by Tracy Sumner
He’d been drawn to her long before he saw her across the ballroom that first night, in a dazzling lavender concoction that sent the room into sluggish rotations as dreams and reality collided. A connection existed between them—and not a trivial one. Imprinted like lines on his palm. Although he had no idea why. “I’ve been following her for weeks, and I’m telling you, she’s trouble. Piper, and then some. Restless and unhappy.” Desperately lonely, if he had his guess.
“A troublesome package but not a lover. Interesting. For you, anyway.”
“She doesn’t need a lover, she needs a husband,” he growled, though his belly tightened as he imagined Baron Rossby touching her. Any man touching her. And he’d watched quite a few try. When no good could come from feeling possessive about a woman you could never possess. “I don’t need the complication,” he thought he should add in the event Julian was getting romantic ideas, as his intense love for Piper sometimes made him do. Complications, love specifically, made one vulnerable, and Finn wasn’t up to the battle. He had enough people to worry about to last a lifetime.
Besides, he was a bastard, she a lady. End of story.
“You think you can trust her?” Julian exhaled sharply, his curse riding the air. “I don’t have to tell you the complete and utter fear I felt months back, finding someone on the estate, someone who had a gift that reasonably brought them here, who wasn’t our friend. Someone with incredibly brutal aspirations, to obtain the chronology despite any cost. Any harm.” He tipped his glass high, his throat working as he swallowed. “He got close to Lucien, Finn. Near my son. I could have killed the man a hundred times over, although I only had to do it once.”
“You can trust her, Jule.” He tapped his tumbler against his thigh. “As well as you can trust me.”
“You say this because you’ve invited her into your life, involved yourself in hers.” Julian tapped his tumbler on the desk. Three hard pops while he ruminated. “Her gift, as I assume she has one?”
This was where Finn paused, trepidation, the same he’d felt since the debacle on the docks, seizing him. He was no good to anyone if he let fear manage him…but the enormity of Victoria’s gift frightened him. Their enemies often had incredible abilities, a talent to see into the future and the past, their desire to use their gifts for nefarious means the difference. The League could never slumber, never rest, never disregard. “She seems able to erase memories. Short-term, brief, I’m not sure how far back it goes—minutes, hours, days—but erasure just the same. When she touched me, I took a mental stumble before I could right myself. I’ve never felt the like.”
Julian slid his hands across the desk, scattering ledgers and sketch pads, paintbrushes and ink wells. “Something odd occurred when I entered the house after talking to you on the lawn. I touched the doorknob and saw nothing, Finn. Which has not happened to me ever. Not once in my life have I touched an object and not seen images of a person who touched it before.” He drew a shaky breath, his fingers flexing into fists. “Is that because of this girl?”
Finn stared into his tumbler, wishing like hell more gin would magically appear. Why couldn’t any of them have that gift? “I can’t read her. Nothing. When she’s around me, my ability to grasp her thoughts snuffs out like a flame in the wind. And it mutes what I receive from others. Sometimes more than mutes. She shuts me down.”
“A blocker,” Julian murmured in wonder.
Finn gave his empty tumbler another wistful glance. “Blocker?”
“Piper’s grandfather detailed it in the chronology, long passages from a German contact we have yet to translate. He believed a blocker cloaked supernatural ability. Lessened or halted outright. Dulling the shine, he called it. A gift he considered more powerful than Piper’s. There was believed to be another with the ability two hundred years ago. In Berlin, as I recall, hence the German texts. But nothing since.”
Finn closed his eyes, a headache ripping through his temples. More powerful than the healer. Of course. After they’d barely been able to safeguard Piper when their enemies found out about her. Should their enemies discover someone with the ability to block a psychic gift, protecting that person would pose an impossible challenge.
Unbearable, Finn thought as his heart dropped to his knees.
“Her dreams?” Julian asked.
Finn squeezed the bridge of his nose, shook his head. I don’t know.
