by Tracy Sumner
“Soft.” Finn chucked his tumbler at the wall, barely blinking as crystal exploded against brick. “We’re going to neutralize the bloody bastard. Using his woman as leverage, with no harm done to her person, of course. We’re not those types. But Hargrave is. Fortunately, while he was fantasizing about his lover moments ago, he told me everything. Her name. Location. White Chapel. He visits her in this time, his adopted time. A milliner. Lucky stroke, that. We station men outside her flat, her shop, make sure she’s watched every second, then Simon travels to Emma. Negotiates with Hargrave, who’s waiting for him to show. He longs for this confrontation. I read that in his thoughts, too.”
The Duke of Ashcroft brushed his coat aside to caress the butt of the knife jammed in his waistband. “Terms of the negotiation?”
Finn slashed his hand out as if to say, I have this. “Emma is untouched, lives in whatever time she chooses to. We allow the same with his piece. His sweet milliner will never know any of it. Secrets safeguarded on all sides.”
“He didn’t exactly take Miss Emma.” Henry flickered into view like a heat stain shimmering in the distance. “She left willingly, if you call curses no fine woman should utter willing. That Hollingmark fellow had gone off to get refreshments, and Hargrave stepped in. She did the leaving to protect you, lad. He didn’t want to hurt her, he said. Didn’t use his trick of making her faint; didn’t have to. Only wants her to stay in her world. Get out of yours. You’re the one he said he’d harm. Splash the truth about your peculiar group of mystics all over the Times. Expose every one of you to the light of day.” Strolling to the wall, he prodded the remnants of Finn’s tumbler with a tsking sound. “Claimed he’s a correspondent or some such, so he knows how.”
“She went willingly? To save me, to save the League?”
Finn and Ashcroft shared a familial look Simon caught out of the corner of his eye, a look he astonishingly felt no ferocity over. The youngest in the close circle of men at the highest level of the League, they were protecting him, as they always had.
“We shield our own. You know that,” the duke murmured and began to crack his knuckles, his expression growing less ducal by the second. Ashcroft loved nothing more than the occasional skirmish to keep his skills tight. “I’ll send someone to find Hollingmark and make apologies for my dear cousin to explain her disappearance. Let’s go with a blinding megrim from being in the sun all day.”
Simon tossed Finn’s chip from hand to hand, his mind spinning, possibilities rife. Then, a dead weight settled in his gut. He couldn’t get to Emma. His portal was gone, destroyed.
And, if she thought he was in danger, she’d never come back to him.
“I see that melancholy glance.” Henry grinned, the gap in his front teeth wide enough for Simon to slide Finn’s half crown through. “I can take you back, boy. And not like your young miss, getting the day wrong, the month even. I can drop you in the exact sodding second of the exact sodding day you tell me I should drop ya’. Light as a canary feather striking snow. None of this bilious feeling like you get with her travel. Sick and sleeping for days. But she’s breathing, so her gift is what it is. Cozy time travel is one benefit to dying.”
Simon curled his hand around the chip, the beveled edge scraping his palm. Relief and rage bubbled in his chest, sending his heart into a dizzying rhythm. “You mean I can travel through time? As long as I take a haunt with me?”
Henry scratched his nose, his watery gaze dropping. If a ghost could blush, this one did. “In a loose manner of speaking, yes. Roundabout way to describe my bequest to ya’. But seems factual enough.”
“Bequest. I’ll tell you where you can shove your damned bequest. I’ve shared a life with those on the outside edge of hell since I prowled the streets of St Giles in short pants. I paid an extraordinary price for being different, talking about my mystical tendencies before I knew to keep my mouth shut, and suffering greatly for it. But that is my burden to shoulder. However, none of you”—Simon stalked to Henry, stabbed a chest that wasn’t solid, his finger passing through the haunt’s misty image to brush the sun-warmed brick—“thought to tell me? When I spent years trying to find a way to get to her? When I’ve been surrounded by haunts my entire bloody life, every one of you jabbering dawn to dusk until I thought I’d go mad? And you never once thought to tell me you could take me to her?”
