The Rake is Taken

by Tracy Sumner

  “Who knows about you?” Humphrey asked from his shadowy corner. “About this?”

  Victoria tore his gaze from Finn’s, able to provide an answer she suspected would ease some of the tension in the room. “Aside from my companion, Agnes, who’s been with me since birth, no one. I’ve shocked more than a few governesses into silence, true enough, but the stolen time only left them befuddled. I never felt the need to confess what I considered a ridiculous trick of nature. Of course, I told my brother, he knew, but now he’s…gone.” She picked at a loose thread on her skirt, avoiding the pitying gazes sure to arrive with the next revelation. “My mother wasn’t directly involved with childrearing, distasteful business, or so she stated on many occasions. My father was unconcerned about anything aside from his horses. So I was left to my own devices, easily able to hide anything that made me different. And when I was introduced to society, my outspoken demeanor and insignificant dowry sent me like a boulder over a cliff. Straight down and out of sight. Not many were tempted to befriend me.”

  “Your frightful temper couldn’t have helped,” Finn murmured and negligently flipped a page. “Or your astounding penchant for trouble.”

  Victoria yanked the thread free and swallowed what she’d love to say if not amid unfamiliar company. If the trace of a smile lighting Finn Alexander’s face grew any wider, she was going to lose the scant hold she had on her frightful temper. “My intended, Baron Rossby, has no clue about my parlor trick, will never have a clue. Our agreement, funds to save my family in exchange for an heir, does not require me to share my life.” Which sounded miserable, she knew. However, the reality surrounding aristocratic marriages was often ugly.

  “Rossby,” Julian echoed in an unenthusiastic tone.

  She nodded, eyes on her lap, refusing to confront the criticism sure to make her feel worse about a situation she had no control over. “Yes, the Grape. It’s an unfortunate moniker, although he does slightly resemble—”

  The door to the library burst open, and a little boy raced across the room and piled into Finn’s legs before Victoria had time to draw a proper breath. Finn laughed, swinging the boy into his arms without a hint of the discomfort she’d always felt around children.

  “Fig, Fig, Fig,” the scamp chanted.

  “Finn,” he corrected, sliding his forearm under the lad’s skinny bottom to hold him up.

  The boy presented a crooked smile and a jam-covered hand which he flattened over Finn’s cheek, leaving a smear of what looked like raspberry preserves. The spiral of heat in her belly as she imagined licking the jam from his skin was not good. Not good at all.

  “Careful with your injury, Finn. Lucien will sock you without knowing what he’s doing. He’s a strong little bugger.”

  Finn recoiled, his cheeks leeching color before he gained control and let a placid smile bleed through. “It’s healed, Jule. Quit worrying.”

  “You take more care, boy-o, and I’ll do less worrying.”

  A maid burst into the room, her cheeks rosy from a race she’d lost, the interruption ruining any chance Victoria had to ascertain if Julian was talking about the nasty scar on Finn’s chest. And how, exactly, he’d acquired it.

  “Lucien, you wee devil! I told you mama and papa were busy. You’ll get no cookie with these antics. Apologies,” she panted and bobbed her head to the room at large, “but he’s as swift as a Whitechapel cutpurse, he is. Running me ragged, and that’s the truth.”

  Lucien perked up. “Cookie?”

  Piper laughed and wagged her fingers at her son. “Oh, Minnie, give him his cookie. How can you resist that brilliant smile?”

  “Spoiled rotten is what he is,” Minnie grumbled as a cookie lifted from her apron pocket, two tries before it floated into the boy’s hand. She frowned and brought her fist to her brow. “It’s hard to do that with her in the room, you’re right, my lord Julian. She’s bringing the quiet to my mind, deafening quiet. Like trying to run through butter.”

  Victoria clicked her tongue against her teeth. Ah, this was the lady’s maid who moved objects with her mind.

  “Fig,” Lucien said around a mouthful of cookie.

  Unable to tear her eyes from boy and man, her heart squeezed as Finn brushed crumbs from Lucien’s bottom lip with a tender touch.

