by Tracy Sumner
“Your venture to Bethnal Green to save Mollie’s sister was fruitful, Emma, darling. She never encountered Mason Thomas. You got to her first. But the threat was an enduring one, so we secured Katherine a position with a dressmaker on Bond Street. We’ve also posted a footman, who can creatively kill a man in a dozen ways, outside the shop and her residence.” He tossed the cufflink in the air and caught it in his fist. “But after my visit, I don’t think this Thomas fellow is going to darken her door again. Any woman’s door if she doesn’t beg him to.”
Emma’s breath hitched at his daring—and his use of the word darling. “You went to see him?”
He shook his head. Not going there.
“They’re whispering about you saving women in St Giles.” Emma popped off the railing, moving closer to him. Close enough for his scent, soap and bay leaves, to skim her nose. What she smelled when she buried her face in his buttery kidskin gloves. “I could help you. Step in before the worst has occurred. Help you relocate the women once they’re in a safer situation. I know what that kind of desperation is like.”
The cufflink slipped from his fingers to the marble slabs they stood upon. “You’re not getting involved,” he said, bending to pick up the jewelry. “I have enough to worry about without that.”
“Like this Josie woman is involved?”
He looked up from his crouched position, and her breath caught. He was stunning, laid out there in silvery, stray moonbeams. Dark and light, shadows and hollows, mahogany eyes burning through her, his face carved in sage lines in the glow. Like a hero from one of her scandalous novels. Judicious, incensed, exquisite. She couldn’t have dreamed up someone so perfect if she’d tried. “How do you know this?”
She backed up a step at his ferocious expression, unease at his secrets being exposed. The dart of jealousy pierced deeply, sending rash words from her lips. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t travel inside the duke’s house, only not outside it. From one room to the other, I hear things. I pop in and out of closets quite handily. Sometimes only losing minutes. Maybe an hour.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, sighed wearily and shoved to his feet. “Josie’s a friend. From long ago. From another life. That’s all you need to know.”
Emma dug the toe of her slipper in a crack in the marble. “Your partner in this rescuing operation. What a good friend to have.” If he’d done with this Josie what he’d done years ago with the countess, and the hundreds of women in between, according to the gossips, Emma was going to have a hard time being gracious, should they ever have the chance to meet.
Simon slipped the cufflink in his waistcoat pocket and, brushing aside his tailcoat, braced his hand on his hip. “Like all the friends you’ve made tonight. Viscount Gordon, Baron Thornton, the Earl of Hollingmark. Am I missing anyone? Christ, I’ve never seen Hollingmark laugh before, while you had him practically rolling on the chalked ballroom floor, the aged sod. But at least he released his hold on you long enough to take those breaths.” His lips tilting low, she watched in delight as Simon’s jaw tensed. “By tomorrow morning, you’ll be the toast of London. I’ve heard talk of a new moniker. Crimson something or the other, because of your hair. They’re idiots, the lot of them, but the ton knows a rare piece when they see it. They’re canny that way.”
Rare piece. And a society name, all her own. Emma shifted in her delightful silver slippers, pleasure shimmering through her. “You’re jealous,” she whispered, joy rounding her cheeks until they stung. “This is grand, to use one of your kind’s fancy words. Simply grand.”
Simon scowled, arm dropping, hand curling into a fist. “You’re daft. I don’t get jealous.”
Emma tapped the Soul Catcher lodged in his pocket, watching with escalating glee as it pulsed and glowed a clear, luminous blue. “Then why worry about how frizzy, old Hollingmark is squeezing me? It’s a waltz. Touching is allowed, isn’t it? I wonder why it’s such a shock when it’s not that shocking an affair, really. Nothing to get your knickers in a twist over, isn’t that right? Just like me with Josie. And the dozens of others you’ve been friendly with. No need to worry when they mean so little.” Bouncing on her toes, she trailed her index finger up his chest to circle the hollow at the base of his throat. Then she took a breathless pause, halting to straighten his impeccably knotted tie.
A tortured sigh slipped past his lips, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.
