Page 4 of The Lady is Trouble

He caught her staring, and his gaze skipped away. Back to the street and whatever it was he searched for. It was too dark to see the color of his eyes, but she remembered—slate, like a morning fog over the Thames.

They were without question the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen.

And she’d long wished for another set to come close.

As if he read her thoughts, his lips curved—nothing near an actual smile. His hair, longer than fashion dictated and still holding a gentle curl, lifted in the breeze, the mahogany strands shot through with auburn firing in the gas streetlamp. As she studied him, an expression she could not measure crossed his face and was gone so quickly she was forced to question its existence.

The sound of a disturbance on the street had Julian holding his finger before his lips.

Seconds later, Finn,dear Finn, dashed into the garden. He held her valise under his arm, packed in a rush as it was not fully closed, with what she hoped were her papers escaping on all sides. “I cleared the room of anything incriminating. And the fire is contained.” Breathing heavily, he glanced up, shrugged. “Mostly. The hotel isn’t going to come down around us anyway.”

Julian shoved her behind him, his lock on her wrist firm. “The carriage?”

“Dalton’s brougham. All I could locate since we can’t risk a hack or your coach. It’s waiting on the northwest corner.” Finn did a sidestep and caught a sheet of foolscap under his boot that tried to flee. “Away from the horde on Bolton. You brought an audience for this one, Pip, you really did.”

Julian swore soundly and jerked her along behind him as they left the garden.

Piper frowned at Finn over her shoulder.Why say that? she mouthed. She drew her finger across her throat, slashing to declareno more.

Finn grinned and offered his free hand as an apology, a typical response, so drolly delivered one forgot to be vexed. How she’d missed him, this boy, nay almost a man, who in her heart of hearts was her only sibling.My, he’s getting as tall as Julian, she concluded in wonder. And still so beautiful it made her heart squeeze. Julian had taken Finn under his protection years ago when he realized the orphaned boy had a mystical gift as powerful as his own. Julian had been little more than a boy himself when he’d begun to lie about their relationship, planting subtle innuendos like a seed in the soil until the ton assumed Finn was his father’s byblow and his half-brother.

She contained her smile as Finn danced about for another sheet. If Julian noticed amusement on her face, he would twist her in a knot with those clever fingers of his. Justly, none of this was the least bit laughable. It was her worst transgression in a life littered with them.

Julian gave a sharp whistle when they met the northwest corner, and the carriage pulled into place, bouncing off the curb in the driver’s urgency to reach them. Piper wondered how Finn had managed to borrow Lord Dalton’s carriage with such haste. Perhaps it only took a snap of his fingers to gain such a simple thing as emergency transport, for Finn was a born trickster, able to bend the truth seven ways to tomorrow and come out clean.

And, if gentle manipulation didn’t get him what he wanted, he read your mind as cleanly as a copy ofThe Times,and that was that. He would have made a brilliant partner—and been the genuine clairvoyant in the room— for Madame DuPre’s readings.

Julian hustled her up the brougham’s single step and into the dim interior. The coachman’s lamp illuminated his visage, and she drew a clipped breath. He seethed without a word, though it was hard to assess his expression through the soot.Oh, dear. She sank to the seat.

He looked as dreadful as she imagined she did.

With Julian’s hard thump on the trap, the carriage jerked into motion. Finn dumped her valise to the floor as he scrambled for purchase on the foldaway seat in the corner. She felt certain he would like to remove himself from the storm brewing inside the brougham’s confines, and the boot might have been a better spot for the two of them, even battling the raindrops that had begun to pelt the windows. To her mind, enduring a thorough soaking seemed more enticing than Julian’s stinging ire.

“The storm should help put out the fire,” she said and traced a rip in the seat. “Although the blaze did seem rather insignificant when last I checked.”

“So bloody insignificant they looked to be evacuating every building on that side of the street,” Julian snapped and settled as far from her as he could get without crawling outside. His voice, raw from smoke, sounded like it had been hauled across jagged glass.

And his aura…

His aura fragmented in every direction like a spectacular sunset. Crimson bleeding into velvety blue bleeding into ginger, an imbalance she had come to understand meant one struggled to hold opposing emotions in check. She’d have liked to gather her papers from the carriage floor and record the hues, but that would have been a dreadful impulse to follow. Not while Julian sat there, brooding. An irate, brooding lord, fresh from a gothic novel. She’d wager a halfpenny in her father’s favorite gaming hell that this utterly masculine display appealed to every woman in London, seamstress to countess.

It certainly appealed toher.

Julian yanked Madame DuPre’s veil from his waistcoat pocket and threw it at her feet. The carriage’s springs squealed as they rounded a corner, and she switched her attention to Finn’s struggle to hold on to his perch rather than take a chance on catching Julian’s gaze.

“You’ve put yourself, and the League, in a horribly dangerous position. Humphrey will need to spend a month in this damned town bribing everyone from bellboy to laundress to forget anything and everything they witnessed. Any of us could be placed in an asylum tomorrow if our gifts are revealed. You’ve met the people we’ve saved from that very fate. And you know about the ones we’ve lost. So, what do we do about the people we can’t bribe, Piper? Can you tell me?” His eyes, when she finally gathered the courage to look, were silver orbs glowing amidst inky soot. He yanked a hand through his hair, leaving it wild about his head and enhancing his feral appearance.

She pressed her bottom against worn velvet while holding Julian’s gaze.Steady, Piper. It would not do to cower. Anyway, she wasn’t sure she knew how.

Julian frequently displayed anger, at least with her, but he was rarely unhinged. She wasn’t frightened of him. Well, not much.

Finn laid his handkerchief on Julian’s knee. At Julian’s hard look, Finn circled his finger about his face. “Might want to address the…” His words trailed off, and he slumped back in the darkened corner.

“Undoubtedly, I look like I stuck my head in a hearth because I followed an implausible vision into a smoldering hotel. Only in one’s wildest nightmare, right?” Julian managed the handkerchief with violence, blending the grime in deeper.

“How—” Her cough cut off the question. She patted her chest, swallowing hard. Julian passed her a flask she presumed he’d filled with water. The gin burned a path from teeth to toes. “Oh, heavens. That ishorrid.”

With a sigh, he slipped a sheet from his trouser pocket, unfolded it with care. Even in the muted light from the coachman’s lamp, she recognized the advertisement before he spun it around on his knee for her perusal. Without comment, she took another sip, her reaction controlled this time. She could come to appreciate the taste. If the choice was gin or being held at the mercy of Julian’s rancorous gaze, she chose gin.