The Rake is Taken

by Tracy Sumner

  Regrettably, her parlor trick hadn’t worked the night before with Finn, a rare episode that had shaken her to her bones, though she’d hidden it well. “I’m not going to knock. I’m going to ring this delightful bell.” The newest accessory in the locality, she’d bet, bright copper with nary a dent, it issued a single dull clang when she tapped it. The door opened almost immediately, the hulking porter taking one look at the shivering female package on the doorstep before slamming it shut in their faces.

  “He’s got the right of it,” Agnes muttered.

  Victoria dinked the bell again and was making a third attempt when the door reopened.

  And there he was.

  Out of breath, a miasma of moonlight and fog cocooning him as he leaned into the night, the magnetic eyes that were the talk of London highlighted in the splash. She wanted to deny their exquisiteness, as the man needed admiration like he needed a knock upside his head, however…they were extraordinary upon close study. Azure, cobalt, and as he tilted his head, a frown ripping across his face, sapphire. Stormy sunsets, twilight skies, shallow oceans. Eyes to lose oneself in, lose oneself over. As women did daily, tripping on loose stones and wrinkled Axminster, practically falling at his feet.

  Victoria had laughed at their foolishness, but now that she found herself pinned by that stunning gaze, declaration, argument, and logical assertion were nowhere in sight. It was senseless. Almost as if she’d turned her parlor trick on herself.

  Silent, Finn stared, the affable mien he usually sported replaced by cold determination, until sweat coated the nape of her neck and her knees began to tremble beneath copious layers. Or perhaps it was his lack of clothing heating her up like she’d pressed her back to a hearth. Dressed as informally as any man she’d ever seen, he looked like he’d been roused from bed. Flowing cream linen open at the neck, no waistcoat to conceal the sleek musculature of his chest or place barriers between them as directed, his hair a dark, desolate tangle, his cheeks covered in a light dusting of stubble. A ridiculously looped tie around his neck, the wrinkled ends dangling. Helplessly, she tracked a puckered scar severing the vee of his shirt, the only imperfection she noted on the man.

  Patience incarnate, he studied her without moving a hairbreadth while she studied him.

  What was he looking for? Dear God, what would he find?

  He knows, is all she could think. He knows.

  “I’m not going to yield, Blue,” she whispered, a statement she hoped met his ears only. The words were ragged, her mind full of dread, but if she could only touch… Ah, a second of insanity as she followed the impulse to trace that angry slash on his chest. And do what after, she had no idea.

  “Yield?” Stepping out of reach, he whistled through straight white teeth and tugged her by the braided edge of her cloak into the narrow vestibule. “As if I’d be so lucky.”

  With a gasp, Agnes shoved herself inside the entranceway with them and executed a shaky curtsy, as if to say, you’re not going without me.

  Finn’s gaze snagged on the shivering maid, and he suddenly seemed to comprehend the indecency of his attire because he frowned, a dimple lancing his cheek as he glanced down. “Apologies for my casual attire, but you are uninvited—and on my turf.” Then he quietly shut the door behind them and gestured to a staircase leading into the bowels of the building, as pretty as you please.

  Victoria complied, Agnes a clinging vine by her side, as an argument in a gaming hell foyer would benefit no one. She took in everything as unobtrusively as possible, surprised despite herself. The carpet muffling her step was plush, the furnishings stately, not what she would have expected to grace a lower-level gambling establishment. Except for the sounds—the buzz of voices, slurred shouts and raucous laughter, a muted, manageable intrusion—she could almost pretend she was in the belowstairs of her home in Belgravia.

  At the top of the staircase, Finn pointed to an open door leaking light into the hallway. Victoria stepped inside, halting so abruptly, Agnes stumbled into her. Pale moonbeams shot across the room, the lustrous wash revealing not a sitting area for visitors but a very personal space. His space. Housing a worn leather sofa big enough to seat five, overflowing bookcases, curio-stuffed shelves. A fire blazing in a bricked hearth. She turned a slow circle. Artwork. Rustic landscapes and portraitures covering every wall. Her gaze fixed on a side door. A bedchamber, she assumed, the postulation sending a warm spiral through her belly.