“Weren’t allowed to tell. Weren’t allowed to take ye. We have higher direction, you know.” Henry shrugged, lining up a neat row of crystal shards with the toe of his boot. “Alas, I’m no rule-follower, but it was the suitable decision as you weren’t ready.” He grinned at the response his advice garnered from his charge, his image flickering like a flame caught in a gust. “Bah, look at that irked face. Consider the cheery side of this, lad of mine. Two time travelers, so-called, joined in this barmy world. Perfect as one of them paintings of your viscount brother’s hanging in the National Gallery, ain’t it?”
“What’s he saying, Simon?” Finn asked in exasperation. “We can’t hear the conversation if you recall. If they’ve passed to the great beyond, I can’t read their minds for shit.”
Simon glanced at his brother, then tipped his head to stare at the sky when he saw the hawkish way Finn studied him. God knows what embarrassing emotions were written across his face.
Surrender, Simon, just let her in. Let them all in.
Amid his agony over Emma stepping eighty years into the past, so far away he couldn’t feel her, sunlight pierced the frothy, smut-stained clouds to strike his skin. To thaw the ice encasing his heart. Perhaps the future wasn’t as bleak and grimy as the street where he’d grown up, after all.
“We going to get your girl or wot?” Henry asked from behind him, still kicking at the shards of glass, from the sound of it. Whistling softly between that gap in his teeth. “You’re mooning, you are. I can always tell when a man is done for. And you, my boy, are done for. Roasted like a Christmastide goose. Cooked. No use fighting it another minute unless it’s from sheer stupidity. Which many a man has been known to do.”
Simon hauled a shallow breath into his lungs, tasting the acrid dust surrounding the race track and, somewhere miles beneath it, hope. Closed his eyes and decided, right then and there, to follow the guidance of his haunt. It wouldn’t be the first time. He’d saved Piper’s life with the assistance of a long-gone ghost, and since then, for some reason, he’d tried too hard to live life without help.
Even from his family.
It was time he changed. Accepted. Loved.
He could let go of the past—with Emma beside him.
Embrace a new life built on the somewhat precarious remains of the old. The rest? Let it smolder and fall into the ashes of his existence, be blown away on a ripping gust, never to be considered again.
There wasn’t a decision to be made, not really. Henry was right about that.
He was going to get his girl.
Chapter 16
Emma flicked the tattered curtain aside, the street bordering her dilapidated lodgings not much to look at. Just past midnight, the grubby lane was deserted of all but the few stumbling past after leaving the Cock and Hammer on the far west corner. Not even one gaslamp to light their path. Reminding her where she was.
Or, rather, where she wasn’t. No hydrangeas beneath her window to cover the putrid scent rolling through Tower Hamlets.
Mayfair smelled like it looked: posh.
She’d gotten soft. Used to cocoa arriving on a silver tray every morning. Tea every afternoon, sprigs of mint bundled in an elegant posy on the saucer’s lip. Silken sheets and a counterpane so thick a hearthfire wasn’t required. Lucious gowns you could live the rest of your days in. Nights spent on a mattress that didn’t involve feathers jabbing you in the back. Lights operated with a flick of the finger and warm water shooting from a faucet inside the house. A duchess and duke you were, bizarrely, coming to call friends.
And him. Most of all, she’d miss Simon.
His wicked smile, hi
s rare laugh. The dimple that winked at her when she was vexed, melting her ire like sun striking ice.
His temper, his fortitude, his vulnerability.
His hot breath crossing her cheek. His long body pressing hers into the mattress. His hands diving into her hair as he inched inside her. Filling her in a way she hadn’t known she needed, not only her body but also her soul. She desired each piece of him to a degree that frightened and astonished her. More than she’d expected after falling in love with him, at first sight, all those years ago, when they couldn’t even speak.
She’d given him up to protect him. A time-traveling girl from Tower Hamlets, nothing special really, but noble when it came to it. Honorable. As much as the society folk she’d been tossing with in 1882. Worthy of Simon Alexander’s love had he given it to her, when he was just an ordinary boy, too.
“He’s not coming,” Emma said, certain she wasn’t as certain as she sounded.
While please come rang in her head, defying every rationale she had for coming back.
