Page 47 of The Hellion is Tamed

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 dayandher 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, ataste, 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 simplyknown. 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. Hewasn’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 shelovedhim, but that shewantedhim. 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 keep 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 eyesalmostmeeting 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.