by Tracy Sumner
Emma popped her head over the back of the sofa and blinked owlishly. “About?” She wobbled precariously, struggling to put on her slippers without anyone noticing they’d been taken off.
Worth tilted his head. “Oh, hello, Miss Emmaline. You need to tell Uncle Si to give us the candies he always carries. He’ll flip them around like a magician if you ask him nicely. Part of his gift. That and the dead ghosties. My gift is that I will someday make fire fly from my fingertips, like my father, the duke. I dream about doing it, so it must be so.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “A secret, but it means we both have gifts. It means we all have gifts.”
Emma’s gaze shot to Simon’s. Fire, she mouthed?
Later, he said with nothing more than a shake of his head.
The League had worried that the next generation would inherit supernatural abilities, and unfortunately, it appeared to be happening. Julian’s son, Lucien, touched objects and saw the past, as his father did. One of Finn’s daughters seemed to be a blocker, like her mother. And Worth…Worth dreamed of fires. News that had nearly destroyed the Duke of Ashcroft when he’d first realized it. Thrown him into a depression Simon had dreaded he wouldn’t recover from. The League had feared he would return to the opium dens, a place he’d frequented before his marriage, but he had not. His wife Delaney, would never let that happen.
Consequently, Simon had decided not to have children. He’d been cautious in his relationships, most of those extremely short, to ensure pregnancy did not result.
To parent a child who conversed with the deceased seemed a worse nightmare than conversing with them yourself.
Seemed like a dreadful wager from the start.
Anyway, he’d never feel that blind obsession, reckless need. Overpowering yearning.
Julian and Finn had stressed the imperative often enough. Without love, a successful union was untenable. He supposed it made him a romantic, but he’d seen his brother’s marriages flourish, so he believed love was necessary. Furthermore, he had no title to offer. Nothing to offer except a dubious upbringing, a fictional history, an uncertain future. He was educated, thanks to Julian, and wealthy, thanks to Finn, who’d gifted him half the Blue Moon upon his majority.
His reputation, however, was in tatters. And his soul, in part, broken.
And the haunts…
Who would want to share that existence? At this moment, Henry, the ghost who’d been troubling him for months and who’d died in 1793, was sitting by the hearth, his wrinkled chin in his fist, viewing the unfolding scene. Simon didn’t have the heart to send the aged vagabond on his way, though he knew he should.
Simon watched Emma wiggle into her other slipper, his heart taking a feeble tilt he rather wished it hadn’t. She’d experienced poverty, isolation, torment. Brawled with the dregs of society to survive. Alone, without family. She needed someone with a soothing soul to rescue her from the abyss, when Simon would do nothing but plunge her deeper into it. He was a man who woke amid childhood terrors, a man who, with every room he entered, experienced the desperate urge to steal something while he strolled through it.
Simon felt a tug on his sleeve and looked down into Worth’s sterling eyes. “Miss Emma makes the grandest cake in London. She showed me how to do the icing. Said she might show her little boy how to do it someday, exactly like we did. Lemon with rosemary, which sounds yucky but was terribly wonderful. Everyone in the house is raving about it, mama says. I ate two slices, then felt sick to my tummy.”
Simon’s gaze crawled to hers. She liked children. And baking. “Cake?”
In a gesture he was coming to understand was all Emma, her shoulders lifted in defiance and self-preservation. “I like to bake. The recipe has been in my family for generations. Being charitable, I gave it to the duke’s cook. I’m the last of the Breslins. Lemon-rosemary loaf is lost to this world if no one else knows how to make it.”
“Hmm…” Simon flopped into an armchair, the worn leather cracking, trying to imagine this virago doing something as domestic as baking a cake. Slipping his hand in his waistcoat pocket, he withdrew two butterscotch sweets and began to twirl them between his fingers. Worth and Winnie’s eyes grew round as half crowns as they scooted to the edge of the sofa. The canine Emma had rested her head upon ambled over, parking himself by Simon’s boot with a muffled bark. The dog had a violet satin ribbon looped about his neck, one Simon guessed had been assigned to contain Emma’s wild tresses before she’d removed it.
Simon tugged at the makeshift collar, then sent Emma a glance that he realized was more than mildly flirtatious after he’d released it.
