The Rake is Taken

by Tracy Sumner

  Victoria nodded, charmed by his graciousness in light of the impropriety of the situation. “I couldn’t sleep. Agnes always can. At the drop of a hat. It’s so quiet here, except for the occasional creak of a floorboard or rattle of a windowpane.” She traced a crack in the step. “I suppose I’m used to the commotion of the city. The stink and bustle, the feverish pace. Even if one suspects they don’t like it, one becomes inured.”

  He exhaled a wisp of smoke but didn’t comment. Then, in an outrageous offer, he offered the cheroot to her.

  “Oh, no, I—”

  “You can do anything you want, Tori. You left the vipers behind in Town. It’s just you, me, and the crickets.” He tilted his head, gazing at the sky. “And a thousand stars. Just look at them, will you? Besides, I know you to be a very bothersome package, up to a dare.”

  Releasing a huff, she took the cheroot from fingers more suited to sculpting clay than smoking stubs and lifted it to her lips. The tip was moist, which sent a dart of heat straight through her. No way to deny it. “It doesn’t taste good,” she whispered with a grimace.

  “Why, no, it doesn’t.”

  She coughed and handed it back to him. “Then, why do it?”

  His gaze caught hers, sapphire dialed down to onyx in the shadows. “Because I can.” Then he laughed, an enchanting sound that wrapped around her as handily as her missing shawl. And she found herself laughing with him. “There’s that wicked smile. I feared the prospect of spending your summer here had forever altered your disposition. Broken your courageous spirit.” He gave her one sweeping glance. “However, you’re here, cavorting around in your nightclothes. That’s courage in action.”

  She rested back on her elbows, marveling at her ease with a man she barely knew. With his patient air and unruffled manner, he was gifted at making people feel comfortable. Even if being comfortable was not in anyone’s best interest. “Are you going to tell me why I’m here, or shall I wait for the explanation over kippers and toast?”

  Finn stretched his legs out with a sigh. Long limbs that took time, there and back, to complete the study of. His boots were polished, his breeches pressed, shirt neatly tucked. What immaculate stylishness he had, even in this state. Another of his gifts. “What did Piper tell you?”

  He needs a friend.

  Victoria dug the tip of her pinkie deeper in the cracked marble. “Nothing, actually.”

  “Many thanks, Pip,” he muttered beneath his breath.

  “I believe the interpretation was, she’s your problem.”

  He gave the cheroot a twirl, the flaming tip shooting a crimson glow over his skin. “For the first time in my life, I’m challenged.” He was silent for a thoughtful moment, his hand going to his brow and pressing. “But earlier today, while you were away from the house on your walk with Piper, thoughts just flowed through me like a rushing brook, and this is what I surmised. Without intending to surmise anything, I should add. One of the kitchen maids is worried about her mother after a recent illness. A footman, a fairly new arrival at Harbingdon, is obsessed with his cousin. Although I can’t say if it’s a man or a woman suffering from the footman’s admiration. Cook broke a tureen she worried she might need to prepare the roasted lamb. The guard at the gate”—he frowned and flicked the cheroot into the azalea bushes lining the veranda—“oh, Lord, never mind that one.”

  She rolled to a sit and turned to face him, tucking her night robe around her. “How do you know these things?”

  He tapped his temple. “My parlor trick.”

  She gasped and brought her hand to her head.

  Chuckling, he drew his knees up and rested his forearms on them, a boy’s stance in a man’s body. “Relax. For some reason, I can’t steal a damn thing from that fascinating brain of yours. Believe me, I’ve tried. Besides, you clog the pipes when I’m close to you. It’s bloody weird. A temporary but astounding respite. I don’t hear anything. Which I’m not sure how to fathom.”

  “You read thoughts? Minds?”

  He made a checkmark in the air. “Yes, yes.”

  She clenched her hands in her robe, her palms dampening. “All those events. Balls. Horse races. The gaming hell. Musicales. Bond Street during the apex of the season. I saw you there once surrounded by a veritable flock. How can you stand it?”

  His smile dimmed, his charm tumbling off the edge of a cliff, and leaving what she supposed was a truthful expression. An extremely weary one. “Judging from tonight’s performance, the last year’s performance, perhaps I can’t.”

