A Dream of Desire (9 page)

The smells of fish and salt water assailed Peter Colston’s nose, cleansing the lingering stink of rotten straw and waste that had permeated Newhall prison. Shops lining the streets of Wapping displayed maritime goods—brass sextants, hammocks, sailors’ shoes, pilot coats, and oiled nor’westers. Provision agents hawked cases of meat and biscuits packaged for ship storage, and the sail makers’ workshops emitted the burned smell of tar.

Peter quickened his pace, enjoying the freedom of being able to go wherever he wanted. The gates of St. Katharine’s Docks were open, allowing a stream of people to pass in and out—laborers, sailors, butchers, clerks. A forest of masts and flags rose from the ships clustered in the basin, and the air was thick with smoke, tobacco, and sulfur.

A foreman stood on a box outside Warehouse Five, shouting out the day’s work as hopeful laborers crowded around him. Knowing he was too late to be hired for a day’s work, Peter stopped along the edge of the quay. He looked at a massive steamer with its gilt stern and mahogany wheels, wondering where it was going next.

The unease he’d felt since leaving Newhall dissipated a bit in these familiar surroundings. As much as he’d wanted his freedom, for the past nine months he had feared what awaited him back in London.

He still did. He couldn’t go to that Brick Street school like his father and Alice wanted him to. He’d left school when he was ten because he couldn’t understand the lessons, not even the alphabet. Before his eyes, the letters swam like fish beneath rippling water, always changing and escaping his comprehension. Numbers were the same, and none of his teachers had ever understood his lack of ability to read or write.

What else was left for Peter to do? He could work at the docks, but there was no guarantee of being hired…and no future in it either, as his father would say.

He couldn’t even hope to be a dockmaster one day to oversee the loading and unloading of cargo. Those men were always reviewing written orders and delivery descriptions. Always tallying numbers of crates and hours for the counting house.

Guilt bit into Peter. He was either too much trouble for his family or useless. And though he was grateful to Alice for insisting he come home after Newhall, part of Peter wished she hadn’t bothered with him. At least then, he wouldn’t feel obligated to her. At least he’d only be responsible for himself.

Sunlight shredded the morning fog into gauzy wisps. He squinted out at the boats. For all its chaos, Peter liked the docks. He was comfortable here, knowing he could do any work required of him, from loading to winch work. He liked the huge ships and fishing boats, the passenger steamers heading off to all parts of the world, the clanking noise of rusty anchors lowering.

After checking in a few of the warehouses and being told there was no work available, Peter returned to the highway. He stopped at a fish shop and bought a cone of fried fish, which he ate while walking down the street and looking through the store windows. He tossed the empty wrapper away and pulled open the door of a shop that sold ships’ instruments.

The shopkeeper glanced his way, but otherwise made no remark. Astonishing what clean clothes and a haircut could do. Nine months ago, the shopkeeper would have thrown Peter out on his ear.

He stepped toward one of the cases displaying compasses. The round, shiny faces looked up at him, etched with markings that Peter didn’t understand but intrigued him nonetheless.

“Can I see that one?” he asked, pointing at a brass compass attached to a chain.

The shopkeeper unlocked the case and opened the compass lid before putting it in Peter’s hand. “Inscription of the maker on the back.”

Peter stared at the compass, watching the needle settle to the north. He would never be able to actually read a compass, but he liked looking at them. He liked the smooth weight in his hand, the way the needle swung around the face, the idea that if you had a compass, you could go anywhere on earth and still know where you were.

“Hello, Peter.”

A shiver ran down Peter’s spine. He turned to find Lawford standing in the doorway, his expression grave. He wore a fine blue coat and trousers that were less imposing than his uniform at Newhall, but still Peter felt his nerves tense.

“Sir,” he muttered, his hand tightening around the compass. “How did you know I was here?”

“I remembered Wapping is your haunt and assumed you would come back here upon your release,” Lawford remarked. “And your sister told me you left yesterday morning and hadn’t come home yet.”

Unease roiled in Peter at the idea that Lawford had spoken with Alice.

“How does it feel, finally being out of prison?” Lawford asked.

The shopkeeper glanced sharply at Peter. “I don’t want any trouble here.”

Peter set the compass back on the counter. “No trouble.”

“You’re bound to find trouble if you frequent these parts again,” Lawford warned. He stepped into the shop, his blond hair darkening in the shadows. He wasn’t a big man, but he was tall, and the sheer presence of him seemed to block the doorway.

Peter swallowed. Sweat pricked his forehead. How many times had he been trapped in his cell at Newhall with Lawford standing in the doorway, piercing him with that stare…

He rubbed his damp palms on his trousers. “Just…just leaving, sir.”