  With a soft grunt, Agnes gave her a nudge as they were backed up in the entryway like carriages on Bond Street.

  His fragrance immediately overtook her senses as she moved further into the study: leather, cardamom, ink, man.

  While she tried to establish the most proper place in the room to settle, he strode to a narrow sideboard set against the far wall, elegance personified. An exceptional skill for a man of such breadth and height to move like a panther and look so adept while doing it. “Tea?” he asked and brushed his fingertip across a teapot to test its heat, as if she’d dropped her card with the majordomo and all was right in the world. As if they were preparing to discuss the upcoming regalia or the new apothecary on Pall Mall. “I fear it’s cold. Guests were not expected.” He glanced over his shoulder, one of the many smiles he held in reserve curling his lips.

  She was coming to doubt the sincerity of those smiles, a hint of self-mockery bleeding through hadn’t been evident before.

  The realization was both intriguing and startling.

  Stilling, he puffed his cheeks, shook his head. “On second thought, something stronger.” He reached for a bottle and whispered, “For your long-suffering companion if no one else.”

  Oh, the nerve, Victoria seethed, hoping he’d catch her eye so she could throw a perfectly placed, acerbic dart. Although she had no idea what that might be, so thank God, he ignored her. Agnes—who’d scurried to a dark corner to hide, the seamed tip of a brown slipper all that was visible—was long-suffering. Everyone would agree.

  But how impolite to mention it.

  Tray in hand, he paused before her, his penetrating attention issuing a challenge. She didn’t want him to become a puzzle because no one loved solving a puzzle more. However, the varied pieces of him didn’t quite fit. His expression, for one—irritation and concern. Her beloved brother’s gaze had often held those warring factions. But Charles had cared about her, loved her when this enigmatic man was a stranger.

  As expected, the thought of her brother unleashed a coil of torment and the prick of tears.

  Swallowing hard, she raised her chin and took a glass from the tray, the ample sip in response to Finn’s nebulous dare sending a screaming fire down her throat. As she coughed behind her gloved fist, he slouched into an oversized blood-red armchair, extending his long legs until his heels brushed the lace edge of her skirt. What a portrait he made sitting there, lids lowered, clothing impeccably awry, glass dangling from slim fingers better suited to a sculptor, a relaxed state of masculine dishabille as accomplished as the art gracing his walls. The Blue Bastard on display. The man women came to fisticuffs over. At the opera recently, in fact.

  Drinking him in from head to toe, she could see why.

  However, behind the beauty, his solemn expression held nothing of the frivolous rogue. Maybe no one, not even while he towered over them in bed, had taken the time to really look at the man.

  She loathed, absolutely loathed, that she suspected there was more.

  Victoria liked nothing less than being outmaneuvered.

  Placing the glass on the table, she reached beneath her knitted wool cloak. His alert gaze followed. Drawing the envelope forth, she tapped it once against crystal. “Unlike the colonel’s wife, I brandish no pistol.”

  Finn took a leisurely sip and eyed her over the rim, firelight etching inky slashes beneath his cheeks. “Fortunately, she was a terrible shot.” Dipping his head, his hair slicked over his brow. It was long, perhaps longer than any man’s in the ton, although he was two steps outside society and the rul
es imposed. A surprising slash of gray near his temple spoke of wisdom she wasn’t sure he’d earned.

  Feeling the familiar rebelliousness rise within her, she yearned to fist her fingers in his dark strands and chase that impudent smirk from his face. Press her lips to his and erase it that way, no parlor trick involved.

  She was quite good at erasing intent with kisses.

  Flustered by the fantasy, she hurled the envelope at the jaded man across from her. It bounced off his open collar, drawing her eyes to the trail of hair snaking inside his shirt. She watched the cream vellum tumble to his lap, disliking herself and him. She would be damned if she fell in line behind half of London, waiting for the opportunity to do anything with or to Finn Alexander. “What is the meaning of this? An invitation to a summer house party at your brother’s Oxfordshire estate?”

  Employing the insouciance he was known for, Finn set his glass aside and picked up the envelope, spinning it between his hands like a child’s top. “What would you like to be the meaning?”

