by Tracy Sumner
But she said nothing because she knew it would frighten Julian more.
She opened her eyes to find his glassy and settled on the uneven plank floor. “Tell me about the walks in St. James Park you used to take with your mother,” she encouraged. Redirection had worked well in the past to lessen the intensity of a vision when he touched an object. “What was the toy you carried along? A wooden horse?”
“A valiant effort, Yank.” His hand shifted, tensed in hers, released.
“Are your visions getting stronger?” Her grandfather’s words rang in her mind. A healer must heal, Elizabeth. “The League is my inheritance, Julian, my only inheritance. I should be a part of it. A working member. You should have summoned me back to—”
“You were protected.” His tone held no room for negotiation. “Which was an overwhelming feat to accomplish in the days following your grandfather’s death.”
“His estate—”
“His manor proved to be the least battle-ready in Cambridgeshire, and we never saw them coming. Our enemies stormed right in, past the fortifications the earl had erected. They knew what they were looking for, too, if you have any doubt. You and the chronology. They got neither, but we may not be so lucky the next time. It was a convergence of bad tidings. Finn less able to decipher his dreams, the League in complete disarray, scattered about England, powerless to do anything more than share the odd morsel of information. I had to spirit you away, without hesitation, and that is what I did. Find a secure location for the League while organizing our efforts as more than an old man’s diversion. Which is what I’m doing.”
“The visions, Julian.”
He glanced around the room before letting his gaze slide back to her. “They’re getting stronger, is that what you want to hear? It’s not bad on doorknobs, railings, dishes. Things touched repeatedly. They create only this semblance”—he circled his finger around his ear—“a whine, like a bothersome fly. Muted colors, like watching someone run through smoke. I can almost ignore those.”
“But, today, you had trouble with a simple fork.”
The spectacles left his face to be deposited on the table. “Too little sleep. One drink beyond what was advisable last night. And my throat feels like someone lit a fire in it.” He grasped his teacup, regarding her over the rim. “The visions are going to have control this morn, not I. I’m strong enough to bring them in.” He tapped the teacup to his temple. “The trouble is getting them out.”
“I’m always apologizing to you, but I am sorry for making everything more difficult.” Taking a deep breath, she met his gaze and forged ahead before he could stop her. “We could work on controlling the visions as we did years ago. A healer must heal, Julian.” She paused, wetting her lips, and trying to ignore how his regard stripped her bare. “I no longer have a place in the League. You must return this to me. No matter the danger, you must. And it seems as if you need me to return as much as I need it.”
He held her gaze as the sounds of a busy dining room surrounded them. “Gifts often shift with age, Yank. Mine is not wholly what it once was. Regrettably, it’s stronger. Where I go…it’s almost a trance.”
“Control can be had with practice, was that not your motto?”
He managed a tight smile. “It was.” His lips, bottom fuller than the top, pressed in on one another. “But now I know better.”
Piper controlled the urge, the compulsion, to touch him. There were no better means of driving Julian away than to let him know their long-ago kiss lingered in her mind like a tender wound.
Maybe he had forgotten, but she had never been able to.
“Jules, you don’t have to be disappointed in me.” After a long moment of silence, she completed the statement, “I can do that very well myself.”
He grimaced, dragging his hand across his mouth to hide it. “Piper, you misplace my intent. Maybe you always have.”
“Since my grandfather’s death, I’ve misplaced everything. My place, my purpose.” She moved her eggs around on the plate, her appetite spent. “As a Scott, society has to accept me. And they do, in part. But we both know I don’t suit.” She tapped her fork against china. “My father never cared for anything resembling well-bred behavior, and after he died, the earl’s wishes were paramount. I had no one else. Every fleeing governess brought another round of angst as he realized that not only my gift but my unusual upbringing, set me apart. The one season in London was pure agony, the auras an eruption before my eyes. I couldn’t maintain a steady stream of inane conversation while colors bloomed around me.” She lifted her shoulder, a shrug one of those governesses would have brought low with the business end of a book. “So, I am left somewhat aimless unless you’re going to let me back in.”
“Let you in? You’ve never been out.” His tone, thick, vibrant, and full of meaning, called to her as soundly as his touch. The emotion shaping his handsome face was too much for her to catalogue and keep her wits intact. “After I was cast out by my own father because of a gift I didn’t want but could not control, can you imagine my disdain for everything, and I do mean everything, he believed in? I manage the viscountcy only to protect the tenants who have spent their lives dedicated to it.” He braced his hands on the table, urgency in his stance. “Like your grandfather found me, and I found Finn, there are more with gifts they cannot manage, people I am welcoming into the League, welcoming to Harbingdon. We are stronger in number. If I have any purpose in life, it’s to make sure no one suffers the way I did, the way Finn did.”
“They need a healer, Julian.”
He brought his fist to his lips, pressed hard. “You’re right, they do,” he admitted.
“Partners,” she said.
“Partners.” The word teased from his lips, a gentle whisper.
“I work with you on controlling your gift. You help me catalogue mine.”
Figuring it was honorable enough to take advantage of a man’s bewilderment, Piper extended her hand, and God help them both, Julian took it.