  They were a family, this odd assortment of people, unconnected by anything as lofty as blood. When Victoria had found blood to be a most tenuous connection herself. Her marriage to the Grape could produce offspring, an adorable little thing like Lucien. Maybe two, if she could endure the process to create them. She was terrified of children, of course, but assumed she’d very much like her own.

  Though she wasn’t looking forward to seeing a naked Grape.

  Finn glanced at her, his gaze pensive, that subtle way he had of reading her—when she knew he wasn’t reading her as he was accustomed to. A new experience for them both. He nodded to the boy in his arms, shrugged a broad shoulder, his smile for once posing a genuine offer. Would you like to hold Lucien?

  The envy was robust and shocking. She shook her head wildly and crowded into the velvet cushions. He blinked slowly, thoughts churning, the shift to indigo as sympathy filled his eyes apparent across the short distance separating them. Recognition erupted like champagne bubbles beneath her skin and scrambled dangerously along her nerve endings. He had the disturbing ability to reveal her until she felt stripped to her drawers, a sensation both embarrassing and arousing. She released a fast breath through her teeth.

  There was no place in her life for what he made her feel, no place at all.

  “You’ve had your treat, young man. It’s off with you now,” Minnie commanded and took a wiggling Lucien from Finn.

  “Fig,” he repeated as she carried him out of the library. “Bye-bye.”

  Fig, Victoria thought and felt her heart not just sink but crumble. Like the biscuits she’d baked last night to calm herself, one of which was clutched in Lucien’s tiny fist.

  “I’ll do it,” she said when the door closed, without touch, behind them. “Research, notes for your chronology, assessment of my parlor trick and how it can help the League, whatever best suits. I’ll be an able soldier, all in for the cause. One month, then I must return to London. I’ve already put off the Grape for as long as I dare.”

  And the dreams, she added silently when Finn turned with a raised brow.

  She would gather her courage and tell the charming Fig about her dreams.

  Even if he hated her for sharing them.

  Chapter 8

  This day was getting worse, Finn decided as he watched Simon pace the library in one of those adolescent moods that took hours to recover from. “You can’t possibly go with me to London when I return. Your life is here, your tutor is here, your family is here.”

  “You don’t know how bad he gets,” Simon threw over his shoulder. “I’m in prison!”

  “You jest. I know exactly how domineering Julian is, God do I. Still breathing down my neck even at this age. That’s what you have to look forward to, by the way. Although you must remember, the undue attention is given with love.” Brandishing his penknife, Finn fractured the seal on a letter he’d selected from the pile the domineering man in question had left for him to parse through. Dispatches arriving from the League’s contacts spread across the continent, warnings of threats to someone in their community, most written in languages Finn could translate with at least moderate proficiency. He’d appropriated the library, covering every surface with ledgers, language primers, and correspondence related to the management of the Blue Moon, a surprisingly time-consuming business to keep afloat even if Julian felt he’d stepped down a level by taking too great an interest in it. “I survived, and so will you. Or rather, I am endeavoring to survive.”

  Simon mumbled a curse, then closed his mouth at Finn’s sharp look. “If it’s the women,” the boy said in an aggrieved tone, “I’ll ignore them like I do every dead soul who follows me through life. The trollops and the classi
er ones, mum’s the word. I won’t tell Julian a thing. I can sleep through all sorts of racket, aside from the haunts. Come home blotto for all I care. I’ve seen the inside of a gaming hell, you know. Picked more than one pocket in the Devil’s Lair back in the day. Went through an entire room in minutes and left with a king’s ransom, best in the East End.”

  “Except the time you were caught and beaten to within an inch of your life.”

  Simon rotated a coin between his fingers, sunlight glinting off the metal and casting sparks on his striped waistcoat. At one time, he’d been the most renowned cutpurse in London, to this day able to perform sleight of hand better than any magician could hope to. “You’re starting to sound just like him. A boring, old toff.”

