Page 2 of The Rake is Taken

Victoria pressed her back against the nursery door and scrubbed her face free of tears. No use trying to leave the chamber when they’d locked her in. After the last incident, she’d gone two days without food. Now, there were crackers in the top drawer of her chest, secreted beneath her badly-embroidered handkerchiefs, and a slice of cheese wrapped in a linen napkin hidden underneath her pillow. Agnes, her companion, and lady’s maid once Victoria was old enough to need one, always kept water in the room, just in case.

Victoria hadn’t meant to ruin her father’s party. She’d approached Lady Dane-Hawkins because the woman had whispered a rude comment about her to Lady Markem as they strolled from the dining room to the salon. Victoriawasodd; she knew that. But she’d worked hard to appear normal, or as normal as a child could when they were, in fact,notnormal. To have that gray-haired snipe say something that made her parents turn and look at her—as if to determine what precisely about their daughter was so strange—when Victoria tried valiantly to evaporate like morning mist when she was around them, was too much. Lady Dane-Hawkins had placed another crack in the cup that held their love, and Victoria felt it leaking away even faster.

She would have told them about her talent long ago if she wanted her parent’s affection to wither like an aster bloom in the winter.

She’d only slipped her fingers around Lady Dane-Hawkins’ wrist for one moment, long enough to erase whatever Victoria had done to make the woman think badly of her. A few minutes of the lady’s memory obliterated. Maybe the entire night, but with a crowded social calendar, who needed another of those? Unfortunately, Lady Dane-Hawkins had fainted dead away, dropped right to the Aubusson carpet her mother loved, her glass of sherry going with her in a rosy-red spill.

Victoria’s parlor trick, the ability to steal time, was one she’d been employing since forever. Although it never worked out well for anyone.

A light knock sounded. A folded sheet of foolscap inched beneath the door.

Victoria opened the note, a tear rolling down her cheek and dropping to the parchment. She watched it bleed into the ink, fracturing the script into broken pieces.You’re not odd. You’re unique.

Charles.

Her brother, her protector. He and Agnes knew about her peculiarity when no one else did. No one else cared.

Her family was much smaller than it looked from the outside.

Dropping her head to her knees, she shivered. There would be no fire in the hearth tonight. No companion to read her a story. No food aside from the concealed cheese and crackers. No love, as expected.

She’d been told often enough that eccentric people usually grew to live solitary lives.

So often, she now believed it.

Chapter 1

Curzon Street, Mayfair

London, 1870

Finn had two choices. Which was remarkable as he usually had many.

Continue to follow the woman he’d been dreaming of for months. Or surrender his pursuit. Only, he wasn’t a runner. Hadn’t run from a problem since Julian and Humphrey offered a new life as effortlessly as the baron’s liveried footman offered champagne.

His smile was menacing, he knew. Because there was no choice. Not when the woman standing across the ballroom, his unwitting twilight partner, was the only person he’d ever encountered whose mind he couldn’t read as easily as he did a copy ofThe Daily Telegraph.

Even touching her arm that time on St. James, as she rushed from a hatter’s shop, had brought him naught.Thatwas a first. A never-before-in-his-life first, because when he touched someone, the thoughts came. Added to the bizarre circumstance of not being able to read her, being close to her obscured his ability to readothers, like she’d dimmed the flame on the gaslamp of his mind, leaving only his thoughts to contend with.

What was she thinking, he wondered?

What werethey—the glittering mass of humanity filling the fragrant, brightly-lit space—thinking? It felt odd to not know.

Finn dusted the toe of his boot through a candlelit prism cast on the marble floor and lifted his tumbler, the brandy doing a reassuring glide down his throat. He’d never entered into a relationship of any kind—friend, enemy, lover—without a landscape of probabilities laid out before him. He knew from the get-go what everyone thought of him, what they wanted, what they hated, what they desired. It was an unfair fight, a gamble weighted entirely in his favor.

Always in his favor.

But not with her.

The dreams had tormented him for months before he found a name to connect to the face. Victoria Hamilton. Lady, as in daughterof, because he wouldn’t be lucky enough to dream of an aging widow. A chimney sweep. A seamstress. Someone of the same social standing as a mind-reading byblow of a viscount.

The lady currently stood by the terrace doors should she feel the need to flee, which happened on occasion, candlelight sparking off a gown so glacial he felt the chill from across the room. She had a glass in her hand but hadn’t imbibed enough of whatever it contained to affect her, as she possessed the vigilant attentiveness of a thief.

Finn recognized this instantly as he’d once been a proficient thief himself.

He sipped and watched Lady Hamilton wiggle from the hold of an inebriated baron. Finn tilted his head; no, maybe a marquess. Though he cared little, he did lament the nip, slight but existent, that had him clenching his tumbler when the baron/marquess reached for her as she edged away, an unsteady, quaking grab. Finn’s cock did enough of a shift in his fine woolen trousers to have him peeling out of his slouch against the pillar. What could he say? Troublesome women fascinated him. The only woman he’d ever loved, his sister-in-law Piper, was more than a handful and always would be.

He was much accustomed to feminine rebelliousness invading his life.