Beyond All Dreams (19 page)

The intensity faded from Neville's face, replaced by a smile. “Very well. My mission is accomplished.”

By the time they returned to the map room with the final map case, Luke felt as though he'd made a new friend.

The new library had been wired for electricity, and lamps with frosted glass shades illuminated the chaos inside the map room. The tables, card catalog, maps, and books had all been delivered. The sun had gone down hours ago, but Anna was too giddy to leave. Tired, grimy, and with muscles drained from exertion, this had been the very best day of her life. Moving into the new library was a thrill unlike anything she'd ever experienced.

Neville went home with the other workers, while Luke stayed to help her refill the map drawers, put books in call-number order, and move her desk three times, until it was in the perfect place for her to survey her kingdom. Ever since he and Neville brought up that final map case, Luke had been in an excessively good mood, losing his earlier surly attitude and eagerly helping her arrange furniture and hang maps. He even went downstairs and stood in line for the delivery of potted ferns that were distributed to the public rooms. When he returned with a Boston fern in a simple brass pot, he beamed with the pride of a man bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

It was amazing how quickly the map room was falling into
place. Finally, the only thing left to do was refill the catalog drawers with thousands of individual cards.

“I wouldn't ask my worst enemy to file the cards,” she said. “It's the most tedious of chores.”

Luke eyed the cards, carefully arranged according to their call numbers. “It seems criminal to make you file those cards on your own. Like Psyche confronted by a mound of seeds that must be sorted by dawn. Show me what to do.”

Was there anything more attractive than a man who knew his Greek mythology? Anna could scarcely believe it, but she was sitting at a worktable with the most eligible bachelor in all of Congress, showing him how to release the metal rod and tension springs from inside each card-catalog drawer. He teased her for the precision with which she numbered every batch of cards prior to packing. Yet she wouldn't let the taunt stand.

“If even a single card is misfiled, we will probably never find the map it belongs to. It could be decades before we see it again . . . if ever.”

“And you worry about things like that?”

He was teasing, but she wasn't embarrassed by her diligence. “I take my job very seriously. Once something is lost in a library, the odds of finding it again are minuscule. I know most people think this obsession with order is silly. After all, everything in here is just pieces of paper with words and lines on them. They're not even very valuable.”

“Pieces of paper with words and lines on them have the ability to change the world,” Luke said softly. “They always have.” His eyes gleamed in the dim light, and his words sent a thrill through her. She swallowed hard.

“I really love it when you talk like that.”

Who would have guessed that this flashy, arrogant man had the exact same values as she? But this was a man who bought a
railway car and then filled it with books to transform it into a traveling library. He set the metal catalog rod down and touched the back of her hand. Just a tiny fingertip, but it triggered a ripple of excitement that raced up her arm.

“We're not so different, O'Brien. You want a cathedral for your books, while I'll put my money on a railcar heading up to the mountains. The outside packaging looks different, but we both cherish the same thing. The incomparable magic of words written on pieces of paper.”

From a distance, the sound of running footsteps echoed down the hallway. They pounded closer until a congressional page came careering into the room. “There you are, sir!” the boy said, breathless from his race down the hall. “We've been looking everywhere for you. A telegram arrived for you this afternoon. From Maine, sir.”

The boy held out a small notecard. Luke merely stared at it, distaste twisting his handsome features.

“Aren't you going to take it?” she asked. The boy fidgeted, meeting Anna's eyes in confusion. When Luke still made no move to take the telegram, she crossed the room, took the message, and thanked the boy. She waited until the sound of the boy's steps faded before turning to Luke. How could he ignore a telegram like this?

“Please don't tell me your fear of technology extends to telegraphy. This might be important. Do you want me to read it to you?”

He snatched the note from her hands, turning away to read it. It suddenly seemed cold in the room. She wrapped her arms around her middle, wishing for a shawl. If the stiffening of his spine was any indication, the message didn't contain good news. Luke said nothing, his eyes turning stony as he stuffed the note into his pocket.

“Is something wrong? Is there anything I can do to help?”

She'd seen Luke on the warpath, keen on getting his own way. She'd seen him roiling with anger. But she'd never seen him behave this coldly.

“It's nothing I can't handle,” he finally said.

Luke folded his arms and stared out the window, the streetlamps creating warm circles of light in the city below. Only a few moments ago, this room had felt like a cozy haven. Not anymore. He drew a ragged breath, and a little of the tension drained from his shoulders.

“Is there any way you can find information on the conditions within a specific prison?” he asked.

“A prison? What kind of information do you need?” If it was a federal prison, it would be easy to find data, but most prisons were operated by states or cities. That would be tricky, and she'd probably need some help.