Christ. He was
free
now. And still just the sight of Lawford made him cringe like a scared rabbit.

“Your sister told me you don’t intend to enroll at Brick Street,” Lawford continued.

“I…I don’t reckon so,” Peter stammered. The fish he’d eaten tumbled greasily in his stomach.

“I’d suggest you stay away from Brick Street.” Lawford stepped toward him, reaching out to take the compass. “Lady Talia is hoping you will testify with her at the House of Commons meeting about the treatment of juvenile prisoners. Though I know you would never speak against Newhall, you would be well advised to avoid such…temptation.”

Peter shook his head. He couldn’t speak past the tightness in his throat.

He still didn’t understand what had happened during his time at Newhall. He’d struggled to prove to Lawford he couldn’t be broken, that he was too tough, but Lawford had won in the end. Months of enforced silence, hunger, confinement, and floggings had imprinted fear in every cell of Peter’s body.

And then, perhaps two months before his release, Lawford had changed. Given Peter extra food, stopped inflicting the harsher punishments, offered him extra time in the yard. Peter hadn’t wanted any of it, but he hadn’t understood Lawford’s change of heart either.

“I don’t want nothin’ to do with her ladyship,” he muttered, which was the unvarnished truth. In fact, he wished he’d never encountered the woman.

“Good,” Lawford said, tilting the compass as he watched the needle turn. “Because Lady Talia can be…persuasive. So I’d suggest you avoid her.”

Peter nodded, unable to stand the confines of the shop any longer. He ducked past Lawford and back out the door, inhaling a hard rush of air into his lungs.

He glanced behind him once to see if Lawford was following. Goddamn, he hated his fear of the man. Almost more than he hated the man himself.

I
’m certain he’ll return soon.” William Lawford crossed one leg over the other as he settled into a chair in the Colstons’ front parlor, looking as if he were entirely comfortable in his surroundings.

Talia smothered a stab of discomfort. When Alice had come to her yesterday morning with concerns about Peter, she hadn’t mentioned she had also asked Mr. Lawford for help. Talia wondered how many times Lawford had called upon Alice Colston when her father was at work, as he was now. The idea of Lawford alone with Alice sent a shiver of repulsion down Talia’s spine, especially when she recalled the speculating way he had looked at Alice when they were at Newhall.

“You’ve been here often, Mr. Lawford?” she asked, glancing toward the parlor door to ensure Alice wasn’t approaching just yet.

“On occasion. Consider it my duty to ensure a boy is faring well upon his release from Newhall, but I can’t say I expected much from Peter, considering his…history.”

Guilt flared through Talia like a struck match. She managed to keep her voice steady as she said, “Did Alice ask your help in looking for him?”

Lawford nodded. “Couldn’t find him this morning, but I’m visiting the Wapping police station later today. I’ll speak with the constable about Peter. He’s rather well known to them. They’ll keep an eye out for him, if I ask them to.”

“I would appreciate that, Mr. Lawford.” Alice Colston entered with a tea tray. “My father will not allow Peter another chance. If he doesn’t attend Brick Street by the end of the week, he’ll be forced to leave the house.”

“Forgive me, Miss Colston, but perhaps that’s exactly what Peter wants,” Lawford remarked.

“Peter is my younger brother, Mr. Lawford. I won’t give up on him.”

“An admirable devotion, Miss Colston,” Lawford murmured, his gaze on her face.

A pink flush colored Alice’s cheeks as she handed him a cup of tea. Talia set her teeth, disliking all the implications of Lawford’s attention toward Alice…and Alice’s response.

“How is your uncle, Mr. Lawford?” Talia asked brightly.

Lawford’s mouth thinned with disgust. “The same, my lady, thank you for asking. He intends to retire soon, after which Newhall and eventually the Shipton Fields prison will be under my governorship. Did I tell you more about the lodging for the governor and warders, Miss Colston?”

Alice shook her head, tucking a stray lock of hair beneath her cap as she settled beside him on the sofa. “Please do, Mr. Lawford. It sounds quite impressive.”

Unwilling to leave her friend alone with Lawford, Talia waited for another forty-five minutes before Lawford finally left; then she told Alice she’d stop at the Ragged School Union offices to speak with Sir Henry after running another errand.

“If Peter does come home, I’ll send word,” Alice promised. “Though I’m not hopeful.”

Neither was Talia. For some reason, Peter Colston seemed determined to make life difficult for himself, a tendency that likely had grown stronger during his incarceration at Newhall. Talia took her leave of Alice, wrestling with the uncomfortable feeling that she needed to find Peter before Lawford did.