“Will she work with you? With Piper? To test her ability, then cross-reference against what’s written in the chronology? You can translate the text.” Julian yanked a scrap of foolscap from beneath a ledger and starting scribbling notes across the page. “Does she need to touch someone to curb their gift or only be near them? Does one’s ability simply diminish or completely fade? How far away from you is she before you’re able to read minds again?”
“You think I know the answers to any of these questions?”
“We’ll have to increase security at the gates, the main house, the perimeter. Employ the Duke’s mercenaries in full force. You’ll have to make Lady Hamilton understand why she can’t go anywhere on this estate without someone with her. Not until Ashcroft and I have a chance to put a plan in place. It could be years, but at some point, she’ll need protection. At some point, they will find out about her.”
“She doesn’t trust me,” he whispered, loathe to imagine protecting her when the mere thought of losing someone else was intolerable.
Julian issued a brittle, humorless laugh. “With your shenanigans of late, would you?”
Finn spun the tumbler in his hands, shooting crystal prisms across the paint-stained Aubusson rug. He could tell Julian he was bored with the women, the drinking, the gambling. His pointless existence. By his own hand, he’d reduced himself to being an aimless commodity. “Do you know I’ve never had an honest relationship with a woman? One undertaken without knowing exactly what she’s thinking? Fairly easy to manage expectations when there are no surprises.” His encounters felt forged, crafted by knowledge he shouldn’t have, didn’t want, couldn’t prevent from slipping through the cracks of his mind.
Now, he felt out of sorts because he’d met a woman he couldn’t read as cleanly as the copy of The Mystery of Edwin Drood shoved in his portmanteau. For once, he’d been assigned a level playing field. Finn Alexander had no advantage in this game.
“Maybe she can help you experience a normal relationship. But be warned, you often have to give up one way of life for the chance at another. I speak from experience.”
“Normal,” Finn murmured, the word as foreign as the texts he translated.
Julian sighed. “Without reading her mind, Finn.”
Finn slid low in his chair, balancing the tumbler on his belly. He didn’t know how to be himself. And he didn’t know normal.
He also didn’t know what to do about Victoria Hamilton.
His lips curved in a cautious smile. The lady would be surprised to find she was what she loved.
A puzzle.
One Finn desperately wanted to solve.
Dinner that evening was a laborious affair.
Lady Beauchamp—Piper, as Victoria had again been urged to call her—had an infectious spirit, and it wasn’t from her lack of effort to ease the tension in the room that the gathering wilted like a discarded blossom.
Finn, the person bringing them all together, skipped out on the festivities, the rat.
“Dodging life,” she’d murmured when he failed to show, surprised when Viscount Beauchamp laughed in agreement. A sound filled with fondness and exasperation.
The viscount’s gaze had touched her often, questions about her parlor trick almost tumbling off his tongue like a rock down a well, but his wife had simply given the slightest shake of her head—not the time—to hold him off.
She’d watched Julian touch items on the table more often than he needed to, his cutlery, his wine glass, the saltshaker, while throwing bewildered looks her way. Eccentric behavior, on a curious estate, a setting teeming with those w
ith mystical talents. Victoria had tried not to look over her shoulder too often, wondering what supernatural trick the footman might be able to employ, the kitchen maid, the cook. Thankfully, the meal was casual, even by country standards. Limited to five courses with no entertainment after, which was a blessing as a musicale by a tone-deaf heiress, was the last amusement she’d been subjected to.
With a sigh, Victoria closed her bedchamber door and slumped against it. One night down. A new puzzle book and the glass of sherry she’d smuggled upstairs awaited. If that didn’t put her to sleep, she’d sneak down to the kitchens and bake after the servants vacated the area.
“Didn’t show, did he?”
Victoria gasped, nearly spilling the sherry when she wanted every drop to hit her tongue, not the Beauchamp’s rug. “Who?”
