The Hellion is Tamed

by Tracy Sumner

  Emma’s cheeks burned to realize the way she felt about Simon was noticeable. Rising to her elbow, she shifted atop the massive bustle as she struggled to kick off her slippers. Lovely silver ones she was coming to adore. Even if they pinched. But she loved them almost as much as she loved her beautiful gowns, except for the dreadful corset she had to wear to squeeze into the gowns.

  This life, this grand, grand life, was one she feared she could get used to. “Mollie, may I ask how you ended up in a duke’s household of all places?”

  Mollie whimpered and crumpled to the crimson velvet settee. “Do I n-n-not please as a lady’s maid? I’m learning to say the H in all my words and not belch and keep my opinions to myself cause I’m not paid to share them. Lowly, they are, truly in the mud, what I think. I told Miss Josie a showy place such as this was aiming too high. Mayfair! T-t-too high, indeed! I woulda been h-h-happy with that stinking-rich banker who needed a scullery maid. But, no, Miss Josie had to place me with a duke!”

  Emma scooted to the edge of the bed, the slipper dangling from her left foot dropping to the floor. “Goodness, Mollie, that isn’t what I meant. You’re brilliant. I’ve never known a better lady’s maid.”

  Mollie’s brow cocked high as she sniffled. “Have you known another lady’s maid, missy? I’m guessing not. I reckon the cousin of nobility fib is stretching it, though you have my promise, I’ll never tell a soul you aren’t what they say you are. To the grave, our secrets. Mine and yours.”

  Emma shook her head and laughed softly, kicking her other slipper free. How was she to dupe the entire of London if she couldn’t dupe a servant?

  Mollie snickered and gave her nondescript black skirt a cheery pluck. “That’s the way of it. We both mean to make the best of this splendid opportunity.” Her voice dropped to a ragged murmur. “Leave the bad behind.”

  “Was it bad?” Emma whispered, grasping with a dull ache how lonely she was. For home, even when 1802 hadn’t been splendid in any way. When she’d had to watch her back, worry every minute about how she was going to pay the next month’s rent, food, candles. Steal when forced, lie all the time. Be nastier than she wanted to be, every single day.

  But she missed the apple tarts her neighbor, Mrs. Watkins, made for her once a month. Missed the aroma of wheaten bread coming from Sampson’s bakehouse on the corner. Missed the children, gap-toothed, their faces streaked with dirt, their clothing riddled with holes, who’d smiled at her as she strolled the docks. She missed her scruffy pillow and the quilt her mother had made for her when she was seven. She missed her favorite boots, the ones that had holes in the soles that she patched twice a year.

  The tricky part: she hadn’t expected to be offered a new life—and then only have seconds to decide whether to accept the offer.

  But she could, would, make the best of it.

  Because this life provided more than fresh quarter loaves Mister Sampson sold her on the sly.

  She could turn a knob and have warm water shoot from faucets right in the house. She had her own tub and a basket of stylish soaps the duchess had given her, colorful cubes that smelled of lavender and peony, enough for a thousand washings. Oranges and grapes were available every morning at breakfast. Last night, she’d sneaked down to the duke’s pantry and perused the incredible variety of staples on the shelves. Milk that sold for leagues more than the 1802 price of two pence, half-penny a quart. Vegetables. Fish. Meat. Every hearth she passed was crammed with firewood, the windowpanes sporting not even one crack. The newspapers scattered about were recent editions, not stained, months-old rubbish. The books in the home’s library smelled of ink and leather, the spines cracking when you opened them because most had never been opened before.

  The duchess housed a library in her mind, her supernatural gift, and did not need an actual library.

  Regrettably, for her heart, the most marvelous thing about 1882 was Simon Alexander.

  For him, Emma would strive to be as polished as the duchess’s priceless silver.

  Emma snapped out of her musings to find Mollie slumped on the settee, sobbing, her head propped on her bent knee. Emma slid from the bed and crossed the room, crouching next to the girl. “What’s wrong? You can tell me. Have I upset you in some way?”

  “My s-s-sister.” Rubbing her fist across her pinkening nose, she shook her head furiously, her mass of coal-black hair spilling from her mob cap to hit her shoulders. “I’m sorry. When you asked if it was bad, it was bad, Whitechapel, but not so much for me. I got out but left her behind.”

