by Tracy Sumner
As tears flooded her eyes, he pressed his brow to hers, so he didn’t have to see them shimmer and flood molten gold. “You don’t understand the level of ruin you would face should you link yourself to me. You can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to be an outcast in every room you enter.”
“Was this”—she gestured to the rumpled bed—“because you can’t read my mind?” He felt her tears dampen his skin, the faint hiccup as she tried to hold them back wrecking him. “Is my blocking the attraction, a talent I don’t want or know how to use?”
He wanted to lie, it would be the easiest way to push her in the right direction, but he couldn’t do it. “No,” he whispered and curled his hand around the nape of her neck, bringing her lips to his in a graceless kiss born of all the things he couldn’t admit. Offer. Do.
She was crowding him into the wall, arms rising to circle his shoulders, deepening their exchange and weakening his resolve, when the knock sounded. Very light, more of an announcement than an interruption. Finn turned to see an envelope sail under the door and skate across the floor. With leaden steps, he stepped away from her and went to retrieve it.
La fin de l’amour, the end of love, Finn thought as he read the note.
“Finn, for pity’s sake, tell me what it says.”
“You were seen kissing Ashcroft at his summer party. The Earl of Hester stumbled upon the two of you behind a fountain, and he couldn’t help but share the scandal—though he fingered the wrong man, the senseless bloke—and it ended up in the gossip sheets. Which had Rossby notifying your family posthaste that he wants to move up the wedding date.”
“Move up the date,” she whispered, her hand going to her throat and holding tight.
“Despite the scandal, he still wants you. Knowing that a duke mightily trumps a baron should you feel the need to amend your selection, Rossby sent a rather threatening note to Ashcroft telling him to back off, or he would make things exceedingly difficult for your family. If he cares for you, don’t make this scandal worse seems to be the extract.”
It was insanity that Finn felt a hot lick of rage because he’d not been the man Hester connected Victoria to. The man who’d kissed the life from her behind that damned fountain. When his name had been splashed across those sheets more times than he could count, and he’d never cared about misrepresentation before. “If we only knew what Rossby held over your family, we could easily clear the path for Ashcroft.”
He glanced up to find Victoria clinging to the bedpost, her fist clutching his shirt to keep it from sliding off her shoulder. Fury stained her cheeks a most becoming shade of cherry as her lips drew into a fierce line he’d come to know well. “Even if you clear the path, I won’t do it,” she vowed, her words dropping like stones in a still pond. “I won’t marry either of them.”
“Yes, you will,” he said quietly and crumpled the sheet in his fist. “Because I’m not offering another option. Not when a bloody dukedom, the most secure future imaginable, is possible with a little reconnaissance. You’ll be safe from anyone who hoped to find you, respected, secure. With the most impressive title in the ton. Deep down, you know I’m right.”
“You mentioned secure twice, Blue, while forgetting an important element. Happy. Which I realize I’m senseless to envisage when I could be what every girl dreams of being, a duchess with a husband who doesn’t love her.”
“Then we understand each other perfectly,” he returned while his mind screamed, don’t do this, Finn, don’t let her go.
She rocked back on her heels, her gaze leaving his, being torn from his. She waved him away, his shirt slipping down her arms and sending a sizzle through his belly. “If you’d be so kind as to secure a carriage while I dress, minus that chemise you destroyed, I’ll ride gracefully into my future. Leave you to ride gracefully into yours. How about that for understanding each other?”
Finn turned and walked from the room with a force of will he hadn’t known he had in him, although he hardly felt his feet hitting the floor. Mechanically, he resumed his life in measured degrees as he located transport, as he bundled Victoria into the dim confines of the carriage, as he watched it roll down a filthy alley six streets from the appalling hovel Julian had rescued him from, his sorrow backlit by nothing but a brilliant sunrise and an unsteady heartbeat.