  Finn felt his second sizzle of temper, the first occurring when Humphrey dragged him from the kitchens. He rarely got angry in London, but his family had the uncanny ability to rouse him in seconds flat. It broke his heart to imagine the ‘racket’ Simon had to sleep through before the League found him living in St. Giles, a hellhole even worse than the one he, Julian, and Humphrey had escaped from. The fact he had to endure daily conversations with ghosts—or haunts as he called them—had made for an unbearably troubling childhood. Losing patience with himself and Simon, Finn ripped into an envelope like he was slitting a throat. “Do you imagine my dissolute lifestyle is a suitable model for a young man to witness? We’re trying to separate you from depravity, Si, not draw it closer.”

  Simon’s face took on the rosy shade of a beet as he shoved to his feet. He gave his nose a vicious swipe. “You could change your life if you wanted to. Less debauchery, less everything, for your family. Find a wife and make a proper home, then take me with you. You’re my brother, too, not just his, and you left when I needed you! Do you think it’s easy with all these people in my head, standing by my side? Living life with me! Telling me things I don’t want to hear?” With a hand that trembled, he shoved the coin in his pocket. “But the blasted women mean more than I do, I guess,” he said on a tear-laden breath and sprinted from the room, slamming the door behind him.

  “Brilliant,” Finn ground out and yanked his hand through his hair. The tender age of fourteen was proving to be a difficult one for Simon to navigate. The scar on Finn’s chest chose that moment to throb, reminding him of Freddie and the real reason he’d been keeping his distance for months. One boy reminding him of the other. A venomous circle of guilt and worry, and then more guilt.

  It was frightening to love someone and still be unable to make everything better. Make everything perfect. Smooth their path so they’d never stumble.

  When Simon joined their family, he’d been a filthy, willful eight-year-old rescued from a flash house crawling with thieves, vagrants, prostitutes. Abused and tormented, he’d trusted no one. Stolen almost every piece of silver in the house, picked every lock, every pocket, told every lie, before finally letting someone—Finn—into his heart. Two orphaned gutter rats who recognized something desperate in the other.

  Simon mistakenly believed Finn would choose anything, anyone, over his family, when he loved the boy like a son, with his every breath. Finn swore and hurled his knife at the door, where it stuck deep, quivering.

  He was on his feet to retrieve it when the knock sounded. “No,” he snapped, caring little who stood on the other side. Although he knew who stood on the other side. He could feel the ripple beneath his skin, the warning squeeze in his gut. And no one’s thoughts intruded. His mind was clear. Damn her.

  She knocked again, tenacious to the end. “Let me in, Blue,” she pleaded. “I need a moment without a roomful of people staring at me with dreamy eyes. Oh, here they come. Just five minutes without being anyone’s savior. Please, I beg of you.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, groaned, laughed. Hell. Opened the door to find Victoria Hamilton, fetching in a gown the color of the roses crowding the estate flowing over her supple, elegant body. Her skirts brushed his legs as she passed, a delicious tickle, her perfume—delicate and dreadfully feminine—trailing just behind. It astounded that nothing came to him but the look and scent of her. Not one private thought, not one. Like a normal, pathetic man, he was left to figure out what a woman was thinking for the first time in his existence.

  She watched in enthrallment as he yanked the knife from the door, snapped it shut, and slid it neatly in his pocket. “Our research appointment with Julian isn’t scheduled to begin for another half-hour,” he said.

  “Yes, yes, I know. I’m early. And remarkably, you’re here.” She tipped her shoulder toward the door. “Close that, will you? Maybe then they won’t find me.”

  Following her directive, he closed the door and rested against it, knowing he shouldn’t but doing it anyway. “How untoward, Lady Hamilton. What would poor, devoted Agnes say about you shutting yourself in a library with a man of my reputation?”

  “She would faint, more than likely. Although with my reputation, maybe you should be frightened. As it is, she’s in bed with a garlic poultice. The peculiar inhabitants of Harbingdon are giving her the vapors. A saltshaker slid across the table by itself at breakfast, and that was that. She’s having none of what she calls the spooks at the moment.”

  Finn lifted off the door with a startled chuckle. “Oh, my, is she going to have a horrendous summer. Wait until Simon tells her about the haunts who reside on the estate, the ones likely sitting beside her at dinner.”

