“If you faint because of what I admitted, he’ll be vexed with me,” Victoria pleaded, fanning Piper’s face. Finn had spoken of his sister-in-law in extremely protective terms, brooking no question about his strong feelings for her or his family. Dodging them by hiding out in London or not, which she believed he was doing.
“I’m a healer,” Piper murmured, disclosing her own secret. Her eyes were serene when they met Victoria’s. “And I see auras. Imagine witnessing someone’s mood surrounding them, a visual cloud as colorful as Julian’s paintings.” She shrugged, offering a plucky smile. “I can’t see yours, which has only happened once before. I’m quite astonished to imagine why.”
“I don’t know what that means.” Victoria dropped to her knee before the viscountess, leveling their gazes. “I don’t know what any of this means.”
“He’s never brought anyone home,” Piper whispered, so softly Victoria wondered if she was admitting this only to herself. “And his dreams…”
“Will you explain them to me? What’s special about Harbingdon? Why I’m here?”
Piper moistened her lips, shook her head. “Finn has to do that, I think. But I will tell you, you’re surrounded by others with gifts. Everyone on this estate, in fact. Which makes for an admittedly interesting family. You’ll be accepted here as you’ve never been anywhere else. As you’ll never be anywhere else. You, my dear, are finally safe. We can protect you.”
“Gift?” Victoria rocked back on her heels. “I don’t have a gift. It’s harmless. A meaningless bit of trickery.” Her fingers twisted in her skirt. “Safe from what? No one knows about me. No one…cares about me.”
“A silly prank,” Agnes repeated in an urgent whisper. “Always just a silly prank.”
“Then why is he dreaming about you?”
Victoria’s cheeks flushed as her mind went in a base direction, fashioning images of Finn tangled in silk sheets, looking as endearingly rumpled as when he’d answered the door at the Blue Moon. No. Although she didn’t know the details, his dreams were not sensual ones. The man could have anyone in England, anyone, at least for the night. He certainly wasn’t attracted to her.
“Something tragic happened to a friend, and he’s not been able to recover.” Piper squeezed her hand, an impassioned plea. “Maybe there’s a reason for your bond, as there often is in our world. For the patient woman, there’s a wonderful, sensitive man beneath the charming patina.”
Victoria’s heart tripped, the revelation landing squarely on her chest, attracting her when she needed no lure. She’d never been able to trust any man aside from her brother, and he was gone. No one in her life needed her. She was a disposable commodity, a book placed on a shelf and forgotten—until the need for funds had arisen. A push into a bleak future without any care for what she wanted from her life.
She was utterly alone in this world.
The next thought left her breathless.
What if Finn Alexander, even with his family surrounding him, was alone in his world, too?
Chapter 4
“For God’s sake, sit down. You have the look of a trapped animal.”
Finn halted in the middle of his brother’s study, a space he’d been roaming—window to bookshelf and back—since being permitted entrance five minutes prior. The silence was numbing, Julian’s reproach threading childlike anxiety through him as if he waited for punishment for shattering an antique vase or spilling ink on a cherished rug.
No one could make a grown man cower like Julian Alexander.
Finn nudged a painting resting against the sofa with his boot. A charming portrait of Lucien, Julian’s adorable two-year-old son. “I like living above the Blue Moon,” he said, figuring the argument should start where it had left off six months ago. Although, he didn’t actually like living there, but the reasoning behind his actions was a perilous pond he wasn’t diving into this day. Not if he could avoid it.
Julian’s paintbrush tapped a steady rhythm on the imposing desk he sat behind. “The gaming hell was an opportunity for us to further the League’s contacts, gain information and entry into various levels of society, develop negotiating power in certain circles, while you learned to manage a business. End of story. I never planned for you to be associated in the way you have been. I think part of its success is due to the chance to carouse with Viscount Beauchamp’s infamous half-brother.”
Finn dropped to a crouch before Lucien’s portrait, a pang of what felt like homesickness flowing through him. Strange, as he’d just come home. “It’s in the black, as you well know. A favorite haunt of every town dandy. The gossip sheets love us. Why, I’m scraping earls and barons off the sidewalk nightly, much to everyone’s enjoyment. Gambling and theatre. After taking their money at the faro table, of course.” He stole a glance at Julian, noting that discussion of their financial success had failed to erase his sour look. “Fortunately, reading their minds allows me to have them escorted from the premises before they irreparably change their lives. Hence being known as the ‘friendly’ betting establishment, the gaming hell where you lose, but not so much you feel the need to swim the Thames the next morning.” Knowing it wasn’t a good idea but unable to stop himself, Finn winked and added, “I’m simply doing my part to help society as they’ve always helped me.”
“Using your gift for this idiocy is almost as bad as Piper posing as a medium. Remember how well that worked out?” He sighed, the paintbrush continuing its pejorative tapping. “This was far from my plan.”
“My living in blasted, bland Mayfair was your plan, I know, I know,” Finn snapped, his temper heating. His head was starting to pound from thwarting Julian’s thoughts, privacy not afforded everyone. Control he didn’t always have. Victoria had apparently moved far enough away for her blocking his reading to abate. At least a little. “The League is still top of mind, Jule. My first priority aside from breathing. Have you forgotten the translations I’m doing? The letters from our German contact? The concern you had, someone in Berlin that’s far too interested in us, in the occult. It’s almost spying, which was not Oxford’s expectation when I sailed through those language classes. Their hope was a lifetime spent filling a library with the works of Heinrich von Kleist and Ludwig Tieck.”
“My hope was not you being asked to depart due to unprincipled behavior. Rustication it wasn’t, despite what you said at the time. It was expulsion.”
Finn swallowed hard and scrubbed the back of his neck. “How was I to know the girl was engaged to the Vice-Chancellor’s son? She never let a thought about the poor sod float through that stunning head of hers. I was as surprised as you were.” Though I would have done it anyway, he wanted to add but didn’t dare. She’d been very persuasive, very experienced, and he a green lad of nineteen.
Julian tossed the paintbrush aside and rolled to his feet. Wrenching the window at his back high, he leaned out into an enveloping, dusky twilight. “I don’t understand your desire, after all we did to leave that life, to return to it. Creating intrigue where we pray there is none, living in that horror of a parish. We’re not thieves any longer, Finn. You’re accepted by association, and you always will be. As long as I’m alive, that is. It’s enough. Embrace this life we’ve fought for.”