Page 20 of The Hellion is Tamed

“Is your friend with us?” she asked, breathless from the waltz. Breathless from something. “Henry?”

Lurching to a graceless halt, Simon released her and stumbled back. Snaked his hand in his pocket to grab a coin before he realized what he was doing and snaked it back out. “You’ve danced before,” he murmured, heat sweeping his body when he got a look at the shy smile on her face. When had this untamed chit ever looked hesitant to discuss any-damned-thing?

Emma pleated her skirt between her fingers, shifting her slippered feet in time to her matchless rhythm. “Here and there. On the warped planks of shabby knotholes, no waltzes, of course. Nothing so grand as this.”

Simon didn’t want to ask who she’d danced with.

The thought making him walk the natural path and wonder whatelseshe’d done. Which wasn’t his bloody business and brought images that had the power to send his temper, lightly restrained on a sunny day, zipping off like one of those pyrotechnics the duke was so fond of. “Good thing, the prior experience. You have it. The waltz. Or close enough not to do grave damage. Practice the turns, let him lead. No more than one dance with each partner. Two in a single evening signals notice you won’t wish to receive.”

The duke’s ballad stuttered to a wobbly close as he realized he’d lost his dancers.

Emma’s head tilted as she searched his face, trying to read him. The woman concealed little of what crossed hers—and he felt a crack, a slight chasm, as emotion flowed from his heart, threatening to expose him.

No way in hell, he ruled, bowing slightly, not waiting for her curtsy, if she even knew how to deliver one.

He was out the back entrance and through the rose garden before Delaney could waddle across the ballroom and stop him. Before Emma could open her mouth and whisper a desire he wouldn’t be able to ignore, or God forbid, touch him, tempt him beyond reason, something only larceny had done before.

He always got an itch between his shoulder blades when he thought of stealing.

And now, after spending years trying to kill the inclination, he also got the itch when he thought ofher.

Bruton Street was clogged when he hit it, carriages and carts tangling for purchase, the scarce inhabitants of the boulevard sprinting along with gazes downcast to avoid the storm, bumping into him as he himself sprinted. He stepped off the curb and into a shallow puddle, certain, thanks to the modern sewer network, it no longer contained a streaming river of waste, only conventional urban grime. Henry was just behind him, avoiding the slick, as ghosts were able to do.

Simon strode in the opposite direction of the Blue Moon, following the streets as they meandered into murkier environs. Traveled through the muddled damp until he was soaked clean through to his drawers. Until his path wasn’t lined with picturesque arcades, apparel shops and confectionaries, but with dilapidated structures jammed together so tightly, they looked like they were holding each other up. Gin palaces and squalid flats and ramshackle shops, one depressing dwelling after the next. Tattered clothing on hooks fluttering in the breeze, the windows he passed patched with wads of newspaper and strips of fabric.

The sounds of the lesser tier surrounded him as he crawled inside, recognition and preservation awakening his senses. Simon Alexander stepped back to allow Simon MacDermot to enter the space, the man better outfitted for the decadence that was St Giles, Shoreditch, Old Nichol. Children’s shouts, hawker’s bellows, the curses of blokes with nothing to lose, soared in volume as he closed in on a part of the city he could taste, breath,feel. Choked lanes and trapped paths and blind alleys, the gritty blend of charred meat, coal smoke and the river tainting the air. Laundry soap and ale and dung. Impoverishment and a clandestine energy he thrived on when he wished he didn’t.

A slice of London he felt more comfortable in than the slice, the life, his brothers had offered him like a piece of angel cake on priceless bone china.

Which would distress them to know.

As he passed a set of filthy windows on Old Nichols Street next to the residence he sought, he caught sight of his image in the rain-slashed glass. Cracks and more repair with tattered newsprint. His hair was the color of the Cork Distilleries whiskey he stocked at the Blue Moon, darker than it’d been when he hustled these streets, his body broader, his jaw rigid. But his eyes werelesswary, less aggrieved. And for some bizarre reason, he felt remorse over leaving that terrified boy behind. Leaving this life of misery and poverty behind.

He despised himself for fitting in so well in fucking Mayfair.

Simon shoved aside musings he’d thought,everytime, he’d resolved, until he returned, halting before a portico of nondescript construction. A decaying set of cement stairs took him to a weather-beaten door and a rusted knocker in the shape of what he assumed was a hummingbird. His request for entry was undemanding, the requisite four raps answered immediately. Ragsdale, Josie’s barbarous majordomo, gave a swift nod as he opened the door, his hand caressing the butt of the pistol shoved in his waistband.

