Page 41 of The Rake is Taken

But he knew it was real.

Because he recognized his sister, in a way that went beyond sight and arrived from the heart, thesoul, the moment he saw her.

Eyes a replica of his widened before the woman gasped and slid into an elegant swoon that in no way fit the dreadful surroundings. Humphrey was there before Finn could react, able rescuer of vulnerable women and orphaned children, lifting her into his arms as if she weighed nothing. Which from the look of her frail form, she didn’t.

“Inside,” Agnes hissed and gave Finn and Victoria a shove across the threshold and into the dank rabbit hole of a flat.

Except for him, they were a well-organized group. Humphrey settling his slight bundle on a threadbare settee; Victoria prodding Finn into a chair he neither remembered seeing or sitting in; Agnes procuring a moistened rag she placed on his sister’s brow. Task complete, Humphrey took one look at him and set to roaming the space, no doubt searching for liquor as Finn had an idea he wasn’t far off from fainting himself. Black dots were spotting his vision, and he inhaled sharply, trying to drive them away. Dreams of the past, imagined or real, swirled like mist through his consciousness.

Humphrey pushed a chipped glass in his hand, the first-rate port sliding down Finn’s throat and making him choke but bringing heat to his cheeks.

A murmur came from the settee, and the entire room stilled until the only sounds were loud bellows from the street and gusts whistling through the multitude of cracked windowpanes. The woman turned her head toward Finn, her eyes,hiseyes, locking on him. She gestured limply to his drink. “Your grandfather was born in Portugal. It was his favorite, I was told.” She closed her eyes and swallowed deeply. “I kept it, always, for when you finally found me. With your talent, I knew someday you would.”

“Can you afford this?” Finn gazed into the glass, asking the most inane question possible and considering if he should finish the dram if she couldn’t.

She laughed, a wonderfully authentic reverberation when most laughter in his world was forced. “No, Finley Michel, I can’t.”

Finley Michel. The name brought forth that memory, faded and indistinct. Racing through grass high enough to whip his knee, giggling, tripping, and someone coming back for him. Tossing back the remainder of the port, he slapped the glass to the table and wrenched forward in his chair. “Had I known, I would have torn England apart searching for you.”

His sister elbowed to a sit, her hair, as light as Finn’s was dark, flowing over her shoulders and down her back. Her clothing was quality but years out of date, patched and faded. She was petite like Piper but thin, too thin. He was afraid to catalog her features to determine what else they shared outside their eyes, each revelation adding weight to his chest until he felt the room closing in on him, his breath hard to catch.

“Isabelle,” she murmured and rose, going to her knees before him. With trembling hands, she drew the locket he’d seen in his dream from beneath the bodice of her gown. Flicking the pendant open, she showed him the painted portrait of two children.

“Belle,” he whispered.

“Yes.” She reached for his hand, and he let her take it. Offering solace when he felt hollowed out inside. Her palms were chapped and raw, the hands of an older woman. “Our mother was the daughter of a marquis, an impoverished title, meaningless after the French Terror, wealth and lands gone, most of the family killed in the siege. Our father, Tennison Laurent, was a tradesman who died in Lyon just after you were born, andMamanhad nowhere else to go but the home of a distant cousin in Surrey. She met a man there, married.”

“And…” Finn’s fingers clenched around hers.

Belle shook her head, shrugged. “Mamanwas stunning, we were destitute, he was wealthy. Simple enough as those arrangements go. But I didn’t stop you from telling him what was inside his mind. Even at three years old, you said too much. You dreamed of him, too, so he began not only to loathe but fear you. There’s time for me to tell you everything, but know this…” Her eyes glistened, and the tears overflowed, racing down her cheeks and dropping to their linked hands, searing his skin and his heart. “You weren’t to blame.Iwas. I could have hidden us, but he took you away the day after she died, the only person I had left, and I’ve been looking for you ever since.”

“How?” he breathed.