“My sister is about to make the trip to Washington to twist my arm, and I don't want her here. I need to put her mind at ease about something, and in order to do so, I need more information about the county prison in Bangor. Just find me anything I can pass on to her that says the place isn't a foul pit of squalor.”

“Most of them are.”

He glared at her. “Look, my brother needs to sit for a spell in prison, and my entire family is ready to burn me in effigy unless I bail him out. I'm not going to do it. It would be the worst thing for him.”

She sucked in a breath. “Your brother is in
prison
? And you aren't moving heaven and earth to get him out?”

“No, Anna, I'm not,” he snapped.

She closed her eyes, an avalanche of ghastly memories closing in on her. She'd only been in a prison once, but the stench of it was branded on her soul forever. After her uncle served
four months of his three-year term for forcing lye down Anna's throat, Aunt Ruth started the wheels in motion to get Henry released early. She wanted Anna to plead with the judge for leniency, and because Anna had lost her voice, Aunt Ruth put a pen in Anna's hand and dictated a letter. Anna was so terrified of her uncle's return, the pen froze in her hand. She couldn't write, couldn't put the words down on the page that might bring that man back into her world. Her aunt dragged her to the prison so that Anna could see what her foul mouth had caused.

The stench had been unbelievable, the sight of her uncle worse. She barely recognized the pale wraith of a man. It was impossible to look into his eyes that brimmed with remorse and not feel pity. Every drop of fear dissolved, and Anna rushed to hug her uncle through the iron bars. His ribs were bony beneath his shriveled skin, and they shuddered as he wept. She forgave him. Noiseless sobs tore from her throat as she cried against his chest and her fear was replaced with guilt. Her uncle cradled the back of her head with a trembling hand.

“I'm so sorry,” he wept. “Anna, I'm so very sorry.”

She believed him. She raced home to write the letter to the judge, saying she was sorry for misbehaving and please not to blame her uncle for the bad words she'd said. Her uncle had been punished enough and she wanted him out of that filthy place.

She never learned if the letter would have done any good. Within a month, her uncle was dead from tuberculosis he'd contracted while in prison. Instead of a three-year term, Uncle Henry got a death sentence for what he did to Anna. And she still blamed herself to this day.

Later, Anna learned that most prisoners caught tuberculosis within a year of incarceration. Very few people lived longer than five years in prison before they died from the disease.

“Prisons are notorious breeding grounds for tuberculosis,” she said to Luke. “My uncle caught it and was dead within six months. How can you just sit there and ignore it?”

His eyes iced over. “You don't know anything about me,” he said in a cutting tone. “You've got no grounds to question my decision. He's my brother, and I'll do what's best for him.”

“And in all likelihood he will be clobbered with tuberculosis within a year. The longer he sits in there, the greater the chance he'll get it. He will
die
, Luke. Do you want that on your conscience? Because I can tell you what it's like. Every time I think about my uncle, I wish I had never learned those cusswords. If I hadn't, my uncle would be alive today.”

“Your uncle was in prison because he abused a child. You can't blame yourself for his death.”

“But I
do
.”

“Then you're a weak-minded idiot. Your uncle chose to pick up that bottle of lye. Jason chose to pick up a bottle of rum and assault a sheriff's deputy. He knows rum is a poison for him, but he picks it up again and again and again.”

“It doesn't matter. You've got to get him out. I could never respect a man who put his own brother at such risk.”

Luke spun away from the window. “You have no idea what you're talking about. My brother has been coddled by irrational feelings of pity all his life. He is
exactly
where he needs to be.”

“He could die—”

“And you don't think the rum could kill him?” Luke shouted. She flinched and took a step back, but he advanced. “It killed my father. It soaked into his blood and brain until he lost all semblance of humanity and became a foul, soulless animal. It's why I'll never touch a drop of it. It's why I want Jason to get dried out in prison, because nothing else we've tried has worked for him.”

He stormed toward the door, but then froze before leaving. Without turning his head, he said through clenched teeth, “If you can find information about the county prison in Bangor, I'd appreciate it. But I don't want to hear another word of pity for Jason.”

The door rattled in its frame when he slammed it behind him.

L
uke spent the morning slumped in a leather chair in the congressional retiring room. With a newspaper held high, he hoped to avoid anyone trying to make chitchat with him. Today was the culmination of his plan to scuttle the tariff issue. Speaker Jones had enough votes to pass the radical new tariff, but only if he could summon a quorum, the minimum number of congressmen who must be present in order to hold the vote. Dozens of congressmen from both sides of the aisle feared the new tariff. Luke and Caesar had been quietly persuading members to boycott the meeting today. Without the necessary number of congressmen present, the Speaker could not proceed to a vote and the tariff would be defeated for at least another year.