Rising to her feet, Emma lifted her hand to smooth her hair, a minuscule pleat settling between her brows. Simon didn’t know if she struggled to interpret the meaning behind his enticing look. Or her reaction to it. Leaning down, she grabbed his gloves from the pile by the hearth and pulled them in close to her chest. It was as if she’d taken his hand and placed it there, just above her ribcage. He could almost feel the flutter of her heart.
They stared, lost to the moment. Until Simon freed himself, straightening in his chair, blindly handing the butterscotch to the children while debating if he was going to follow his brain’s instinct to cross the room, take Emma’s face in his palms and—
“Emmaline,” the Duchess of Ashcroft called from the hallway. “I need to speak to you about your dance lesson.”
Worth and Winnie glanced at each other before turning pitying eyes on Emma. “Good luck, lessons are a horror,” Worth whispered around his butterscotch with all the bravery a young boy could muster, then he and his sister dashed across the room and edged into the hallway, obviously hoping to avoid their mother.
“Dance lessons,” Emma whispered, her cheeks blanching. She twisted his gloves into a wrinkled wad. “What bleeding dance lessons?”
Simon sneaked a farthing from his trouser pocket, a wide grin tilting his lips. Propping his boots on the coffee table, he flipped the coin from hand to hand. “I think I’ll stay a bit, after all. Dancing lessons. Sounds positively enchanting. Unless one is engaged in taking the lesson, that is. My tip? Don’t say bleeding or step on the dance master’s toes. And never, ever, think to say no to Delaney Tremont.”
The very pregnant duchess practically tumbled into the room, her breath leaving her in little pants. “Oh, heavens, there you are. I worried for a second that you’d blinked and traveled to 1920 or something. You’re like a butterfly I’m afraid will flit away while I’m not looking.” She closed her eyes, tapped her head, then opened them again. Making a quick trip to the attic in her mind. “Did you know they call a collection of butterflies a kaleidoscope? Maybe someday we can take a trip to America, just for a day or so. I haven’t been back since Sebastian took me on our honeymoon. With four children, I have no time for travel. But you’re quicker than Cunard, that’s for sure.” Delaney patted her belly, her gaze widening when it hit him. “Simon. This is divine intervention. Monsieur Claude had to cancel, and we need to get moving on the waltz. The ball to introduce Emma to society is in less than two weeks.” When he didn’t make an immediate effort to stand, she snapped her fingers. “Get up and come along.”
Simon looked to Emma, who was deciding, he could see from her strained expression, between laughing at his dilemma or being fearful of her own. He rose to his feet with a choke of laughter. “Oh, no, Delaney. I’m not your man. Finn’s the one you—”
“I have you, the most accomplished dancer in our extended supernatural family, according to your instructor, Madame Rudolph. She said your gifts were not confined to your feet. I always wondered about that comment, which seemed odd at the time. But you’re an Alexander, so maybe it’s perfectly clear. I’ll meet you in the ballroom.” Dusting her hands, the deed done, the duchess turned on her heel and marched from the parlor, or as well as she could with an ample belly marching out before her, expecting the two stunned inhabitants to follow.
Simon tugged Emma’s sleeve as she brushed past. “De
laney’s joking. I was fifteen. Madame Rudolph meant nothing by that comment except that I’m a marginally proficient dancer.” He gave the farthing an embarrassed spin. “If you must know, it came naturally. Not like growing up in St Giles gave me any advantages. Little more than bawdy houses and gin palaces. Those I know a great deal about.”
When Emma gave him a cross glare and followed the duchess into the hallway, he shoved the coin in his pocket and trudged along behind them. Women.
“Can’t please these chits nowadays; don’t even try,” Henry advised from his spot just behind Simon. He was a relatively accommodating haunt. He didn’t try to get too close nor stay too long. Sooner or later, he’d disappear altogether, and Simon would feel a pang wondering what had happened to him. “Might as well go and show the young miss the waltz. Four simple steps. Nothing to it. Just remember to bow when you finish. Proper like. And wipe off that frown. Think of the advantages, sonny. No better way to get close to a girl you fancy than the waltz. A true scandal in my time. Course, just starting to be popular when I had to up and die.”
“I don’t fancy the girl. I’m protecting her,” Simon muttered and took the circular stairs leading down into the ballroom two at a time, ignoring Henry’s bark of laughter.