Emma tucked her finger inside his crisp shirt collar in a deliberate ploy and tugged at it. “It’s not like I’m going to let some musty earl of what-whose-it kiss me.”
Simon’s eyes flashed, but he kept his arms by his side. “Because the Dark Queen of the West End is so frugal with her kisses.”
“I used to be,” Emma whispered, daring him, daring herself. “But I’ve decided I should now take my pleasure where I please.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked in time with her heartbeat, but he made no move to accept her challenge. “Your grammar is quite improved. Emma Breslin is a fast learner. Better than I was. It was months before they managed to polish off even the first rough edge.”
“I want the change more than you, a young boy, could have. I long for the change, even as I worry what it’s doing to me to take it.”
She watched astonishment roll over this face. “Emma…”
She exhaled gently and pleated her silk skirt between her fingers, her focus dropping to her slippers. “The duchess has me read to her from the newspapers every morning after breakfast. Then they fix my grammar. Piper likes to go straight to the gossip columns. A wicked one, that girl. Like no viscountess I’ve ever imagined.” She lifted her gaze, trapping his before it could skip away. “The scandal rags are full of stories about the unwed Alexander. Reserved, but with incredible skill. With his hands. Volatile when pressed. A string of broken hearts scattered behind him. Who’s going to snare you, they venture to guess?”
“Ludicrous drivel.” His flash of emotion sent a shudder through her belly, her thighs, weakening her knees and making her long to touch him. “No one, that’s who. I’m not marrying. Ever. Finn, Julian and Sebastian, the Duke of Ashcroft, each have a child who has inherited a supernatural gift from their parents. Do you imagine I would want that agony?” With a muttered oath, he grasped her shoulders and hauled her against him. “Well, I don’t. I have enough people to protect without children I adore being added to the jumble.”
The puncture of affection beneath her breastbone was razor-sharp, taking her breath. Settling her hand alongside his jaw, she tipped his head down. Brought his lips to hers. “Simon,” she murmured against his mouth, having no idea what she was pleading for. Perhaps simply an end to his anguish. Her tongue flicked out, a languid sweep over his bottom lip. She felt his surrender as his body sagged, leaning over and into her, his arms sliding around her, tightening their hold amid the crush of their bodies.
Simon glanced over his shoulder into a far, dark corner. “Leave us, Henry,” he snarled, then dragged her against him, his lips capturing hers.
She melted into the kiss, her thoughts dissolving into London’s viscous brume. His hand rose, cradling her face, slanting her head and perfecting a fit she’d thought already flawless. His touch resonated like the clamor of a bell through her soul, ripples of desire dancing along her skin.
Then, it changed, the kiss going from tentative to seeking, calamitous. Shattering her self-control and her heart. Her breasts flattened against his chest, her nipples peaking, tender points of awareness in a body catching fire as he continued to claim her. Her hand tracked up his chest, over his shoulder and into the thick hair at the nape of his neck. Tugging the strands, she sighed into his mouth, a sign of acquiescence.
Groaning, he spun them around, pressing her against the column. “Tell me to stop, Emma,” he whispered against her mouth, then plunged back in before she could speak. His arm circled her waist, his lips molding hers as he deepened the kiss. Taking more, more, more. Turning her inside out, until she felt reborn, a raw
mass of sensation.
Shaken, she curled her hand around his hip to keep from stumbling. Time, her gift and her curse, suspended, holding steady as it never had before. Without a plan, she tumbled into the marvel of an unhinged Simon Alexander.
An unhinged Emma Breslin. Drunk on yearning and recognition.
When she’d never felt more herself in her life.
Kissing his way down her jaw, he halted at the curve of neck and shoulder, releasing a hot breath that skated deliciously across her skin. The hand at her waist lowered, tunneling beneath her bustle and curving over her bottom. Then, with a strangled, hungry moan and a shift she felt to her core, Simon brought her up and against his hard length. His lips returned to seize hers, his tongue inviting her in playful, toe-curling enticement. Her fingers were tangled in his hair, her hand kneading his hip through layers of clothing, fighting the urge to slide center and down, reach his trouser close, free his cock to her pursuing touch.
