a kaleidoscope, perform feats of legerdemain.
Talia had spent a great deal of time tagging along after her brothers and trying to do what they did. And when they didn’t let her, or when she couldn’t join them on their adventures because she had music or dancing lessons, then at least she had always enjoyed reading about them.
Even now, Talia read the more recent Boys’ and Girls’ Magazine and Fireside Companion, which was filled with stories, poems, and articles about interesting things, like how a magnetic telegraph worked. She brought all the magazines and penny dreadfuls to the Brick Street school for the boys, of course, but not before reading them first. Not before imagining what it would be like to explore the world as one pleased. Just as James did.
“Isn’t it nice that Lord Castleford has returned?” Aunt Sally remarked. “Lady Willingham said he intends to publish his journals before he leaves again. Quite an exciting life the man leads.”
Talia murmured a noncommittal agreement.
“I’ve always found his tales so fascinating,” Aunt Sally continued as she selected a slice of plum cake from the tea tray. “Your uncle was in the Royal Navy before we married, you know, and he always had a longing for the sea.”
“Part of our blood, it seems,” Talia said. Her grandfather had spent much of his life traveling throughout Russia as ambassador to St. Petersburg, and her father had taken the family on many excursions to Europe, Egypt, and Russia. All four of her brothers enjoyed travel, as Talia had until her mother’s abandonment had made the idea of home far more appealing.
Talia had gone to St. Petersburg last fall to visit Alexander and his family, but aside from that one trip, she had remained in London. Compared to her brothers’ lives, hers was dull, but at least she k
new what to expect here, and she wasn’t faced with unexpected choices that called her judgment and her very nature into question. At least she could do some good here.
“He cut such a fine figure in his uniform,” Sally remarked with a sigh.
“Uncle Harold?” Talia thought of Sally’s portly, whiskered husband. “Er, I imagine he did.”
“Oh, I know he wasn’t terribly handsome, my dear.” Sally plucked at a loose thread on her needlework frame. “But he carried himself with such dignity, such command, that women were naturally drawn to him. Bless his heart, he only had eyes for me. He said I was Helen to his Paris, though with a much happier ending, of course.”
Talia smiled at the tender, wistful look on her aunt’s face. She remembered Uncle Harold as an affable man who often remarked on his wife’s beauty and goodness.
“You had a good marriage,” she said.
“Heavens, yes. Would that all women were as fortunate in matrimony as I was.” Sally pushed the needle through the cloth again. “Not only did Harold provide well for me, but he also never failed to demonstrate how much he admired and loved me. Both outside and inside the bedchamber.”
“Aunt Sally!” Talia felt a blush crawl over her face.
Her aunt laughed. “Talia, dearest, don’t believe any woman who says what goes on in the bedchamber doesn’t matter. Trust me, it matters a great deal. And the happier a couple is there, the happier they are in every other aspect of their lives.”
Talia stared at Sally, suppressing a sudden rush of questions. Certainly her aunt and uncle had always seemed happy and in love, but Talia had never imagined that pleasure in the bedchamber had anything to do with it.
Then again, she remembered vividly how arousal had bloomed through her the instant she’d pressed her lips to James’s. She remembered how their bodies had fit together, how her heart had pounded, how thrilled she’d been when he hauled her into his arms and took possession of her mouth…
Talia dropped her book to her lap and pressed her hands to her cheeks. God in heaven. Could the matrimonial bed really be more exciting, more fulfilling, than that?
