by Tracy Sumner
The movement caught Julian’s attention. Bracing, he shoved his arm against the brick. “You think they’re glowing now? Wait until they see us step out of the garden of a hotel known for trysts, in a state of dress that tells a very debauched story. Or worse, the revelation that one of their own is a spiritualist who has a penchant for starting fires. If you keep this up, my next mission will be retrieving you from Bedlam.”
She wiggled her chilled toes, realizing she’d lost a slipper. She surely looked a fright. Or at least, not as she should. Madame DuPre dressed for informal consultations and did not have the sartorial expectations of the granddaughter of an earl. And everyone expected a little grandeur with a spiritual reading.
Her gaze sought Julian’s, an explanation, some explanation she was sure, on the tip of her tongue. But shadows and obstinacy kept them silent.
Temper lighting, she shoved against his grasp.
He shook his head, lips pressed. No.
The warmth of Julian’s skin seeking hers through layers of cloth, his breath scalding her cheek with each uneven exhalation, combined to bring all those awful, beautiful, forbidden hopes to life. His touch still had the power to obliterate, as well as the fire raging around them.
Damn him.
“You, too, Yank,” he whispered.
Mortified by the nickname and her thoughtlessness in speaking out loud, she struggled. “Let me go.” She jabbed her elbow in his ribs. “I won’t run. I promise.”
With a sound caught somewhere between a laugh and a snort, he shifted enough to let her slide down his long body. He gave her no more than a second to catch her breath, then captured her wrist, the strength exerted conveying how, due to promises broken in the past, he held little trust. She inched back, gathering her equilibrium. In the years since she’d last seen him, he had cast aside the too-lean, scrappy young man. His broad shoulders blocked the moonlight; his thickly muscled arms tensed against hers. Combined with his height, which had presented attraction and annoyance when it arrived, he created a daunting picture.
He caught her staring, and his gaze skipped away. Back to the street and whatever it was he searched for. It was too dark to see the color of his eyes, but she remembered—slate, like a morning fog over the Thames.
They were without question the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen.
And she’d long wished for another set to come close.
As if he read her thoughts, his lips curved—nothing near an actual smile. His hair, longer than fashion dictated and still holding a gentle curl, lifted in the breeze, the mahogany strands shot through with auburn firing in the gas streetlamp. As she studied him, an expression she could not measure crossed his face and was gone so quickly she was forced to question its existence.
The sound of a disturbance on the street had Julian holding his finger before his lips.
Seconds later, Finn, dear Finn, dashed into the garden. He held her valise under his arm, packed in a rush as it was not fully closed, with what she hoped were her papers escaping on all sides. “I cleared the room of anything incriminating. And the fire is contained.” Breathing heavily, he glanced up, shrugged. “Mostly. The hotel isn’t going to come down around us anyway.”
Julian shoved her behind him, his lock on her wrist firm. “The carriage?”
“Dalton’s brougham. All I could locate since we can’t risk a hack or your coach. It’s waiting on the northwest corner.” Finn did a sidestep and caught a sheet of foolscap under his boot that tried to flee. “Away from the horde on Bolton. You brought an audience for this one, Pip, you really did.”
Julian swore soundly and jerked her along behind him as they left the garden.
Piper frowned at Finn over her shoulder. Why say that? she mouthed. She drew her finger across her throat, slashing to declare no more.
Finn grinned and offered his free hand as an apology, a typical response, so drolly delivered one forgot to be vexed. How she’d missed him, this boy, nay almost a man, who in her heart of hearts was her only sibling. My, he’s getting as tall as Julian, she concluded in wonder. And still so beautiful it made her heart squeeze. Julian had taken Finn under his protection years ago when he realized the orphaned boy had a mystical gift as powerful as his own. Julian had been little more than a boy himself when he’d begun to lie about their relationship, planting subtle innuendos like a seed in the soil until the ton assumed Finn was his father’s byblow and his half-brother.