Julian backed down the stairs, three to be precise, until the dining room, with a modest lean of his body, came into view. He’d been headed up at a swift trot, the better to end a negotiation he had no chance in hell of winning.
Her soft laughter had slowed his progress.
He grasped the railing as if his life depended on staying connected to the pitted wood. Thankfully, the visions were muted and manageable, while the riot in his brain was not.
He had agreed to be her partner. Piper Scott’s partner.
Was he bloody cracked?
Balanced on the tip of his boot in the event he had to spring into action to avoid being caught observing, he recorded Piper’s interaction with the inn’s owner, Warren McAlister. A conversation about gardens and what bloomed best in sun versus shade. How much water did this plant require and which ones could go without. She was buoyant, vibrating with youth and loveliness. So petite, and this Julian had failed to recall, her head barely reached the man’s chest.
Or his.
She sounded genuinely interested in horticulture, gesturing enthusiastically as she absorbed the advice of a man enthusiastic himself. A man, by the by, whom Julian had never seen rise above a bland smile in two years of frequent stops at his establishment. The exchange made him question how much he actually knew about the woman currently soaking up all the oxygen and sunlight in the dining room below. If he drew a breath, he imagined he’d catch the trace of lilacs radiating from her skin, stronger even than the scent of his breakfast sausage.
He stood there, suspended, and watched her captivate.
Asinine fool, he resolved and continued up the staircase. How could he have forgotten this?
Piper Scott loved to set people on their ears.
Especially him.
Maybe it barely registered, the vibration she projected, tilting the world around her while he tried to retreat to the background. Hard for the tallest man in the room to do. Especially one with a moniker or two, as Piper had so agre
eably pointed out. Beauchamp the Lion. He cursed as he slapped his bedchamber door open. What foolishness from a group of people with nothing better to do. With nothing more to worry about.
While he had the entire world on his shoulders. Or so it felt some days.
He scooped his soot-stained clothing from the carpet and into his battered valise. This bag he kept at the inn, stocked with a fresh change of clothing, allowing him to leave Harbingdon or London at a moment’s notice and rest at the midpoint. It was his favorite bag, one he’d retained from what he considered his other life. Too battered for a viscount, surely, which is likely why he felt affection for it. At one time, a boy, nearly a man, had run from an affluent but brutal existence at the hands of his father and disappeared in the bowels of London’s mean streets with nothing but that valise in his hand.
It now showed its age in a very inelegant way.
Perhaps they both did.
He slumped to the bed, dropped his head to his hands, and tried to massage away the ache. He wasn’t sleeping well. Controlling the visions was getting harder as they matured along with him. Images that had once made little sense now rang clearly, twisting his mind and his body into knot after knot. He was damned sick of looking into lives and being repulsed by what he witnessed. Repulsed and unable to expunge.
In actuality, he did need Piper.
She was buoyant, effervescent. Nothing, not even being a healer and pursued because of it, weighed her down. How did she manage that? His gift brought him low, scantly off the ground—his promise to protect the League even lower.
A ragged laugh tore from him as he imagined what she’d been up to in the past month. Fear mixed with fury inside him, but he still laughed.
Good God, she had guts.
A part of him, never to be revealed, envied her daring, her joie de vivre. Her bloody lack of concern even as someone, usually him, stayed close behind, sweeping up the mess. Strangely enough, at one time, freshly installed at her grandfather’s estate and not sure of his direction, Julian had wished to be more like her. Outspoken, animated, vivacious. But his objectivity held steady even in light of his wish that it not.
He pressed his palm to his chest. Through layers, he could feel his uneven heartbeat kicking. Shit.
Touching Piper Scott still made his pulse race.
Her body had filled out, curves deepening, on the verge of voluptuous for such a small frame. She should have looked drab in a borrowed dress, the bodice too tight, the hem already sporting a muddy border, when instead she looked nonchalantly enchanting.
God above did a title do anything but solicit magnificence, women thrown by eager mamas at your feet like rose petals. Very little were luminous without effort. Piper’s deep green eyes haunted him, reminding him of the emerald earbob he’d pinched from the gaming hell the first week after he’d run away, when food was so scarce his belly ached. An impulsive decision he’d taken a sound beating for because, unlike Finn, he’d never made a good thief.
Outside of those wondrous, glittering eyes, her mouth had always been her most arresting feature. Much too large for her face, he had been correct in assuming she would grow into it.
The enormously distressing element of this accounting, which was making his head pound and his cock stiffen, was the fact that Piper would crawl all over him if he let her. Sink inside him and grasp his heart, his body, his mind, all in one effortless, dazzling swoop.
He knew this. Had always known it.
She’d quite truthfully told him about her attraction, and once, at his weakest, he’d been unable to deny his own.
How was he to handle occupying her sparkling world again, when she would, without curbing any impulse, block him as he struggled to curb every one of his?
A forced distance between them was required because he was more dangerous to her than their enemies. Her grandfather had made him promise because he recognized the danger. It was written in the pages of his chronology, laid out rather brashly for those who chose to heed its warning.
