by Tracy Sumner
I needed you, he could have said but didn’t dare.
She hauled the neckline of her gown to her chin and halted at the end of the hallway, wrinkled silk fisted in her hand. Lifting her arm, she rapped on the scarred walnut door leading to the alley. Three times, quick and hard, like he had the first time. Two knocks came back. Emma slanted Simon a heated look and repeated with one.
Mackey opened the door, his grin rising when he saw who stood on the other side. “I thought those blows sounded right feeble. But you got the cadence best as a judge, darlin’. A crafty one, you are. I can see why you’ve been loafing ‘round.”
“We meet again,” Emma said, throwing out a curtsey she hoped Simon could see was elegant enough to please a queen. Unfortunately, she was a fast learner of waltzes, curtseys and cyphers allowing women in and out of back entrances of gaming hells. The duchess had her bending and scraping until she’d declared the effort perfect, and Emma’s knees ached.
But, by God, she was going to fool them all.
“Meet again, we do.” Mackey tipped his bowler hat and bowed, not bad form for a ruffian, if Emma were asked to assess. Which, of course, she’d never be asked to do. “Same chit twice in one week. A record for our boy. I fear you got him by the short—”
“Mackey,” Simon snapped, “round up the carriage if you please.”
Emma snorted softly and descended four stairs to the grimy cobblestones. “Quite haughty for one from St Giles, isn’t he, Mackey? Polishes up nicely, though, I must admit.”
One of Mackey’s shaggy eyebrows rose until it slipped beneath the shadow of his hat brim. “Tragic place. Where the Great Plague started, first poor victims buried in the churchyard of St Giles-in-the-Fields.” Tapping his muddy boot on the cobbles, he gave his employer a painstaking examination, as if this information provided a connection he hadn’t anticipated having. “Me auntie comes from over that way. Grape Street, right horror of a lodging, but she’ll leave when she kicks and not a moment before. Stalwart, like most of the females in my family. Blast, like most females.” Seeing the conversation was going no further, Mackey tipped his hat and hustled away, gesturing for the carriage they kept parked at the corner.
When the silence began to chafe, Simon took the stairs with a hop and landed beside her, blowing out an exasperated breath. “Are you going to tell me what has your knickers in a twist?”
“I want the swish stone back,” she answered without glancing at him. If she did, with that kiss swirling in her belly, filling her chest with what felt like flaming cotton, it was going to end with her pressing him against the gritty brick and begging to have another go. She covered it well, but her knees quivered, her hands trembled. Her lips stung. Her thighs burned.
And between her thighs…
She’d never felt more like a vulnerable female, a desirable woman. Regrettably, she wasn’t sure she liked it.
“Give it back? No ma’am. I’m not applauding bad behavior.”
Blood bubbling from the emotional mix—resentment, longing, helplessness—Simon created in her, Emma presented her back, turning to watch the Blue Moon’s carriage, that after circling the block, rolled down the alley on its journey to retrieve her.
“We make a deal, here, now, in this splash of misty moonlight, Miss Breslin. If you comply, I’ll consider giving it back at the ball. Not one bloody trick between now and then, not even traveling from the breakfast room to the duke’s garden unless you walk. The next time you think of placing yourself in danger, don’t do it under my watch.” From the corner of her eye, she saw him pat his pocket, the Soul Catcher’s glow evident beneath the soft linen of his coat.
There had been others parts of him, ones she was desperate to explore, hidden but not well, beneath fabric this evening. Hard as a stone. She kept herself from looking past his waistband to see if this was still true.
“The ball is in ten days. So I won’t see you until then?”
His pause was interminable, his boots scraping stone as he shifted from one foot to the other. “After that kiss, a little distance might be for the best,” he finally said, his words as tentative as the fog. “The sensible avenue to take.”
Sensible? She didn’t want sensible. She never had. Not with him.
Instead, she wagged her head, her gown drooping, the corset’s sharp edge digging into her breast. Her nipples were still rigid as pebbles, she’d love to tell the toad. “Nothing to it. Forget it ever happened.”