She contained her smile as Finn danced about for another sheet. If Julian noticed amusement on her face, he would twist her in a knot with those clever fingers of his. Justly, none of this was the least bit laughable. It was her worst transgression in a life littered with them.
Julian gave a sharp whistle when they met the northwest corner, and the carriage pulled into place, bouncing off the curb in the driver’s urgency to reach them. Piper wondered how Finn had managed to borrow Lord Dalton’s carriage with such haste. Perhaps it only took a snap of his fingers to gain such a simple thing as emergency transport, for Finn was a born trickster, able to bend the truth seven ways to tomorrow and come out clean.
And, if gentle manipulation didn’t get him what he wanted, he read your mind as cleanly as a copy of The Times, and that was that. He would have made a brilliant partner—and been the genuine clairvoyant in the room— for Madame DuPre’s readings.
Julian hustled her up the brougham’s single step and into the dim interior. The coachman’s lamp illuminated his visage, and she drew a clipped breath. He seethed without a word, though it was hard to assess his expression through the soot. Oh, dear. She sank to the seat.
He looked as dreadful as she imagined she did.
With Julian’s hard thump on the trap, the carriage jerked into motion. Finn dumped her valise to the floor as he scrambled for purchase on the foldaway seat in the corner. She felt certain he would like to remove himself from the storm brewing inside the brougham’s confines, and the boot might have been a better spot for the two of them, even battling the raindrops that had begun to pelt the windows. To her mind, enduring a thorough soaking seemed more enticing than Julian’s stinging ire.
“The storm should help put out the fire,” she said and traced a rip in the seat. “Although the blaze did seem rather insignificant when last I checked.”
“So bloody insignificant they looked to be evacuating every building on that side of the street,” Julian snapped and settled as far from her as he could get without crawling outside. His voice, raw from smoke, sounded like it had been hauled across jagged glass.
And his aura…
His aura fragmented in every direction like a spectacular sunset. Crimson bleeding into velvety blue bleeding into ginger, an imbalance she had come to understand meant one struggled to hold opposing emotions in check. She’d have liked to gather her papers from the carriage floor and record the hues, but that would have been a dreadful impulse to follow. Not while Julian sat there, brooding. An irate, brooding lord, fresh from a gothic novel. She’d wager a halfpenny in her father’s favorite gaming hell that this utterly masculine display appealed to every woman in London, seamstress to countess.
It certainly appealed to her.
Julian yanked Madame DuPre’s veil from his waistcoat pocket and threw it at her feet. The carriage’s springs squealed as they rounded a corner, and she switched her attention to Finn’s struggle to hold on to his perch rather than take a chance on catching Julian’s gaze.
“You’ve put yourself, and the League, in a horribly dangerous position. Humphrey will need to spend a month in this damned town bribing everyone from bellboy to laundress to forget anything and everything they witnessed. Any of us could be placed in an asylum tomorrow if our gifts are revealed. You’ve met the people we’ve saved from that very fate. And you know about the ones we’ve lost. So, what do we do about the people we can’t bribe, Piper? Can you tell me?” His eyes, when she finally gathered the courage to look, were silver orbs glowing amidst inky soot. He yanked a
hand through his hair, leaving it wild about his head and enhancing his feral appearance.
She pressed her bottom against worn velvet while holding Julian’s gaze. Steady, Piper. It would not do to cower. Anyway, she wasn’t sure she knew how.
Julian frequently displayed anger, at least with her, but he was rarely unhinged. She wasn’t frightened of him. Well, not much.
Finn laid his handkerchief on Julian’s knee. At Julian’s hard look, Finn circled his finger about his face. “Might want to address the…” His words trailed off, and he slumped back in the darkened corner.
“Undoubtedly, I look like I stuck my head in a hearth because I followed an implausible vision into a smoldering hotel. Only in one’s wildest nightmare, right?” Julian managed the handkerchief with violence, blending the grime in deeper.
“How—” Her cough cut off the question. She patted her chest, swallowing hard. Julian passed her a flask she presumed he’d filled with water. The gin burned a path from teeth to toes. “Oh, heavens. That is horrid.”