Simon took the carpeted stairs two at a time, realizing it was a reckless endeavor, coming here in the light of day, seeking solace instead of sex, as any other man entering Josephine’s would be seeking. Henry jostled him, having completed the trip with him, a blast of air rather than the feel of an actual body colliding with his.

When Simon tromped into the parlor where he knew he’d find her, a fleeting surge of fury reeled through him. He’d been unable to save her, his childhood friend from the mudlarking days. The desperate, despicable days. Unable to offer the sister of his heart another solution until it was too late.

Josie glanced up from her knitting, a fleeting assessment. A judgment that would be right on the money because she knew him almost as well as he knew himself. Halting her clacking needles, she gestured with one to the sofa across from her. “Sit. I can see something beyond our normal business is on your mind. I wasn’t expecting you until next week. A new girl needing placement. But we can get to that after you tell me what’s wrong.”

He blindly followed instruction, sprawling on the brocade sofa, his legs going out, his head back. Josie’s ceiling needed repair, a spider crack spanning an entire corner. He would have the Blue Moon’s steward add it to the running list of maintenances. Yanking his hand through his hair, he sent streaks of rain sliding down his cheek to collect on his collar. With a shiver, he slipped a farthing from his waistcoat pocket and rotated it between his fingers as Josie halted her knitting to play hostess. Feminine succor, comfort for both of them in the routine. Pouring tea, stacking biscuits on a plate edged with what looked like daisies, murmuring observations he wasn’t required to satisfy. Not with her. She knew how to calm him better than even his brothers. Better than whiskey and, sometimes, better than sex. Her perfume, delicate, discreet, circling the space. Closing his eyes, he breathed in one of the few sensations ofhomein any memory he wished to carry.

Josie reclaimed her seat, fished out her yarn bundle and put her needles into play. It looked like she was halfway to creating a scarf, some godawful mix of gold and fuchsia. “You’re soaked to the skin. No gloves, no overcoat. Where is that Inverness cape I saw you wearing on St James last month? My, you looked an Oxford man. You’ve done us proud, darling boy. Former bandit of the night. Not a lick of Old Nichol on you. You’ve got the life. Unless one glimpses eyes the color of the finest chocolate and sees the hopelessness.” She tapped the needle against her bottom lip. “Care to tell me what this impromptu visit is about?”

“I gave her my gloves,” he said stupidly, flexing his chilled fingers. The supplest kidskin to be had, Welsh, specially ordered and just in from his tailor the week before. They would have come in handy during his stormy dash into the slums,dammit.

“Her.” Josie’s knitting needles reclaimed their task, her lips curling to hide what he assumed was a smile. She ducked her head before Simon could confirm the suspicion, but his mood curdled anyway. “That answers my question. Why should I be shocked? You run back here every time you get frightened by your new life. But you’ve never run back because of a woman. More resentment with your brothers over their heavy-handed management, that silly tiff when you were almost expelled from Oxford for stealing the Roman antiquity from the library. But never the need to escape awoman. Hmm…”

“I’mnotrunning from a woman. I needed to walk. Clear my head.”

“Clear your head by strolling from Mayfair to Old Nichols? In the blinding rain?” Josie glanced out the window at the congested mass passing her residence, the sound of a man’s shout and glass breaking a clear reminder of where they were. Her needles clicked as she shrugged a slim shoulder and resumed her project, accepting of her circumstances, forgiving of his good fortune, as always. “It’s been almost twenty years, Mac. Doesn’t that life fit yet?”

Simon shot a breath through his teeth, slapped the farthing to the table and cradled his hands around a teacup, wishing like hell the delicate china was filled with gin.Mac. Besides Josie, only his mother had ever called him that. A nickname even his brothers didn’t know about. “I’m not frightened.” He took a sip, the taste of chamomile and cinnamon dancing along his tongue, calming, as she’d planned. “Unnerved, perhaps. Unsettled. I don’t know why this is the case after all this time. I’m lucky, I know it. Schooling only an aristocrat, even one hanging on to society by the nick of his fingernails, would receive. Quality clothing, a loving family. A home. Two, in fact. Mayfair and Julian’s estate in Oxfordshire. Aprofession.” He sighed and tapped the rim of the cup against his teeth. “I love the Blue Moon like I birthed it. There couldn’t be a place I cherish more in this filthy city. Mine, thanks to someone else’s good grace.”

Josie paused, placing the half-completed scarf on her lap. “You lose yourself dissecting the boundaries between who you were and who youare, Mac. It’s a tireless route, bouncing between them. When is there time to simply live? Accept, move on?”