Page 10 of The Hellion is Tamed
Simon drained his drink and reached for the decanter to pour another. “Oh, here we go. Next, you’ll start spouting off about true love. Wives extinguish blazes, is that it?”
“Or light them, in my case. Simon, this girl you were fixated on—”
“I’ve never been fixated on a woman in mylife, brother. My interest is perfunctory, at best,” he growled, slamming the decanter on the sideboard. “Don’t make this out to be more than it is. I knew Emma was in trouble,wastrouble, from the first moment I laid eyes on her. She couldn’t step out of the bubble she was in and talk to me, but despair was splattered all over her like Julian’s paint across a canvas. Despair I”—he thumped his chest with his glass—“recognized. The kind of poverty and desperation that drives you to madness. You must remember what that level of hopelessness is like. I wanted tosaveher from that world like Julian saved you and me. Give her a new life. And maybe assist our supernatural band of misfits along the way. We don’t, at current, have a time traveler in our ranks. Could come in handy.” Tipping his glass, he drained the contents in one swallow. “I’ve handed her over to the women of the League. There, my debt ends.”
Although, and he hoped like hell Finn didn’t read this thought, he’d started looking for her, in some obscure part of his soul, before he knew. Before he even knew her, he’d known someone was out there. Waiting for him.
A secret he planned to take to his grave.
“So,” Finn theorized with another knuckle tap on the desk, “she’s starting lessons meant to turn her into a society belle. A duke’s charming but solitary cousin, a chit no one’s ever heard of, debuting at a spring ball he’s throwing in two weeks in her honor. A mad scramble to school a woman born on the streets. Rookery streets, remember those? Elocution. Literature. Watercolors. Proper cutlery placement. Dancing. I can see it now. Victoria, Delaney and Piper, threeextremelydelightful examples of feminine decorum, guiding the way.”
Simon jammed the top in the decanter with a clang. “I know it doesn’t sound like the keenest plan…but it’s the one I came up with.”
“It sounds risky,” Finn murmured. “The women you’ve picked to tutor your little wanderer determined harridans themselves.”
“Emma only has to make enough of this experience to fit in, the League a protective buffer surrounding her. Enough comfort in life, so she doesn’t want to…”
Finn hummed, smoothing his broad palm over the desk. “So she doesn’t want to go back.”
“No more meandering from one decade to the next,” Simon whispered, speculating on the likelihood of that. Emmaline Breslin didn’t seem the type to listen to anyone’s counsel but her own.
“Not even local meandering? Jumping from, say, one city dwelling to another?”
Simon slowly lifted his head, remembering Finn had come bearing bad news as well as good. “Where is she?”
Finn ran his tongue over his teeth, trying, Simon could see, to hide his smile. “The spare cloakroom, the one where we keep the misplaced items. You know, we need to donate those clothes. The rag and bone man was by last month, and no one’s going to claim a pair of drawers they lost in a linen closet whilst swiving.”
“Finn,” Simon ground out between clenched teeth.
Finn held up a hand in apology. “She’s shoved herself between a frock of some scratchy material, I’d guess wool, and a velvet dinner jacket reeking of bergamot. Planning to wait out the close of the establishment, then find you. Youoweher, I believe she said. Nonverbally, of course. What, exactly, you owe, I haven’t been able to detect.”
As a calming gesture, Simon yanked the cards back out of his pocket and began to shuffle. “You’ve been reading her mind all this time, knew she was here, and you’re just getting around to telling me?”
Finn shrugged a broad shoulder. “You picked good news first.”
The cards fell still in Simon’s hands, the six of diamonds floating to the Aubusson carpet. “She just showed up, is what you’re telling me? Not through a door? When we had a deal?” With a curse and a rising temper, he bent to retrieve the card. It wasn’t often one escaped his charge. That’s how much this chit was affecting him. “Did you check if they let her in the main entrance? What about the alley door?”
Finn picked a piece of nonexistent lint from his sleeve, a typical ploy when he was assembling either his words or his expression. “She didn’t come through one of the Blue Moon’s doors. Or a window. This, I have confirmed. I’ve had a guard posted in the alley everysecondsince my darling wife showed up the two times when we were, well, um, courting. It doesn’t pay to let a woman surprise you.” One of Finn’s devilish smiles split his face, thickening Simon’s ire. “Unless it’s, say, anakedsurprise.”
Simon tossed the cards on the sideboard. “This woman is going to be the death of me.”
Finn gave another loose shrug. “A time traveler will travel, now, won’t she? And you didn’t even leave her with the Soul Catcher.” He tilted his head in thought, his eyes sparkling. “She’s pretty good without it. Imagine what she could dowith.”
Exasperated, Simon crossed the room and took the stairs to the main floor at a run. He hadn’t trekked to every library in England, Scotland and Wales, made one trip to Germany and two to France, researching each notation regarding time travel or a portal to the past to let this female fiend slip through his fingers.
Although, he’d nocluewhat to do with her now that he’d found her.
Shouldering through the throng hovering around the hazard andvingt et untables like London’s impenetrable fog, Simon ignored the shouts of patrons deep in their cups, the grasping hands of mistresses men liked to have by their side while they squandered their time and, often, their birthright. He disregarded the impulse to steal, then sighed and paused to swipe a half sovereign resting on the baize before a boozy baron who had his hand tucked inside his paramour’s bodice. Sliding the coin beneath his sleeve, he waved off his guards with a rigid shake of his head that said, I have this. Like he’d handled the episode last night, though this time, he wasn’t expecting a fist to his face for his trouble.
But a fist to the heart was possible.
Emmaline Breslin was, like it or not,hisproblem.
She had been from the moment she’d stepped into his life, hushed presence before a lonely boy or not.
He forced aside the pinch of emotion in his gut, ignoring the emphasis he’d unintentionally placed on the very possessivehis.
Halting before the cloakroom door, Simon glanced over his shoulder at the haunt who’d followed him down the stairs. An older gent, Henry, who seemed to want nothing more than someone to talk to occasionally. “No,” he whispered, “not now.Later.” Henry blinked his watery green eyes once, gave a sharp salute, then continued down the unlit hallway and out of sight. Simon snicked open the door and stuck his head inside, immediately spotting the toes of the grubby boots Emma had traveled to 1882 in peeking from beneath a puddled mound of wool and linen.