Luke glanced out the window. It was a foul, rainy day, with steel-gray clouds scudding across the sky and tiny droplets of rain spattering the windows. A perfect reflection of his mood.

Anna's face floated before him. He cringed at the memory of calling her a weak-minded idiot. There was nothing wrong with Anna's mind, but how could she be so forgiving of her uncle? That man poured
lye
down her throat, and yet she blamed
herself for his imprisonment. Anna was another casualty of the corrosive effects of alcohol.

But he shouldn't have flung those insults at her. She was a kind woman, capable of extending forgiveness where he could not. Everything in him wanted to leap out of his chair, dash across the few acres that separated them, and apologize to her, tell her how much he admired her.

Coup de foudre
. A bolt of lightning. Love at first sight.

Shouldn't these irrational feelings have eased by now? This wild, impulsive instinct to be near her should have faded, and yet it was growing stronger.

He turned the page of the newspaper with an impatient jerk. He was stuck in this room until his sister replied to his telegram; he expected a reply within the hour. Afterward, he'd grab Philip and they'd catch a train out of town for the rest of the day. He didn't want to be anywhere near the Capitol when the boycott went into action.

From behind the newspaper, the distinctive tapping of Caesar Trammel's cane penetrated Luke's gloomy thoughts. He raised the newspaper higher, hoping to avoid the encounter, but the paper collapsed as the tip of Caesar's cane shot out and knocked the pages from Luke's hand.

“And good morning to you too, Mr. Trammel,” Luke said, forcing an artificially pleasant tone.

“I'm surprised to see you here today,” Caesar said.

To mention anything else in a room where they could be overheard would be foolish. It was hard to keep secrets on Capitol Hill, and the retiring rooms were notorious for eavesdroppers. Nevertheless, so far it appeared that Caesar's plan of coaxing dozens of members into boycotting this afternoon's vote on the tariff had been successful. For sixty-five members of Congress to maintain their silence and agree to the boycott had been a
miracle. They only needed a few more hours before they would spring the trap on Speaker Jones.

“I'm waiting for a telegram,” Luke said. He'd sent a message to Bangor late last night, advising Julia to stay in Bangor and authorize the family lawyer to pay the fine to get Jason out of jail. As soon as the telegraph operators in the basement received her reply, he could leave.

Caesar leaned down. “Leave now,” he said. “I don't want you anywhere in the building today, and if the telegram comes, I'll keep it safe until I can pass it on.”

Luke rose, tugging his vest and straightening his tie. “Agreed.”

It was still bleak and drizzly outside, but the copper dome of the new Library of Congress gleamed in the damp morning. Was Anna upset over what he said last night? Shame flooded him for losing his temper, for how his shouting had caused her to flinch.

Soon he was striding up the steps of the library and barreling through the front doors. He needed to beg her forgiveness and expel the bitter note that soured their friendship yesterday. Washington was crammed full of ambitious men and social-climbing women, all jostling for position. Anna wasn't like that. She was an unassuming person who took pride in her job, not for prestige or for riches but for the sheer love of knowledge, and that fact alone slid beneath every one of his defenses and made him long for her.

Would she even see him? Apprehension trickled through him as he rounded the grand balcony and walked down the corridor to the map room. It was still disorganized, with empty boxes mounded in the hallways and the sound of banging hammers in the distance. The doorway to the map room was open. Anna sat at a worktable, feeding cards onto a skinny metal rod. He rapped on the door, and she looked up.

“Are we on speaking terms?” he asked.

She set the rod down. “You tell me. I'm not sure you want to be associated with a ‘weak-minded idiot.'”

He sighed. Of all the times to lose control of his tightly wound anger, why did he have to lash out at the one woman who least deserved it? “Please forgive me,” he began. “There's no excuse for my behavior. Jason is my problem, and I shouldn't have lashed out at you. I'm sorry for acting like a foul-tempered bear.”

“You can at least make yourself useful.” She extended the metal rod in his direction, an unconventional peace offering.

A rush of warmth expanded in his chest. Was she always going to have this effect on him? He took the metal rod and sat in the chair opposite her, resuming the easy rhythm of the previous evening when she handed him a batch of catalog cards to funnel onto the tension rod.

“I gather your brother is a sensitive topic for you,” Anna said cautiously.

That was an understatement. “I fear Jason is following in my father's footsteps,” he said slowly. “My father was a decent man when sober, but when he was drunk he turned into an animal who trampled on everyone and everything standing in his way. For the life of me I can't understand why Jason or Julia turned to drink after witnessing what it did to our father.”