With a sigh, he slipped a sheet from his trouser pocket, unfolded it with care. Even in the muted light from the coachman’s lamp, she recognized the advertisement before he spun it around on his knee for her perusal. Without comment, she took another sip, her reaction controlled this time. She could come to appreciate the taste. If the choice was gin or being held at the mercy of Julian’s rancorous gaze, she chose gin.
“Well?” He plucked the flask from her hand.
She sat back, out of the lamplight, formulating how honest—at this moment—she wanted to be. A better time to discuss her research strategy would present itself with the benefit of a night’s sleep and a decent meal. Surely—
“Oh, no, you don’t. Sitting there, figuring out the best path to take.” Her tactical hesitation held all the strength of gauze, and he saw right through it. “A medium? A mystic in an age of cruel fascination with the spiritual world? Is this your idea of exhibiting caution and prudence, per our agreement? You nearly burned down a bloody hotel!”
Her heart skipped as the streaky moonlight filtering through the window highlighted the shadowed crescents beneath Julian’s eyes. He looked weary and defeated, for which a good night’s sleep would do little. Wordlessly, he folded the sheet and slipped it back in his pocket.
She curled her hands into fists to keep from reaching for him. Piper had not played the healer in many a month. Madame DuPre told fortunes but saved no souls. That, too, had been part of their agreement. Wait until we know how to manage your incredibly singular gift, had been Julian’s final words before sending her to Gloucestershire.
She could draw his exhaustion from him as quickly as venom from a snakebite, but he’d rebuff her. So, she stared until he sensed it. Until his aura gurgled like a brook about him. “It wasn’t entirely affected. Not swindling like you and Finn did in the rookery. I can take an aura and a few personal queries and turn it into something quite representative. I wasn’t touting myself as a conduit to their deceased Aunt Prudence.”
“Not affected, huh?” He regarded her steadily, his somber gaze razor-sharp. “Like the accent?”
Her cheeks flamed, and she hoped the dim confines protected her pride if nothing else. For all his scrupulous nature and moral rectitude, Julian could play in the gutter when his temper shoved him there. This was a sore spot, and he knew it. She’d worked hard to let the long vowels and lilting tones of the aristocracy filter into her speech after a youth spent being dragged into every gaming hell in New York City while being told to sound very un-English. For all her diligence, when her mind wandered, certain words popped out with the flat undertones that gave away her indecorous upbringing. In truth, her accent was a complete and utter muddle. Like her life. “The proper accent is simply giving them what they want.”
He laughed, genuinely amused. “When has Piper Scott ever given anyone what they wanted?”
“Once. Quite well and gladly, as I recall.”
With a curse, he swiped his brow with the handkerchief and hurled it to the seat. “Don’t. Go. There.”
For the first time in three years, the sting of tears pricked her lids. Turning away, she blinked into a foggy night. Judging by the star’s alignment, they were heading north, out of London and into the countryside. She had no idea where and didn’t have the energy to inquire. She’d shed copious tears over a passionate instant of recklessness from a man who was never reckless. She understood and understood it well: Julian Alexander, eighth Viscount Beauchamp, took his promises very, very seriously.
And he’d promised right in front of her to never touch her again.
“Let me enlighten you, Yank. There’s someone in the ton interested in us, in you specifically. They’re getting closer if Finn’s dreams are any indication. And you’ve possibly thrown yourself right in their path.” He popped his fist against the carriage wall. “You don't think before you jump.” Another fist thump. “Ever.”
She rolled her head to look at him. He dodged the scrutiny, his gaze seeking the onyx twilight from his window. “How could I possibly know that? You left me with an aunt we located in some dusty tome she was so distant a relation, a letter arriving once a month if I was lucky to update me on your progress establishing the League and defining my place within it. I couldn’t walk to the village without a footman with a pistol shoved in his boot trampling on my heels.”
