by Tracy Sumner
Simon hummed the answer to a question he’d evidently only asked himself. “Delaney told me about the swap you proposed. The Soul Catcher for the League’s allowance to delve deeper into your gift.” Tugging a pair of kidskin gloves from his coat pocket, he extended them without a hint of mockery, which, right or wrong, would have had her tossing them in his face. “I remember that feeling. Of being indebted in a way I could never repay. When I came to live with Julian, I was very tormented. And still, to this day, I feel I owe him. And Finn. Piper. Which if I utter the sentiment, sends Julian into an indignant spiral. Only, poverty doesn’t breed a desire to take things one hasn’t earned. I know this. I understand. I stole because I had to. Now, if I’m the occasional thief, it’s only because I’m bored.”
She laid the parasol aside, and after a moment, took the gloves from him. They were the color of the caramel sweets sold in the market around the corner from her flat. Butter-soft. So delicate and yet, not. She resisted the impulse to bring them to her nose and inhale. He’d think she was cracked, for sure, or that she liked him. Tugging them on, where they bulged and hung on her slim hand but felt like sleek magic, she asked, “Trade?”
Bringing his hand to his lips—quiet—he opened the cloakroom door and peeked into the hallway. Then half-turning, he crooked his finger at her, beckoning. “All clear. Come. If Delaney finds you missing, we’re in trouble. And that kind of trouble, I don’t need.”
“But—”
“No arguments. Not after my fishing you out of this stew. Another word of advice? If we come upon anyone, anyone at all, look at the ground. Those eyes of yours are about as astonishing as your hair.”
A familiar sting scalded her cheeks. Her hair had always been an embarrassment, a reason for unwanted attention. Yet, Simon described it in a way that made her feel almost…beautiful. Taking a courageous breath, she nudged her mask high and stepped into the hall, so close to Simon, his shadow washed over her.
If she could only stay in that safe nook forever.
“What’s the trade?” she whispered as she crept down the darkened hallway. Laughter and the crack of dice and crystal flowed down the passageway like a river along narrow banks. The scent of whiskey, cigar smoke and men’s cologne salting the air with a piquant mix with which she was well acquainted. Not everything in the future was different. “I’m not sayin’ I agree until I hear the provisions, you know.”
He smothered a laugh in his fist and halted at the end of the hallway. Lifting his arm, he rapped on a scarred walnut door three times in rapid succession. Two knocks came back from the other side. Simon repeated with one knock.
“This feels very mysterious,” Emma murmured, intrigued despite herself. 1882 was turning out to be more entertaining than 1802 had been. And, the future held Simon.
Without comment, he blindly reached for her hand and, when the door opened, tugged her through the entranceway and into the alley. The cobblestones were slick with dew and grime, the foul scent of the river and what smelled like charred meat stinging her nostrils. Pale moonlight peeking through the ashen clouds, feebly lighting their way. “For God’s sake, cast your gaze to your feet,” he whispered roughly and escorted her to a waiting carriage. A fine one, from the looks of it. Luxurious equipage. Nothing of the dilapidated hackney variety she was used to when any conveyance, in truth, was a luxury she’d rarely been able to afford.
A brutish sentry who’d been stationed by the alley entrance lowered the carriage step, the door open and awaiting her arrival. Emma frowned. So, this is what the series of knocks had said without words. A woman who needed to sneak like a rat into the night without advertisement. A frequent enough occurrence for the Blue Moon staff to have a secret code to put the plan into action.
Emma climbed the step on temper alone. Flouncing to the tufted velvet squab, she shifted her bottom and yanked her skirt from beneath her, the piercing rip she heard sending her anger bubbling. “How often do you employ this crafty dodge anyway?”
“Ofen’ enough, miss,” the sentry murmured with a chuckle, closing the door with a finalizing click. “Tucks ‘em away in his flat right regular, he does. And we gets ‘em out. A bang-up operation we run at the Blue Moon, innit? In the gaming salon and out back.”
