by Tracy Sumner
Simon strode to the wall of windows lining the gallery, caught a flash of canary yellow mixed among the lush sea that was the duke’s expansive lawn. The Soul Catcher hummed to life in his coat pocket, recognizing Emma before he did. He leaned to the left, squinted. There, she and Delaney seated on a marble bench in the side garden, a sterling tea service settled on a table before them. Simon narrowed his eyes, his body tensing. Rounding out the group to a lovely trio was the Earl of Hollingmark, rather impressive when Simon wished he looked more like a toad. A man who’d made it known to all who would listen that he was open to marriage again, no immeasurable dowry required. His late countess had been a rare beauty. And a wealthy one. It seemed he was in the market for another gorgeous gem, much like the gem housed in Simon’s pocket.
Simon’s heart kicked in his chest, memories of his lost night with Emma circling his mind and snapping like a pack of wolves. The flood of possessiveness was disturbing for a man unaccustomed to ownership. Temper, he reminded himself. He’d been known, on multiple occasions, to make tactical errors under volatile duress.
He shoved the button in his trouser pocket and rounded on his haunt. “I can’t go out there with this in my hands.” Thrusting the violin at Henry, he gestured to the sweeping staircase that led to the upper floors. “Deliver it to whichever chamber is hers, as I’m sure you know which one that is. Someday, my friend, we need to discuss your voyeuristic tendencies.”
Henry’s bushy sterling eyebrow rose, his lips pursing. Taking the violin with the tenderness one would reserve for a babe, he tipped his chin toward the hallway they’d traveled down. “All them flowers had notes. Poetry, even. If I leave this without tribute, she’ll think the duke sent it, being a musician himself.” Henry’s thumb snaked along a grove in the case, a rough caress. “How will that advance your agenda?”
“This isn’t a strategic military campaign; I don’t have an agenda.” Simon muscled through the terrace doors, the side garden down a short stack of stairs and to his right. A gust of wind flavored with the Thames, azaleas, roses…choices and fate…hit him square in the jaw. His gaze immediately found Emma, looking like cream topping a fairy cake in a gown the color of sunlight and possibilities. Goosebumps swept his arms, raised the hair on the nape of his neck until he shivered from the effect. His cock, willing, hungry since the moment Julian had dragged her away, rising at the sight of her. He denied the impulse to let his perusal take her in from head to toe.
In their hours together, he’d been unable to get enough of her. But in the most simple of ways. The brush of her knee against his, his ankle caressing her calf. Tracing the pale blue veins beneath her skin, the charming freckle on her cheek. Whispers in the darkness, hands clasped.
Laughter, joy, contentment.
Insignificantly significant connections he’d never made or needed before.
However, the point he couldn’t get past, something that, when he recalled it, made him stumble as he entered the duke’s lush garden, was that he’d almost told her he loved her. Felt the need in the quiet hush, after they’d made love a second time, to admit this, open the rusty chest that was Simon MacDermot. Mac. To admit he was considering forgiving her for leaving him if she’d forgive him for not waiting for her.
He’d been grateful she’d been asleep when the sentimental urge hit.
Mooning over her for years as a boy, only to find he was doing the same as a man, was marginally distressing.
He sneezed into his fist, goddamn roses, the sound interrupting the trio at an opportune moment.
Delaney swiveled on the marble bench, something murky in his expression lightening hers. She loved nothing more than romantic drama, he thought with a scowl.
“Simon, join us.” The duchess patted the empty spot next to her. He noted no empty spot next to Emma, moving into the center of the garden with a halting step. Hollingmark had claimed more than half of the bench she sat on, his arse crushing the trim of her butter-yellow gown.
Three hulking footmen stood on the outer edge of the lawn, patrolling in the event Hargrave got it in his mind to approach Emma so soon after his last attempt. They nodded when Simon glanced at them, their dour expressions never shifting from kill-at-any-moment perseverance.
“Yes, join us,” Emma said, throwing him a terse look, her eyes flame-blue, letting him know she was still angry that he let his brothers separate them—and then making it worse by not coming after her immediately. Or the very next day, at least.