  As Emma listened, Mollie unleashed a desperate tale of two sisters. Mollie, saved by a benefactor, the other, Katherine, a year older, a young woman who hadn’t been able to escape the destiny of the slums.

  “When did Katherine get involved with this man you say has ruined her?”

  Mollie wept into her starched sleeve in between uttering broken apologies for her behavior. “She h-h-had a right fine job, a learning position at a dressmaker’s in Bethnal Green. Mostly domestic uniforms and reproductions of the lavish dresses you see in the shops on Bond Street.” She gestured to Emma’s gown as if to say, like yours. “Katie has a way with copying the posh designs, thus the new position once the dressmaker seen her walking down the lane in one of her creations. Could sketch them right up and cut the patterns, too. G-g-gifted, like you but without the time travel. She’d taken a turn at what they call a plain sewer at the garment mill in Bethnal Green. But the air is filled with fibers, and anyone there more than a month coughs something awful for the rest of their d-d-days. And the dyes, don’t make me reveal what those poisonous liquids do to a soul.” Mollie swallowed, slanting Emma a fearful look, twisting her hands together.

  “And…?” Emma prompted.

  Mollie yanked her mob cap free, sending midnight strands of hair streaking across her cheek. “The owner of the factory, Mason Thomas, he’s a m-m-mean one. Greedy and tight-fisted. Broad as a barn, strong as a bull. Doesn’t provide food except for scraps of bread and water when folks work twelve-hour shifts. Children, too. Ones as young as eight years old slaving away on his garment floor. He got his eye on K-K-Katie. She’s a looker, all right. She quit, up and left the second he approached her with his base desires. He has a wife and three children already!”

  “But he found her,” Emma whispered, a tale she’d heard a hundred times before.

  “Ah, that he did.” She dragged her cap across her nose and hiccupped. “One evening, leaving her shift at the dressmaker. Cornered her in the lane just behind. It was force, I tell y-y-you. And now, she’s holed up in some squalid flat he’s got for her, miserable. No options, no life. A baby on the way at some point, sure as the d-d-day is long. She can’t leave, she says, not after it happened. Even Josie couldn’t talk her out of that place.” Mollie ironed her hand down her modest but serviceable domestic uniform. Kicked her feet together to display unattractive but glossy, new boots. “When I have all kinds of a future. If I could o-o-only go back to that day, before he attacked her, I would give my life to save her.”

  “What if we can do that? What if I can?” It would be the first time in this time, beyond the desperate ventures she’d waged in 1802—going back to help Mrs. Marsden cross the street before the cart ran her over, making sure the doctor was notified when Eileen Churchill went into labor that last awful time—that she’d found a way to use her gift.

  Maybe Simon would forgive her if time travel came to have true meaning.

  Maybe she would forgive herself.

  Emma rose, crossing to the bedside table. Gleaming mahogany with glossy pewter hardware, an elegant piece unlike any she’d ever owned. The blue velvet pouch was in the top drawer behind the copy of David Copperfield Simon had given her. When she opened the bag, the swish stone rolled into her hand, a glittering ball of fire. A powerful sensation pulsed through her as she clutched the gem to her chest.

  To protect, to transform.

  To amend.

  She turned to Mollie, who eyed the
flickering stone with all the admiration it deserved. “Tell me the exact day, the exact time, Mason Thomas found your Katie in the alley. We’ll be back before breakfast, no one the wiser.”

  She hoped with not a little trepidation that she could keep this promise.

  Chapter 8

  Simon just knew it was going to be a ghastly evening.

  He’d had a nagging itch between his shoulder blades since leaving Josie’s the previous night, unwelcome advice and intolerable realizations stinging worse than the driving rain in which he’d sprinted back to the Blue Moon.

  Love. What the bloody hell did he know about love?

  He understood death, the line between the living and the deceased gossamer-thin in his world. People stepping in from the past to plague him, then stepping out again as suddenly. Appropriately, the only woman he’d been compelled to consider his own floated like a feather between eras, in his grasp, then gone again. Uncertain, when his other relationships were certain without desire for them to be.