Delaney had tripped the gaslights, and the chandeliers glowed, casting a gilded shimmer across cream marble. The weather was gray and leaden, but in this room, the world was luminous. Emma wandered through the cascading light, her gown shifting from indigo to a shade close to the color of one of the Blue Moon’s five-pound chips. They could have practiced just as well in the gallery, Simon guessed, but Delaney liked to make every event a celebration.
He wondered vaguely if her joie de vivre ever exhausted her husband.
Halting at the bottom of the stairs, he repressed an insane urge to steal the figurine of a hound sitting on a high table to his right. Henry clucked his tongue in dismay and drifted past, strolling to a spot along the far wall from which to observe Simon’s probable thievery further.
“There’s no music,” Simon offered contrarily and crossed to where Emma stood, her slim body quivering like a reed as she shifted from one silver slipper to another, his gloves pressed ruinously to her bosom. She looked like she was being offered up as a human sacrifice. While Delaney, Her Grace, Duchess of Ashcroft, looked positively thrilled.
Thrilled by what, Simon had no idea.
Though, she was the most competitive woman he’d ever met.
“Oh, we have music,” Delaney said with a smile meant to throw them off course. “In this house, we always have music.”
Simon grimaced, looking around for something to steal. “You didn’t. He wouldn’t.” A duke who could shoot fire from his fingertips and was, well, a duke, wouldn’t participate in this frivolity.
Delaney snickered and curled her hand lovingly around her protruding belly. “You think I can’t get the duke to do anything I’d like him to do while I’m in this delicate condition? Darling, Simon, you have yet to learn the lengths to which a man will go for the woman he loves. I only need crook my finger in his direction.”
Simon blew out a breath, not bothering to look over his shoulder when he heard a familiar, resounding tread slapping marble. The duke stalked through every room he inhabited like the former soldier he was. An intentional stride, never an idle amble for this man.
Sebastian Tremont, fifth Duke of Ashcroft, halted beside the taciturn group, violin in one hand, bow in the other. “I hear a waltz is in order.”
“Your Grace,” Simon murmured in a brutal tone.
Sebastian tapped the bow to Simon’s shoulder, knighting him king of the ballroom. “What a surprise. Young Simon, here to help prepare my dear cousin, Emmaline, for her debut.” His smile grew, plumping his granite cheeks. “Or not,” he added in a whisper for just the two of them.
Emma stepped close, too close, the scent of her damned rosemary cake sliding past his nose, twisting his heart and his gut. With a sigh of longing, she trailed her finger up the violin’s scrolled neck. “You play, Your Grace?”
If it were possible for a duke who had most of society cowering to preen, this one did. “I do,” he said and bowed ever so slightly.
Emma gently plucked a string in a manner that spoke of familiarity. “I do as well. A little. Nothing taught. My granny”—she snapped her lips shut and exhaled sharply—“my grandmother had an instrument. We had to sell it, eventually, to pay the rent. And it was more of a fiddle, nothing so grand as this.” She trailed her knuckle along the fingerboard in a caress that had Simon’s cock jerking beneath his trouser buttons.
Highlighted in the light washing over her, a detail Simon didn’t need became discernable. A tiny freckle on Emma’s right cheek, an imperfection that made her more perfect. He suppressed a hushed, desperate yearning to press his lips to the spot—a yearning more potent than any he’d felt in his life.
“Better get that wicked lovesick expression off your face if you don’t want the chit to know how loopy you are over her,” Henry whispered from just behind him. “Or His and Her Grace to know how you feel. You’re the kind to keep it tucked up tight, I’ve noticed that about you.”
Simon threw out his hand in a gesture of impatience. “Are we starting the lessons, or what?”
Emma tilted her head, her blue eyes so bloody blue he was sinking in them. “Is there one around you now?”
Simon shrugged, frantic for a cufflink to steal. Button to pilfer. Coin to filch. “Henry. Bootmaker, died in 1793.”
Henry gave his mustache a twirl. “Blacksmith, actually. The best in Portsmouth.”
“Sorry.” Simon rocked back on his heels. “Blacksmith.”
“Hello, Henry,” Emma said and searched the area surrounding Simon. “I’m Emma. Time traveler. Formerly of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.”
Simon halted, his breath seizing. No one had made an effort to speak to one of his haunts before, not once. Not ever. He must have reacted in a way Emma neglected to notice—a reaction the duke certainly did notice.
In a thrice, Sebastian took Emma’s elbow and escorted her to his duchess while Simon’s heart continued its descent to the marble floor.