Simon ripped his bowler from his head and whipped it against his thigh. Then, perching on the edge of the duchess’s bench, he waved away her offer of tea, and instead, made a game of twisting his hat brim into submission while trying hard not to stare at Emma’s gown, the most gorgeous he’d seen on her yet. The bustle was ridiculous but stylish, rounding out her slender figure. A floral motif, chrysanthemums if he wasn’t mistaken, woven into the silk in a pale green thread that glimmered in the sunlight. Her auburn hair contained in a chignon that exposed the gentle slope of her neck to his hungry gaze.
“This looks cozy,” he murmured finally, unable to help himself, his tone saying what his words didn’t.
Delaney choked on her tea, her cup rattling the saucer as she banged it atop her thigh.
“Don’t,” Emma mouthed across the short distance. Don’t, you, dare.
“This ain’t a good start,” Henry advised from his spot next to a hydrangea that looked to be swallowing him in lavender blooms.
The earl gazed curiously around the group, canny enough to realize he didn’t comprehend the whole story. “I was just asking Miss Breslin if she’s ever attended Epsom. The running of the Derby’s next week, at the Downs. The Duke of Westminster’s horse, Shotover, took Newmarket. Could be the one to win, first filly in over a hundred years to take two in the Crown if she does.”
Simon gave his hat brim a snap, eyeing the earl’s cufflinks. Oval, etched with some sort of scrolling design around the boundary that he found fetching. Capped with a ruby, tiny but quality, he could see, in the center. Catching the earl’s eye, he said, “Didn’t you visit the Blue Moon after Newmarket this year? Finn had to break up a petty spat with that Wellington chap over a horse he’d told you was well suited to juice in the grass, rainy conditions that day and all. Considering your unfortunate wagers on the beast, that didn’t turn out to be the case.” Simon clicked his tongue against his teeth, thinking he could get a mint for even one of the cufflinks. “No, no, I have it wrong. It was his mistress you were quarreling over. The opera singer from Wales. Perhaps you thought to make her your—”
“Simon,” Delaney whispered between clenched teeth, “behave.”
The earl bounded to his feet, his teacup tumbling from his knee to the grass. “Alexander, if it were a different time, I’d call you out for this nonsense.”
Emma said nothing, stirring her tea with a chilled expression he couldn’t decipher.
In for a penny, Simon thought with a sigh. Tossing his hat on the bench, he braced his hands on his knees and rose with a lazy stretch, knowing full well he was going to tower over the earl once he got there. “Pretend it’s another time, Hollingmark. I’m the youngest in a family of brothers who delight in pummeling me into the dirt. Her duke”—he jacked his thumb in Delaney’s direction—“has done it quite a few times himself. Former soldier, so no easy mark. Me, either, now that I’ve had so much practice. Try your best, and we’ll see where we end up.” He stretched his shoulders with a pop. “Make a day of it.”
Emma hopped up, squeezing herself between the men with as much grace as possible and without actually going so far as to touch either of them. She’d learned well; Simon could almost believe she’d been born to this life. When he knew it wasn’t the first time she’d broken up a brawl, though this news would have surprised the hell out of the earl. “I would love to attend the Derby with you, Lord Hollingmark. Thank you for asking,” she said, a bit breathlessly. Fury, though it probably sounded like reticence to those who di
dn’t know her. “I look forward in great anticipation to the event.”
The earl flashed a broad smile, his steely gaze shooting to Simon. “Well, I’m obviously delighted when you said you had to think it over first. Emmaline Breslin leaves the party if she’s not enjoying it, as this town has come to find. Disappears almost. We shall, as Mister Alexander suggested, make a day of it, my dear. I’ll do my best to keep you entertained.”
“You botched this one, but good,” Henry muttered. “And not even the prime gift of a violin to make up for it. I already deposited that, without poetry, to her suite.”
