Page 6 of The Hellion is Tamed

Simon muttered a curse beneath his breath.Brilliant. “Then this spot it is.”

She straightened her spine, closed her eyes and whispered something he couldn’t quite catch.

Then they were gone.

Chapter 1

The Present

1882, A Duke’s Boisterous Residence

Mayfair, London

Five days and eighty years later, all Emma could think was:Simon Alexander’s a do-gooder.A hypocrite. A changer of lives. His bloody own, the most astounding. From rookery bugger to natty bloke. A mighty grand life he’d procured for himself.

Now, he thought to change her. Procure this life forher. Without even considering that she wouldn’t want to be beholden, owe such a debt to his family. To him.

The daft part of the deal? Shewantedto change. For him, without knowing him anymore, an understanding she’d stumbled over like a wrinkle in the extravagant carpet upon which she trod. She glanced around the luxurious bedchamber with a tight swallow. This life of measured sips instead of gulps, walking with your back straight as a ruler and whispering when you felt like shouting was a life she wasn’t sure she wanted.

The lot of them, Simon’s family, wished to file away the rough bits that made her Emmaline Breslin. They did, indeed. Every dreadful, jagged edge. The lips that opened and allowed cockney to tumble free. The hands roughened by labor and desperation. The red hair. The freckles. The scowl they said made her beautiful when turned to a smile. The curse words and the ribald jokes not suitable for a woman ofstanding.

Every chatty chit in his family had surrounded her since Simon ditched her, promptly disappearing with a duke, like a dog with a nagging wound to lick. And they hadn’t shied away from telling her how wonderful he was. Selling her on an item they didn’t realize wasn’t for sale. Not to her. Not for a blimey second had they quit shoving his agreeable qualities before her like a dripping slice of tipsy cake.

Gentle, calm, strong.

Intelligent, handsome, witty.

As if she didn’t know these things about him.

The year they’d spent together when she was fourteen and he fifteen, her popping in and out of his life, his time, had been magical. A reprieve from poverty and despair. An effort to control a mystical talent that had been nothing but a hardship from birth. Even if she couldn’t find a way to destroy the barrier separating them and touch him, talk to him, she’d been enthralled. Fascinated, charmed, attracted. Boosey with him, like the time Winsome Sally had challenged her to a gin match on her birthday, and she’d promptly lost both her dinner and the wager. But it had been grand fun before the muddle.

Back then, she’d studied Simon with—

Emma scrunched up her face and searched for the word…

Diligence. She’d studied Simon Alexander with more diligence than the books her ma had borrowed from that posh family in Berkeley Square she’d worked for before she died. This months-long investigation had allowed Emma to witness his undying love for his brothers, men not in actuality his brothers at all, his struggle to deal with his magical gift and all the ghosts who surrounded him, and the distance he held himself apart. She’d desperately wanted to reach him, had wanted to change his life, too. Had wanted to be apartof it.

Though she belonged in his world less than a rodent in a ballroom.

But no one in this splendid Mayfair townhouse grasped her motivation back then—andhe’dforgotten. Or convinced himself that the way they’d talked without words had been a—

Emma sighed and hunted for the phrase she’d read in the duchess’s book last night, shifting from foot to foot, her new slippers pinching her toes worse than the intricate twist her maid had wound her hair into was pinching her scalp. She snapped her fingers when it came to her.

Simon had convinced himself their feelings had been afigment of his imagination.

He was angry with her for leaving and not coming back. When she hadn’t been able to come back. Not for ages, due to pitiable circumstance and weak command of her gift, and when she had, five years ago, he’d broken her heart without knowing it. And that, friends, was that. He wasn’t going to forgive her—and perhaps she couldn’t forgive him. Even if she learned to speak without dropping her Rs, which she’d done quite right with on her own. Wore exquisite gowns and prissed around like a princess. Held out her pinkie when she sipped tea. Sipped, notslurped,being the goal, according to the duchess.

No, Simon had dropped her like a lump of flaming coal, taken himself off to his frantic city life, ignored her all week after thrusting her into a situation that pinched more than the slippers.

The boy she’d left behind had turned into a full-fledged man. His soulful brown eyes were the same. His hair was a shade darker, now the color of dying sunlight, curling around his face just so. Made a woman want to push the strands aside, give them a neat tuck behind his ear.

But everything else,changed.

When he’d brandished that knife like no sharper she’d ever seen, his long body bent over Jonesy, she’d been reminded of a fighter she’d seen once in a Shoreditch market, muscles in his arm bulging, broad shoulders tensing beneath a shirt made to look ragged when it was tailored sleek as a cat to his form.

Simon Alexander fought like no posh toff should, that’s for sure. Skills she didn’t imagine he got to use often in Mayfair.

Emma glanced around her assigned bedchamber with a frown, her gaze snagging on the velvet curtains, the silk counterpane in shades of cream and violet, the gaudy rug that was worth more than anything she owned or would ever own. It was, without a doubt, the most fetching chamber she’d ever seen, much less stepped into. Or been given.