She tilted her hat against the morning sun as she stepped outside. Her father’s carriage waited at the curb, and she instructed the driver to take her to Mudie’s Library on bustling New Oxford Street. Shelves of books and journals lined the interior of the shop, and several patrons sat at the desks situated along the walls.

“Good morning, my lady.” Mr. Hammersmith, a tall, thin man with a fringe of white hair, stood from behind the front counter as Talia approached. “The magazines from America arrived just two days ago. We’ve got them packaged up for you.”

He hefted a tied bundle of magazines onto the counter.

“Lovely, thank you. And do you have the recent editions of the
Boys’ Journal
?”

“Yes, I’ll fetch it for you. Would you care to have a look around? We just received some new books for children.”

Talia nodded and went to the shelves where Mr. Mudie kept the most recent arrivals. There were several books of stories for children, and a primer on geography. She paged through the primer, which included lessons on the shape of the earth and how to read maps. She looked at maps of the vast United States, the Russian colony in northwest America, and the continent of Africa.

She loved maps, all the curves and lines representing mountain ranges, oceans, cities, wide plains, and valleys. When James was off on his expeditions, Talia could look at a map and imagine where he was at any given moment. She could picture him hiking through a jungle, climbing a mountain peak, guiding a boat over a serpentine river.

Warmth filled her chest. She tried to smother it, tried to remind herself that she no longer felt anything for the man who had rejected her.

Then his voice spilled over her like a ray of sunshine on a chilly day.

“Good morning, my lady.”

Talia turned, her heart giving a wild leap at the sight of James standing just behind her. A shaft of light gilded his brown hair, and his eyes crinkled with a warm amusement that never failed to ignite flutters in Talia’s belly.

She clutched the primer to her chest, as if she could use it as a barrier between them. “How did you know I was here?”

“Soames told me you’d intended to come here during your errands.”

“And why did you go to the King’s Street house?”

“I wanted to apologize.” He stepped toward one of the shelves and picked up a thin book of lessons. “I should have written to you, poppet. I did want to.”

Talia didn’t bother asking why he hadn’t, then. She already knew. However, her embarrassment over that afternoon at Floreston Manor was tempered by the memory of how he had responded to her kiss. As if he’d been unable to stop himself from surrendering.

She gazed at his profile as he opened the book and studied the contents. So familiar, yet completely different. Sharp nose, strong cheekbones, and jaw dusted with whiskers. A shiver ran down Talia’s spine as she remembered how the scrape of his stubble had felt against her skin.

“Do you remember ‘A was Apollo’?” James asked, glancing up from the book.

Talia shook her head, even as a tendril of warmth curled through her heart. When they were children, James and her brothers had taught Talia several verses to help her memorize lessons.

“The god of the carol,” James prompted, his warm brown gaze still on her, potent as a touch.

“James—” Talia swallowed hard. Memories stirred in the back of her mind, pressing for entry, asking her to remember the many cherished moments she’d shared with James. The moments that had culminated in her love for him.

“B stood for Bacchus, astride his barrel,” he said.

“What is the point of this?”

“C for good Ceres,” he continued, edging a bit closer to her so they were concealed by the stacks of books, “the goddess of grist.”

“And D was Diana, who wouldn’t be kissed.” Talia stepped back, fighting the wave of nostalgia that swept through her. “Enough, James. Those days are long gone.”

“Nothing remembered between two people is ever gone, Talia.”

Heat flooded Talia’s cheeks. A faint disconcertion darkened James’s eyes as he appeared to realize what he’d just implied.

Talia turned away from him and went to the front counter, where Mr. Hammersmith was tying up her bundles of books. She still couldn’t reconcile everything she’d felt since discovering James had returned—she held so much love for all their cherished childhood memories. Yet now those memories were bittersweet and tarnished with Talia’s realization that her long-held dreams of James Forester would never come true.

James stopped next to her at the counter. Awareness moved through Talia at the sensation of his strong body beside hers, that innate sensation that she was safe and protected.

“That will be all, Mr. Hammersmith, thank you,” she said. “Please put everything on my bill.”

Before she could scoop up the books, James hefted the stack into his arms and opened the front door for her.

“The Ragged School Union offices,” she told the driver as James handed her into the carriage.

As she had known he would, he climbed in behind her and shut the door.

“Lawford,” he said.

Talia’s heart jumped. She lifted her head to stare at James.

“I saw you speaking with him last night,” James said, folding his arms across his chest. “Ridley informed me he’s the deputy governor of Newhall prison.”

Rather than implicate herself, Talia chose to remain silent. Her stomach tightened.

“And Northwood got word from a friend of his that you visited Smithton prison recently,” James continued.