An unforeseen merging of gifts can be catastrophic.
Of late, Julian had trouble leaving the otherworld once he entered, and he had no idea if someone going in with him would also have difficulty leaving. But he feared it was so, as her grandfather had feared. She’s not yours, he’d whispered in Julian’s ear with almost his last breath.
Piper had proven the combined power, crossing into the otherworld this morning when she grasped his hand. For one moment, he had known she was there with him. And he’d never been more terrified in his life.
The grave possibilities when their gifts converged were inescapable, it seemed.
So he would stay away.
No matter how fervently he desired her.
Chapter 4
To begin, begin.
~William Wordsworth
Later that morning, after dragging Finn from his bed, they left the Cock and Bull, seated together in the carriage, until for no reason Piper could determine, Julian’s aura began to flare, and he moved to ride alongside on a horse procured at the inn. He rode with a natural rhythm, reins dangling from slim fingers, muscular thigh digging into the horse’s flank. When he caught her watching, he held immobile, then, with a hoarse command, urged his mount to the front of the path, outside her view.
Nothing had changed.
One-sided, their fascination.
With a quick glance at Finn, Piper pushed the thought from her mind. Finn needed contact to read someone, or he had before, but maybe his gift had strengthened as Julian’s had.
As it was, the poor boy sought to ease the strain of the past twenty-four hours by regaling her with stories of Harbingdon and the village that lay beyond it, his smile only slightly brittle. The countryside changed as they entered an area of gently rolling hills swathed in dense expanses of woodland. The air thickened with the scent of moss, decay, and pine, the fragrance drawing like a shawl around her.
The rhythmic groan of the carriage wheels circled her ears as notions of what lay ahead circled her mind.
She admitted to being nervous when she was not a nervous person.
In the afternoon, with crimson and teal darkening the sky, the carriage halted at a drive flanked by two massive stone pillars. Julian’s deep voice filtered through the open window as he spoke to the gatekeeper and what appeared to be four guards. With a lurch, springs squealing, they passed between the pillars and continued along the gravel drive.
Piper considered waking Finn. She should have listened to his hours-ago ramblings about Harbingdon. Instead, she knew nothing about the place Julian called home with such longing. Home. When had she, Julian, and Finn ever had a place to call home? Memories of the errant childhood after her mother’s death came to her, as pronounced and choking as smoke from the hotel fire. By the time she’d made it to her grandfather’s estate at the age of twelve, her sense of family, security, love, shelter, anything resembling normalcy, was as distressed as the leather carriage grip she clung to. Only after Julian and Finn had arrived a year later and shared with her their paranormal existence did her life start to settle.
Leaning to get a better view as they pulled in the circular drive, the arched entrance of a lovely manor glided into view above a line of Yews in desperate need of pruning. She released a sigh, her hand rising to her lips to hold it in. Oh, this house was Julian’s in every way.
Elegant, restrained, beautiful.
Each window was in proportioned balance to the whole, each chalk stone uniform, identical wings jutting from the main to steady the scale. This house, unlike so many others, hadn’t been ruined with additions.
No line of servants stood to greet them, instead only Humphrey, scowl sitting like a lump of wet dough on his face. She sniffed. Naturally, his aura shone the color of mud. He was Julian’s man of everything—friend, manservant, valet, personal assistant. As wide as two men, though Julian topped him in height, he intimidated with just the glower, which rarely left his ruddy face. He’d arrived on her grandfa
ther’s doorstep, bruised and dressed in rags, mere days after Julian, and he hadn’t left his side since. They were as close as brothers—had saved each other was Julian’s only explanation—and aside from Finn, Humphrey was his only confidant. She’d always felt jealous of their relationship, which was senseless and said a lot about how hopeless she’d always been about anything connected to Julian.
She knocked her knuckle against the window. She didn’t imagine Humphrey was going to be thrilled to see her.
Julian rode past and slid gracefully from his mount. A groom appeared with prompt efficiency and ambled away with the beast. Julian and Humphrey conversed, and her anxiety shifted to irritation as Julian gestured to the carriage with a beleaguered expression. Humphrey glanced her way, ran his hand across his mouth, then raised his shoulders with a shrug that clearly said, she’s your problem.
Prepared to defend herself but wondering how she’d make it out without the step lowered, Piper had her hand on the door, ready to bolt, when her breath caught in surprise. A dog—small, wiry, and truthfully a little pathetic looking—bolted from the side of the house and ran straight to Julian, who dropped to his knee, words lost but affection clear as he stroked the animal from nose to tail.
So, this was part and parcel of home: Humphrey and a dog.
Her heart gave a slow, aching thump. A permanent residence had not been possible with her father’s itinerant lifestyle, much less the ability to house an animal, even though she’d asked, begged, on occasion.
She had survived by pushing aside longings for unattainable things.
Julian entered the manor without a backward glance, the dog at his heel, leaving her with a slumbering Finn and a scowling Humphrey. She readied for battle as the step clicked into place, and the carriage door swung wide. Humphrey’s arm, the one with the pitted scar running its length, shot into the interior. She straightened her spine and placed her hand in his, refusing to cower.