by Tracy Sumner
He kicked a shard of pottery into the corner, his gaze anywhere but on her. “I don’t want them.” His tortured exhale rang through the conservatory, off the rows of polished glass panes. Shoving his messy hair from his eyes, his attention finally circled back to her. The devastation highlighted on the handsome, hard planes of his face frightened her, the sunlight she stood in unable to thaw her chilled heart. “And maybe I don’t want you.”
“You’re going to let me go,” she whispered, her mind clouding with the knowledge. She couldn’t grasp that this might truly be his intention. Even after their spats and battling, that he might let her go. “There are…” She pointed to the house, indicating the console table in the foyer currently displaying her popularity. “Invitations, a dozen of them this morning alone. A ball at a titled gent’s somewhere in the country, a musicale a baroness of whatever is only inviting me to because she thinks I’m a scandal in the making. They smell something different about me, this pack of city wolves, yet they can’t quite figure it out. Still, having a duke for a cousin trumps all, I’m seeing. I have a choice, Simon, genuine choices aside from you.”
He tilted his head to stare through the domed glass ceiling, his hand snaking in his pocket and pulling a farthing free. She’d wondered how long it would take for him to start that up. “Then pick. Roll the dice, Dark Queen of the West End. Will it be an earl, a viscount or a marquess? Centuries of near-royal blood for the taking.” He slapped his hands together, his heated gaze meeting hers, the coin, for the first time a play she could witness, sliding into the edge of his sleeve. “But whoever you choose, you bloody well better choose to stay in 1882 with them.”
His fear was vaster than she’d estimated. Shock was the current emotion racing through her, but rage trickled in like rain through a split in the ceiling. She was willing to unleash the storm on him, oh, was she.
Sunlight glinted off the coin as it passed through his fingers. “And just so you know, I’ll take care of Hargrave.”
“He’s my problem,” she returned, rage bleeding into her words.
Simon retreated two paces, perching his bum on a bench that looked as shaky as the one they’d destroyed in the utility room. If only he didn’t look so attractive, a professorial swindler, standing there in a burst of light usually reserved for nourishing citrus trees. Drawing her even as she backed away because he’d pushed her. “He’s the League’s problem. You’re one of us now. You have been since you showed up in Oxfordshire and had Delaney’s mount tossing her into the dirt. It isn’t my problem if you’re just catching on to this fact. You came to us, remember?”
“I apologized to the duchess straight-off for that unfortunate event. I was only trying to get the Soul Catcher. Desperate. Out of options, time running out. Remember those things, do you, you bounder?”
He laughed then, lowered his head and let the rusty sound roll from his lips. Lips wounded from her ministrations. His shirt collar wrinkled from her ferocity. His hair a disaster because she’d tangled her fingers in the strands as he’d thrust inside her.
Made love, though not likely what he’d call it.
It had been love. It was love.
“I’d buy tickets to see the Breslin version of an apology. God in heaven, I would.”
“Are you trying to hurt me, Simon?” she asked as the wail of the duchess’s children approaching the conservatory rolled over them like a wave. “Or are you trying to make me so furious I never wish to speak to you again? Is this reluctance because I see you, as you see me? We’re alike, the two of us, in an exceptional way that terrifies you.”
His coin hit stone, his eyes blazing when they met hers. “I’m trying to save you. From me. And, yes, you do bloody terrify me. My choices when I’m with you terrify me. As it is, I’ve had you three times without taking sensible precautions. You could be carrying my child this very minute, Emma. Have you thought about that?”
I want your baby. The words rang through her mind like a dull chime, teasing her lips open. Sending her heart into a flurry in her chest.
Spilling emotion she couldn’t hide across her face.
In the end, she left Simon before he could read what she’d silently written, as he wished her to do. Shoved the door to the conservatory open, fading sunlight balmy on her cheeks as she turned her face to the sky. She skirted the lawn and the gravel path back to the house, avoiding anyone who could catch a glimpse of her and know what she’d done.
Relinquished her heart, irrevocably, to a man determined to live his life without her.