  Bracing his hand on the balustrade of the balcony high above the gaming floor, Simon surveyed his domain. Let the crack of dice, the din of conversation, the aroma of brandy, cigars and macassar oil soothe his nerves. The shout of victors, the whimper of those losing their wealth and their souls, rising to echo off the paneled walls of his study.

  This day…bad to worse.

  Baron von Delton had won a substantial sum at the vingt et un table, which happened on occasion but made Simon feel like diving into a bottle of gin and never crawling out. The puerile poet who’d been coming in every night for two weeks finally depleted his reserves, then got into a drunken altercation with the third son of an earl that was sure to hit the scandal sheets. Karina, Simon’s oft-companion and currently one of the most popular actresses in London, had shown up at the alley entrance, eyes puffy, dress hanging off her shoulders, looking gorgeous and pitiful, a skill she employed to no end. He’d ushered her into a private salon promising to return when he had no intention of doing so, leaving her in the capable hands of the Blue Moon’s manager, Benjamin Squires. Who’d looked like he wanted to rip Simon’s head off for giving him such an odious duty. Simon imagined Benji, a former rookery thug, would have liked to show his displeasure in a way that would’ve had him scuffling on the gaming floor with his employer.

  And, while reviewing the evening’s annoyances, there was Finn.

  Overprotective, interfering Finn.

  The single person he’d loved above all others.

  Simon glanced over his shoulder at his brother, who sat sprawled at the desk in the dimly lit alcove of a space Simon liked to think of as his, a fountain pen’s nib pressed to his bottom lip, his index finger trailing slowly down the ledger columns as he added figures in his head.

  “Don’t you have a newborn to attend to?” Simon shoved aside the urge to swipe the etched gold cufflinks Finn had left sitting on the edge of the desk and instead tugged his hand through his hair. The strands were overlong. Bedraggled, Karina had said. Although she’d whispered it like it was a good thing in that dry tone she used to great effect in darkened bedchambers.

  “Just making sure you don’t bankrupt us with this von Delton debacle,” Finn murmured, his gaze tracking the figures before him. The pen had left a spot of ink on his lip that Simon guessed half of London would love to lick off. “I only gifted you forty-nine percent, my pet. I hold the remaining fifty-one if you recall. The final decision, and responsibility, for this establishment is mine.”

  Simon bounced his fist off the railing and rose to his full height. “That’s a crock of— ”

  Finn threw his head back and laughed, his cerulean eyes dancing. Simon hated it most days, but he could see why the ton thought his brother the most gorgeous man in England. He was horribly pretty. A pretty jackass. “You’re so easy, lad. So easy.” He flicked the ledger closed, tossed the pen atop it and stacked his hands behind his head with a stretch and a smile that ceaselessly won people over from the first tilt of his lips. “We’ll make a killing tonight, no worries. Fairly, I might add, unlike most gaming establishments in the city. Thankfully, we’re not required to send ourselves to hell in order to run one.” Finn yawned and gave another heroic shrug of his broad shoulders. “When the men arrive worse for drink and not too bright to begin with, it’s an economical gambit from the get-go. Heck, we offer a service no other hell can by having a professional read their minds. To save the despairing few who would throw themselves into the Thames over their foolishness, I share my supernatural gift. I don’t want their downfall on my conscience for a fistful of blunt.”

  Simon wiped his thumb over his lip. “Saint Alexander, champion of the exploited, you have a spot of ink on your…”

  Finn popped his boots on the desk, dashing his hand over his mouth. “Ah, these pens with endless streams of ink. I can’t get over it. Technology proving its worth, right before my very eyes. How your girl lived through her era, what with tallow candles and oil lanterns and water arriving at the house in buckets, I can’t fathom.”

  “She isn’t my girl. And it wasn’t that bad,” Simon murmured, thinking of the candlelight washing over Emma in the dreary depths of the public house, his first glimpse of her in years. The way his heart had clutched and released in a feral flutter.

  He’d known at that moment that nothing had changed.

  “Not your girl,” Henry scoffed from the dark corner where he’d decided to settle himself.

