Page 51 of The Hellion is Tamed

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 surehe’dknown it.

Hargrave took a long drag on his cheroot and lowered his boots to the floor with a thud, readying for confrontation. “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 andmyboot 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.

Simon glanced back at her, love, if she could believe it, looming in his eyes. Like Hargrave had said he’d seen coloring them. Strangely, Simon didn’t try to hide his feelings from anyone but her. Maybe he wasn’t trying to hide anymore. “It warmed the closer I got to you. Pulsing a blinding blue, like your gaze in the moonlight. Almost led me right here.”

“You’re a bloody poet, Alexander.” Hargrave jammed his cheroot out on the wall, the stench of burnt wallpaper traveling across the room to sting her nose. “That trinket isn’t going to help her. Because she’s stayinghere. She can keep the damned stone. A treasure from a lost time. A memento from her lost love. Under her pillow like your gloves and that stained handkerchief. I’m even thinking, such a crafty girl being wasted in this hole, that she could help me bring back others who travel. Be trained to do my job, so I don’t have to do it. With a little persuasion, of course. Threats, you’d call them.” He flicked his fingers dismissively. “All just semantics.”

“I wouldnever,” Emma said, rage riding her voice.

Simon strolled across the room, planks creaking with each step, until he stood a slender pace away from Hargrave. Close enough to touch. Insult in his bearing, provocation in the challenging smile he released to the world. Her man liked to show his temper, he did. She’d be more fearful if she weren’t impressed by his masculine show of bravado. She was weak for him,weak. “You don’t know much about the League, do you, Hargrave? It’s not wise to go into battle without understanding who you’re fighting. Confidence above skill is never a successful combination.”

“You insolent mongrel.” Hargrave thumped the heel of his hand against Simon’s shoulder, knocking him back a step. An exchange Simon didn’t try to defend himself against, his clenched fists never leaving his sides. Emma choked back her cry, not understanding why he hadn’t reacted until she watched the time tracer’s face pale to the color of ash. “What the—?” Hargrave opened his fingers in a calculated roll, staring as if he’d never seen them before.

Simon snaked a tarnished half guinea from his trouser pocket and flipped it between his hands in a cheeky act sure to further infuriate Hargrave. When she knew it was merely his way to calm himself. “Why did I touch him, and he’s still standing, you ask? Have you ever heard of a blocker, Hargrave?”

“Victoria? You brought someone with you? But…how?” Emma breathed and stumbled away from the window, halting when Simon gave her a furious, arresting look. Finn’s wife could suspend supernatural gifts. Emma had yet to meet her but knew the League planned to see if she could travel while Victoria was close. When the expected answer was no.

“Who the hell is Victoria?” Hargrave growled, dusting his hand through the hair scattered thinly atop his head, a signet ring on his pinkie catching the candlelight.

“My sister-in-law. She’s in the hack outside, as is my brother, Finn. Her husband, who’ll kill you if you so much as gaze at her unkindly. If Victoria’s within, oh, a hundred yards or so of one of the insanely gifted, their power is reduced to ash, like that cheroot you rudely snuffed out on Miss Breslin’s wall.” The coin flashed as it snaked between his fingers. “Go ahead, touch me again. Throw a punch and see how vicious I’ve become, learning to protect what’s mine. Gaming hells aren’t known for civility. Neither is the supernatural world.” He tossed the coin in the air and caught it. Then it disappeared up his sleeve. “I’ll tell the haunts to step aside. Man to man, this bout, no mystical gifts involved. But you look a tad worse for the travel, so you’d better consider the situation carefully. I’m well-rested, my friend.”

Hargrave spat on the floor and gave his mouth a bruising buff with his forearm. “If you think I’ll let you take the girl backwithouta fight, you’re crazier than they say.”

Simon tipped his head back and laughed. “Crazy, am I? Society, once again, has a man pegged incorrectly. It’s talking to empty rooms that aren’t empty that confuses them. Initially, I considered insanity myself. Truly.”

Emma took a step closer, silently pleading.Simon,stop this; play the game.

He must have felt her because his hand shot out, his jaw tightening.Hiswarning. “To borrow an American expression from my dear friend, Delaney Tremont, the Duchess of Ashcroft, let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? I came eighty years for proper negotiation. Equal trade. Fair-minded, both sides.”