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
H e’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
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
H e’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
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