When she reached the kitchens, she took the servant’s staircase as Simon had advised, her ruined combination a reminder of how mad she was to wish she could ruin another. Halting on the winding staircase, her hand braced on the chilled stone, she promised to stop loving a man who couldn’t love her back.
This plan survived until she entered her bedchamber and found the violin. No note, nothing like the godawful sonnets she’d received.
When no note was needed.
Cradling the extraordinary gift to her chest, Emma wept until the sun slipped low in the sky, ending the day and her remarkable love affair.
Chapter 15
Simon usually enjoyed the Derby.
It was what he liked to think of as a commoner’s race when he considered himself common to his core. The public was allowed to view for free in restricted areas, drawing a massive crowd of folk from Epsom and the neighboring towns of Tadworth and Langley Vale. Of course, Queen Victoria was in attendance in the upper reaches, where he was allowed to roam freely because of his association with Julian. Well, one level below Her Majesty, to be exact. Bastards of viscounts got knocked down a bit, which he agreed with in democratic fashion. Close enough to note the color of her gown should he care to, a rather atrocious mauve that made her skin look like wax paper.
The environ crackled with loser’s cries and winner’s roars, peanut shells and discarded wager slips crunching beneath his boot. He’d always loved the scent of gambling. Because there was a scent, a taste, he’d noticed the first moment stepping inside the Blue Moon when he was but a lad of ten. Peeking from behind Finn’s coattail, eyes round like saucers. His brothers had laughed at his reaction when he’d simply known. This life called to him. Exhilarating, and a prudent profession for a man who didn’t risk more than he could afford to lose. It wasn’t tempting, the reckless squandering, when he spent his nights watching others go down that hell pit.
When he was feeling charitable, saving them from it.
Too, there was always his ability to steal should he need ready funds. Which, thanks to the supreme success of his gaming hell, was never going to be required of him again.
Now, he simply filched for fun.
Fun, he thought irritably, fingering the ruby earbob he’d lifted from Baroness Ampthill when she’d lingered next to him, whispering lewd suggestions about what she’d do if they chanced to meet in her thoroughbred’s stable after the races.
He wasn’t going to meet the baroness in stable number five, no matter what was rumored about the length of her tongue. He wasn’t.
Even if—while observing the Earl of Hollingmark place his sticky fingers all over Emma on the balcony moments ago—he wanted to. Desperately. Like a dog in pain, he wanted to hide in the familiar. And sex with someone he cared nothing for was familiar to the extreme.
If only there were a way to make her pay as he was paying—for loving her. Erase the crimson tint filming his vision like a brutal swipe of his hand would the chalk marks on the Derby betting boards. Ridiculous desires when the obsession in question had stated, well, not that she loved him, but that she wanted him. Wanted them to be together.
For now.
However, she hadn’t uttered the three words that truly mattered. The words that would lead him to her and keep him chained there happily for the rest of his life.
I will stay.
He’d had enough people leave him—and he couldn’t stomach another.
He had one job. To kee
p Emma safe and bring her into the League. Not marry her, as he was tempted to do in the far reaches of his mind, down there in the ditch with the items he didn’t discuss with anyone. Not Finn, not even Josie.
Leaning against the varnished slab serving as a bar top, Simon stared at the perplexing puzzle of female misfortune across the way, the sounds of the race removing any chance for him to hear what Emma and the earl were discussing. He guessed she could feel his scrutiny because she twitched, tugging at her glove, her eyes almost meeting his. Then she shifted her interest to her escort when Delaney forced the issue, the duchess throwing a fiery glance at Simon that said, don’t do this again.
Turning away, he left Emma to the duke’s men, who were shadowing her every move. Former soldiers dressed as footmen, their multi-hued livery lighting up the tavern, hulking blokes daydreaming about ways to exterminate a man in between slugs of ale. They might be bothered to learn that the woman they guarded could waltz out of 1882 before they got so much as a fat pinkie on her. Not like the typical supernatural suspects they protected. Or maybe she’d zip to the future, where she’d taken Simon while they’d made love, the sound of engines roaring through the sky louder than her frayed moans.