“Burke’s Peerage is hardly a dusty tome, Piper.” Julian propped his arm on the window frame and dropped his head to his hand. His shoulders lifted and fell with what she assumed was a repressed sigh. “Gloucestershire was a temporary solution. Fashioned under duress, I might add. Your grandfather’s death sent us into a spiral. I was only trying to get you the hell away from London until we understood who wanted you badly enough to commit murder. Our reality is far from the entertainment the ton envisions from spiritualism. You’ll be trying to levitate next, is that what I’m to assume?”
Her temper overrode the logical end of the discussion, which would be to share her research and the reason for her activities in London. Julian would be interested. After all, the League was his. Piper’s grandfather had started the society years ago as a place for those genuinely afflicted with a mystical talent to find shelter because to be afflicted was nothing short of a cruel fate, which he knew first-hand because his wife had been a healer, just like Piper. In the last moments of his life, her grandfather had laid the responsibility for the League’s future—her future—on Julian’s shoulders.
An honorable man, he’d not been able to say no.
She’d felt a burden ever since.
“I’m not certain why Gloucestershire was so demanding a situation. Why an impetuous escape was even necessary.”
“Because your temporary solution chose to pass in her sleep last month, Jules,” Piper said. “Her heirs were cleaning out the manor around me and asking how long I intended to stay.”
Julian turned at this, his head lifting. A lock of hair slipped over his eyes, and he knocked it away. “She died?”
“Yes. So, I forged a communiqué from my dear family friend Viscount Beauchamp inviting me to stay in the family home in Mayfair with a maiden aunt as there was no longer an adequate chaperone in Gloucestershire, etcetera, etcetera. Another option would be found and so forth. Although, at twenty-three, I’m far too old to require a guardian, but try telling that to anyone in the ton.”
“What maiden aunt? How did you—”
“I pinched a few sheets of your letterhead in the event an opportunity presented itself.”
He blinked. “I’m afraid to ask how closely your signature resembles my own.”
Piper rapped her knuckle on the windowpane, then repeated the action for good measure. She’d actually grown quite fond of Aunt Hortense and her crooked wisdom—such as the enormous biological burden Piper faced having an American actress for a mother. “Gloucestershire wasn’t so bad.”
“I visited as often as I could. Between classes,” Finn adde
d, trying to placate when she imagined he wanted to climb off his tiny seat and out the window. “Quite the calm setting. Much better air.”
Julian waved away the sentiment with an exasperated growl. “I needed time to find an estate completely separate from the viscountcy that could house what is coming to be a rather eccentric group of people. Time to raise funds to purchase it because most are flowing into the titled estates.” After a long pause, he continued, “Harbingdon is secure and quite perfect for our needs. But before I acquired it, we”—he shook his head—“weren’t ready.”
“You weren’t ready, you mean,” she whispered. She left it unsaid but wished Julian could read her thoughts while praying Finn did not. I know why you hid me away.
As that was not Julian’s gift, he read her expression. “Fine. Any way you would like to interpret.” The scent of him drifted to her, subtle, woodsy, close to the ground but not rooted. Like something earthy your boot released as it hit a patch of moss in the forest. Enticing without effort. So like Julian, it physically hurt.
Dashed, she could get lost in that scent.
Julian swiped the flat of his hand across the expanse of velvet between them. “You’re the crown jewel in our tiara, Yank, whether any of us like that fact or not. And one must protect what is most valuable.”
With a huff, she turned to face him, preparing for battle. His gaze swept her body, lingered, then returned to capture hers. Heat lit his eyes, and his aura blazed like a brilliant sunrise splitting the horizon. The wash of color nearly made her forget her point. She placed her curled fist, gloveless and soot-stained, next to his without touching him. “Send the crown jewel back to Gloucestershire. I can beg to be housed as a destitute relation, sharing that no unentailed properties or assets flowed from my father as they were all gambled away. That my cousin inherited my grandfather’s title and cleanly abandoned me without provision.” Grabbing the filthy handkerchief on the seat, she tossed it at Julian’s head. He ducked, and it sailed out the open window. “Or, leave me at the next coaching stop. Or back at the charred hotel!”