Page 9 of The Hellion is Tamed

Simon rolled his shoulders, dug a half crown from his pocket before turning to face Finn. “A fist in the face is what it got me. As you well know.” He ran his knuckle lightly over the bruise on his cheek, stretching his jaw with a pop. “However, I was able to reciprocate, which felt bloody marvelous, shoving that earl’s smirking face into the Axminster carpet, my favored pursuit of the week. The lessons in warfare are finally paying dividends. I cut that pompous dandy off at the knees, just like my friend the duke taught me to when I was no more than ten years old.”

“I don’t think that’s what Ashcroft had in mind with his training sessions. More the plan to use those skills to protect yourself. And the League.”

“Huh,” Simon murmured, holding back a grin, the coin catching the light from the sconce as he flicked it between his fingers. He was starting to enjoy this. A loving wife and adorable children had made his older brother no fun at all. Finn wanted to run his business, then return home as promptly as possible. No blood-stained collars or bruised jaws involved. “Those lessons are not meant to give me the ability to smash an earl’s face into costly carpeting? I must have misinterpreted.”

“With the way you’re behaving of late, I can’t imagine a fight with an earl is your preferred pastime. What’s on tonight’s agenda? A countess? An actress? The gossip rags have you connected to both.”

“You’re forgetting Baroness Blithe. Been sending me notes, asking when I’d like to havetea.” Simon laughed and dipped his head to press the sound into his sleeve. “Her version of tea? Tangled in her sheets, tea optional.”

“Don’t laugh, Si. That journalist was by earlier today, the snoop from theTimes. Hargrave. Hard, nasty eyes for a writer. Heard about the earl whose charming visage you so kindly rearranged. He wanted a quote for a piece he’s doing on vice and villainy in London. The Blue Moon to be featured, lucky us. Free promotion, when none is needed.” Finn buffed his fist over his stubbled cheek and sank back on the desk with a groan. “I have a bad feeling. Hargrave’s thoughts are unfettered when I read them. Scattered. And never, ever, about the topic he says he’s writing about. He’s baiting me. Talking about one subject, his thoughts racing along down another. I caught you in those thoughts, with heated emotion backing it. Then he led me in another direction.”

“Don’t worry,” Simon said and wedged his shoulder against the column securing the balcony, a long-legged sprawl he used to hide his unease. The coin was a comfort in his hand, silver warming against his skin. Although he, too, was concerned about E.L. Hargrave’s interest. Not in the Blue Moon. That they could handle. But in what he and Finn both feared, interest in theLeague. Who wanted to write about a gaming hell when one could expose a group of clandestine supernaturals living amongst society? Going so high as a duke who blew fire from his fingertips. “Someday, someone—”

“Is going to find us. We can only hide for so long.” Finn pinched the bridge of his nose with a ragged exhalation. “I know this. We all know this. But now, there are children involved. Julian and Humphrey, two each. Ashcroft, four in another month or so. My three. Some inheriting gifts, some only living with the guilt ofnotinheriting. I want, with everything I am orhave, to protect our families from a precarious future. Lucien is giving Julian fits. Asked to leave Rugby with no hope of a return. The boy will be working with us soon. Another Alexander sent to London to bedevil society.”

“Like we were any better. Didn’t Rugby ask you to leave a hundred or so years ago?” Simon pulled himself out of his negligent posture, closing his hand around the coin. “And can you stop reading my mind, please? I can see from your expression that you’re doing it.”

Finn grimaced and brought his hand to his temple, rubbing. “Sorry, the baby was up all night. I’m exhausted. I can’t control it right now. And Victoria’s not around to block. Your thoughts are slipping like mist through my mind. Everyone on the street, a cacophony of speeches, pleas, desires.” He released a labored sigh. “It’s grueling. Trust me when I say, I wish I were a normal man.”

“If you quit having them, babies, that is, you’d get more sleep.” Finn and Victoria had been married for ten years and had three children to show for a hideously loving union. They were devoted to each other, and the marvelous benefit for Finn, aside from a beautiful woman who loved him more than any woman should, was his wife’s ability to block his gift when she was near. Block almost everyone’s gift, except Simon’s. The haunts paid her little mind and closed in on him with confidence. It was only with maturity that he’d been able to force them aside. Talk them home, as he called it. Reason triumphing over will.Mostof the time.