  “I hope you enjoyed traveling back, possibly being unable to return. Because that’s the last time.” Finn’s voice splintered, a familiar argument about to rise between them. The League wanted to know everything about Emma and her gift—but Julian and Finn didn’t want that to include letting Simon test it out and travel again with her.

  Ever again.

  Simon pushed off the balustrade, realizing the fight he’d wanted may be coming from his brother and not Benji, which wouldn’t be the first time. “Do you realize you’re making these threats to a twenty-seven-year-old man? I’m not a grubby urchin, begging for your advice.”

  Finn’s polished-to-a-high-sheen boots hit the floor with a thud as he rose to a stand. “Eighty or eight, that was the last time-travel you’ll be doing if I have anything to say about it.”

  The brothers stepped forward at the same time, two paces apart, fists clenched. Finn had Simon by a solid inch in height. But Simon was younger. And meaner. Finn didn’t like to fight, and honestly, wasn’t very good at it.

  The study’s door hinge squealed, and Simon looked over Finn’s shoulder to see his eldest brother, Julian, stepping into the room. The viscount took one look at their harsh expressions, the fighting stances, and sighed behind his fist. “Not again.”

  A beast of a man barreled into the room behind Julian, sending the viscount forward two steps he hadn’t counted on taking.

  The only ungifted member of the League, Humphrey was Julian’s best friend from childhood and as close to Simon as his brothers. Humphrey’s gaze bounced between the two men, squaring off in the middle of the room. “Christ, am I going to be fixing split lips again? I suppose I have to take my brother-in-law’s side, even if he’s just a daft, beautiful bloke.”

  “Take his side, fine by me,” Simon snarled and gave Finn a shove, his temper heating. “You married his sister. I didn’t. All’s fair in war and family, right?”

  Finn reached to rub his chest, his smile growing. Rolling his shoulders, he whispered a vile obscenity, then knocked Simon off his feet before he could take a breath. The clip to Simon’s jaw that followed was trifling and rampant with brotherly love.

  Before Simon could return the favor, Finn rolled to his back, his hand going to his temple and pressing hard. “She’s here. In the cloakroom again. Injured.” Closing his eyes, he released a muted growl that had the men surrounding him, Julian dropping to his knees at his side.

  “Who?” Julian whispered.

  Finn flicked his hand toward Simon with a grimace. “His w
oman.”

  Simon scrambled to his feet, pushed past Humphrey and stumbled down the staircase, the raucous activity in the main salon lost to him as he muscled his way through the crowd, the sights and sounds of a vibrant gaming chamber a blur, his skin gone clammy and cool.

  Injured. Injured.

  She’d traveled in time. Against their agreement. Against the rules.

  He smacked the cloakroom door open with the heel of his hand, bouncing it back against the wall. Mollie was huddled beneath the rack of coats, coiled protectively over Emma, who lay motionless on the floor, her cheeks pale as snow in the meager gaslight, the Soul Catcher captured in her outstretched hand. The stone pulsed like a heart, a prism of amber light unlike anything he’d ever seen emerging from it, splattering the room.

  Julian stepped behind him, crowding into the small space. “My God, it’s on fire. Have you ever…”

  “No,” Simon whispered and went to where she lay atop the scuffed planks, his pulse a bumpy drumbeat in his head.

  “We traveled back, through r-r-rainbow colors, a flash of sound like thunder, but not. It went through my body like a punch. Bethnal Green. My sister,” Mollie panted, her hair hanging in a limp tangle down her back, her chest riding swift breaths beneath a torn bodice. Scurrying aside to let Simon move in, she gestured crazily, on the edge of hysteria. “We saved her... Katherine. Before Mason Thomas g-g-got his hands on her. I don’t know how it changed things... Her life path... I only know it did. I’ll go now and find out. I have to g-g-go now.”

  Settling on his knee next to Emma, Simon brushed aside a strand of hair fired with amber clinging to Emma’s cheek. Her breathing was steady, her color improving. She was going to wake soon, and when she was strong enough, he was going to have it out with her. Her recklessness was going to stop. “Julian, can you arrange a carriage for Mollie to Bethnal Green?” Josie had told him about Mollie’s sister and her abortive effort to save her from the clutches of a garment factory owner who routinely ruined women with ease and little conscience.