“Julia is your sister?”

Julia, his beautiful but tragically flawed sister. Her problem wasn't only alcohol; it was also her inability to control the deluge of emotions that blotted out every scrap of logic and reason. She was like a moth rushing toward a flame, heedless of the power of that burning temptation. Those unwieldy emotions had propelled her into an affair with a married man.
“You wouldn't understand,”
she'd cried.
“Our souls
are one!”

Their bodies had certainly become one, as evidenced by Philip's arrival when Julia was only seventeen. And her adoring
married lover? He fled with his wife to Boston at the first sign of Julia's pregnancy. Julia turned to rum to soothe her depression, gradually losing her ability to take care of herself or her young son. It was Julia's dependency on rum that compelled Luke to take Philip with him to Washington.

“Yes, Julia is my sister. The only girl among three brothers.”

Anna nodded and began funneling cards back onto the rod. “I've always been a little jealous of people who have big families. I don't have any experience with worrying over brothers and sisters, but I wish I did.”

His family was a bottomless well of frustration, yet he loved every one of them. They were the framework by which he defined himself. They gave spice and laughter and color to his world. It was hard to imagine the isolation Anna must have felt as an only child who lost her parents so early. Was that why she'd been acting so obsessed with tracking down the details of her father's final voyage and correcting the navy's report of the sinking?

“Are you going to keep digging into what happened with the
Culpeper
?” he asked.

She gave a weary sigh. “I've nearly gone blind scanning old newspapers, looking for any mention of the ship in the summer of 1882. I've spotted three references to the ship in Cuban newspapers that summer, but they don't mention anything about why it was there. If I try looking into the navy's archives for more information, they'll likely fire me.”

That was probably true. The navy and the government would close ranks to protect Admiral Channing's reputation, while the fate of a single librarian was of little consequence. They'd flick her away like a mosquito if she threatened to tarnish the good name of their prized admiral.

“It's like a sore tooth I can't ignore,” Anna said. “That report is wrong, they know it's wrong, and I'm forced to sit here and
let that error get calcified in the historical record. As more years go by, it will be harder and harder to correct.”

Her rambling was cut short as she startled and stood up. “Can I help you, sir?”

Luke turned to see three uniformed members of the Capitol police clustered in the doorway. Jonathan West, the sergeant at arms for the House, stepped into the room, the insignia flashing on his uniform. Luke rose in concern. Such men rarely left the Capitol unless it was for good reason.

“Sir, you are under arrest,” the sergeant at arms said. The two police officers behind him moved to stand on either side of Luke.

Luke let out a bark of laughter. “Is this a joke?”

“No, sir. You are to follow us to the Capitol immediately.”

“What are the charges?” he sputtered.

“Illegally seeking to evade a House vote,” the officer responded. “The Speaker of the House is authorized by the Constitution to compel your presence for the vote. He has chosen to do so. You and the other sixty-five members of Congress who have chosen to miss this afternoon's vote are all subject to immediate arrest.”

Luke clenched his fists, so angry he couldn't speak. Everything the officer said about the Speaker's power to arrest him was true, but this sort of stunt hadn't happened in decades. And all his colleagues still in the city were most likely being simultaneously arrested as well. Obviously their secret had been exposed. Most of the conspiring congressmen had surely left the city, but it seemed a careful watch had been kept on those within the reach of the Capitol police. One of the officers moved closer, a pair of handcuffs dangling from one hand.

“Don't even think it,” Luke snapped. He wouldn't put it past Speaker Jones to have Luke handcuffed and frog-marched all the way down Constitution Avenue, with journalists and photographers gathered around to memorialize the spectacle.

Luke swallowed hard, his mind working fast. He had to be smart about this. He wasn't going to be the only member of Congress arrested today, and they needed a unified strategy to snatch this victory out of Cornelius Jones's salivating jaws.

He glanced at Anna. Her face had gone white, and she was staring at him with wide eyes. He smiled and reached out to squeeze her icy hand. “Don't worry about this,” he whispered. “It's just another salvo in a long-running war.”

He left the map room with his head held high, shoulders back, determined to handle this with the same cool composure as when Cornelius Jones bumped him down to the Fisheries committee. He would smile, take it in stride, and keep working behind the scenes with all engines firing. The officers trailed behind him like serfs in the wake of royalty. Wending his way through the crowds in the great hall of the library, he nodded and smiled to the onlookers, who didn't know what to make of the uniformed men following a member of Congress through the building.

But inside, Luke was seething.