“Done,” he whispered, pretty as you please.
The carriage halted before them, Mackey out like a shot, yanking down the stairs and gesturing grandly for her to make her way inside. “My lady. Yer chariot awaits.”
“Christ,” Simon muttered.
When she was settled on the velvet squabs, the gigantic overcoat in a puddle around her, she glanced out the window to find Simon standing in the same spot, his face drawn in lines of battle. After scratching his chin with his shoulder, a cautious signal, he dug deep in his checked waistcoat and came out with a handkerchief. SA embroidered on the corner in somber gray thread. “You may want to wipe the blood from your cheek before you face the duchess. It’s going to be enough to explain the damaged clothing. But you made this bed, so it’s only appropriate you lie in it.” He shoved the strip of cloth into her outstretched hand, their ungloved fingertips brushing, sending a bolt of heat through her body.
And, she prayed to all that was mighty, through his.
Giving up, she sighed and flopped back against the seat, pressing the handkerchief against her shuddering belly. Touching him was going to be a danger hereafter. Another problem that blasted kiss had introduced. When she was prepared to make it worse. The minute they got out of sight, she was going to lift the wadded linen to her nose and breath the deepest breath she’d drawn all day. Inviting his scent into her soul.
He stuck his head in the window before they rolled away, determined to get the last word. He was tall enough, plenty tall enough, to lean right in and over her. Incredible, when the Alexander brothers didn’t share a drop of blood, that they were near the loftiest men in London. “I want to know everything about this time tracer, a minor detail it would have been fantastic if you’d shared before. Julian will need to record your considerations in the chronology, discuss it with the League. I don’t believe it’s something we ran across in our research to find you. If we’re going to protect you from him, we have to know how. And why.”
She was tangled up in emotions she craved and loathed. No one, no one, had ever stepped in to protect her. She’d had no father, and her mother had been ill every day Emma had known her. Her granny too old, then gone before she knew it. The feeling of being safeguarded was magnificent and…frightening. As tangible a weight as the coat draped across her shoulders. Though she wasn’t prepared to accept it. “I saw you with the countess when I came back. My ‘knicker twist,’ as it were. Or hers, should she have been wearing any.”
He rocked out of the carriage, then back in, moonlight a hazy wash over his ruthlessly handsome face. The mist had curled his tawny hair about his ears and jaw, and she wanted nothing more than to knot her fingers in the overlong strands and draw his lips to hers.
“Countess,” he whispered, baffled. Shaking his head, his hand came up to grip the window frame, his gaze searching her face. His fingers were long and slim, the nails ragged as if he chewed on them. A spot of ink marked the rough pad of his thumb.
Intimate details she unwillingly cataloged, hating the both of them for the need to.
“I didn’t have first-rate control then. I practiced, but it wasn’t, it still isn’t perfect. I even ended up in Scotland once.”
His fingers clenched until his knuckles whitened. “Brilliant.”
“No, it truly wasn’t. Cold as a witch’s teat there. Anyway, when I returned, I tried to land smack at the viscount’s, Julian’s, estate in the country, where I met you before. I thought of you and it, that place, but somehow, I bungled the job and ended up in—” She
bit her lip and released a pained exhalation through her teeth. “This vulgar pink bedchamber. You and a countess and her tiara. And not much else. Except for that bloody birthmark on your bum!”
“Oh…” he breathed, a comical expression of horror on his face. “That’s not good.”
Emma snorted beneath her breath, unable to think of another thing to say.
“It didn’t mean anything. They never do.” His lashes lowered, partially concealing his discomfort. “And she wasn’t a countess.”
Incensed because he’d made no effort to deny what she’d known was the truth, Emma pried his fingers from the window frame and banged on the carriage’s roof. Mackey whistled, and the conveyance jerked into motion, throwing her against the squabs. She wasn’t going to look through the rear window, dammit, but in the end, she did.
Simon stood in the Blue Moon’s shadowed entrance, his expression vacant, his eyes haunted. The Soul Catcher shimmered a radiant blue from the depths of his coat pocket.