It had been her choice not to return them to the present in those fevered seconds, and he’d been fine to be in any time as long as she was with him.
Or perhaps she’d been helpless to, much like he’d been.
He’d made his own rash choices, drowning in that vulnerability. Stayed inside Emma, his passion spent. A gross dilemma for a man who never played fast and loose during sexual adventures. Never chanced a babe, not once. But he’d chanced one with Emma. Three times, in fact. Rolled the dice, and how. A man surrounded by bookmaking, his world comprised of it, frightened to his toes over a wager he’d laid.
A crisp riddle, that. Ironic and profound.
He knew, deep down, in that soul-searching place that made him steal items that didn’t belong to him, that he wanted a baby with her as much as she—he’d witnessed the longing in her eyes, right there for the taking, a mad dare for a thief—wanted one with him.
It was his practice. To run.
He’d run from his name and his past. Was running from his future, stuck watching another man fondle the woman he wished to be the mother of his children. Very gentlemanly, the fondling, very proper. Nonetheless, heating Simon’s blood as he wondered what the hell he was going to do about it.
“Did you see Westminster’s filly overtake Dingham’s stud as she rounded Tattenham Corner?” Finn, breathless and half-lit, shoved Simon into the bar as he lurched into the vacant spot beside his brother. “That horse is unbelievable. Un-believe-able. History-making, this win, history. Blunt dripping out of men’s pockets like water from a sieve. The Blue Moon shall benefit from the excitement this evening, I can feel it.” Glancing over his shoulder, in the direction of Simon’s gaze, Finn snickered, brotherly mocking riding air reeking of moist earth, whiskey and horses. “Quit staring, boyo. Unless you have a ring ready to give your beloved time traveler. Of course, a violin’s better than any ring, if you ask me.”
Simon sighed and raised his hand to signal the barman. The Duke of Ashcroft couldn’t keep a bloody secret. If he had to deal with Finn’s advice, he wanted a potent dram with which to wash the counsel down. “She doesn’t know who sent it.”
Finn hiccupped behind his betting sheet, his smile running so loose and free the ladies next to him fluttered their fans and stepped closer, knowing full well the middle Alexander was in frantic and cheerful love with his wife. However, they couldn’t help themselves as Finn’s good looks were staggering. “Bloody hell, Si, take it from a man who botched this process himself. Royally. Our girl Emma’s a smart one; she knows who sent it.”
“I’m not marrying someone just to advance the League; bring the only traveler we have on record into the fold.” Simon pointed to a bottle of Scotch, held up two fingers, then tossed coins on the bar in payment. “Change my life just to fill pages of Julian’s chronology. Thank you, but no.”
“Ah, brother of mine,” Finn whispered against the rim of the glass Simon handed him. “How about, do it for love?”
Why not tell him? When he’d told Finn just about everything else. Or as much as he could. He gave the earbob a spin, the ruby winking in the light. “I’m not waking one morning to an empty bed, only to find my wife has scurried off to 1920 because I said something cross over dinner.”
The smile Finn unleashed was wobbly and endearing to the point that even Simon had trouble looking away. The female contingent clustered next to him tittered, the ostrich feathers in their bonnets fluttering. “Have you asked her to stay—and not a threat because of the danger if she returns? Women don’t care about danger nearly as much as their men do. Maybe, like you need to hear she won’t run, she needs to hear that you want her to stay. That you love—”
Simon knocked his shoulder against Finn’s, sending his brother stumbling into the crowd of female chicks and ending the pronouncement before it could become a legitimate part of the world. Like a flower pushing through a crack in a cobblestone, existing despite the menace.
“Why you nutty, young pup,” Finn grunted and launched himself at Simon, where they grappled and tumbled to the floor. The baroness’s earbob tumbled from his hand and bounced across the floor. Another scandal, Simon gathered, fearing Julian’s reaction but enjoying the rush of adrenaline, even if he’d never be allowed entrance to Epsom again.