  “But not me,” she whispered, her gaze drifting across the lawn and to the golden glimmer of a lake she could see in the distance. “You steal thoughts, but not mine.”

  He balanced his brow on his folded arms and was still for so long she wondered if he’d fallen asleep. “I would pinch them if I could, I can’t seem to help myself. I’m a born thief, Tori, I’m laying that right out there. A rake the likes of which you’ve never encountered. But, somehow, you’re blocking my gift.” He exhaled through his teeth, cursing softly. “Gift. What a tidy word for a disastrous burden.”

  “How long…?” She gestured inanely to her head, to his.

  “As long as you’ve been able to nick chunks of time. Forever, am I right? I used to have to touch people to capture their thoughts, mostly anyway, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gained more control. Much due to working with Piper. She’s quite talented in helping one strengthen their ability. I can shut it off, or rather, turn it down. Sometimes. But in a crush, it’s impossible. Walking down a crowded street is like going to war.”

  “Healer,” Victoria breathed, recalling Piper’s word from earlier. Lady Beauchamp was indeed afflicted, just as she and Finn were. His request to come to Harbingdon for the summer was starting to make sense.

  “She isn’t a medical doctor. It’s more a healing of the soul.” He rolled his head to look at her, shadow and light playing across his high cheekbones, his firm jaw. “I send my mind out like a dog to hunt. Then I’m brought back thoughts, along with a face to connect them, usually, which is helpful. Thoughts no one wants to release, thoughts buried deep. People have unwittingly shared clandestine affairs, murderous dreams, ghastly degradations, fantastical aspirations, heartfelt fantasies. I journaled for years, my hands covered in ink, pages and pages of notes because Piper said it would help clear my mind but…”

  “Your mind is full, but you’re empty,” she whispered in a ragged voice.

  His gaze snapped to hers. “Except when I’m around you. It’s like I’m dipped in mud, and you’re the warm bath, allowing me to cleanse myself, hear myself.” He sounded accusatory when none of this was her fault. She didn’t want a preternatural gift any more than he did. And she surely didn’t know what to do with it. “You’re changing me. An important role for a person I don’t know very well.”

  His profound admission, uttered in an entirely leaden tone, a man on the verge of giving up his mission, sent a surge of panic ripping through her. What was she doing, sitting in the summer nightfall with the most gorgeous mind reader in England, telling him her secrets and letting his roll over her, roll through her? Twist her up until her heart hammered beneath her breast, her bodice sticking to suddenly moist skin. “I don’t want this. I want to be—”

  “Normal,” they both said.

  Finn grasped her wrist when she would have jumped to her feet, another burst of French tumbling from his lips, too complicated for her to translate. Awareness shimmered, wrapping them in gossamer, an intimate estrangement until it felt she stood with him against the world. His eyes were liquid pools, deep, dark, and unfathomable, nothing like the witless charmer who’d rescued her from several humiliations during a dreary Season. Her pulse skipped, her breath rushing forth as she imagined pulling her other trick and kissing him to make them both forget.

  When kissing meant as little to her as it likely did to him.

  “Don’t start designing ways to distract me, Tori darling. I can see the wheels spinnin
g. Understand this. I’ve never dreamed about anyone unconnected to the occult. Unconnected to the group of misfits my brother has assembled and calls the League. Never.” His glittering gaze sliced away. “I don’t know why we’re linked. I don’t. I usually—” He swore roughly and tugged his through his hair, the enticing streak of gray glinting in the moonlight.

  She flinched, and his eyes widened, apparently stunned to find he still had a hold on her. Something, the stark sadness in his gaze, his painful effort to explain himself, the way his thumb was drawing deliberate circles on her wrist, made her heart bottom out.

  He released his grip and slumped back against the pillar. “I’ve never conversed with a woman, or more when the occasion warranted it, without knowing what she expected from the involvement. Placed like a bouquet of daffodils at my feet. It’s part of the reason for my success, as it were. The knowing. I’m given the answer before the question is asked.”

  Victoria scoffed and gestured to him, head to toe. “You’re the reason for your success, Mr. Alexander. Although I’m sure reading minds means you deliver superbly.”

