Page 10 of The Lady is Trouble

Asinine fool, he resolved and continued up the staircase. How could he have forgotten this?

Piper Scott loved to set people on their ears.

Especially him.

Maybe it barely registered, the vibration she projected, tilting the world around her whilehetried to retreat to the background. Hard for the tallest man in the room to do. Especially one with a moniker or two, as Piper had so agreeably pointed out.Beauchamp the Lion. He cursed as he slapped his bedchamber door open. What foolishness from a group of people with nothing better to do. With nothing more toworryabout.

While he had the entire world on his shoulders. Or so it felt some days.

He scooped his soot-stained clothing from the carpet and into his battered valise. This bag he kept at the inn, stocked with a fresh change of clothing, allowing him to leave Harbingdon or London at a moment’s notice and rest at the midpoint. It was his favorite bag, one he’d retained from what he considered hisotherlife. Too battered for a viscount, surely, which is likely why he felt affection for it. At one time, a boy, nearly a man, had run from an affluent but brutal existence at the hands of his father and disappeared in the bowels of London’s mean streets with nothing but that valise in his hand.

It now showed its age in a very inelegant way.

Perhaps they both did.

He slumped to the bed, dropped his head to his hands, and tried to massage away the ache. He wasn’t sleeping well. Controlling the visions was getting harder as they matured along with him. Images that had once made little sense now rang clearly, twisting his mind and his body into knot after knot. He was damned sick of looking into lives and being repulsed by what he witnessed. Repulsed and unable to expunge.

In actuality, hedidneed Piper.

She was buoyant, effervescent. Nothing, not even being a healer and pursued because of it, weighed her down. How did she manage that? His gift brought him low, scantly off the ground—his promise to protect the League even lower.

A ragged laugh tore from him as he imagined what she’d been up to in the past month. Fear mixed with fury inside him, but he still laughed.

Good God, she had guts.

A part of him, never to be revealed, envied her daring, herjoie de vivre. Her bloody lack of concern even as someone, usually him, stayed close behind, sweeping up the mess. Strangely enough, at one time, freshly installed at her grandfather’s estate and not sure of his direction, Julian had wished to be more like her. Outspoken, animated,vivacious. But his objectivity held steady even in light of his wish that it not.

He pressed his palm to his chest. Through layers, he could feel his uneven heartbeat kicking.Shit.

Touching Piper Scott still made his pulse race.

Her body had filled out, curves deepening, on the verge of voluptuous for such a small frame. She should have looked drab in a borrowed dress, the bodice too tight, the hem already sporting a muddy border, when instead she looked nonchalantly enchanting.

God above did a title do anythingbutsolicit magnificence, women thrown by eager mamas at your feet like rose petals. Very little were luminous without effort. Piper’s deep green eyes haunted him, reminding him of the emerald earbob he’d pinched from the gaming hell the first week after he’d run away, when food was so scarce his belly ached. An impulsive decision he’d taken a sound beating for because, unlike Finn, he’d never made a good thief.

Outside of those wondrous, glittering eyes, her mouth had always been her most arresting feature. Much too large for her face, he had been correct in assuming she would grow into it.

The enormously distressing element of this accounting, which was making his head pound and his cock stiffen, was the fact that Piper would crawl all over him if he let her. Sink inside him and grasp his heart, his body, his mind, all in one effortless, dazzling swoop.

He knew this. Had always known it.

She’d quite truthfully told him about her attraction, and once, at his weakest, he’d been unable to deny his own.

How was he to handle occupying her sparkling world again, when she would, without curbing any impulse, block him as he struggled to curb every one of his?

A forced distance between them was required because he was more dangerous to her than their enemies. Her grandfather had made him promise because he recognized the danger. It was written in the pages of his chronology, laid out rather brashly for those who chose to heed its warning.

An unforeseen merging of gifts can becatastrophic.

Of late, Julian had trouble leaving the otherworld once he entered, and he had no idea if someone going in with him would also have difficulty leaving. But he feared it was so, as her grandfather had feared.She’s not yours, he’d whispered in Julian’s ear with almost his last breath.

Piper had proven the combined power, crossing into the otherworld this morning when she grasped his hand. For one moment, he hadknownshe was there with him. And he’d never been more terrified in his life.

The grave possibilities when their gifts converged were inescapable, it seemed.

So he would stay away.

No matter how fervently he desired her.