  She slid to the edge of the sofa until they sat close enough to drink in each other’s scent, hear each other’s rapidly-drawn breaths. His pupils expanded, the dusky ring leaching into indigo. Not as calm as he appeared. Because she was spiteful on occasion, his tension pleased her. “You didn’t ask me at Samuelson’s, as you could have. Instead, Viscountess Beauchamp directs the communication to my mother, a woman known to take tactless interest in all things society. With a minor”—she traced a nick in the table and glanced at him through her lashes—“addendum mentioning the Duke of Ashcroft’s possible presence.”

  “God knows I don’t make the rules.” Finn sent the invitation skating across the table and against her hand. “But duke trumps baron any day of the week. Although we don’t know what your beloved Rossby holds over your family. Perhaps nothing more than funds…and your dear father’s wish to avoid a dank cell in debtor’s prison. Money does tend to speak loudly and force hands. But we can find out.”

  Victoria popped off the sofa, then settled back with a huff. “This is madness. I have no baron. I simply signed an unwelcome, seemingly unavoidable betrothal agreement. And, yes, I would like to know why my father is indebted. But other than this, no one is concerned with me. Truly, not even my own family. I’m like one of the paintings lining these walls. An object. A duke showing interest, a man I’ve never met, is entirely implausible. If there’s a reason for this”—she tapped her knuckle on the envelope—“I want to know what it is. Not this balderdash about supporting my marital pursuits.”

  His pupils expanded again, and she filed the tidbit. Amazingly, Finn Alexander, gambler extraordinaire, lover of women and mischief, was not wholly indecipherable. Cracks were showing in his façade.

  There was a reason for the offer; he just didn’t feel she needed to know it.

  “I’ve never been introduced to your sister-in-law, a woman who welcomed me to her country home with such exuberance. Odd that.”

  “I forged the note. Piper will learn about the house party when we crawl out of the carriage at Harbingdon. Unless I get word to them first.” He polished off his drink, did a stretch that brought his bootheel atop her skirt. A subtle trap. “The duke part is true, by the by. Ashcroft’s looking for a wife for all I know—and he’s often at Harbingdon. You certainly won’t be more aggravation than he’s encountered previously. What’s the latest tattle? An opera singer, isn’t it? His romantic entanglements are…untidy. But so is his life.” Left unsaid: mine is not.

  “Impossible. My mother will be otherwise occupied in Scotland and—”

  “She sent a note of acceptance to my family’s Mayfair home this morning. I believe your maid”—he nodded to Agnes—“was stated as joyfully accompanying in her stead. Almost a second mother to you or some such rot. The package is, shall we say, wrapped. Unless you’d like to go to the trouble of unwrapping it. Tossing aside a possible dukedom for a barony is the height of insanity, but what does a man of my marginal station know?”

  A loud sniffle erupted from the corner, followed by grumbling Victoria thankfully couldn’t comprehend.

  Victoria jerked her skirt from beneath his heel and tried to concoct a sound rebuttal as the noose tightened around her neck. Her options were limited, her family’s circumstances desperate, and London held no opportunity for her to stumble upon a better marital prospect as the ton was vacating the sweltering city like rats from a sinking ship. Baron Rossby was simply dreadful, agreed, but most in the ton needed funds flowing in, not flowing out. He was one of the lucky ones who was flush. And she’d not a farthing to her name aside from a modest amount of pin-money she’d been saving. She’d been told she kissed well and—

  “Look at the thoughts churning through that exacting brain of yours. It’s like watching a waterwheel,” he murmured and yawned behind his hand.

  Infuriating man, she seethed, and let herself take him in again from brow to boot while his eyes were closed. It should have been illegal to look so attractive without effort.

  “Don’t tell me it’s propriety vexing you,” he said after a tense moment with only Agnes’s sniffles breaking the silence. “Not after showing up at a notorious gaming hell’s alley door in the wee hours. Conversing with me is even worse. You must know I’m untouchable for someone of your rank and situation.”

  “Unmarried being my situation. Widows of admirable birth seem to be very touchable in your world.”

  His lips quirked, the barest of smiles. “Will it anger you if I agree?”