  He brought his hand to the bridge of his nose and squeezed, his lids sliding low. “Can I tell you a secret? The first of those I promised to share if you came with me on this journey. I’m fatigued. Discontented. I yearn for my family, my home. The boy I let slip away on the wharf one horrible, stormy evening. Simon, the boy living here, who needs me when I can’t quite let myself need him back. Julian’s growing the League without me when I once wanted nothing more than to be a part of building it. Not managing a gaming hell, quite successfully, I might add. I find myself playing a role I no longer want to play, yet I’m not sure how to crawl out of the furrow. Julian stamped this life all over me with that heavy hand of his, a good life, but the toddler who showed up in a rookery orphanage with a note stuffed in his pocket listing a first name and nothing else was lost in the process.”

  “Is this secret number two? That you’re not the late Viscount Beauchamp’s byblow?”

  He closed his eyes with a groan, his cheeks flushing. “I’ve never admitted that to anyone before. I sometimes forget Julian and I are not actual brothers, and I, well, the blood part doesn’t matter.” Yanking his neckpiece off, he stuffed it in his waistcoat pocket, popped two buttons on his shirt, and breathed deep. She tried to avoid looking too closely at the golden skin exposed by the open vee, she really did. “I must be losing my mind, or all that brandy is doing a number on me. I don’t usually drink heavily. I’ve found it to be very unwise for a man with my talent.”

  The poignant burden of his confession landed on her chest, suspending her breath as she searched for a reply that wouldn’t break the fragile bond they were constructing. She chose humor, as this seemed to be one of his standard fallbacks. “You’re simply fatigued from climbing trellises and leaping from windows with furious husbands in pursuit.”

  He opened one eye and pinned it on her, a reverse wink. “That goddamn window was two stories up. And the trellis, which is a true story though I wasn’t fleeing an incensed husband but rather an overeager baroness, didn’t support my weight.” He threw his arm out, traced a pale scar on his wrist that twisted like a crooked river up his arm. “I bled like a stuck pig all over the baron’s shrubbery and down Curzon Street. Upon reading the broadsheets, Julian immediately sent Humphrey to fetch me, our fixer-in-residence, so I had to face his censure as well, which is, if you can believe it, and you will when you meet him, worse than my brother’s.”

  She covered her mouth and leaned into the laughter, feeling slightly tipsy when she hadn’t had anything aside from that measly glass of sherry. How she could be amused when her family didn’t care what she did as long as she surrendered her future to save them, and she’d come to find she was even more peculiar than initially thought.

  “Care to discuss your misbehavior? What was the latest on-dit? Lord Kilroy’s fountain? Or was it the Earl of Trotsham’s musicale? The fiasco at—”

  “Excellent diversionary tactic, my guardian angel, but perhaps a suitable plan for the summer would be for you to consider what else there is to Finn Alexander, if you’re set on forging a new path. Aside from the obvious attributes, of which all are aware. A necessary break from the hordes tripping over their feet to get a second look at you.” Although the kitchen maid earlier had been sufficiently dazed, so it might be impossible to escape attention even in the country, but no need to mention that when the man looked utterly demoralized, his loneliness so palpable it seemed to be inhabiting the scant space between them.

  She sympathized with every woman whose heartbeat raced when faced with one of his smiles. It wasn’t like he didn’t make her knees tremble, she was only human.

  But she could control it.

  “What else is there, aside from…” He looped his hand in a lazy circle, signifying all kinds of things that made her stomach heat and twist. Speechless, he frowned, an absurdly captivating fold popping between his brows. His scent, bergamot and brandy, drifted to her on a steamy breeze, sliding along her skin like the gentlest of caresses.

  “I’ll help you if you help me,” she proposed with more courage than she felt. “We step back from Town mischief and find out who we really are. This supernatural predicament, notwithstanding.” She gestured to whatever lay beyond the house. “In the wilds of Oxfordshire, no less. As a betrothed woman, I’m safe from your charms. And you can’t read my mind, so falling back on your old standby won’t work. An exchange: enlightenment for friendship. As we explore my gift and you forget, at least in my company, about yours.”