The earl grasped Emma’s gloved hand and brushed his lips across the kidskin tips. “I must take my leave, Miss Breslin. A noon meeting with my solicitors. I’ll be in touch. Next Wednesday morning. Mark your calendar.” His gaze again shifted Simon’s way, the sneer twisting his lips a blatant challenge. “I’m thrilled by your acceptance, by the by.”
Simon faked another sneeze, stumbled, his arm brushing the earl’s. The cufflink slipped into his hand as easily as knocking an acorn from a branch. “Sorry, old chap, all the blooms, don’t you know.”
Delaney rolled her eyes, linking her arm through the earl’s and leading him from the garden before Simon had the opportunity to score the other cufflink. “I’ll be back in a moment, Emma darling. The footmen are there on the lawn, and Mollie is in the conservatory, should you need her.”
“Yes, yes, we’re well and truly chaperoned,” Simon said as they walked away, the earl’s swagger so pronounced Simon wanted to color his creamy linen shirt with the green of freshly cut grass by dragging his body across it. Delaney was an American and found society’s rules and regulations as cofounding and foolish as he, a lifelong Brit, did. But they were forced to play the game. Or be ousted from the communal ledge they stood upon.
“You arrogant ass,” Emma snapped once the duchess and the earl were out of earshot.
“You senseless chit,” he returned, irate for no good reason. And he knew it. Bounced the cufflink from one hand to the other, making sure she saw it. “Enjoy the Derby. Such a magnificent event.”
“I will. You better believe I will.” She huffed a breath and spun on her heel. “Henry, be gone!” Then she marched across the lawn, toward the conservatory, conceivably in search of her missing maid. A maid he’d saved from the slums and brought to her, she should know.
Frustrated, he watched her pert bottom swing from side to side as she stalked away, debating if he should hike in the opposite direction to his waiting carriage. To another adventure. Lady Lydia Davidson, a widow with what some said was the most talented mouth in England had sent him a note last week, a rather bold invitation to tea, a tea that would be fun. So he wasn’t desperate. Or lonely. He sighed and rotated the cufflink between his fingers. Well, not any lonelier than he’d been his entire damned life.
The feel of Emma’s pert bottom in his hands, lifting her onto his cock as he leaned against the headboard of his massive bed, her legs wrapping around his waist as she settled atop him, sending him deep, flooded his body with a tremor of repentance that had him going after her like a fox on the hunt.
When he entered the conservatory, it was empty except for the woman he stalked and a king’s ransom of orange trees. Just Emma and the stinging scent of citrus, his girl standing in the shadows, facing him, eyes a sharp indigo glimmer. Her hands going into fists and rolling out of them at her sides. Her ginger-snap hair had tumbled from its confinement and lay in a puddle across one shoulder and rounded breast.
He stared, unable to approach as his body screamed for him to do. As the Soul Catcher screamed for him to do, a lightning pulsation in his pocket. He’d wondered at his immediate and visceral attraction. Had always wondered. A supernatural meeting, the inability to talk. A girl from another time, a curious, lonely boy, searching and starved for self-worth. Yet, he could see the allure now, with a man’s wisdom. Her strength, her certainty, called to him as solidly as thievery did. She’d known who she was, accepted herself when he’d been tossed in a rising tide of antipathy over things he couldn’t alter.
She’d stepped into his world, recognizing him in a way few had. Recognized his eccentricities, his mystical gift, the ghostly circle of people included—should anyone choose to share a life with him.
And wanted him anyway.
He’d learned to mistrust on the streets of St Giles, mightily. Watched his mother step in front of a carriage because she didn’t want to live—or didn’t want to live with him. He’d made every person who cared about him work twice as hard to prove themselves when he’d been desperate to let them in. Julian, Finn, Piper, Humphrey, Victoria. And to what end? When he was simply a thief. Hot-tempered, rash, obstinate in a most uninviting manner.
Why would a woman such as this—formidable, clever and so breathtakingly beautiful—want him?
A quiver started in the pit of his stomach and rose, settling in his chest. Then, a whisper of sound, her husky sigh, acquiescence or perhaps surrender, shot from her as she took a faltering step forward, his name leaving her lips to settle over him like freshly fallen snow.