Indeed, Simon would consider this another abandonment. He would know, from one of his haunts or his mindreading brother, that she’d left his time of her own free will. Walked out of Epsom, the aroma of horseflesh clinging to her clothing, the only thing she took with her. Aside from telling Hargrave how she was going to gut him when she got the chance—anyone who’d seen her stroll past with a man dressed, not well but well enough, would’ve had no idea her heart was breaking into pieces and scattering at her feet. That she was leaving at the end of a barrel as surely as if Hargrave had the muzzle of his pistol pressed to her temple.
“He’s not coming,” she repeated, turning to face her nemesis. Sighing, she rubbed her bruised cheek, an injury sustained when Hargrave shoved her into the carriage at Epsom.
Hargrave said nothing from his sprawl in the only chair in the room, his muddy boots perched on the only table. Both rickety pieces not far from being pitched on the rubbish heap, lacking even for the Hamlets. Worthless, like everything she owned.
Somehow, her shoddy dwelling looked worse by candlelight.
As did the man who’d brought her back.
Hargrave’s eyes were red-ringed, shadowed with fatigue and focused on her in a poisonous manner that made her knees quiver. But his hand trembled when he lifted a slender cheroot to lips chapped by drink and weather, his fragility showing. He looked like he hadn’t slept since arriving in 1802 thirty hours before, which he hadn’t. Their standoff endured, neither of them trusting the other enough to so much as close a lid. He’d dragged her straight to her former residence on Milk Yard, still hers because, unbelievably, only one day had passed since Simon had taken her home. Home. Tears stung her eyes, but Emma blinked them back before the time tracing bastard could see.
At least, Hargrave hadn’t felt the need to incapacitate her. But, then, she hadn’t resisted. And any power he used took from him as well. She’d seen how his gift weakened him. Plus, she thought he enjoyed the battle. An unconscious woman presented no challenge to a man like him.
In the end, her gift was robbing her of everything. Just as she’d known it would.
This time, she and Hargrave were going to destroy each other. Her destiny was like a pulse of lightning, sparking charges in the air. It was undecided if there would be a winner. Maybe they would both lose.
She dragged her finger over a split in the wall that kept the room chilled in summer and frigid in winter, fatigue riding hard—though she was unable to show it. “I don’t know why you’re waiting for him. He can’t get back. You torched his portal, or did you forget that crucial fact?”
“Crucial.” With a sullied chuckle, Hargrave sucked lustily on his cheroot, then blew a smoky torrent in her direction. “Listen to the swank talk. My, did they do a number on you. Guttersnipe to society sensation in four short weeks. Let me guess. Dance lessons, speech, etiquette. The Mayfair trifecta. The elegance starts to rub off like tarnish from a tea service, now, doesn’t it? Pinkie out when you hold a cup and all that. I’m there myself, torn between two worlds. Torn between three, five. Until my head whirls with it. You’re not the only time traveler, though there aren’t many. Just enough to keep me on my toes. But you are the most rebellious, I’ll give you that.”
“You’re not going to get him. You have me, but that’s where it stops. I told you I’d stay.” She glanced around her home with an aching pinch of despair. The scuffed furniture, the bent bed frame, the sagging mattress. Her mother's patched quilt, made for her with scraps of fabric collected one long, cold winter. Candles on the upturned crate serving as a bedside table. A grand total of four, all she had funds for. “I’ll never leave Tower Hamlets, 1802, again. You have my word.”
“Your word.” Hargrave slanted his head, his flat black gaze never leaving her. His smile grew, and she realized she was doomed. Because he liked it. The control, the cruelty. He wasn’t chasing her through time on principle alone. “Don’t be so sure about my not getting my hands on Simon Alexander. He’s had me, in some way, chasing you for years. Wasted a load of time on the two of you. When time is my game. Besides, I tend to get what I want, dear heart. If I know what I saw in the man’s eyes when he looked at you, he’ll find a way. Then…one touch, and he’ll tumble like a petal I’ve plucked from a dying rose. I’ve bested many a beast more terrifying than him. In many a time.”