“Simon,” she whispered, voice tortured, sentiment laid bare. Nothing to hide, nothing she could hide.
He wrenched back enough for her to see his face. His eyes. Wild, a deep, murky brown surrounded by that startling ring of violet. Opposing forces, those colors, one tranquil, one savage.
With a sigh she knew meant he was thinking, Simon’s hold on her loosened, his connection unraveling second by second.
She dropped her hand to his chest and shoved him back, completing the separation. “You’re not afraid of the heat, the passion, but any emotion coming with it scares the life from you. So I understand what you mean about the women being nothing. Because you never felt anything. And, now, I think you do.”
His lips flattened, a muscle in his jaw tensing. Not pleased, but not arguing, either.
A knot of emotion backed up in Emma’s throat at his lack of effort to keep her. In any way, shape or form. She stepped back. “This is useless. I’ll—”
“This performance sheds light on why you’re skipping through time like a rabbit, Miss Breslin. For some curious reason, because of it, I’ll enjoy returning you even more.”
Emma turned with a gasp, recognizing the threat and the voice.
Simon grasped her arm and shoved her behind him. “Bloody hell, Emma. You didn’t tell me the tracer is Hargrave.”
“I didn’t know.” Hargrave. The journalist who’d been sticking his nose in Simon’s business was her tracer. The bastard who’d been chasing her for years through time. Simon and his brothers thought the reporter’s interest was the Blue Moon when it appeared it was much more than merely infiltrating a gaming hell.
He must have known about the League, about their supernatural society, about everything.
Hargrave stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight, his knee-length cape swirling around him. Tall and gaunt, an untrimmed beard covering his face, ebony slashes beneath his golden eyes, he looked determined. And exhausted. She’d often thought, if not for his ability to render her senseless with a touch, she could’ve fought him and won. “Alexander, we meet again,” he said and nodded to Simon. “Now, why do I think you’re going to disagree about handing her over? She’s already caused one disturbance in this time, altered a young woman’s reality. Did you think I wouldn’t know about that?”
Simon’s voice dropped so low she had to struggle to hear it. “When I say run, take my hand and run. Don’t think, run.” Then, he turned his attention back to their nemesis without missing a beat. “You’ve laid a keen wager, Hargrave. Because I am going to disagree about handing her over. We’ve been waiting for you. Hoping you’d step into the light, where we could have a fine look at you.”
“Ah, your League, is it?” Hargrave took a stumbling step forward, a crooked smile tilting his lips. A gust caught his cape and sent it shooting like a dusky vapor behind him. “I have a job to do, Alexander. Or, what was it in the rookery days, before a viscount stepped in to liberate you from your deprived existence? MacDermot? See, I grew up in Spitalfields, not ten streets away from your grubby hole. In the 1740s, though. Strangely enough, I heard about you before I ever arrived in your time, whisperings in the occult world while I traveled through it. About a boy with enchanted hands, a devil who could filch a jewel off Victoria’s crown while it sat perched atop her head. A boy the deceased sheltered. A boy who sheltered the deceased. You’re legendary in our bizarre sector for having a foot, much as time travelers do, planted in dual realities.”
Simon rolled his shoulders and laughed, a sound frosty enough to send a chill down her spine. “The circumstances of my birth and removal from St Giles matter not. You’re welcome to my secrets, but you’re not welcome to the girl.”
Hargrave shook his head sadly, gave a half-hearted shrug, then rushed them in a move no one expected. Although Simon was bigger, leagues stronger, and from what she’d seen, well-trained in hand-to-hand combat, Hargrave had a gift for casting spells. Knocking people off their feet with a simple touch.
When his knuckle grazed Simon’s chest, Simon went to his knees with a pained curse that rang through the night.
Emma walked backward across the veranda as Hargrave advanced on her. He crooked his finger, his teeth a sallow glint in the darkness. “Come, dear heart. Your dire predicament in 1802 isn’t my responsibility. Returning you to it is. I only follow what must be. I can’t be bothered with what is.”