“Christ, Mackey, shut up,” Simon growled and elbowed him aside.
Mackey gave a choked stutter, his ruddy cheeks flooding with color she could see clearly in the misty night. “Them dirty boots and the gaudy mask, oh, I thought this wasn’t one of yours, Mister Simon. The viscount losing his beans at the whist table, maybe. Or that daft earl who’s come in every night this week because his actress trotted off with the poet.” He tipped his hat in apology. “Your ladies are quality and don’t usually leave this early.”
“Bloody hell,” Simon muttered and motioned Mackey away from the carriage. Leaning in, he clutched the window ledge, his knuckles blanching. His chagrined expression would have had her snickering had crimson not been bleeding into the borders of her vision. His lips tilting, the bottom one tucked attractively between his straight, white teeth. As if he wanted to speak but had decided it best he not.
Invading her space with his broad body when all she could imagine were the thousands of women he’d had ‘right regular’ up there in his blasted flat. Quality women, which her soiled boots had revealed her not to be. She was, in fact, quality, according to rookery rules. Untouched, though she’d no doubt this would surprise most. A battle it’d been to stay that way, too, when selling herself would have paid well enough to keep her in candles most nights. Her gift of disappearing the reason she’d been able. Stepping out of dangerous situations. Consequently, she’d gained a reputation as having the touch, never a good thing.
And because of her upbringing, she knew the mechanics of the act, had seen more than any young lady of good breeding—quality— should have.
The thought of Simon and anyone but her doing that sizzled across her skin like a fever. Too late, the thoughts, because she had that damned vision in her head to guide her, a rotten experience she planned to never tell anyone about.
Worse than imagination when a person had the real thing to recall.
However, Madame Hebert’s words flashed through her mind, the barest whiff of good feeling. Like Simon’s stimulating scent drifting in the open carriage window, light but uplifting. He’d looked for her until he was mad with it, which must mean something.
Simon’s shoulders drooped on a sigh men all through the ages had expelled, his teeth losing their hold on his bottom lip. “I’m not sure what you’re so annoyed about.”
It hit her then, like her ma’s occasional smack across her bottom.
Emmaline Breslin, who could’ve snared any bloke she’d wanted in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, even if they’d been scared to pieces of her mystical touch, wanted a man who didn’t want her. In that way. He wished to save her, to pick apart her gift. He hadn’t spent ten years tracking her down out of fondness or devotion. Same as her, at first. She’d come to the League because the gypsies who camped at the edge of town every spring told her about a group of people who aided those mystically gifted—and about a magical swish stone.
But she’d come back again and again for him.
His were sensible motives when her heart wasn’t a sensible vessel.
“Whatever could I be irked about?” she asked, vowing right then and there in the swank carriage he used to spirit women off when he was done with them, to make herself the bleeding toast of London. She’d learn to speak like a countess and walk with a book on her head clear to Westminster and sip tea like blinking Victoria while wearing the most gorgeous gowns society had ever seen.
All to allow the condemned man clinging to her carriage window to feel this pain.
She’d make him so jealous he would discharge like one of the duke’s poorly-made firecrackers.
She yanked his gloves off, one finger at a time. Preparing to give them back, then deciding not to. “I want the stone. While
I’m learning to be a high-born lady, I want it with me. It calms me. And if your League is going to pick my…talent like a wound, make me appear here and there around this blessed city, a marionette and them holding the strings, I need it.”
Simon gazed into her face so penetratingly that what her granny called look-see grooves flowed from the corners of his eyes. Adorable lines she wanted to smooth away with her fingers. Or with a tender, lingering kiss. “Take the better life,” he whispered and dug in his coat pocket, his broad shoulder lifting, coming up with the Soul Catcher. A slice of weak moonlight struck it, and it glittered, casting yellow and green diamonds across the carriage’s interior. A splash of an omen about the future, perhaps. “You’d be a fool not to.”
“Like you did. And you’re no fool. Anyone can see that.”
