The Hellion is Tamed

by Tracy Sumner

  Simon shoved aside musings he’d thought, every time, he’d resolved, until he returned, halting before a portico of nondescript construction. A decaying set of cement stairs took him to a weather-beaten door and a rusted knocker in the shape of what he assumed was a hummingbird. His request for entry was undemanding, the requisite four raps answered immediately. Ragsdale, Josie’s barbarous majordomo, gave a swift nod as he opened the door, his hand caressing the butt of the pistol shoved in his waistband.

  Simon took the carpeted stairs two at a time, realizing it was a reckless endeavor, coming here in the light of day, seeking solace instead of sex, as any other man entering Josephine’s would be seeking. Henry jostled him, having completed the trip with him, a blast of air rather than the feel of an actual body colliding with his.

  When Simon tromped into the parlor where he knew he’d find her, a fleeting surge of fury reeled through him. He’d been unable to save her, his childhood friend from the mudlarking days. The desperate, despicable days. Unable to offer the sister of his heart another solution until it was too late.

  Josie glanced up from her knitting, a fleeting assessment. A judgment that would be right on the money because she knew him almost as well as he knew himself. Halting her clacking needles, she gestured with one to the sofa across from her. “Sit. I can see something beyond our normal business is on your mind. I wasn’t expecting you until next week. A new girl needing placement. But we can get to that after you tell me what’s wrong.”

  He blindly followed instruction, sprawling on the brocade sofa, his legs going out, his head back. Josie’s ceiling needed repair, a spider crack spanning an entire corner. He would have the Blue Moon’s steward add it to the running list of maintenances. Yanking his hand through his hair, he sent streaks of rain sliding down his cheek to collect on his collar. With a shiver, he slipped a farthing from his waistcoat pocket and rotated it between his fingers as Josie halted her knitting to play hostess. Feminine succor, comfort for both of them in the routine. Pouring tea, stacking biscuits on a plate edged with what looked like daisies, murmuring observations he wasn’t required to satisfy. Not with her. She knew how to calm him better than even his brothers. Better than whiskey and, sometimes, better than sex. Her perfume, delicate, discreet, circling the space. Closing his eyes, he breathed in one of the few sensations of home in any memory he wished to carry.

  Josie reclaimed her seat, fished out her yarn bundle and put her needles into play. It looked like she was halfway to creating a scarf, some godawful mix of gold and fuchsia. “You’re soaked to the skin. No gloves, no overcoat. Where is that Inverness cape I saw you wearing on St James last month? My, you looked an Oxford man. You’ve done us proud, darling boy. Former bandit of the night. Not a lick of Old Nichol on you. You’ve got the life. Unless one glimpses eyes the color of the finest chocolate and sees the hopelessness.” She tapped the needle against her bottom lip. “Care to tell me what this impromptu visit is about?”

  “I gave her my gloves,” he said stupidly, flexing his chilled fingers. The supplest kidskin to be had, Welsh, specially ordered and just in from his tailor the week before. They would have come in handy during his stormy dash into the slums, dammit.

  “Her.” Josie’s knitting needles reclaimed their task, her lips curling to hide what he assumed was a smile. She ducked her head before Simon could confirm the suspicion, but his mood curdled anyway. “That answers my question. Why should I be shocked? You run back here every time you get frightened by your new life. But you’ve never run back because of a woman. More resentment with your brothers over their heavy-handed management, that silly tiff when you were almost expelled from Oxford for stealing the Roman antiquity from the library. But never the need to escape a woman. Hmm…”

  “I’m not running from a woman. I needed to walk. Clear my head.”

  “Clear your head by strolling from Mayfair to Old Nichols? In the blinding rain?” Josie glanced out the window at the congested mass passing her residence, the sound of a man’s shout and glass breaking a clear reminder of where they were. Her needles clicked as she shrugged a slim shoulder and resumed her project, accepting of her circumstances, forgiving of his good fortune, as always. “It’s been almost twenty years, Mac. Doesn’t that life fit yet?”