Oh, no.

Talia’s breath escaped her in a rush, her pulse pounding with trepidation. She curled her fingers into the seat cushion and tried to conceal her sudden fear.

“Er, Alex…Alexander knows about that?”

James nodded, regarding her steadily. “But he doesn’t know why.”

And he asked me to find out.
He didn’t have to say the words. Talia knew her brother and she knew James Forester. Of course they would both want to know why she was visiting a prison.

“Alexander is concerned about your safety, Talia,” James said. “As am I. Tell me why you went.”

The faint note of command in his voice prickled her nerves. She certainly wouldn’t tell him the truth simply because he ordered her to. Besides, telling James anything about Brick Street would be a huge risk, akin to having confessed her love for him. And that had turned out an unmitigated disaster.

Resolve filled her. She would not allow either Alexander or James to divert her from her path. This was the first time in years that she had actually felt useful, felt as if she could do something in the world, and nothing would take her from it.

Not even James.

“It’s simply part of my charity work,” she told him, gazing out the window.

“Yet you’ve not had need to visit prisons before.”

“You haven’t been here for a year, James. You have no idea what I have or haven’t done.”

She experienced a grim satisfaction when he didn’t respond to the truth of her statement.

She looked at him again. Her breath caught. In the darkened interior of the carriage, his eyes glittered. He was staring at her mouth. Talia parted her lips to draw in a breath as heat bloomed in her chest.

No. No. Foolish girl, you can’t possibly…

Her eyes lowered to his mouth—the beautiful shape of his lips that had fit so seamlessly against hers. She could almost feel it now, the hot press of their kiss and the way their tongues had met. The mere taste of such intimacy had caused all sorts of heated thoughts to deluge Talia’s mind during the past year. If a thirty-second kiss with James Forester could ignite such fire in her blood, what would further intimacies do to her?

Only in a shadowed, secret area of her heart did Talia admit she would still very much like to find out.

She tore her gaze from James, aware of her increased breathing. His presence seemed to fill the enclosed space of the carriage. Even with his rejection of her hovering like a shadow between them, James still embodied all the qualities Talia so admired. Boldness, daring, the urge to succeed and carve uncharted paths.

He was still looking at her. She felt his gaze like a touch. She remembered the warmth of his large palm as he rested his hand against the side of her face.

How different her life would be if he had reciprocated her love…

Stop!

The order snapped into her brain. Talia straightened her spine. She refused to be a lovesick wench, even in the privacy of her own mind. It was over. James could bluster all he wanted about needing to ensure her safety, but Talia knew his reasons had nothing to do with her. He’d agreed to look after her because of his loyalty to Alexander. Not because he was genuinely concerned about her well-being.

And if he could use her to get what he wanted, then she could certainly use him to get what she wanted. She just had to remember that what she wanted was most assuredly
not
him.

James followed Talia from the carriage to the Exeter Hall offices of the Ragged School Union. He carried most of the books, while the footman trailed behind with the journals and magazines.

Gentlemen and a few ladies occupied the corridors of the building, pausing every so often to consult with each other about one matter or another. Talia strode up the steps to a glass-windowed door that bore a painted sign:
Sir Henry Clark, Director
. After a knock, the man’s voice bade them enter.

“Lady Talia, an honor to see you here.” A rotund man stood from behind a paper-strewn desk and approached, a smile breaking out from behind his whiskers. “I hadn’t expected you until later this afternoon.”

“It’s a bit of an impromptu visit, Sir Henry.” She gestured for James and the footman to put their books and journals on a nearby table; then the footman departed. “I’ve just visited Mr. Mudie’s Library and picked up some things I thought the boys would like.”

“I see.” Sir Henry looked as if he didn’t, in fact, see. “Er, you wouldn’t care to bring them directly to—”

“Not yet,” Talia interrupted, her voice bright. “I thought I might store them here for the time being, if you don’t mind?”

“Of course not.” Sir Henry looked inquisitively from Talia to James.

Talia made quick work of the introductions, then added, “Lord Castleford is leaving London again soon, Sir Henry. He’s heading an expedition to Siberia. Won’t that be exciting?”

Irritation prickled James’s neck. Every time she introduced him to someone, she remarked that he was
leaving again soon
in that light tone that suggested they needn’t trouble themselves by involving him in anything important. Because he’d be leaving again soon. Off on another adventure.

He turned to examine the books he had left on the table. Tried to ignore the discomfort rising in him. Talia had always respected his travels, always reacted to them with admiration and a hint of wistfulness. Now she seemed almost…indulgent about the idea, as if his taking to the sea were a childish whim they should all merely tolerate.