He laughed then, a vicious sound that sent goosebumps dancing along her arms. “Darlin’, I was a mudlark before turning to the more profitable and less dangerous, though completely hazardous sport of thievery. This, when I was all of eight years old. A celebrated cutpurse set to spill the last of his young blood on the cobbles of St Giles, before I was given an opportunity much the same as you’re being given, to forge a new life.” He rapped the window ledge once with his fist. “So, never, ever mistake my understanding of the circumstances you find yourself in. Or the twist in your belly when you think about accepting the offer and being indebted for life to another. It’s an exchange, make no mistake. I’m only telling you, advice from a professional gambler if you choose to take it, that it’s a profitable exchange.”
Emma rocked back against the squabs, clenching her trembling hands in her lap. Mudlarking? Saints be. Only the most deplorable of circumstances lowered one to that profession. “Your name,” she whispered from the depths of the shadows she collapsed into. “Your real name.”
His arm extended into the carriage, the Soul Catcher an offer held lightly between his long, slim fingers. “MacDermot. Simon MacDermot. There might have been a middle name at one time, but I can’t recall it if there was.”
Emma gasped and leaned into the stray moonbeam piercing the carriage window. “Irish. You’re Irish.” She could see it now that she was looking. The faint scatter of freckles dancing across the bridge of his nose. The hair, glints of auburn, just a touch, mixed in with wheat.
“My father…he was…” His lips caught in a hard line, the skin around his mouth whitening. “I don’t use the name. I’m never going to use it.”
Shattering the charged moment, Emma snatched the swish stone from Simon before he changed his mind about loaning it to her, then patted the gem against her chest. Mostly an effort to erase the anguish from his face by turning his thoughts from his father to her. “I’m Irish, too. In County Donegal, my granny said it was Ó Breasláin.” Tucking the stone in the edge of her bodice, unable to ignore the way his gaze fiercely tracked the movement, she shrugged, wishing his regard didn’t light her up the way it did. That slender ring of violet around his pupils, the tawny mix in his hair, him looking so dapper standing there. Without even trying. Spit-shined, as the old Emma would have said. A body like Captain Jack, the finest pugilist in Tower Hamlets. Lean, broad, bulging muscles even clever tailoring couldn’t hide.
She thought back to when Simon had jammed his boot on Jonesy’s back and dug the thug’s face in the dirt, protecting her.
The gesture made her warm in places it shouldn’t.
She’d always taken good care of herself. It was madness to let that job fall to someone who only cared about a mystical talent that had wrecked her life. Made her an oddity when she’d wanted to fade into the background. Made her everything but normal.
Although, feeling nothing for him was impossible. He had this adorable dimple that winked at her when he smiled, which wasn’t often. And he was handsome in every way that mattered. Like a church bell, his nearness reverberated through her, even if the noise was one she didn’t wish to hear.
“Breslin. It means strife if you’re wondering,” she finally said when the silence had begun to chafe.
Simon yanked the curtain across the window, shutting off her view of him, then stepped back with a rough laugh. “So your name literally means trouble? Brilliant.” Tapping the carriage roof, he gave the duke’s address to the coachman and bid her goodnight with one whispered promise that floated away on the breeze: tomorrow.
Though her heart reached through the window to catch the proclamation back.
As the conveyance rocked into motion, she turned, watching through the narrow window as fog settled upon her savior, a concealing mist, until she could no longer see him standing there.
But he was a beating presence in her heart. In her mind, in her soul, if she had one.
A presence she feared more than she feared going back to 1802—and not making it out alive.
Chapter 4
The next afternoon, Simon arrived at the Duke of Ashcroft’s townhome and was escorted to what he thought of as the gruesomely green parlor, where he found Emmaline sprawled indecorously across the Axminster carpet situated before the hearth, her head pillowed on the rounded rump of one of the duke’s many mutts. The mutt asleep, the girl awake. Her deliciously long legs stretched out, stockinged toes wiggling, she held a book he imagined was one of Dickens’s novels he’d sent over this morning. She had the volume tucked close to her face, her mouth moving silently as she read lines of text. A charred section of the rug, fresh from the look and scent of it, lay right beside her elbow, one of the Duke of Ashcroft’s attempts to send a blaze from his mind directly to the hearth.
