Page 14 of The Hellion is Tamed
But she’d come back again and again forhim.
His were sensible motives when her heart wasn’t a sensible vessel.
“Whatever could I be irked about?” she asked, vowing right then and there in the swank carriage he used to spirit women off when he was done with them, to make herself the bleedingtoastof London. She’d learn to speak like a countess and walk with a book on her head clear to Westminster and sip tea like blinking Victoria while wearing the most gorgeous gowns society had ever seen.
All to allow the condemned man clinging to her carriage window to feel this pain.
She’d make him so jealous he would discharge like one of the duke’s poorly-made firecrackers.
She yanked his gloves off, one finger at a time. Preparing to give them back, then deciding not to. “I want the stone. While I’m learning to be a high-born lady, I want it with me. It calms me. And if your League is going to pick my…talent like a wound, make me appear here and there around this blessed city, a marionette and them holding the strings, I need it.”
Simon gazed into her face so penetratingly that what her granny called look-see grooves flowed from the corners of his eyes. Adorable lines she wanted to smooth away with her fingers. Or with a tender, lingering kiss. “Take the better life,” he whispered and dug in his coat pocket, his broad shoulder lifting, coming up with the Soul Catcher. A slice of weak moonlight struck it, and it glittered, casting yellow and green diamonds across the carriage’s interior. A splash of an omen about the future, perhaps. “You’d be a fool not to.”
“Like you did. And you’re no fool. Anyone can see that.”
He laughed then, a vicious sound that sent goosebumps dancing along her arms. “Darlin’, I was a mudlark before turning to the more profitable and less dangerous, though completely hazardous sport of thievery. This, when I was all of eight years old. A celebrated cutpurse set to spill the last of his young blood on the cobbles of St Giles, before I was given an opportunity much the same as you’re being given, to forge a new life.” He rapped the window ledge once with his fist. “So, never,evermistake my understanding of the circumstances you find yourself in. Or the twist in your belly when you think about accepting the offer and being indebted for life to another. It’s anexchange, make no mistake. I’m only telling you, advice from a professional gambler if you choose to take it, that it’s a profitable exchange.”
Emma rocked back against the squabs, clenching her trembling hands in her lap. Mudlarking? Saints be. Only the most deplorable of circumstances lowered one tothatprofession. “Your name,” she whispered from the depths of the shadows she collapsed into. “Your real name.”
His arm extended into the carriage, the Soul Catcher an offer held lightly between his long, slim fingers. “MacDermot. Simon MacDermot. There might have been a middle name at one time, but I can’t recall it if there was.”
Emma gasped and leaned into the stray moonbeam piercing the carriage window. “Irish. You’re Irish.” She could see it now that she was looking. The faint scatter of freckles dancing across the bridge of his nose. The hair, glints of auburn, just a touch, mixed in with wheat.
“My father…he was…” His lips caught in a hard line, the skin around his mouth whitening. “I don’t use the name. I’mnevergoing to use it.”
Shattering the charged moment, Emma snatched the swish stone from Simon before he changed his mind about loaning it to her, then patted the gem against her chest. Mostly an effort to erase the anguish from his face by turning his thoughts from his father to her. “I’m Irish, too. In County Donegal, my granny said it was Ó Breasláin.” Tucking the stone in the edge of her bodice, unable to ignore the way his gaze fiercely tracked the movement, she shrugged, wishing his regard didn’t light her up the way it did. That slender ring of violet around his pupils, the tawny mix in his hair, him looking so dapper standing there. Without even trying. Spit-shined, as the old Emma would have said. A body like Captain Jack, the finest pugilist in Tower Hamlets. Lean, broad, bulging muscles even clever tailoring couldn’t hide.
She thought back to when Simon had jammed his boot on Jonesy’s back and dug the thug’s face in the dirt, protecting her.
The gesture made her warm in places it shouldn’t.
She’d always taken good care of herself. It was madness to let that job fall to someone who only cared about a mystical talent that had wrecked her life. Made her an oddity when she’d wanted to fade into the background. Made her everythingbutnormal.
Although, feeling nothing for him was impossible. He had this adorable dimple that winked at her when he smiled, which wasn’t often. And he was handsome in every way that mattered. Like a church bell, his nearness reverberated through her, even if the noise was one she didn’t wish to hear.
“Breslin. It means strife if you’re wondering,” she finally said when the silence had begun to chafe.
Simon yanked the curtain across the window, shutting off her view of him, then stepped back with a rough laugh. “So your name literally means trouble? Brilliant.” Tapping the carriage roof, he gave the duke’s address to the coachman and bid her goodnight with one whispered promise that floated away on the breeze:tomorrow.
Though her heart reached through the window to catch the proclamation back.
As the conveyance rocked into motion, she turned, watching through the narrow window as fog settled upon her savior, a concealing mist, until she could no longer see him standing there.
But he was a beating presence in her heart. In her mind, in hersoul, if she had one.
A presence she feared more than she feared going back to 1802—and not making it out alive.
Chapter 4
The next afternoon, Simon arrived at the Duke of Ashcroft’s townhome and was escorted to what he thought of as the gruesomely green parlor, where he found Emmaline sprawled indecorously across the Axminster carpet situated before the hearth, her head pillowed on the rounded rump of one of the duke’s many mutts. The mutt asleep, the girl awake. Her deliciously long legs stretched out, stockinged toes wiggling, she held a book he imagined was one of Dickens’s novels he’d sent over this morning. She had the volume tucked close to her face, her mouth moving silently as she read lines of text. A charred section of the rug, fresh from the look and scent of it, lay right beside her elbow, one of the Duke of Ashcroft’s attempts to send a blaze from his mind directly to the hearth.
Close, the effort. No more than a foot away. Refining his skill after years of practice.
Simon slumped against the doorjamb, crossed his legs at the ankle and took her in, this positively foreign, absolutely fascinating creature who’d beguiled her way into his life.
A woman who’d haunted him more than any ghost in existence.
She was nothing like the society chits who offered themselves to him daily. Their attraction answerable to his ownership of the Blue Moon and the skills a viscount’s byblow possessed that a high-born man likely wouldn’t. A jaded bunch, the lot of them, himself included, seeking entertainment and deliverance.