  “Indeed,” she agreed, her gaze tracking him as he circled the desk and collapsed to his chair with a squeak of stiff leather. Her regard lit him up, a modest glow, a sensation he didn’t remember feeling before. Possibly because thoughts were rampaging his mind, and they’d dulled his reception.

  Not comfortable being honest with her, he released a practiced, flat smile. The Blue Bastard’s façade firmly in place, which made him feel secure and dejected.

  What do you want, Tori? Rest assured I may not care. I’ll undoubtedly act like I don’t.

  She gave her spectacles a boost, pinched her lips together, contemplating her words, sweetly nervous, which perversely made his cock stiffen even as a dart of dread at what she might say pierced him. She was patient, a thinker. A strategist, as he was, even if he didn’t look the part. Evidently, intelligent women appealed when he’d been settling for senseless ones all this time. “You seem troubled,” she finally decided on with a pointed glance at the gash in the door.

  His erection wilted. Solid choice of topic, he thought grimly. “Family matters.”

  She walked to the bookshelf, freed a slim book of poetry, and turned it over in her hand. “Troubled, when I would give anything to have so many people care about me. You’re the most popular person in Oxfordshire. Sincere affection, too, unlike the rabid thirst in London. That’s not a burden, it’s a godsend.”

  The third jolt of anger this morning raced through him. “Did I say it was a burden, my lady?” Swallowing tightly, he smoothed his hand over his chest, the thought too close to the one he’d had when he threw the damned knife.

  She pivoted to face him, her eyes highlighted in the sunlight, a mix falling somewhere between the color of spring soil and autumn leaves. They were changelings, altering with her mood. As they stared, lost, a gust raced through the window and sent papers drifting about the room like snowflakes. “Would you like to talk about it?”

  It. The scar. She’d seen the mark that night at the Blue Moon. Her gaze had lingered on the open collar of his shirt and the angry slash beneath for long enough. “Not without a lot to drink, no, I don’t think I would.”

  She replaced the volume and circled the room, stopping before a stack of books he used when translations were getting complicated. “Medieval Latin,” she murmured. “I have to admit, Blue, I’m impressed. What a mind you’ve been hiding. A fantastic gambit. You’ve fooled them all.”

  His skin heated—no way to admit it was anything but pleasure—just enough to let him know what a daft fool he was. Enough to let him know much he l
iked this snappish, enchanting, clever woman and her incidental observations. “Not bad for a gutter rat, I suppose.”

  Signaling an impending storm, another breeze lashed the room, ripping a strand from her wobbly chignon and slinging it across her cheek. England surely couldn’t let them have more than two hours of sunlight without recompense. Tipping his head against the curled tuft of the chair, he let his lids slide low though he could still see every delicious inch of her. “Your hair has a mind of its own. As feral as your temper.”

  He watched her reaction unfold, fascinated to his toes. A slight lift of her hand to smooth the errant strands, then stubborn denial of the impulse. Brave girl. With a playful smile he’d give a thousand pounds to be allowed to decipher, she crossed to the desk, steepled her fingertips on the edge and leaned in. “Now that you mention it, do any of those desk drawers hold a pair of scissors?”

  Scissors? But he found a pair readily enough, offered them with the sharp edge flattened against his palm. No need to encourage treacherous behavior.

  “Turn,” she ordered and drew her finger in a tight air-circle. “And take off the jacket.”

  He rose, his pulse doing a fiendish dance beneath his skin. Her voice held a rough thread of longing if he was not mistaken. Because he stole thoughts to confirm his suspicions, he usually wasn’t. But not this time, no hints for him—and Victoria’s face showed only serene vacancy. Talk about gambits. Without question, he followed her directives, shrugging out of his coat, one arm, then the next, giving it a neat fold and setting it on the desk. When he went to sit in the chair, she halted him with a light touch that was pure torture, spirals of pleasure racing down his arm and out his fingertips. “Perch on the edge. Back to me. I’m tall enough, and the height should serve well.”

  Serve well for what he wanted to ask more than he’d wanted to ask anything. In. His. Life. Did she realize you could command someone like this in bed and have them eating from your hand? Have them begging.