Page 25 of The Lady is Trouble

He knew no way to wake from dreams of Piper.

She recognized him for who he was at his core, stripped of artifice. Even as he dodged, lied, coerced. He’d gotten so bloody used to hiding. To manipulation. To the trappings of wealth, the idiocy of society. This cerebralknowingthey shared, combined with his desire to join his body with hers in a purely elemental way, left him no room to maneuver.

No room to hide a damn thing. Not when she owned him, mind and body.

Pensive, he rolled the hairclip he’d found jammed inside the lining of his hat between his fingers. Piper’s visage washed over him, sending his blood pulsing through his veins. He’d touched it so frequently in the past week, that the visions were fading. However, one was still distinct. Minnie assisting Piper with her coiffure, a skill she and her mistress lacked. This image he was able to join like an unseen apparition. The choice was his. To step into the otherworld or watch through murky glass. A somewhat recent experience, the option to go deeper, both remarkable and frightening.

Remarkable because it represented a heightening of his gift.

Frightening because he was not always able to stepout.

Piper could help him refine the ability to cross that mystical bridge as easily as Harbingdon’s village footpath.

If he let her.

“You idiot,” he whispered and tapped the hairpin against the windowpane. Tick, tick, tick like the mantle clock counting off minutes behind him. He played an excruciating game. He should return the hairpin, posthaste. It carried not only images butfeelingsthat twisted his heart, clouded his mind. Instead, he kept it like some sorrowful token of Piper’s affection.

When the affection between them was scarce.

They’d avoided each other in the past week, exiting and entering rooms as if connected by a pulley, which was for the best. Wasn’t distance from Piper Scott what he’d always wanted? Another four taps of the hairpin.He. Was. Not. Sure. Astute fool that he was, he recognized the hollow ache in his gut. The enticing taste he’d gotten of her during their ride across the estate had recalled those candlelit discussions during his time home from Rugby and, later, Oxford. Conversations lasting into the wee hours, bare feet and laughter, scandalous freedom allotted due to her grandfather’s advancing age, a remote locale, dwindling lack of funds and servants, and the degree of risk Piper was willing to take.

Which was much.

Nevertheless, he’d been her friend. And she his when he counted few as such.

And he’d not been a threat inthatway, her best interests entirely at the forefront of his mind. Except for the slip up on her nineteenth birthday, he had been positively angelic, denying impulses at every turn when he’d wanted her—or felt supremely linked—from the first moment he set eyes on her. That kiss,ah, he thought and released a tortured breath through his teeth. A tempestuous spot of youthful abandon, that night the only instance where he’d chosen to ignore reason and consequence. Where he’d let his body rule, obstructing sound judgment and his obligation to protect.

He rapped the glass hard enough to shatter. In a mocking twist, protecting Piper also meant protecting her fromhimself.

In any event, with the transitory exception of an aged earl who had left her life too suddenly to make plans, no one cared to step in regarding her care. He was the only taker. Her cousin, Freddie, who’d inherited the Montclaire title, had proven useless, callous even.

Julian slipped the hairpin in his waistcoat pocket, questioning his promise to assist with her research. Bloody hell, if he hadn’t dug himself in deep there. Relighting the lamp’s wick, he returned to the desk and the stack of ledgers awaiting his attention, the joyous weekly accounting of his properties. Letters from stewards, secretaries, and solicitors cross-referenced against Humphrey’s notes from recent visits; records on repairs and tenancy issues; checks and balances on bank drafts and deposits. Evaluation of his contributions to the village schools, the churches. Knocking his spectacles high, he knuckled his stinging eyes.

It wasastonishingthey were in the black.

If he cherished any of the fading relics, felt a familial connection to justone, his heart would have been in the management, but most held appalling memories of a troubled youth spent hiding who he was, evading a father with a loathsome temper. With a heavy heart, Julian glanced at the corner of an envelope peeking from a stack of mail Humphrey had delivered earlier. Scented paper.Roses. He preferred the smell of oil, paints,Piper. With the tip of his finger, he edged Marianne’s dispatch further beneath the pile.

Frustrated to have two women battling in his head, he pulled Lady Coswell front and center, as she’d looked the night in Mayfair, his robe hanging off her body, waiting for the coil of heat to dart to his mind, belly, or cock.

Nothing arrived aside from a faint, fond glimmer.

Conversely, all pathways tensed in anticipation when he thought of Piper, the one woman he did notwantto want.

To say he’d placed an immovable wall between them would be a just assessment. After their heated discussion beneath that damned flowering tree, the irrational need to grovel beckoned. His words had come out honestly but indelicately.The wrong reasonsnow seemed like a crude way to express his indecisiveness. Displeasure crossing Piper’s face was a common occurrence, but firm resolve was rare. And shocking.

Pride and distress had warred within him at her self-possession.

Novel in his dealings with her, a grown woman had confronted him. And he wasn’t bloody sure who’d won the battle.

A knock on the door had his heart kicking as he imagined Piper coming to him. Except, she was avoiding him for the first time in memory, turning the other direction when she saw him coming. He patted the hairpin helplessly as a burst of lightning shot through the window and danced across his desk.

“Jule?” Finn popped his head around the open door. “Are you free?”

He crooked his hand to signal entrance, and Finn made an awkward bow into the room, his body having grown faster than even his enormously innate poise could account for. A paternal rush hit Julian hard as the young man took a seat, dusting raindrops from his coat and hooking one leg over the other with the cool finesse of a peer of the realm. Tilting his head, Finn nudged a canvas into view with a boot you could see your reflection in. Julian poured brandy in two glasses, managing to find a clear path between ledgers and paint supplies as he slid one across the desk.

Finn took it with a crooked smile, a raised brow. Being offered a drink was unprecedented and a signal of his approaching majority. He took a leisurely sip, his posture lowering little for the brandy’s delight. An astute student since their first encounter in the rank back alley of a gaming hell, Finn had sucked in every measure of polite society and looked prepared to expel it back in their faces. Possessed of an amiable nature and a rather indolent manner, Julian suspected the world was set to write Finn off as little more than the harmless, beautiful bastard of a deceased viscount.

The League would use this lack of discernment to their advantage as the beautiful bastard read every stupid thought in their heads.