“I have no gift, nothing like yours, but I know when others do. I realized the moment you were born that you were different. I can walk a street and tell you who sees things they shouldn’t. A serving girl in the Ax and Shield, the bloke who operates the coster cart in Leadenhall. My skin tingles, my brain hums.” She glanced about, pointing to Victoria, Humphrey, Agnes. “The upmarket lady, yes, the handsome brute, no. The frightened mouse of a maid, no. ”

“The mystery deepens,” Humphrey said wryly from his position guarding the darkest corner of the room. “Holy hell, but will Julian love this. Any chance you can locate a gifted majordomo with that humming mind of yours, Belle sweet, as we need one on the estate?”

Belle turned to gaze at Humphrey for a long moment, her eyes narrowing in fascinated study, then she shook herself and circled her attention back to her brother. “I was told our beast of a stepfather dropped you in a London slum. I ran away from him when I was fifteen and went to a smaller village in the next shire where I could afford lodging. Then I took every job an insufficiently educated woman who nonetheless speaks three languages and is willing to lie through her teeth can—seamstress, tutor, shop girl, maid—while I saved money. I arrived in London ten months ago and began to roam the streets, lying in wait for a man with my eyes. I knew you’d find me eventually, with the dreams, but I hoped to hurry fate.” She smiled without humor and motioned to his expertly-tailored clothing. “I fear I was walking the wrong streets. I don’t often go so far as the West End and the society pages. You’re the bounder with the blue eyes they write about.” Her lips tipped low, a short sigh slipping from her. “Oh, Finley Michel, what have you been doing?”

As if awakening from a stupor, Finn glanced about the room, recording every tattered piece of furniture, every battered surface. The sound of glass breaking and a hoarse shout in the alleyway running alongside the building only added to his unease. “You’re not staying here, Belle. Not another night.” With a creak in the floorboard, Victoria stepped closer, reacting to the edge of panic in his voice. That she was so attuned sent an ill-tempered rush through him. “Don’t argue with me, any of you,” he said in a voice he rarely found the opportunity to use, except when pitching a drunken sod out the back door of the Blue Moon. It was Julian’s voice he emulated, a rigid tone offering no room for negotiation. He had learned from a master.

Humphrey stepped into the pale candlelit circle. No gas fixtures in this dwelling. “I’ll bring another carriage for the belongings.”

“Who are you to order me about? It isn’t much, but it’s home,” Belle said and straightened her slim shoulders in a pitiful show of force. Finn felt a swirl of dread imagining what she’d had to endure without him, without a family, without protection. But those were stories for another day as he was confident his heart couldn’t take much more on this one.

Humphrey chortled and scrubbed his hand across his stubbled cheeks, amused by her, Finn could see. “I didn’t save his arse all those years ago”—he jabbed his elbow at Finn—“to have his sister spend another second in this squat.”

Belle stared, and Humphrey met her gaze without flinching when a woman’s fury could be a harrowing thing. Finn wondered if he imagined the spark of awareness that flowed between them. Perhaps Belle found Humphrey handsome. The women in the village trailed after him, chattering about him needing a wife, so anything was possible. Hewasthe most protective man Finn knew aside from Julian, and the most caring, though his hulking frame obscured his gentle nature.

It didn’t sound like Belle had encountered this type of concern in years, if ever when Finn had been smothered daily.

For the first time since they’d entered the pitiful abode, Finn looked to Victoria. They shared that spark of awareness, too, for some unfathomable reason. It snuck under his skin like a splinter, pain, and pleasure. She returned his regard without wavering, her gaze molten gold in the candlelight, ethereal, haunting, her knowledge of him so absolute he felt naked in a way wholly unrelated to his attire. This was his life—chaotic, bewildering—and she had an uncomfortably clear view of it.

A view he’d never given another. Never thought to give another.

“I’ll help you pack,” Victoria offered, her encouragement subtle but intoxicating. So compelling a proposal, he turned his head to gaze at the frayed wallpaper rather than watch a woman he was becoming obsessed with bundle a sister he hadn’t known existed into her threadbare coat. “You and Finn have much to discuss”—the crash of a cart and human sounded on the street—“but perhaps not here.”

“I’ll go,” Belle finally whispered, “because there isn’t any reason to stay. There has never been.”