Chapter 5
The Duke of Ashcroft played better than her granny ever had, Emma decided as she half-listened to the duchess’s dance instructions and the duke’s meandering tune. Violin tucked against his collarbone, chin resting on the glossy wooden lip, he looked a prime piece standing there, body swaying as he moved through the song. One of those men who were big and broad but still somehow managed to look elegant.
A neat trick, that.
Rather like Simon and his flash of elegance.
To a degree that made her mouth water.
Simon was leaner than the duke but retained a muscular frame his fine clothing couldn’t hide. Lanky, even, a new word in her vocabulary, thanks to Dickens. Restless, his hands in constant motion. Reserved, his emotions sealed. However, she wasn’t fooled. He was passionate beneath that exterior he worked hard to polish smooth as glass. He’d shown his true self to her a few times. While jamming Jonesy’s face into the dirt and for a flaring, hot second when she’d spontaneously spoken to his ghost. Something about that gesture had struck him deeply.
In a place she didn’t think too many people had reached.
Emma peeked from the corner of her eye as the duchess gave her directions she didn’t for a moment hear.
Not when she could watch him.
Standing before the window, hands braced on the ledge, staring out at nothing of interest that she could see. People slinking down a busy London street. Overloaded carts, posh carriages, burdened hackneys. Coachmen in liveried attire. Folks in plain dress, folks in stylish. It wasn’t like it was dark, and the lane lit with those incredible streetlamps one could stare at all night. He flipped a farthing between his fingers, defying gravity, not looking down. Muscle memory, the gypsies called it. An effort to calm himself, she’d come to believe. She’d seen haw
kers at carnivals who couldn’t do what he could.
It made her wonder, in a mysterious little nook that lit up when she looked at Simon Alexander, what else he could do with those hands.
“He’ll forgive you. If you’re patient…and you play your cards right as women for centuries have had to. Don’t feel it’s dishonest; it’s simply the mathematics of love.”
Emma flinched and turned to the duchess, her breath catching to realize she’d been caught ogling what accounted, in a distant, supernatural family way, to this woman’s brother. “Play my cards…”
With a groan, Delaney slid gracelessly into the chair her husband had directed a footman retrieve for her. The duke was the height of care and consideration with regard to his duchess, which Emma found a most adorable—and sickening—thing to watch. “He’s the sensitive one in this family. Julian, Finn, Humphrey, Sebastian, none as painstakingly constructed as Simon. As guarded. Still holding on to such a substantial slice of who he was before. So many secrets. Too many secrets. Finn and Julian worry about his struggle, as brothers should. But I”—Delaney took a sip of tea from the cup the duke had snapped his fingers and had superciliously delivered to her—“think he’ll talk to someone when he finds the right someone. What he’s doing with these women, I imagine, doesn’t require much talking. And is only an effort that brings more loneliness, not takes it away. But men have to figure that out for themselves, now, don’t they? Uncomplicated creatures.”
“Forgive me for what?” Emma asked, the snag in her voice apparent. Anger and…understanding flooding out. Simon was a scamp, a rogue, a bounder. And she’d been right in thinking he was upset with her. But she was upset, too. Nevertheless, if he trusted her enough to share his secrets, she’d likely be weak enough to fall right into that trap and share hers back. “What did I do?”
Delaney paused, the teacup halfway to her lips. “You left.”
Emma glanced over her shoulder to confirm the man they were discussing hadn’t moved from his contemplative spot by the window. “I couldn’t come back. My mother was ill, dying. And, then, when I could, after she passed, even with the Soul Catcher, I messed up, over and over. Arrived once before Simon was even born. The other time, in Oxfordshire, but he was a baby in London. Once, I even ended up in Scotland in the dead of winter. Horrible. And then…” Emma glanced at his gloves, still clutched in her hands. She’d lifted them to her nose in the privacy of her bedchamber this morning and breathed his scent into her soul. He hadn’t forgiven her—but he hadn’t waited, either. “I made it back. Five years after I left, maybe six.” She glanced into the duchess’s smoke-gray eyes, the scene coming back to her, a rough pinch to her heart. “There was a woman. Older. A countess or something close to it, I figured. I stepped into a performance I shouldn’t have, then stepped out as quickly as I could. Landed in the wrong year on the way back, which I fixed after a bit of experimentation.”