  Simon shot a breath through his teeth, slapped the farthing to the table and cradled his hands around a teacup, wishing like hell the delicate china was filled with gin. Mac. Besides Josie, only his mother had ever called him that. A nickname even his brothers didn’t know about. “I’m not frightened.” He took a sip, the taste of chamomile and cinnamon dancing along his tongue, calming, as she’d planned. “Unnerved, perhaps. Unsettled. I don’t know why this is the case after all this time. I’m lucky, I know it. Schooling only an aristocrat, even one hanging on to society by the nick of his fingernails, would receive. Quality clothing, a loving family. A home. Two, in fact. Mayfair and Julian’s estate in Oxfordshire. A profession.” He sighed and tapped the rim of the cup against his teeth. “I love the Blue Moon like I birthed it. There couldn’t be a place I cherish more in this filthy city. Mine, thanks to someone else’s good grace.”

  Josie paused, placing the half-completed scarf on her lap. “You lose yourself dissecting the boundaries between who you were and who you are, Mac. It’s a tireless route, bouncing between them. When is there time to simply live? Accept, move on?”

  Simon spanked the table with his teacup. “Is that what you do, Josie? Simply live?”

  She lifted her head, her eyes glittering, as lush and green as spring grass. “I chose this. I opted to live in squalor and fight to get others out. I foster every woman I can, giving them a future. This business is a ruse, you and I both know, except for the women who truly wish to sell themselves and will never turn back. And for them, I provide the best situation possible.” Josie lifted a brow, her expression chiding. “You speak as if this is my life’s purpose, not yours. We built this together, Mac. Have you forgotten you’re my covert benefactor? Or that this undertaking was your idea after seeing how well creating a new life from a lie worked for you.” She gestured to the world outside her cozy little parlor with the knitting needle, a string of yarn tangling around her wrist. “How many of my girls have you employed so far? In the Blue Moon and at your brother’s residences, the homes not requiring a person to have a magical gift? Ten?”

  Bracing his hands on his knees, Simon rose to his feet. “Thirteen.” Josie wasn’t a drinker, but she had to have liquor somewhere in this chamber.

  If they were going to explore his secrets, he needed a drink.

  “Oh, yes. Mollie McCurley. How is she working out?” Josie smoothed her hand over the scarf, fretted at a knot in the yarn. “I worried. A duke’s seat is aiming very high, and her stutter is quite pronounced if she’s nervous. We worked for months to even out the rough edges of her manner and her speech but still…”

  “She’ll be fine. The Duchess of Ashcroft is an American and as unconventional as they come. Everyone equal, no kings, no titles, all that rubbish. I asked that Mollie be attached as a maid to her new project, a girl with quite a few jagged edges herself.” Simon dropped to his haunches before a scuffed cupboard and loosened the bottom drawer, a bottle of Irish whiskey rolling to the front with a pop. Bingo. Yanking it free, he gave the cork a twist and drank deeply.

  Josie sighed. “I have glasses in—”

  “No need.” Simon took another pull, the liquor burning a delightful path to his belly.

  “I hate to ask, but is one of your specters here with us?”

  Simon dragged his wrist across his mouth and jammed the cork in the bottle. Alcohol was swimming in his head—but better hazy oblivion than unchecked Emma. “Henry. Bootmaker.”

  “Blacksmith,” Henry murmured from his spot against the escritoire.

  “Blacksmith,” Simon echoed. “A very amiable fellow.”

  “Thank you,” Henry said, “you as well.”

  Simon wrenched open another d
rawer, this one littered with hair ribbons, a button, loose change, and at the back, a broken pencil and scrap of wrinkled paper. He pulled the pencil and paper out and slid to the floor, his back resting against the cupboard, his legs outstretched.

  To keep his hands occupied and lessening the urge to steal, Julian had taught him to sketch. Only thing was, he wasn’t good at drawing while he was an excellent thief.

  Surprisingly, however, the trick worked every now and again.

  “Your brothers don’t know about me, do they? The women you’re saving from an absolute horror of a life? You couldn’t even tell the one who smiles all the time, the man they call the most gorgeous in England?”

