All My Broken Dreams (Locksley Hall #1)

Chapter Two

D eacon hung up and slipped the phone back in his pocket.

That wasn’t true. Alastair had a son he could call on to clean up this mess, but he’d never put his flesh and blood in the line of fire. Deacon had Alastair, and only Alastair, from the time he was nine years old. His uncle was a hard man, but he loved him. He knew there were some who pitied him for that love; he didn’t care. Alastair could’ve abandoned him when his mother died but he didn’t. He fed him, clothed him and provided for him when no one else would. Deacon loved the man and it wounded him to grieve him.

Nevertheless, he gazed at the book of poetry with a pang. His plan to better himself seemed daft now. Rain lashed against the windows. A cold, miserable night to be roaming the streets but he had a duty to the Order even if he wasn’t one of them. Duty and loyalty were concepts that Harry Listowel failed to grasp. For a smart guy, he sure was dumb.

The only way to advance in their world was through Locksley Hall Academy and the only way to get into Locksley Hall was through Fuil Bratach. The Order controlled who was accepted via a recruitment process that was rigorous, with the goal of installing alumni in the most powerful positions in government, business and global affairs in the world.

They’d had it their way for so long that when a candidate like Harry Listowel came along, the membership was completely unprepared. Harry was a problem and Fuil Bratach didn’t have a strategy to deal with problems.

They had Deacon Wake.

“How did you get on then?”

The bookseller nodded at the abandoned volume of poetry with a tiny smile as if he knew Deacon didn’t have a fucking clue what he was reading.

Deacon ignored the heat rising up in his neck and shrugged. “Load of horseshit. Only picked it up to kill time.”

“Poetry is the only thing worth reading in these dark times, lad. On the American plan is it? Camp out in the shop, paw the merchandise and leave when you’re ready. Can I assume you will not be making a purchase?”

He dug in the pocket of his brown tweed overcoat and tossed a couple of pound notes on the counter. He wasn’t Scottish but his accent wasn’t American either.

“The Canadian plan, actually.” Deacon jerked his head toward the door. “That girl who was in here–did she say who she was looking for?”

“No, sir, she did not, though Dugald Croft should offer a clue. She’s looking for one of those mucky-mucks who go to Locksley Hall Academy. You’d think it was Oxford the way this city dotes on that lot. Those privileged snots never show their faces in this store. Too good to buy their books in the High Street like every other student, they have whole libraries at their disposal. Will there be a reason for your interest–other than the obvious one?”

Deacon glowered at the insinuation. “I live near the Croft. I could’ve shown her the way.”

The bookseller’s head bobbed up and down. “Next time, speak up, lad. She would’ve been safe enough with you, I imagine. As it happened, I had to draw her a map, she was that thick. Looking for her brother, she was. She’ll make good time if she takes the alley, which she should do. It’s a right stoat coming down out there.”

Deacon slipped out, his exit marked by the bell jangling over the door. The girl had a significant head start. With the shortcut, she could be there by now. He had to prevent her from reaching the Croft but prevent her how? Stop her with what? His bare hands?

Rain mixed with sleet pelted his face. He was hatless.

Fucking Harry. He better not have a sister.

Especially not that one. When she stared at him with those navy eyes of hers, dark and solemn, it was like she could see him.

No one saw him. His invisibility is how he managed to survive.

That girl looked right at him.

The map was getting wet. She turned it sideways to see if that helped. The street she was on was not on the map. Robbie turned, debating going back to the store and forcing the bookseller to explain his directions.

“Nope, the store will be closed by now,” she muttered to herself as she ducked under an awning to look at the map again.

According to the map, cutting down the alley to her left would lead her straight to Dugald Croft. The rain had let up slightly–more good news. Once she was at Harry’s place, she would have a great story to tell him, she thought as she dragged her suitcase into the narrow lane.

Two weeks ago, the idea that she would get on the plane was beyond her imagination and yet here she was. Coping brilliantly.

Her mother had never asked Robbie for anything in her life. Sarah Listowel didn’t want her daughter’s help this time either. Robbie more or less forced it on her. She convinced her mother that she could find Harry and bring him home. At the very least, she could make sure her brother was alive and well.

“And what if he isn’t? What good will you be to me then? You can barely take care of yourself, never mind your brother. No, this is too important. I’ll send someone I can depend on.”