He could quickly return to the women and the gambling, he decided as he smashed the wine bottle against his bedchamber wall. To the idiotic horse races and the leaps from widow’s balconies, he resolved as he stripped sweat-streaked sheets from his bed and took his knife to them until they lay in tatters.
To waking alone, wondering what it would be like to share his life with another person.
He brought the torn chemise to his nose and inhaled a last, lingering breath. As Victoria had so eloquently put it, he would return to the tedious mockery of a man he presented to the ton.
Finn made an agile leap from the oak branch to the sloped roof of Rossby’s townhome, landing outside his bedchamber window if the kitchen maid whose mind he’d read had provided proper information. His grief was a living thing, making his skin raw, and his breath painful to catch. He was looking forward to taking out his sorrow on someone. His aura would present a nightmare of color, he suspected, should Piper be able to see it.
He slid the already open window high enough to slip through, landing on the carpet with a dull thump. The room smelled of cigar smoke and port, and a choking, sweet fragrance he didn’t try to name. Maybe opium, which was interesting. The lights were dim, the furniture heavy, the form huddled beneath the coverlet still. Finn had been watching the house for hours, waiting for Rossby’s return. The baron had stumbled from his brougham less than an hour ago, in precisely the state Finn wanted him to be in for their discussion.
The sharp point of his knife was against Rossby’s neck before either of them took another breath. The baron wrenched awake, his bloodshot eyes widening as he scooted up in the bed. “Alexander. What…what the devil are you doing here? I don’t owe the Blue Moon. I paid the note months ago.”
Finn hadn’t tried to disguise his identity. Even with a mask, his eyes would show, and everyone knew those. “Another matter, sorry. I’m here to insist you compose an exceedingly humble missive telling Lady Hamilton’s father you’re respectfully stepping aside so she may marry the Duke of Ashcroft. Because you believe in true love, etcetera, etcetera. It will overflow with positive intention, and I do mean positive intention.”
Rossby laughed and wiped his wrist across his lips to contain the spittle. “I’ve wanted the girl since I first saw her when she was no more than sixteen. If you think I’m letting her go after all I did to secure her, you’re suited to a spot at Bedlam.”
Finn’s hand twitched, the blade digging into the baron’s fleshy, moon-pale skin. He watched the trail of blood race down Rossby’s neck to mingle with the spun cotton of his nightshirt with absolutely no feeling. “My God, are you making this bad on yourself.”
The baron slumped against the headboard, his hand rising to cover the wound on his neck. It was then he realized this was a game he might not win. “What’s this? Why do you even care about my marriage? About the girl? You’re known to be close to the duke, is that it? Did he send you?”
“Don’t worry about who sent me. Worry about waking to take your daily jaunt through Hyde Park tomorrow.”
“You vile bastard.” Blood seeped through Rossby’s clenched fingers, dribbling to his wrist.
Finn released a measured smile, delighted when Rossby’s skin paled. “Is that the best you can do? Disappointing.”
“You won’t get away with this.”
Finn wasn’t sure he would, either, but for Victoria’s sake, he was willing to risk it. Leaning down until Rossby’s fetid breath struck his cheek, he ran the stained blade beneath the man’s chin. “Oh, yes, I will. Because I know what you have on her father. I know everything.”
Rossby’s gaze darted around the room, frantic, before circling back to Finn
. His body spasmed beneath the sheet he’d drawn to his chest in defense. “You couldn’t. No one would talk. We have an agreement.” And then, of course, he started thinking about everything Finn could know, what might have been said because you couldn’t fully trust anyone.
Having never been more appreciative of his gift, Finn closed his eyes, brushed the tip of his pinkie over the ticking pulse beneath the baron’s ear, and let the man’s thoughts tumble through him. Finn shuddered because mixed in with a detailed account of certain reprehensible and quite illegal business dealings, were images of what Rossby had been hoping to do to Victoria.