  “Finn,” Simon murmured and sketched Henry with swift strokes, his disheveled hair, the cowlick riding up in front like a rogue wave in the sea. Collar nearly hitting his chin and ruffled sleeves, attire not seen since the late 1700s. Tilting his head to inspect, he licked his thumb and muddied the charcoal edge just as Julian had shown him to do. “They left the slums and never looked back. Humphrey, too.” He gestured with his pencil, a quick jab. “Julian’s a viscount and never belonged here, anyway. And Finn turned into a gentleman the moment he dipped his toe into Mayfair’s seductive pond. They don’t understand my need to retain parts of this sad life, parts of that sad boy. So, no, I don’t tell them I’ve been coming here since I was old enough to sneak away. They don’t know about you, about the network we’ve established.” He added Henry’s curling mustache, thinking it looked more like a scar in the finished product. “They know Simon Alexander, not Simon MacDermot. I’ve never been able to share him easily.”

  “Did you ever tell them your mother was a lightskirt, compelling you to now risk so much to help these girls?”

  Simon flinched, the pencil going wide across the page. “No.”

  “Maybe it’s time to tell them. Quit trying to jam these loose pieces of yourself into a puzzle that only makes sense to others. It’s acceptable if two such distinct realities don’t quite fit and too taxing to try and make them fit. You can’t live a life like that.”

  He’d often thought he should tell them. Then, his random disappearances and clumsy fabrications, when pressed, would finally make sense. The somber mood he often had trouble liberating himself from. His sporadic requests to place a female domestic in one of their households.

  He knew he needed to tell someone who he was—and was fiercely annoyed to realize that someone was Emma.

  “So, darling Mac, you’re here because…”

  “I required a moment to breathe. My family is coming to town for the duke’s ball next week. The lot of them. Children, too. It will be utter madness. And this girl, the duchess’s project, she demands my attention, in part. It’s complicated.” He put too much pressure on the pencil, and the tip broke off with a snap. “If you need me, I won’t be able to get away easily. Send a note to Mackey—”

  “Wait, go back to the duchess’s project. I hear a catch in your voice. Is this the woman you mentioned? Her?” Josie’s hands twisted the yarn into submission as she probed his soul with a gaze so fervent he was forced to look away. “The one with your gloves?”

  Simon flipped over the wrinkled paper and started a new sketch, this one of Emma. Let’s face it, he thought, that’s who you wanted to draw the entire time. “You remember the girl who showed up at Julian’s estate in Oxfordshire? Ten or so years ago? The one I couldn’t talk to? The one who stole the Soul Catcher?”

  Josie gasped, her knitting needle hitting the carpet with a soft thump. “Oh, Simon, you finally found her.” Scooting to the edge of her chair, she smiled broadly while his frown grew. “How did you travel back? Was it incredible? What was London like then? Were the clothes very odd? Did she remember you?”

  Emma’s reaction when she’d first seen him flashed through his mind, a joyous spill widening her indigo eyes until they completely conquered her lovely face. She’d not only recognized him. For one moment, she’d looked as ecstatic as he felt.

  “I think I’m still in love with her. Just like I was when I was a daft boy of sixteen,” Simon whispered and let his head fall back against the cupboard with a clunk. How bloody senseless was that? With a loathsome snort, he reached for the bottle, but Josie was quicker, on her feet, snatching it from him before he could make the situation worse by getting drunk in the middle of her parlor.

  “We’re not solving this problem with gin, Mac. And you’ve tried solving it with half the women in this city. It’s time to find you. Maybe this woman can help you do that. She’s one of us. A beggar, at heart. Supernaturally gifted, as you are. You have nothing to hide, no one to hide from.”

  He closed his eyes and allowed the rookery’s tenacious essence to seize his senses. The sound of carriage wheels striking pitted cobbles, a hawker selling sweets beneath Josie’s window, fried fish and laundry soap drifting into his nostrils, stale smoke and the Thames battling for control on his tongue. “I found it unpleasant, investing my heart. The return wasn’t agreeable. And as an Alexander, I’ve been taught all about agreeable returns. I run a business, a successful one, based on nothing but agreeability.”

  Josie went to her knee beside Simon. Paper crinkled as she removed the sketch from his hand. “Is the girl you’ve been waiting on to return for ten years the lost cousin of the duke I’ve read about in the newspapers? I know you’re very close to him, almost like a brother, you’ve said. Is she the duchess’s new project you speak of? The woman all of London is desperate for a glimpse of?”