“The scamp that drug us here, that’s who.” Agnes rose from the overstuffed chair tucked in a corner, hiding in wait for her mistress. She loved making disquieting entrances, and Victoria, after years of these contests, should have expected one. “Saw him climb into a showy landau, fancy crest decorating the side, and ride off into the night. Sneaking away from his brother’s disdain and heading for trouble in that charming village we passed on the way here.” Agnes crossed to Victoria, motioned for her to turn, then began unbuttoning her gown, a routine they’d completed a thousand times. “No good ever came from being that handsome. Just like no good has ever come from your prank. Scrambling thoughts and making people forget your foolishness, what kind of talent is that? A talent everyone in this house seems overly interested in, is what. I suppose because most of them seem filled with the spook, just like you. Takes one to know one. Peculiar, this entire place.”
“It’s a lovely estate, Aggie. Although the staff may be slightly unusual. Think of this as our last adventure before we enter confined servitude.” She let her dress slither down her body, stepping from the pool of silk with a sigh. “As for Finn Alexander, don’t let the face fool you. There’s a clever man underneath all the glitter. Shrewd. He plays his cards close, that’s his game. And you know, I love a riddle.”
Agnes snorted softly through her nose and worked on Victoria’s corset ties. “You play any game with the man, and we’ll be in a fine muddle. I seen the way he looks at you. Rossby won’t appreciate it if he hears you’re messing with the likes of the Blue Bastard. He’s dead-set on ownership before he owns. Neither will your mother, for that matter.”
Victoria paused, her breath coming forth in a rush. How had Finn looked at her?
Are you going to be one of those senseless girls after all, Victoria Hamilton?
With a whispered curse, she waved Agnes away and strode to the wardrobe, pulled out her night robe, and slipped it on, cinching the crimson ribbon around her waist. “If I can find another solution, maybe Rossby would be relieved if I begged off.”
Agnes brushed past her, Victoria’s dress and corset twisted in her fist. “Don’t you believe it. When Rossby looks at you, his gaze is fiercer than the Blue Bastard’s. Gives me the chills, it does. Your mother’s not a proper judge if she thinks the baron is fit for you. And your father—” She whistled sharply through her teeth and hung the dress on a peg in the wardrobe, placing the corset on a low shelf. “Not every woman has prettiness and intelligences. Rossby tiptoes around you like a boy who stole a jewel and has it jammed in his pocket. Not your fault he’s a snowflake and you’re sunlight. You’ll melt him, and he knows it. But he craves that sunlight.” She shut the wardrobe door with a final snap. “We’re stuck, bugs in amber. Tossed out on the street if you don’t save this family. And soon. Your father already let the house in Belgravia for the summer, did you know that? Nowhere to go should we dash back to London.”
Victoria moved to the window and flattened her hand on the cool pane. Harbingdon’s rolling lawns and vast parklands stretched to the horizon in smoky, surreal twilight. The scent of cut grass and woodsmoke, evergreens and azalea blossoms, drifted in on a tender breeze. It was a peculiar place, yes, but it was also beautiful. Peaceful. And as Piper has said, safe. Especially for someone who had nowhere else to go. “I could talk to my father again. There must be another way. If he’ll give me time to find another way.”
Agnes came up behind her until they were shoulder to shoulder, as they had been for most of her life. “I love you like my own, girl, you know that. But the truth is, they don’t have it in them to love anyone but themselves. Neither of them. Your mother sending you here, without a care except for the hope that a duke might flutter by, with me as your only protector, almost no funds, is proof of her indifference.” She reached for Victoria’s hand and squeezed it. “You have to get over it, harden your heart to them. Love isn’t always given where it should be. Sharing blood should force a river of affection into their hearts, but it hasn’t. I’ve been waiting for it since you was in nappies. Charles, too. I finally gave up and think you should as well. At least on them anyway. Save your hopes for better things. Better people.”
Victoria ran a knuckle beneath each eye, knowing Agnes was only trying to make her accept the truth. Then at some point, it would no longer pain her so much. “Is Rossby better people, Aggie?”