He suddenly wondered if Victoria would be able to block Emma’s ability to travel through time, keeping her locked in 1882, where Simon wanted her.

A fly in amber. Stuck until he figured out what to do with her.

Though he wasn’t going to admit this desire to keep her close.

Not ever.

“I don’t know if Victoria can block her. We’ll have to test it and see,” Finn said. “Part of Julian’s plan is to do just that, and soon, as you bloody-well know. Better prepare her for an Inquisition to rival Spain’s.”

Slapping the coin on the desk as he passed it, Simon took a lingering stroll about the study, filched a deck from the sideboard and worked the cards between his fingers, a matchless sequence unlike any the dealers on the floor below could accomplish. Of course, he wasn’t allowed in any club in London but his own, due to his particulartalent.

“Have you been by Sebastian’s this week?” Simon kept his gaze on the cards in his hand, his cheeks flushing. Goddamn it to hell. If Finn readthesethoughts, he was going to smash his brother’s face into the carpet.

“The Duke of Ashcroft’s? This week?” With a lioness yawn, Finn kicked his legs out to cross them at the ankle, linking his hands over his belly and settling in for what looked like a nap. The man could sleep in the middle of a typhoon. “Now why would I—”

“Dammit, Finn.”

Finn held up his hand and smiled with only partial humor, his legendary cerulean gaze snagging Simon’s. “I bring good newsandbad. Which would you like first?”

Simon gave the cards a furious shuffle that had the ace of hearts flipping to the top of the stack, as he’d planned. He’d had a nagging itch between his shoulder blades since he’d dumped Emma at Ashcroft’s five days ago. Five days that felt like twenty. The way time slowed when he was a boy, and he wanted to do something he knew was blinking mad.

He and Emma hadn’t spoken on the return to 1882, the entire journey taking perhaps a minute. Butwhata journey. Fantastic, like being awake during a dream and surrounded by every color you recognized, and some you didn’t. Drunk, but not. Lucid, but not. The experience had left him so fatigued that after leaving her, he’d slept for forty hours straight.

When he’d checked with Delaney, afraid Emma was in a similar state, he’d been told she’d suffered no ill effects. Instead, awoken the following day fresh as the proverbial daisy. It scared the life from him to realize that she could travel eighty years, seemingly at will, without even the slightest tinge of a megrim.

Though she’d landed them three months later than he’d asked her to.

But she’d gotten the year right, thank God. And the country.

Thoughts of that hellion suddenly making him cross, Simon jammed the cards in his waistcoat pocket, moved to the sideboard and poured a generous measure of gin. “Start with the good,” he muttered and knocked the liquor back. “By the time you make it to the bad, I’ll have another drink in me, and I should be better able to acknowledge the news.”

Finn cracked his knuckles, each one a dull pop, an activity set to keep him from doling out brotherly advice. “Julian and Piper arrived in town last night.”

Julian’s wife Piper, Viscountess Beauchamp, was the League’s healer. Over the years, she’d helped Simon negotiate with his haunts and send them back where they were supposed to be, which was often not with him. The League had summoned Piper to assist Emma. Perhaps, she wouldn’t arrive three months late on her next journey. Simon took a deliberate sip, wondering where this conversation with his brother was heading and how furious he was going to be when Finn got them there.

“You looked for her for ten years, Si. Researched how to find a portal to travel back and get her, until we worried you would never find it, would never forgive yourself for having to leave her to her destiny. The risk you took, you don’t know the sleepless nights I had worrying about you. Now, she’s here, in the Duke of Ashcroft’s townhome. Another forlorn waif joining the League’s ranks.” Finn yanked the cuff of his pressed sleeve taut and threw Simon a quelling glance, his personal tell to straighten already pristine clothing. “You’re restless, more than usual. The fights, the women, the drinking. Can’t a brother worry?” Finn knocked his knuckle on the desk, three hard taps. “How’s Emma going to help you? A person we don’t know, aside from her visits years ago, when no one could actually speak to her. Is she going to quench the blaze inside you?Finally, is someone going to be able to do that, I wonder?”