  Simon opened one eye, fixing it on his oldest friend. If he loved Josie in that way, if she loved him in that way, life would be so much easier. “She’s going to bring me down again if I let her. I spent years wondering where she was and why she didn’t come back. I still don’t know. Foolish, perhaps, but it pains me.”

  Josie rocked back on her heels, Simon’s sketch of Emma fluttering to the faded carpet. “Your answer to finding your lost love is to create a life for her well above your own? Placing her out of reach, should the ruse be accepted? A future with some posh toff? When she could be with you if you’d let yourself figure out who you are.”

  “It will be accepted,” Simon whispered and levered to his feet. Did Josie think that made him happy? He didn’t want to imagine what would happen should Emma become an overnight success, which was the plan for a duke’s cousin. A prosperous future, a future that would never include marrying a viscount’s bastard. “There are downsides. She’s headstrong, not one to let a few meaningless rules get in her way. Reckless, impulsive.” He crossed to the window, rain falling in sheets and sending a river of filth racing along the street to accumulate in the half-choked drains. “She’s also intelligent. Shrewd. Capable. Sensible, I suspect, beneath the swagger. She’ll deceive them all and laugh while doing it.” He tracked a raindrop down the dirty pane with his thumb, his heart stuttering in his chest. “It might even be amusing to watch.”

  If only he believed that.

  “But what about you, Mac?”

  Simon pressed his palm to the glass and stared at a life he’d left behind, a citadel of the underworld living among the ton.

  What about him?

  He’d keep coming back to this very spot, even if it defied his family’s strategy to secure his happiness.

  And he’d go on loving Emmaline Breslin, he supposed, against his goddamn will.

  Chapter 7

  “He did wot?”

  Emma collapsed on the edge of her bed, a tricky endeavor in the gown she wore. The bustle jutted out from her bottom like a bundle of straw, at the perfect angle to balance a tea tray on. How had fashion come to this, she wondered and watched her maid, Mollie, strut around the room like an actress ready to break into song. Emma questioned where on earth they’d found the girl. She knew nothing about employing domestics and running fine households but guessed Mollie belonged in Mayfair even less than she did.

  And that was saying something.

  Emma fell back on t
he bed with a sigh, marveling at the comfort of the feather mattress shifting beneath her. The most snug bed she’d ever settled upon, without question. “He left me. In the ballroom. Yesterday, during my lesson that wasn’t a lesson but a chance for him to bloody one-up me. When I’m a woman who doesn’t like to be one-upped.” She socked the counterpane, pretending it was his rock-hard jaw. “At the end of a waltz. Walked away, ran more like it, before I even had the chance to curtsey. And I’d been practicing that curtsey for days!”

  “That’s an Alexander for you. Probably had a p-p-prior engagement, if you gets my drift.” Mollie sniffed and rubbed her forearm beneath her nose, something Emma noted the girl did when she wanted to slow her speech and take hold of her stuttering. “Simon, ah, he’s known for ‘em. Engagements with females that is. It’s the way with the men in that family. Or so the chatter says. The ladies love ‘em, they do.”

  “I don’t care what engagements he has,” Emma seethed, giving the counterpane another punch. Cad. Bounder. Rotter. He could show that birthmark on his arse to every wench in London for all she cared. But he would not turn his back and ignore a curtsey she’d spent hours perfecting.

  “Course you do, missy. Can’t help w-w-who you like, even if he is a scoundrel who sees spirits. I heard the lower house staff talking about his latest ghoul, Henry. And the duke and his fires, the duchess and her mind attic. Land sakes, this house is peculiar. I listen, quiet like, so folks talk right in front of me. The s-s-stutter makes them think my mind doesn’t work well. But you have your own odd talent, so that evens it out if you do favor him. The oddity that is.” Mollie flung open the wardrobe doors and grabbed a nightgown, giving it a clumsy unfurl before tossing it over her shoulder and turning to Emma with a pitying expression. “I seen the way you looked at him that one time, when he popped in at breakfast. You’re sunk but good. Maybe you could use your fancy disappearing act on him the next time”—she snapped her fingers—“poof, into another room with ya’. Take that for leaving me unaided on the dancefloor!”