Agnes snaked a hand around Victoria’s waist and pulled her into her side. “No, darling girl, I don’t think so. But where you go, I go. We’ll work it out.”
Victoria closed her eyes and rested her cheek on her treasured companion’s shoulder.
Was Finn Alexander better people, she couldn’t help but wonder?
Chapter 5
Later that night, Victoria heard the wheels of the carriage grinding over the pebbled drive before the conveyance emerged from a misty shroud. A landau, the Beauchamp crest emblazoned on the side, two sleek horses stomping and snorting in the lead. Stationing herself behind a pillar, she pressed her cheek to the cool stone and shivered. Her shawl lay in her bedchamber beneath the puzzle book she’d been trying since dinner to invite into her mind.
She should have gone to the kitchens to bake, her secret pleasure. Instead, she stood in the shadows of the veranda, waiting for Finn to come home.
He exited the carriage as it lurched to a stop, more of an expulsion. The coachman rushed to assist when his boot awkwardly hit the metal step, but Finn waved him off. Somehow he kept his feet, though his route across the sloping lawn looked as if he were trying to write his name in the stalks of grass.
By the time she reached him, he’d made it to the top step of the veranda and lay sprawled on his back, one arm flung wide, his hand cupped as if to catch a snowflake. The other lay over his stomach in a protective curl. His frock coat hadn’t made it home with him; his waistcoat spilled wide like the pages of a book, exposing lean but significant muscle beneath snowy-white linen. His neckpiece lay in a limp twist, the ends dangling. Someone had tangled his hair beyond hope of repair. A streak of oil, no doubt from the coach’s seat, split his brow in two.
He looked vulnerable, younger than she suspected him of being, and impossibly appealing.
Knowing that aiding the inebriated toast of London in the dead of night in nothing but her night robe was a dreadful idea didn’t stop her. However, she did whisper a reproachful, “This is a dreadful idea,” as she dropped to a squat beside him. With a sigh, she reached, halted, rounded her fingers into a fist, and let it sink into the folds of her skirt. As a friend, she could assist another friend, a completely foxed one from the look of it, into the shelter of the house. But there was no call for gratuitous touching, despite the overwhelming inclination to do so.
Tipping her head, Victoria gazed at the murky spill inking the sky, the stars startlingly brilliant pinpricks nestled inside opaque folds. Aside from the distant call of an owl and Finn’s soft breaths, the world was blessedly silent. Bucolic, far-from-town silent. Glancing back at him, she reminded herself that an attraction, when he and his family held answers she should have sought out long ago, was enough of a barrier. If the pending marriage required to save her family from financial do
om was not.
When a summer romance would mean nothing, less than nothing, to one of the most profligate scoundrels in England.
“So,” he whispered, his words elegantly slurred, “are you going to help me up? Or shall we ruminate on the loveliness of a country evening…from what is turning out to be shockingly cold marble? Le plus inconfortable.” Very uncomfortable, he added, switching to French for no reason she could fathom.
She reeled, losing her balance, landing on her bottom beside him. “Are you mocking me, Mr. Alexander?”
“Do I seem the mocking type, Lady Hamilton?”
Yes, he did. But she laughed, unable to check the impulse. She didn’t want to like him. Was trying hard not to. Partly because every female he encountered liked him too much. “Let’s get you sitting up. Then, if I have to call a footman, your incapacitation won’t seem as dire as it currently appears.”
His smile grew, but his eyes remained closed, a detail she was thankful for as she assisted him to a resting slump against the pillar. Settling in beside him on the step—far enough to prevent them accidentally touching but close enough for a shimmer of awareness to dance along her skin—she wondered if she should start a conversation or merely endure the charged silence for as long as she could stand it.
“What are you doing out here at this time of the night without that rabid-eyed duenna of yours?” he finally asked as he dug around in his waistcoat pocket. Gesturing to the cheroot he extracted, he anchored it between his lips.