It had been months with no word from him. Her mom wouldn’t have come to her if she wasn’t really frightened, and her fear made Robbie afraid. She was more afraid of losing Harry than she was of leaving her apartment.

Taking that first step over the threshold in over a year was shockingly hard. Harder than she thought it would be.

The clinical term for her condition was agoraphobia. At least it wasn’t claustrophobia, she thought, feeling her way through the tight stone alley. Agoraphobia wasn’t much better—significantly worse, in fact. It was easier to find open space than it was to explain why you couldn’t tolerate open space.

Traveling to Scotland took a series of negotiations to get her on the plane. Anxiety for her brother’s safety played a small part; vanquishing Sarah Listowel’s disappointment in her only daughter was the real driving force. All Robbie had to do was to imagine the look on her mother’s face if she failed and she was motivated to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Now she was dragging a mammoth suitcase down a dark alley in a strange city. You go, girl.

This was all Harry’s fault. Why did he have to be so pig-headed about every little thing? Her brother was admitted to Locksley Hall Academy, a private university in Scotland that was over four-hundred-years-old. He told her it was so exclusive that regular students were never accepted. Admission was through family connections only.

He was desperate to go. Their mother was equally desperate to prevent it. Robbie didn’t have an opinion either way. Harry was her mother’s love child by a long ago lover who abandoned her and was never talked about.

Her half-brother was almost three years older than she was and much smarter. Harry claimed he had an uncle on his biological father’s side who pulled strings to get him admitted. Something about this mysterious relative freaked their mother out and she dug in her heels. If that man was behind it, then her son was definitely not going.

There was nothing Sarah could do to stop him. Harry was an adult and admission to Locksley came with a full scholarship. But he loved his mother and wanted her support. He didn’t understand her opposition and neither did Robbie. He asked his sister to talk to her. Get her to see sense. Persuade her.

Harry was asking the impossible. He was Sarah Listowel’s golden child, not Robbie. He was the one she listened to.

Their mother was alone in the world with a two-year-old when she met Robbie’s father. She told her once that it wasn’t love that led her to marry David Listowel and consequently give birth to a daughter, but desperation.

Robbie had been trying to win her over ever since. Her father filled the gap when she was growing up and now that he was gone, and Harry was gone, she felt my inadequacy in her bones.

Her dad told her once that she shouldn’t take it personally. Her mother was fleeing a toxic relationship when her parents met. David fell madly in love, but Sarah’s heart had been broken too badly to ever love again. Her honesty, brokenness and beauty moved a young David Listowel to vow he would be honored to take whatever affection she could offer him if she would be his wife.

He was a fucking idiot. Robbie loved her dad, but he was a fool to think there could ever be affection with an ice queen for a wife.

David Listowel’s love was not welcome. He adapted by pouring all of the love his wife wouldn’t accept from him into his daughter and stepson. He raised Harry as his own, loved him unconditionally and Harry returned that love.

When he died suddenly and unexpectedly last year, Harry and Robbie were both shattered in different ways. Harry handled it by running off to a school in a foreign country. Robbie handled it by retreating to her apartment and not coming back out again.

Until her brother vanished.

All she had to go on was an address and a brief explanation of how he came to be accepted to a prestigious university in Scotland. It was an evasive conversation that didn’t permit questions, not that she would dream of asking any. Harry Listowel was almost twenty-five, but he might as well be fifty. He was significantly more mature and decisive than she was. Still, his reluctance to talk about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was not like him. When something great happened, Harry usually bellowed it from the rooftops.

She remembered that she did have one question for him.

“Why Scotland? There are excellent private universities in the United States. Why do you have to travel to another country?”

“I have family there, Robbie.”

She thought he meant the mysterious uncle, so Robbie asked their mother about him. Sarah had paled and demanded to know why she was asking. Robbie backed away from her curiosity and not for the first time. She found that as she grew older whenever she tried to understand something about her mother or her brother, her questions were met with hostility, as if she didn’t have the right to ask.

She could handle her mother’s secrets better when her father was alive. Without him around as a buffer, Robbie felt like she didn’t have any family at all. And now fucking Harry has disappeared on her.

Footsteps echoed loudly in the laneway behind her.