  “I know I suggested it, but I’m coming up blank on the friend thing. Experience with, that is.” He blinked sleepily, his lids fluttering. “Forgive me, the brandy has befuddled.”

  “What a shock,” she whispered, recalling the women she’d seen hanging on his arm, the rumors printed in every gossip rag, the stories tripping off the tongues of those who wanted the piece of him they were jealous they weren’t getting. “Who needs friends when lovers are so abundant?”

  “True,” he concurred and lay back, his arms going beneath his head to cushion. She couldn’t help but record every inch of him as his eyes drifted shut, his cheeks smoothing out, the stubble lining his jaw sparking gold in the moonlight. Broad chest, flat tummy, lean hips, long legs. Boots polished to a high sheen. Perfection.

  He yawned, his throat pulling taut. “Friendship, and this engagement mess of yours, mean I have to ignore my attraction. That’s what I’m hearing. Which is, of course, the prudent plan. New beginnings, stepping back from Town mischief, etcetera, etcetera.”

  She wrenched her gaze from him, seeking the glimmer of the lake’s surface in the distance. “Attraction is habitual, it means nothing. You go there without trying to encourage a cerebral connection. I’m no better. I’ve thrown out kisses like rose petals to men who don’t deserve tribute of any kind. Better I should give them the thorns. Maybe it’s time for me to find another way to manage life, too.”

  “No mind reading, which is a relief.” His lids lifted slightly, his gaze catching on her mouth and holding, an intense look as sure of feeling as if he’d brushed his finger down her cheek. It was a clear break in his promise to keep his charm contained. “No flirting, which is not. Cerebral, is it? This friend thing sounds monotonous as shite.”

  She pressed her lips together to will away the imagined sting of his touch, longing pulsing through her body in a sturdy, betraying rhythm. “The League, Finn? Can you tell me more about it? And the chronology? And why I’d ever be in danger because of the parlor trick?”

  “Tomorrow, I shall tell all,” he murmured, lashes settling against his sun-dusted skin. “Now, Tori, darling, I’m going to dream. Maybe of you.” He sighed softly. “Maybe of you.”

  Then he drifted to sleep, the frustrating man, right there in front of her, a Greek god laid out on marble. As the promise of her dancing through his dreams surrounded them.

  Chapter 6

 
She liked watching him.

  A suitable pastoral diversion, Victoria concluded, leaning over the balustrade and bringing the eyecups close to her face. Finn Alexander was her bird, an enchanting cerulean one presently racing his mare across the woodlands like disaster nipped at his heels. Agnes had taken her dogged inspection of Harbingdon’s lawns and gardens as a burgeoning interest in nature and the like—a relatively innocuous activity when exposed to such harmful ones in London—and requested assistance as her charge’s eyesight was weak. A maid by the name of Long Sally arrived in her bedchamber after breakfast—opening and closing the door without touching it—and presented a set of mother of pearl opera glasses in a citron velvet purse, wholly over and above what she needed to spy on her friend.

  Nevertheless, Victoria decided with a twist of the glasses’ center wheel, they did bring the man into sharp, glorious focus.

  A daring rider, this she knew from the first sight. As she’d once been a daring rider herself.

  Heels down, thighs clenching the horse’s flanks with just the right amount of pressure, which was to say, not too much. Refined poise, all told, precisely as she’d have expected of him. However, the old fear gripped her as Finn jumped a hedge as if attacking it, without a care to the muddy depression on the blind side. She tipped her gaze to his hands as he cleared the obstacle with room to spare, a soft hold sending the reins sliding through his cupped fists like water, allowing the horse to control his balance, not the rider. Richmond, her family’s groom, would have been pleased.

  Victoria had often taken too firm a hand herself.

  Her riding style said a lot about her.

  Finn back-armed sweat from his brow and settled his mount with a reassuring glide of his palm across the horse’s neck, his untucked shirt riding high with the movement and exposing a minute strip of tawny skin above his waistband before linen resettled over his lean hips. A tantalizing encounter she would have missed without the aid of Lady Beauchamp’s marvelous—and apparently little-used—opera glasses. Missed if he wore a waistcoat or topcoat, which he did not.