Then, without so much as a twitch of his pinkie, he turned and walked inside, closing the door behind him.
Emma collapsed, her breath leaving her in a piercing sigh. It seemed she and Simon were always walking away from each other.
Ravenous countesses, unwanted supernatural gifts, London’s dense fog and eighty years standing between them.
He’d had too much to drink.
But the looming distance between his female troubles and his ability to do anything about them were welcome.
Simon’s brothers, who’d barreled into a deserted Blue Moon after closing, were not.
“Humphrey, take the gin from him, will you?” Julian advised from his spot behind the desk in the gaming hell’s study, a sketchpad balanced on his knee, his charcoal making light strokes across the page. “I worry this is what goes on when I’m in Oxfordshire. He’ll be on the floor soon, with Finn not far behind.”
Humphrey reached over him, the bottle leaving Simon’s hand before he could recapture it.
“Nothing but grief since she stepped into my life,” Simon whispered against the rim of his glass, determined to enjoy the last sip if that’s all the controlling viscount was going to allow. Emma’s fiery kiss was burning a hole in his brain, and he needed alcohol to eradicate the reflection. “Josie doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.”
Finn rolled his head to look at Julian. He was half-slumped in a massive leather chair angled before the hearth, one leg hooked over the arm, the other stretched before him. He sat so close to the fire, Simon imagined his boot was getting toasted. “Who’s Josie?”
“The madam in St Giles he visits,” Julian said without looking up. “Great Russell Street, isn’t it? A philanthropic venture, if you can believe it. Childhood friend. A few years back, they formed a rescue alliance for impoverished women, taking them out of that life and placing them in service. Covert, but I admit, quite impressive. I employ two of them currently, a scullery maid and a governess, believe it or not. The Duke of Ashcroft has at least one or two himself. Finn, I’m sure you have someone he’s foisted on you.”
Simon pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance. “Old Nichols Street. Russell is two over.”
Humphrey slapped the bottle on the sideboard, slanted a swift look at Julian, then poured a generous drink. “That pisspot of a neighborhood? What the ever-loving saints is he doing down there? After all the bother we went to getting him out.”
“Can’t help myself,” Simon murmured, pulling himself up on the sofa. He braced his arm on the brocade cushion to steady himself, swaying. “How long have you known about Josie?”
Julian’s hand stilled, his smile, Simon wasn’t surprised to note, lethal. “Since the first time you went. What were you, Mac? Fourteen?”
“Thirteen,” Simon echoed in a leaden tone, chafing, as he always did, under the protective burden of his eldest brother. He should’ve known his nickname, his charitable venture, his entire life, would come as no surprise to Julian Alexander.
Nothing got by Viscount Beauchamp when it came to his family. Nothing.
“Thirteen.” Julian used his thumb to soften a stroke in his sketch. “I must have missed a year then.”
“I can’t forget where I came from, Jules, like you, Humphrey and Finn have been able to. My past haunts me worse than Henry”—he nodded to the ghost who sat in friendly contemplation on the other end of the sofa—“ever could.”
Julian scratched his jaw, leaving a charcoal streak on his cheek. “Who said anything about forgetting? Your problem is acceptance. Connecting that life to this one. That’s the only thing we’re better at, Simon. Or maybe it’s because we’re older. I was about your age when I finally forgave myself for my past mistakes and embraced a future with Piper.”
“Who is Mac?” Finn slid sideways in the chair, his lids lowering. “No, don’t bother. I’ll read your mind and find out.”
“I’d love to have the sofa to myself, if you don’t mind,” Simon told Henry, stretching out when the haunt moved to sit next to Finn. The bountiful amount of gin he’d imbibed was tilting his world almost as much as Emma’s enthusiastic kiss.
He’d never had a difficult time breaking away from an embrace. Evading a passionate situation he’d discovered he’d rather not be in once the kissing started. Theirs hadn’t been a situation he wanted to extricate himself from. At all. Instead, for one frenzied second, he’d considered pressing her down on that godawful pile of coats and climbing atop her.