They have people with abilities greater than yours, she wanted to tell him. Opened her mouth to issue the threat before she stopped herself. Why warn him if the League could catch him by surprise? She hadn’t been given much information as a new member, but she’d been given some. Enough. They had weapons at their disposal. The Duke of Ashcroft shot fire from his fingertips. Delaney’s intellect was far-reaching and fantastic. Victoria blocked gifts. Finn read minds. Julian touched objects and saw the past. Piper was a healer. And Simon, he had a unique talent aside from holding her heart, a deceased brethren who sheltered him, as he sheltered them.
They would protect him. From the misfortune she’d dragged him into by stepping into his world in search of the Soul Catcher, the beginning and the end of her.
When Simon had never trusted her enough to give up the gem anyway.
The sound was slight but caught her ear. The scrape of a carriage wheel against stone. So slight only one standing by a fractured windowpane would hear it.
Inching aside the curtain with her pinkie, she glanced to the street. Simon stood beside a rented hack, his hand still clutching the doorframe. His furious gaze found hers across the twilight. His smile was hard-edged, succinct, devastating. Gorgeous and windblown, looking like he’d stepped from his tailor’s shop and straight into 1802, he motioned to someone inside the conveyance and started across the lane.
Mine. The word rang through her mind, tender illumination lighting her soul.
Dropping her head, she sucked a biting breath through her fist.
He’d come for her.
Seconds later, the door cracked back on its hinges.
His typical entrance.
Then Simon was striding through the archway into her squat abode, his broad body filling the space as no man’s ever had. She almost laughed to realize that even amid calamity, she was embarrassed to reveal the way she lived. The poverty, the degradation.
Absurd, when Simon Alexander, nay, MacDermot, had come from such humble beginnings himself.
His gaze seized her for a lingering moment, then focused on Hargrave. She kept her face impassive—but her body’s response was swift, love filling her as he filled the lone room of her dreary abode the moment he stepped into it. Dark slashes beneath his eyes, his cheeks gaunt and shadowed. Enraged and exhausted, as she was. But here. As he’d promised, without promising, that he would be.
When they’d made love, she’d known it was forever.
Until now, she hadn’t been sure he’d known it.
Hargrave took a long drag on his cheroot and lowered his boots to the floor with a thud, readying for confronta
tion. “Wasn’t locked, Alexander. The door. But thank you for the impassioned entrance. Almost theatrical. Like this pithy play on Drury Lane I saw once. 1838 or so, I reckon it was. Although everything, with you and this chit”—he rolled his shoulders, braced his hand on his knee and rose resignedly to his feet—“is impassioned, isn’t it?”
Emma tried to catch Simon’s gaze to keep him steady. It wasn’t the time for that temper of his to rip through the space like a frigid winter wind. But she was too late; Simon zeroed in on the bruise on her cheek, his hands curling into fists as he took a fast step forward. “I’m going to fucking kill you, Hargrave.”
Hargrave leered, deliberately, evilly, the wisp of smoke from his cheroot coiling like a snake about his head. “Guns don’t work well on me. Knives, either. I see the bump of a pistol outlined in your coat pocket. I bet, little gypsy, there’s a knife jammed in your boot. Superb attire doesn’t separate the man from his origins. Miss Breslin and I were just discussing that very fact. Unlucky for you, the gods that made me made me durable for this line of work. I have more lives than a cat. And if I touch you…” He shrugged and swept his hand out, signaling someone falling to the floor. “You’ll bother me no longer. Imagine, arriving like some fictional hero to save your woman when it’s simply not possible. The future I see is your face pressed against the rotting planks of this hellhole and my boot on your back. Under my control, no time travel involved. You and me? After years of this anarchy, it’s personal.”
Simon plucked the Soul Catcher from his waistcoat pocket and held it near the flickering flame of a candle burning on the mantle of her regrettably empty hearth. The glow caught the sharp edges of the stone, flinging golden facets across the ceiling and the floor. “This is yours, I believe,” he murmured and tossed the gem to her.
Reaching, she caught it with one hand. Gasped as the heat from the stone rolled up her arm. Her fingers, helplessly, curled around the treasure as she brought it to her chest.