Close, the effort. No more than a foot away. Refining his skill after years of practice.
Simon slumped against the doorjamb, crossed his legs at the ankle and took her in, this positively foreign, absolutely fascinating creature who’d beguiled her way into his life.
A woman who’d haunted him more than any ghost in existence.
She was nothing like the society chits who offered themselves to him daily. Their attraction answerable to his ownership of the Blue Moon and the skills a viscount’s byblow possessed that a high-born man likely wouldn’t. A jaded bunch, the lot of them, himself included, seeking entertainment and deliverance.
Glancing about the room, he came across a tidy pile stacked by the hearth. A pair of silver dancing slippers, a lilac shawl and his gloves. He flexed his fingers and, in a swift move for a man known for them, shoved his clenched fists deep in his trouser pockets. It seemed Emma intended to give the gloves back when he, absurdly, wanted her to keep them.
He took a step into the parlor, aware that a gentleman would have alerted a lady to his presence. But he wasn’t a gentleman, and Emmaline Breslin wasn’t a lady. With a soft smile, he shook his head, unsure what to call her. Termagant? Hellion?
She wore another new gown, this one a shade, perhaps two, lighter than her magnificent indigo eyes. Madame Hebert had selected jewel tones that would set her apart in a ballroom if the vivacity of her personality did not. Simon thought her raw beauty enough to make her shimmer, a diamond amongst dull, grey stones. High cheekbones, a chin that spoke of obstinacy and hasty decisions. A challenging face, sensual and stubborn. One that brought to mind tangled sheets and the pleasurable tremors that ripped through you after coming so hard you almost blacked out.
Any man’s dream, aside from the abrasive accent, the rough skin, the disrespectful manner. Things that didn’t matter in the least that mattered mightily to the ton. They’d have to change her or hide the parts they couldn’t change before she’d be ready for society introductions.
He knew this because he’d done it himself.
To please him, she needed no alteration. He’d searched for her before he knew. He wondered if she realized that. Or, that’d he given up on her—and now questioned if he should have. Years too late, that decision. He’d lost himself along the way and lost her, too.
With a rousing yawn, Emma pulled Dickens closer and squinted.
Simon held back a
chuckle. Why, she needs spectacles. He opened his mouth to tell his hellion that when two small, human projectiles rammed into the backs of his legs, forcing him to stumble awkwardly into the room.
Emma shoved to an inelegant sit, tugging her skirt over her ankles, color sweeping enticingly down her neck and bleeding into the rounded collar of her gown. Her gaze snapped to the slippers stacked hopelessly by the hearth as she gave her stockinged toes a frantic wiggle. She’d lost herself in—Simon tilted his head to read the title of the book she’d placed by her feet—David Copperfield.
The duke’s youngest children, twins Worth and Winnie, danced in a wild circle around Simon, chanting a charming ditty he didn’t know, their grubby hands tugging on his trousers and leaving what looked like specks of jam behind. He laughed and tried to brush them off. “I know you’re looking for butterscotch. I didn’t bring any today.”
“Bother,” Winnie said, flashing a gap-toothed grin, her amber eyes exact replicas of her father’s. But her face, oh, her lovely face was all Delaney’s. “You never forget sweets. You’re the bestest for sweet giving.”
Worth plopped himself on the sofa and folded his hands in his lap, a flawless embodiment of etiquette. “I shall behave like a gentleman whilst I beg for my treat.”
Winnie giggled and jammed her bottom right next to her brother’s. “Me, too. A perfect lady.” Then she ruined the statement by licking a spot of jam from her thumb.
Simon had to work to contain his amusement at the apprehensive look on Emma’s face. “What say you, Miss Breslin?”