A tender sanction, a soothing plea.
Neither he could ignore.
They met in the middle of the deserted space, the kiss nearly knocking him off his feet, the earl’s cufflink hitting the stone slab. His fingers in her hair, yanking pins free to scatter like petals. Her hands cradling his jaw and bringing him down until the fit was seamless. The kiss was past due, payment for misdeeds and misunderstandings. Jealousy. Possession. A vicious edge, crimson bleeding into his vision. His skin aflame.
He backed her up with a rough step, into a wobbly bench, and then the wall. And there he held her, imprisoned between medieval stone and his body. Took her hands and pinned them by her side so he could look, think without her touching him.
She wasn’t the only one who’d waited years for this.
Emma gasped and wrenched high on her toes but not free, her passion turned to rebellion. He could feel it in the stiffening of her spine, her angled hip beneath the curve of his knuckles. Bumping against the firm ridge of his cock, a blatant presence beneath buckskin he couldn’t hide, she rubbed against him like a cat, purring, that little mewling sound that had unmanned him before. And she knew, from the wicked sparkle in her eyes, exactly what she was doing.
Entrapment of another kind. Her kind. A feminine, fearsome snare he wished desperately to be entangled in.
When he let her go, instead of shoving him away as she should, she slid her hand between them, setting her palm over his rigid length. Curled her fingers, conforming her grip to his shape. Stroking until he felt his heart kick, once, twice, in his chest.
“I’m afraid of what I feel for you,” she whispered and squeezed his cock, almost bringing him to his knees. “But I want to know more than I want to be afraid. Those things I saw in dark, drunken corners and alleyways, the hunger, the desperation. I understood the act and what bodies looked like doing it, but I didn’t understand anything until you touched me. It’s humbling to imagine that what my mind and body have been telling me about you all this time is true. I know myself…and it seems I know you. I know us.”
She pressed her lips to his, her tongue tracing his bottom lip and nibbling until he released a ragged groan, without plan pressing her harder against the wall. “And I will, no matter what happens to us, have you. Have this. I’ve earned it, you see. I didn’t travel those eighty years for nothing.”
It seemed this was a promise she intended to keep. To herself, if no one else.
“How much time?” he asked, his voice whisper-thin against her jaw, her neck, tilting her head until he was swimming in the blue of her eyes. “Before Delaney comes to retrieve you?”
Her mouth fell open in invitation, one step toward fulfillment of her promise. “She’ll have to check on the children, which turns into spilled milk, requests for more cookies or the reading of a fairytale. Someone hiding, someone crying. A half-hour, maybe a l
ittle more. But we mustn’t tear my clothing. No time to disrobe. But I’ve seen it done such. A swift…joining.” Her smile grew, her hot gaze sweeping his body.
She liked his physique, he could tell. From the aroused beat of the pulse in her neck to the way she sighed out a prolonged breath he guaranteed she hadn’t known she’d held. Her studious attention made him swell, his posture, his cock and his heart.
She made him feel greater than he was, stronger, smarter.
Made him feel the future was bursting with hope if he could forget the past.
It was more than love to be elevated like this. And though his heart stayed in the shadows, his body leaped forward.
Taking Emma’s hand, Simon dragged her down the center aisle toward a utility room he remembered stood at the back of the conservatory. Jostling her inside, he turned back, and with a hoarse grunt, shoved a marble plant stand before the door. Not enough of an impediment should one of the duke’s burly footmen come calling, but it was certainly enough to keep a curious duchess out.
He didn’t let her speak, stepping in and seizing her lips before she could say something else to ruin him. Utter avowals he wasn’t prepared to answer, offer declarations he couldn’t yet return. Her hands fisted in his shirt and brought him closer, her tongue an assault inside his mouth, seeking to intensify a connection already too intense. A bruising onslaught, his arms full of her, his mind rupturing with sensation. He closed his eyes to it, to her, let the sound of the wind scuttering through a split in the wood, and her muffled moans drive him a little mad, right there in the duke’s vacant utility room.