Finn swallowed hard and removed the blade from beneath the baron’s chin before he made a snap decision and gutted him in his bed. Stepping back, he wiped the knife on his trousers, metal glinting in the moonlight spilling in around him. “I want the file. And don’t argue, because I’m either leaving with it or with a man’s death burdening my conscience.” He shrugged, meaning his next words with every beat of his heart. “It’s completely your choice.”
“You can’t do this,” the baron whispered, but he was rising from the bed, and Finn had ascertained from his thoughts that he was going to retrieve the file.
“I already have,” Finn said with a sigh, snagging his hand through his hair with a dull pulse of misery. “But don’t despair, she’s gaining a duke. An incredibly high step from a lowly baron. Such a benevolent decision you’re making.”
“I suppose you feel good about this,” Rossby snarled and yanked open a drawer on the escritoire desk just visible in the shadowed corner. He pulled a file out and crossing the room, thrust it at Finn. “Helping the duke marry his ladylove. I’d heard you were friends. And everyone knows the Alexander brothers think themselves noble. Tell Ashcroft I won’t forget this.”
Finn grasped the file and turned to the door. He wasn’t leaving through the damned window, he didn’t care how many servants saw him. He held all the cards now. “Remember what you will, Rossby, just know I have this information, and it implicates you in a very damaging manner should I decide to throw you to the wolves. Next week, next year, in ten years. What you’d best understand is that I’ll never forget.”
Exiting the townhouse, Finn closed the door behind him and sagged against it. He tipped his head to stare at a festal sky filled with winking specks of silver and a low, velvety gray haze. He gulped a breath of the river and coal smoke and the scent of fear lifting from his skin, carriages and people and even a stray dog moving past him, unconcerned with one man’s marginal island of desolation. He felt disassociated from the sounds of life around him. His heart was racing, his skin chilled, his mind teeming with unwanted images. A blinding headache was sitting just behind his eyes, and he brought his hand to his temple to push it away.
If he could only push her away.
Rossby had been dead wrong. He didn’t feel good about this.
He only felt his bloody heart breaking.
Chapter 16
There were traces of Finn all over Julian’s townhouse.
If one looked closely. Which, during her extreme and deadening misery over the past two days, she had.
Russian language texts, puzzle boxes, a handkerchief hidden in a desk drawer that carried his scent as solidly as her clothing did the faint zing of nutmeg. The pièce de résistance was a small portrait of him Agnes found her standing before, Victoria’s gaze likely as lost as it was enchanted. When she walked down the hallway the next day, the painting was gone, only a whitish mark on the wall to show where it had previously hung. Like Finn leaving her life with only a bleached mark staining her memory.
And just yesterday, she’d received a fateful memorandum from Rossby, brief but respectful, stating he couldn’t stand in the way of true love and would allow her to break their betrothal agreement. She could only stare at the missive in dry-eyed wretchedness while wondering how much Finn had to do with it. He’d removed the Grape from her life’s equation, and for this, she owed him.
But she was still stuck marrying a man she didn’t love.
Humphrey, Aggie, Belle, and the servants were handling her like someone being dispatched to the country for a recuperative period instead of what she was, a forthcoming duchess who’d yet to have a conversation with her duke. On the streets of Mayfair, the rumors connected her to Ashcroft, but inside these fashionably stenciled walls, everyone knew it was the endearing half-brother of the viscount who’d…
Victoria slumped to the marble bench hidden amidst a thicket of lilac bushes in the townhouse’s walled garden. Gazing at a turbulent sky the color of wet ash, she searched her mind, her breath scattering.
What, exactly, had Finn done to her?
Shown her a side of herself, a wanton, unaffected side she quite liked. Forced her to question her commitment to her family, to blind obedience, to sacrifice. Caused her—for the first time—to consider what she wanted from her life.
Did her happiness mean less than her father’s because she was a woman?
Were her options limited by her sex?
Everyone in her world certainly thought so. Without batting an eyelash thought so. Ashcroft had sent an admittedly agreeable message stating he’d visit her at three o’clock to discuss the details of their arrangement as if this expressed all that needed expressing.