Honestly, he was delighted with the idea of pummeling his brother to bits—until he heard it. Heard her over raucous conversation and clinking crystal.
Finn was the mindreader in the family, but Emma’s words—forgive me—hit his ear as clearly as if she’d kissed a breathless promise into it.
The plea punctured his soul, dread pouring in.
Shoving his brother off his chest, Simon scrambled to his knees. “Emma’s in trouble,” he snarled, then was off, muscling through the horde crowding the barroom, skidding over ale-slick planks, Finn, he knew, right on his heels.
His family was utterly dependable like that.
The balcony was bedlam, wind whipping his hair into his eyes, the sound of horse hooves striking earth a ricochet through the misty morning, straight through his chest to his heart. Jostling his way to the railing, Simon peered over the side, his pulse skipping when Emma’s guards, having given chase, looked up from the level below with bewildered expressions. He was over the balcony railing before the notion materialized that this was his plan of attack and possibly, not a good one. Landing in a crouch in a thankfully deserted spot near the staircase, without breaking a leg, he took the stairs two at a time, hitting the courtyard situated inside the stable closures at a dead run.
There were people everywhere, an explosion of color before his eyes. Murmurs, shouts, the smell of roasting meat and horseflesh. Sweat. Perfume, flowers, leather, dirt.
He’d done a wretched job protecting her, staying away because of jealousy, because of blinding trepidation. The next time he touched her, and there would be a next time, he was never letting her go again.
Never again. And he knew what this meant. Oh, he knew.
However, when he didn’t have to face what he’d just admitted to himself immediately…where the hell was she?
They caught him there in the dusty semicircle—her guards, Finn, the Duke of Ashcroft. His brother’s cheeks were parchment, more than a race down a set of stairs would render them. The duke, too, looked stunned, his gaze soldier-alert.
Simon grabbed Finn’s coat sleeve, crushing linen in his grip. “What did you hear?”
Finn swallowed, his hand covering Simon’s. “Si…”
Simon stumbled back, brought the heels of his hands to his eyes and pressed until he saw stars. When he tried to feel her, he knew with dead certainty that Emma was no longer in 1882.
The panic edging into his lungs, tilting his world on its axis, was real. Deserved. It had taken him ten years, ten,
to find a portal to travel into the past. Years of research utilizing Delaney’s library of a mind, her supernatural gift. Exploiting Piper’s ability to strengthen his own. Conversations with haunts from Emma’s time period, visits to those in the mystical underworld who’d had interaction with a woman with blazing blue eyes, there one minute, gone the next. According to his contacts, his portal, a forest in a German village ravaged by a recent fire, was gone. Hargrave’s work, if Simon had money to wager.
He had money to wager. Loads. But no Emma.
What did blunt matter when he didn’t have the girl?
He inhaled a breath of racetrack filth, collecting himself before uttering the words. “What did she say, Finn? In her mind?” Exhaling brutally, he blinked away the sting of tears in his eyes. “How can I find her again?”
Finn brought the tumbler he still held to his lips and polished off the contents. Then he paused, dipped his fingers in his waistcoat pocket and came out with a green poker chip, which he shoved into Simon’s hand. “I read Hargrave’s. There were too many voices, too many thoughts, excited and scattered, aroused and uncontrolled, I couldn’t read them all. However, strangely enough, his rose above the rest like yeast floating to the top of an ale barrel.”
Simon grasped his brother’s lapel and gave him a fierce jerk. “What did he say?”
“I have a possible way out of this mess.” Finn unwrapped Simon’s fingers from his coat, turned his tumbler upside-down, letting a drop of brandy stain the straw beneath their feet. “There’s a woman.”
Finn shook his head, clearing it, doing fast magic with the chip in his hand. “What?”
“Ah, we’ll reclaim your weakness by attacking his,” the Duke of Ashcroft said in his nobly ruthless way, his hand going to his jaw as he strategized. Simon could see the wheels spinning. “A cunning strategy for the softest Alexander. Nothing brings a man to his knees like threatening the woman he loves.”
“I’m missing something,” Simon murmured, wondering why he was the only one missing something.