Something one did with a lightskirt, not the woman you suspected you were falling in love with.
Or, rather, had never fallen out of love with.
A woman who, from her artless but picture-perfect kiss, you presumed was a virgin.
Simon had steered clear of inexperienced women and had no clue how to handle one.
Julian angled the sketchpad, frowned, added another stroke. “I’ve come to believe love is a pursuit for wholeness. Not to sound overly sentimental, but the other half you’re so damned incomplete without. Piper helped me to not only find myself and control my gift but to accept what I couldn’t change. Accept who I was. But I had to locate the courage to take what she offered. Strong women don’t make it easy, Si. And they don’t give up. But if you want love and intimacy and friendship, the entire package, you’re going to have to work for it. Not be terrified by the promise of more.”
“This isn’t love.” Simon stretched long on the sofa, hiking his booted feet atop the armrest, staring at the ceiling in place of meeting Julian’s probing gaze, the lie he’d uttered reverberating in his chest. “It’s obligation. Since you know my secrets, lord and master, consider it another rescue mission, this one simply retrieving someone from the past instead of down St Giles way.”
Humphrey snorted and popped his glass to the sideboard with a bang. “God almighty, youth is wasted on pups.” Simon heard a clank as he poured, bouncing the neck of the bottle off the rim of the glass. “You dunce. It’s been love since that chit first burst into our bizarre world and sent a duchess tumbling from her mare and into the dirt. With a duke riding up seconds after to save her, white knight extraordinaire. Put their love affair into motion that very day. The duchess should be thanking Emmaline Breslin for the assist, which may be why Delaney has such a blinding inclination to make your girl over. Turn her into a bashful cousin come to Town set to turn the ton on its ear.”
Simon stacked his arms beneath his head, his fingers itching to slip something from one of the men in the room into his pocket. “My idea to style her as a duke’s cousin. Inspired by Julian, of course, and his sound work on Finn and me.”
“Brilliant, your plan. I can see the advantage. Now that she’s here, your wandering girl, after you brought her to our time at great risk to yourself, you’ve decided you don’t want her?” Humphrey released a deafening exhalation and began to crack his knuckles. “I feel like coming over there and knocking you upside the head.”
Simon slanted a watery, one-eyed gaze Humph
rey’s way, the room spinning sluggishly around him. He was likely going to embarrass himself by hurling in the rubbish bin sitting beneath his desk, and likely soon. “What are you so furious about? Emma’s maturing into a society miss before our eyes. Flipped a curtsey at Mackey tonight that would have made Victoria cry. Her speech is improving, mostly. She waltzes as well as a debutante. All she needs now are a few inane topics to prattle on about, watercolors and fashion and the like, and we’ll be golden.”
“What about your time thief and that daffy maid of hers racing into the past, then coming back banged up and bloodied?” Humphrey halted his knuckle-popping long enough to pour another drink, crystal clanking. “Golden? Since when? Adept at getting the traveling chit to keep her rabid opinions to herself, are you? According to Delaney, she’s got about an ounce of submissiveness in her, maybe less. Another fiery woman we’re inviting into the League, heaven help us.”
Finn yawned and slid lower in his chair. “Fiery ones are the only ones we like.”
“What if she’s an unqualified success?” Julian asked quietly, the suggestion exploding like a firecracker thrown into the middle of a church service.
Simon rolled to a shaky sit, a headache beginning to thud behind his left temple. “Meaning?”
“Emma’s introduction to society, if Ashcroft’s ball goes as planned, will lead to invitations. More balls, teas, musicales. The opera. Walks through Hyde Park. Epsom Derby, anyone? Perhaps a proposal. Isn’t a strange notion for a beautiful woman, cousin to a duke, to receive one. And matrimony is where most roads in society lead. If anyone can keep her in 1882 long enough to marry her, that is.” Julian tapped his pencil on his thigh and tried to act coy, like he wasn’t presenting the topic to make Simon think. The old guess-you-haven’t-thought-of-this-but-your-big-brother-has ploy.