A done deal. Which she supposed it did, and it was.
Finn understood what living on the fringe of society was like and had impressed upon her the certainty that securing her heart’s desire meant being banished to the nether reaches.
She didn’t care about being banished.
But he cared.
Enough to push her away, enough to turn his back when she’d gotten closer to him than anyone ever had. When, maybe, just maybe, he loved her, too. A flush lit her skin as she recalled the glorious things they’d done to each other in his stark bedchamber above the Blue Moon. True love or brief liaison, she couldn’t end their story for him. Not if he’d regret it every time they entered a shop, and someone gave her the cut direct.
And it appeared as if he wasn’t going to offer a way out when Ashcroft could provide everything she allegedly needed—security, wealth, standing.
Everything except love. Happiness. Contentment.
She wanted Fig Alexander’s children, not the Fireball Duke’s.
Drawing her slippered feet to the bench, Victoria dropped her cheek to her knee, cried out, hollow, absolutely empty inside. She sniffled and breathed in the overwhelming scent of lilacs, proving there were more tears in there somewhere. Finn Alexander, you coward. Except he wasn’t. He was an honorable man intent on doing the right thing, and she loved him for it. His bloody sincerity. His exemplary kindness. His sincere concern that someday she would need protection only a duke could offer.
Victoria stilled, her fingertips tingling.
Ashcroft.
Rolling her head to the side, she watched the duke cross the terrace with a purposeful stride, saddened that she felt nothing for the tall, menacingly handsome man. Not a single burst of heat, not even one goosebump. Enigmatic and intimidating, he would be hard to tame.
Victoria liked puzzles.
And, heavens, he was a duke.
An interesting man if she were interested.
Maybe she could pretend.
Until she figured out how to get Finn to run away with her.
Ashcroft bowed before her, flexing his hands, the look on his face one of bewilderment. Her gift still seemed to astound him. “May I?” he asked and gestured to the bench.
She gasped and yanked her feet to the ground, smoothing her skirt. “Of course, Your Grace.” The man must see she was no one’s idea of a suitable duchess. Incorrigible. Hadn’t Finn called her that with no small amount of admiration, his words muffled against her moist skin? He liked her passionate nature when the austere duke looked like he favored obedience.
“Ashcroft, please. We needn’t stand on such rigid formality.” He smiled, though no warmth reached his eye
s. “Lady Hamilton, may I ask what you did to poor Hester at my summer party? We found him stumbling around the lawn, clutching his head and stammering about my kissing you. Which”—he coughed into his fist, his brow winging high—“I think I’d recall.”
“Along with my slight gift…” She chewed on her nail and gestured inanely. “I’m able to erase the recent past from someone’s mind, a parlor trick I’ve mostly used for my own trivial benefit. To avoid scrapes, that sort of thing.” Scandals her guardian angel had saved her from when her gift had not. The realization made her chest ache, her hand curling around the stone bench and sending the jagged nicks into her skin. At that moment, she missed Finn so much, she wondered how she’d get past it.
“My dear, your ability to blast the heat from my fingertips is demonstrated whenever I’m within a hundred yards of you. Nothing slight about it.” He stared wonderingly at his scarred hands, and she recalled the stories about his many military escapades. “It’s bloody remarkable.”
Her breath seized, the illumination in her heart dimming to a tiny, wretched dot. He would marry her for her gift while Finn pushed her away despite it. She picked at a loose thread on her skirt, gathering her courage. She and Ashcroft couldn’t build a relationship, even one as associates in the League, based on lies. “I have to be honest…”
“Let me guess. You’re in love with young Finn, you and half of England,” he muttered, issuing a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snort. As if she’d chosen to place her money on the horse everyone expected to win. “I noted the way you looked at each other standing by my fountain, even if you were both trying mightily to stamp out the fire. I imagine he’s the man Hester observed kissing you, but your mind-scramble rendered him a faulty witness.”
