A Matter of Temptation by Lorraine Heath Page A

his own window, hoping inspiration would strike, when something caught his eye.
    “Stop!” he yelled. “Stop the coach!”
    “What is it, Robert? What’s wrong?” she asked, suddenly straightening, ever alert.
    He couldn’t explain it. He merely shook his head. The coach rocked to a stop.
    “I’ll be only a moment,” he said, not waiting for a footman, but flinging the door open and stepping out. He walked only a few feet away from the coach so he’d have an unobstructed view.
    The building was as ominous from the outside as it was from the inside. Foreboding as well as forbidding. He broke out in a light sweat. Heswore he heard the clanging of doors, the shuffling of feet as prisoners were escorted to the exercise yard or the chapel, the absence of voices—
    “What is it about Pentonville that fascinates you so?”
    Robert nearly leaped out of his skin at the unexpected question, her unanticipated nearness. He’d not heard her clamber out of the coach, not heard her approach, and yet she was beside him, studying him. He wasn’t certain what she might see, what his face might reveal, so he tore his gaze from her, striving to keep any sort of emotion out of his voice.
    “What makes you think it fascinates me?”
    She released what she probably hoped would be a laugh, but sounded more like she was choking. “Because twice before when we’ve been out on a drive, you’ve done this very thing: had the driver stop so you could stand in that exact spot and stare at that horrid prison.”
    So twice before when his brother was with her he’d stared at the prison. Fancy that. Robert wondered how many times John might have come to look at it when he wasn’t with her. If he ever stood nearby with guilt raining down on him, guilt for all he’d acquired and all it had cost his brother, the true heir.
    Had John considered confessing his sins to her, or had he simply been taking a moment to revelin his unbridled success at replacing his brother? What had he thought when he’d stood there? And what could Robert now say to his wife to explain his actions?
    “I’m not certain why it fascinates me. It’s a morbid sort of fascination, to be sure.” Like gazing at one’s home in hopes of remembering pleasant memories where none existed.
    “I’ve seen a drawing of the prisoners taking their exercise. They’re tied together—”
    “They’re not tied together,” he interrupted. “They’re merely forced to hold a rope, knotted at five-yard intervals, to keep them from getting too close to each other. The distance prevents them from carrying on a conversation with another man.”
    “In the drawing I saw, they wore hoods—”
    “Yes,” he interrupted, not wanting to hear any more of the details with which he was so horrifyingly familiar. “It’s a bit of frippery called a scotch cap.”
    “Why do you call it frippery? It saves the prisoners the embarrassment of having their faces seen.”
    “By whom?” he asked, unable to keep the anger from surfacing. “By other prisoners? Other guilty men? Imagine living your life day in and day out at a masked costume ball…only everyone wore the same mask. You could easily go insane when everyone looks exactly alike. Watching the men come out is like bees swarming from thehive. You can’t tell them apart. The sameness of it. Everything always the same. The same thirteen-by-seven-foot cell. The same clothing, the same hood, the same—” He broke off. He’d not meant to go on so, but the misery of that existence was buried deeply inside him, struggling to escape with tenacity equal to his own.
    “I thought this new prison system was considered far superior to what we had before. It is clean, modern. And while the hoods may be a bit of a nuisance, if I were within those walls, I wouldn’t want anyone to know it was me. I believe I would welcome the anonymity while waiting to be transported to Australia.”
    “Yet you would lose that anonymity the morning you were