Page 7 of The Hellion is Tamed

Given by Simon. Saint Simon.

While spouting off about his many fine qualities, his family hadn’t mentioned his astonishing skill with a blade. His bloodthirsty bent when he heard the call to bring the sentiment forth. His fast flashes of temper, what her ma would have called getting his breeches in a twist.

But there weren’t breeches in this modern world, only trousers. Oh, they’d told her that, too.

“Restez immobile.Stand still,” Madame Herbert, the modiste whispered, her French accent muscling her suggestion into an authoritarian area Emma both admired and feared. “You need contemporary clothing, and you need ittoday. I’m going to jab you if you keep moving. You’ll bleed, and then where will we be with this exceptional linen I had my assistant retrieve right off the ship this morning?”

Emma fidgeted as Madame Herbert yanked a needle from the pincushion attached to her wrist and slid the metal sliver into the material she’d bunched at Emma’s waist.

Glancing back at Delaney Tremont, the Duchess of Ashcroft, Emma sent a pleading look across the room. “Duchess, how many do I need? This is the fifth gown we’ve altered, and I only had two day dresses before. How am I to pay you back if you keep ordering more items than I can ever pay you back for?”

“Proper address is ‘Your Grace’,” the modiste supplied, giving her hip a little squeeze.

“Call me Delaney, please. And these clothes are my gift to Simon, darling time traveler. And toyou. If you hadn’t stepped in front of my horse that day ten years ago, a stunning apparition, and caused me to land on my rump, my duke might have waited years to realize he loved me,” the duchess murmured from her sprawl on the chaise lounge, her hand covering her rounded belly, her eyes closed in near-slumber. She was expecting her third child and seemed to sleep most of the day away.

Poor thing, had been Emma’s first thought.

Until she’d seen the duke’s lovesick expression when he looked at his wife and changed that to,lucky girl.

“Rags, what you had before,” Madame Herbert muttered around the needle she’d thrust between her sharp teeth. “And your shape is quite lovely.Quite. Curvaceous, but not too. Too many curves ruin the contour. Deserving of my talent, this figure. But showcased by tatters such as the ones you arrived in will not serve.” She tucked and pinned, mumbling beneath her breath, pinching harder than necessary to gather the pleat. “Men will drop at your feet, a blind spiral, when they see you in my creation. With that scarlet hair, ah, la, and those sapphire eyes, the colors I’ve chosen, it will be a triumph like none London has ever seen.”

“I’m done to a cow’s thumb,” Emma said, dread growing like ragweed through stone in her belly. Simon and his band of mystics wanted to pass her off as a distant relation of the Duke of Ashcroft, the duke such a close friend that Simon had immediately dropped her at Ashcroft House upon their arrival in 1882. Like he would a dog they were watching while he traveled. All the while, telling her she would soon be a valued member of this League he kept mentioning, as if she cared about the occult.

She hated her gift, hated being extraordinary more than she hated being poor.

They thought the solution to her problem was to create a fresh history for her. She plucked at a stray bit of fabric with a frown. Maybe the magic surrounding these people was twisting their senses. Time travel had made her unafraid of living in a different era. But this? Country cousin to a duke? A backstory of isolation and modest associations allowing her to step into a life she’d neither earned nor felt comfortable accepting. Allow for the social gaffes she was sure to make at every turn.

Society, no matter what year you chanced to meet them in, was a poisonous bunch.

“Done to a cow’s thumb,” Madame Herbert whispered, appalled, her gaze skating over Emma then back to her task. “We can’t parade you through a ballroom in one of my marvelous gowns without improvement of your speech,chérie. Like slapping paint on a decaying building.”

“It means I’m tired, exhausted, worn plum out,” Emma said, her temper flaring. Moving out of range of the modiste’s questing grasp, she stalked to the window, gazing at the tumult that was the city of her birth. Chaotic, just like it’d been when she left.If this French crow thinks to belittle me and me stand for it, she has another think coming.

The duchess groaned and lumbered to her feet, her arm curled low to cradle her belly. “I’m a transplant here as well, Emma. A filthy American, as you can hear from my speech. Not exactly someone thetonwanted to filch one of their dukes. But filch him, I did.” She shuffled across the room, perching her hip on the escritoire by the window, her crimson silk gown a delicate flutter around her. She appeared a duchess in every way,exceptfor the accent. “I had to learn to fit in, too. It can be done. Easily. Your enunciation is very good, considering. I imagine you’ve been filtering out the impurities all along. Anyway, you’re a member of the Duke and Duchess of Ashcroft’s family. And society pays attention to anyone with even a hint of blue blood racing through their veins.” Delaney tapped the windowpane and smiled. “But better yet, you have the League’s support.”

Emma grunted and gave the tassel wrapped around the velvet curtain a yank. She’d heard this one before, all week long.

“Everyone in this residence is special. Did Simon tell you this?”

Infuriation swelled, emotion flooding Emma’s cheeks when she thought of the way Simon had dropped her like a bag of rubbish at the duke’s door. “Honest to heaven, he told me nothing.”

“Such a foolish man, but then, aren’t they all?” Delaney murmured, her smile growing. “Then I shall tell you, since he has not. You aren’t alone. Every person we employ has a supernatural talent. From maid to footman to duke to duchess.” She wrestled herself into the chair sitting before the desk, kicked a rubbish bin upside down and stacked her slippered feet on top. Elegant, though, the entire production. Bloody impressive. “Even our Madame Herbert.”

Emma turned in a flurry of half-stitched linen, her mouth falling open. Madame Herbert glanced up from her sketch with a slight bow of her head, a blisteringly graceful rejoinder.

“You must learn to see past what is presented,chérie.” With a wrinkle of her nose, her thimble floated from her reticule, drifted across the room and into her waiting hand.

Emma blinked and stumbled back, plunking her bottom on the window ledge. “Why, you have a cursed rum touch.”

Delaney covered her mouth to hide the laugh that blessedly came out sounding like a cough. “A ‘cursed rum touch’ that made her vulnerable as a woman living alone in Lyon. As you know, our gifts do not endear us to, well, to anyone except each other. So Madame Herbert came here ten years ago to be a part of the League after hearing about protection with a supernatural group in England. She made my wedding dress. And every stitch of clothing since then.”

“I don’t even know what a League is,” Emma grumbled, picking at a loose thread on her skirt.

“The League is a group of people with gifts, like you and me. Madame Hebert. My talent is knowledge.” She tapped her temple. “I have an attic of material at my disposal, enough to fill a thousand libraries. It’s been useful to us on occasion. Carrying important information to our contacts in other countries, for example. Not a letter someone could confiscate, but rather, reams of research tucked in the dark corners of my mind. I’ve learned to manage it, this gift. Not let it suck the marrow from my bones. That will be part of the agreement if you join us. That we research this ability you have to travel through time, then help you better control it.”

Use me when you need it,Emma guessed, was also part of the deal. She scratched her shoulder, an unfinished seam pricking her skin. “I can control my skill fine enough with the swish stone in my possession. The Soul Catcher.” But she reckoned that picking anexactday to appear when she strolled through time would be better than the random arrivals she now directed. She’d dropped herself and Simon like a stone three solidmonthspast when he’d disappeared, an incident he’d said nothing about. But she could tell, aside from his noticeable relief that she’d landed them in the correctyear, he’d not been impressed by her overcalculation. “I suppose we could barter, a swap of sorts. I might be willing to play, depending on the terms.”

The duchess tilted her head in thought. “Swap?”