Hargrave tracked the look she directed at Simon as he struggled to rise, the tracer’s expression souring. “I see what’s in your eyes, darling, even if your thieving lover can’t. You want me to render him senseless for the rest of his days? Then fight me on this. Challenge your destiny, and we’ll see where that lands us. Lands him.”
Desire and regret an unbridled pulse beneath her skin, Emma surrendered without a battle.
She’d survived leaving Simon before. To protect him, she could survive leaving now.
Love rained down upon her like the watery London mist, ghostly and unreachable but bolstering her resolve.
Bowing her head, she closed her eyes and waited for time to catch her.
Chapter 11
His gorgeous time traveler was going to be the death of him.
Dazed, Simon braced his fist on the terrace’s cool marble, his head pounding, the Soul Catcher throbbing like a wound from his waistcoat pocket. Yanking the gem loose, he folded his fingers around it, the flood of conflicting forces—strength and calm—expected, as he well knew the stone’s power. A dense fog had rolled in off the river, delivering a vaporous, stinging drizzle to his cheeks as he lifted his head and gazed into the distance.
Across the veranda, only Emma’s indigo eyes were visible in the cloaked mist. When she closed them, extinguishing hope, and bowed her head, accepting a return to a time that would be the death of her, crimson crowded Simon’s vision. She’d never had anyone to protect her—and she wasn’t sure how to fight. How to trust. He recognized that defeating inclination more than she’d have believed possible after seeing him with his brothers. He’d fought against trusting anyone until Finn broke through the wall he’d built around himself.
Allegiance, when one had been mistreated, wasn’t easily given or gained.
As Hargrave reached for Emma, Simon snarled and stumbled to his feet, his mind dizzy with terror.
“You’re our protector, but for once, let us help you,” Henry said from behind him, frigid air flowing past as the haunt elbowed him aside and crossed the distance to Emma in a thrice.
Simon watched in astonishment as Henry snatched Hargrave by the collar of his cloak and tossed him over the balustrade as if he weighed less than a babe. Then he turned, gave Emma a shove in Simon’s direction and issued this advice, “Go to another time, a week in the future and hide out for a bit. I can’t do more to interfere, and he won’t stop, this man, in his search for you. But maybe you can throw him off his conniving route while you devise a strategy. You and them brothers of yours can surely come up with something.”
It was an odd time to have a piece of the
puzzle of his life fall into place.
His haunts had been guarding him all along. And he had been harboring them.
Jolting himself from his stupor, Simon grabbed Emma’s wrist and dragged her against his side. His hands trembled, fed by emotions he wanted to reject, feelings he wanted to deny. “You thought to give in, give up?” he whispered, fury a fever in his blood.
Emma’s gaze kindled, her lips falling open. With an oath he was unsurprised she knew, she yanked her arm from his grasp.
“Go,” Henry shouted as Hargrave extricated himself from a hydrangea bush and staggered to his feet, head in his hands as if he wasn’t sure how he’d ended up in the duke’s shrubs. “There’ll be time for quarreling later, as it seems it’s all you two do.”
Emma held out her hand, one that quivered almost as much as his. “Give me the swish stone.”
The drizzle had spiraled into a downpour. Rain clung to Emma’s eyelashes, misted her creamy skin like dew on a petal, molding silk to the gentle curves of her body. A drop highlighted the freckled birthmark on her cheek he wanted to press his lips to. She wasn’t beautiful, not enough to compensate for his blind attraction. His undeniable desire to memorize every facet until, if he had Julian’s skill, he could sketch the art of her on a canvas.
No, she wasn’t beautiful.
But she was stunning, courageous, unforgettable…
And he wanted her with a mindless intensity that shook him to his core.
I wasn’t expecting this, he concluded, but you’re mine, nonetheless. Now I only have to figure out what to do about it.
Decision made, Simon shoved the Soul Catcher into her hand. Took her arm as Hargrave bounded up the veranda steps, advancing on them.
“Take us from here, then,” he said, hoping like hell she didn’t hear the way his voice caught on the word us.