  She clenched her fist in her skirt. “I don’t trust men who look like you.”

  His smile intensified, sending tantalizing creases from the edges of his eyes. “And I don’t trust women with a brain.”

  “This is why I’ve seen you everywhere, isn’t it? This campaign of yours, Blue, whatever it means. You’ve been following me. What I want to know is why.”

  He blinked, his gaze, when it met hers, far from sleepily unaware. Like the time on Regent Street when a cutpurse had robbed her blind, she experienced the sensation of being swindled. Rattled, she resisted the urge to check her pocket for the half crown, the only item of value on her person.

  A tiny crinkle settled between his brows. “You noticed me.”

  She sighed and gave her skirt a yank, two times before releasing it from his dogged boot heel. “I have what is required: a pulse.” Wading into his gaze, she prepared for the impact. “Tell me why you’ve engineered our association, and I’ll accept the kind invitation to your family’s country manor without dispute.”

  “You speak like an instructor I had at Rugby. An unforgiving crank.” He flexed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Makes me fear for a ruler striking my knuckles.”

  She leaped to her feet, finished with his blasted nonchalance, his cavalier teasing. If he was going to tell her nothing, then to hell with him! And to hell with his blasted summons.

  Mirroring her, he was up in an instant, his face, his eyes, ablaze. “I’ll throw this in the hearth”—he crushed the envelope in his fist—“crisp it to a forgotten memory if your answer to the next question is ‘no’. Dreams. Have you had them? Unusual, fantastic. If you have, I don’t need to elucidate. You’ll know.”

  Startled, she crossed to an escritoire desk shoved in a corner, as if work were a neglected duty. But evidence of effort lay in the open ledgers, books with pages bent to call the reader back to the location, the cloying odor of ink splashed across aged parchment. “I’ve used my parlor trick twice to make Baron Rossby delay our wedding. I told myself his submission was due to his desire to make me comfortable if not happy, not the pressure I was exerting on his wrist. Pressure that made him lose himself just long enough for me to slip from reach. Confuse him about the date we’d planned, the details of our arrangement. Etcetera.” She glanced over her shoulder to find Finn standing in the same spot, watching her, his gaze intent, his famed smile absent.

  The pronouncement was finalized right there: he was nothing lik
e the man he presented to the ton.

  The surety of the judgment chilled her to her toes.

  She turned back to the desk, her gaze falling to a wooden box the size of her palm buried amidst the ledgers. It was lovely, geometric designs circling an escutcheon on the front. Bringing it close to her face—the only way she could read the inlaid script without her spectacles—she immediately located the hinge on the back and the lid popped open. She frowned. Nothing inside.

  A floorboard squeaked as he stepped closer. “How did you…?”

  “Puzzles are my passion,” she answered. “I have a collection of boxes with secret compartments. One almost identical to this.” She blinked, trying to decipher the text. “Is this Russian?”

  He grimaced and streaked his hand through his hair. “My time at Oxford, before the expulsion, revealed a marginal gift for languages. French, in particular. But I also speak a little German, Russian, and Italian.”

  “Hmm….” She turned to him, propping her bottom on the desk. Better to face this challenge head-on. Victoria Hamilton was no coward. “Intelligence isn’t the first trait you disclose. I can see why. Attractiveness is a reliable prop and presents no compulsion to dig deeper.” She tilted her head, felt the internal shift as she placed Finn Alexander in the basement of her brain, where she kept puzzles, people, books she was interested in exploring further.

  “It’s a skill, posing as someone else. A skill I’ve worked hard to master. Not inborn, I assure you. Although it’s made easy when you’re surrounded by people lacking in self-awareness.”

  Fascinating was all she could think.

  His jaw clenched, a muscle in his cheek jumping. “Let’s get something straight, my lady. I’m not one of your damned puzzles.”

  She flipped the puzzle box lid open and shut, open and shut, before returning her gaze to him. “So, I’m to travel to Oxfordshire to summer holiday with a group whose acquaintance I have not previously made, without a rationale behind the invitation presented to me? Sounds delightful.” She secured the box with a snap. “I think not.”