His gaze snapped to hers. “Except when I’m around you. It’s like I’m dipped in mud, and you’re the warm bath, allowing me to cleanse myself, hear myself.” He sounded accusatory when none of this was her fault. She didn’t want a preternatural gift any more than he did. And she surely didn’t know what to do with it. “You’re changing me. An important role for a person I don’t know very well.”
His profound admission, uttered in an entirely leaden tone, a man on the verge of giving up his mission, sent a surge of panic ripping through her. What was she doing, sitting in the summer nightfall with the most gorgeous mind reader in England, telling him her secrets and letting his roll over her, roll through her? Twist her up until her heart hammered beneath her breast, her bodice sticking to suddenly moist skin. “I don’t want this. I want to be—”
“Normal,” they both said.
Finn grasped her wrist when she would have jumped to her feet, another burst of French tumbling from his lips, too complicated for her to translate. Awareness shimmered, wrapping them in gossamer, an intimate estrangement until it felt she stood with him against the world. His eyes were liquid pools, deep, dark, and unfathomable, nothing like the witless charmer who’d rescued her from several humiliations during a dreary Season. Her pulse skipped, her breath rushing forth as she imagined pulling her other trick and kissing him to make them both forget.
When kissing meant as little to her as it likely did to him.
“Don’t start designing ways to distract me, Tori darling. I can see the wheels spinning. Understand this. I’ve never dreamed about anyone unconnected to the occult. Unconnected to the group of misfits my brother has assembled and calls the League. Never.” His glittering gaze sliced away. “I don’t know why we’re linked. I don’t. I usually—” He swore roughly and tugged his through his hair, the enticing streak of gray glinting in the moonlight.
She flinched, and his eyes widened, apparently stunned to find he still had a hold on her. Something, the stark sadness in his gaze, his painful effort to explain himself, the way his thumb was drawing deliberate circles on her wrist, made her heart bottom out.
He released his grip and slumped back against the pillar. “I’ve never conversed with a woman, or more when the occasion warranted it, without knowing what she expected from the involvement. Placed like a bouquet of daffodils at my feet. It’s part of the reason for my success, as it were. The knowing. I’m given the answer before the question is asked.”
Victoria scoffed and gestured to him, head to toe. “You’re the reason for your success, Mr. Alexander. Although I’m sure reading minds means you deliver superbly.”
He brought his hand to the bridge of his nose and squeezed, his lids sliding low. “Can I tell you a secret? The first of those I promised to share if you came with me on this journey. I’m fatigued. Discontented. I yearn for my family, my home. The boy I let slip away on the wharf one horrible, stormy evening. Simon, the boy living here, who needs me when I can’t quite let myself need him back. Julian’s growing the League without me when I once wanted nothing more than to be a part of building it. Not managing a gaming hell, quite successfully, I might add. I find myself playing a role I no longer want to play, yet I’m not sure how to crawl out of the furrow. Julian stamped this life all over me with that heavy hand of his, a good life, but the toddler who showed up in a rookery orphanage with a note stuffed in his pocket listing a first name and nothing else was lost in the process.”
“Is this secret number two? That you’re not the late Viscount Beauchamp’s byblow?”
He closed his eyes with a groan, his cheeks flushing. “I’ve never admitted that to anyone before. I sometimes forget Julian and I are not actual brothers, and I, well, the blood part doesn’t matter.” Yanking his neckpiece off, he stuffed it in his waistcoat pocket, popped two buttons on his shirt, and breathed deep. She tried to avoid looking too closely at the golden skin exposed by the open vee, she really did. “I must be losing my mind, or all that brandy is doing a number on me. I don’t usually drink heavily. I’ve found it to be very unwise for a man with my talent.”
The poignant burden of his confession landed on her chest, suspending her breath as she searched for a reply that wouldn’t break the fragile bond they were constructing. She chose humor, as this seemed to be one of his standard fallbacks. “You’re simply fatigued from climbing trellises and leaping from windows with furious husbands in pursuit.”
He opened one eye and pinned it on her, a reverse wink. “That goddamn window was two stories up. And the trellis, which is a true story though I wasn’t fleeing an incensed husband but rather an overeager baroness, didn’t support my weight.” He threw his arm out, traced a pale scar on his wrist that twisted like a crooked river up his arm. “I bled like a stuck pig all over the baron’s shrubbery and down Curzon Street. Upon reading the broadsheets, Julian immediately sent Humphrey to fetch me, our fixer-in-residence, so I had to face his censure as well, which is, if you can believe it, and you will when you meet him, worse than my brother’s.”
She covered her mouth and leaned into the laughter, feeling slightly tipsy when she hadn’t had anything aside from that measly glass of sherry. How she could be amused when her family didn’t care what she did as long as she surrendered her future to save them, and she’d come to find she was even more peculiar than initially thought.
“Care to discuss your misbehavior? What was the latest on-dit? Lord Kilroy’s fountain? Or was it the Earl of Trotsham’s musicale? The fiasco at—”
“Excellent diversionary tactic, my guardian angel, but perhaps a suitable plan for the summer would be for you to consider what else there is to Finn Alexander, if you’re set on forging a new path. Aside from the obvious attributes, of which all are aware. A necessary break from the hordes tripping over their feet to get a second look at you.” Although the kitchen maid earlier had been sufficiently dazed, so it might be impossible to escape attention even in the country, but no need to mention that when the man looked utterly demoralized, his loneliness so palpable it seemed to be inhabiting the scant space between them.
She sympathized with every woman whose heartbeat raced when faced with one of his smiles. It wasn’t like he didn’t make her knees tremble, she was only human.
But she could control it.
“What else is there, aside from…” He looped his hand in a lazy circle, signifying all kinds of things that made her stomach heat and twist. Speechless, he frowned, an absurdly captivating fold popping between his brows. His scent, bergamot and brandy, drifted to her on a steamy breeze, sliding along her skin like the gentlest of caresses.
“I’ll help you if you help me,” she proposed with more courage than she felt. “We step back from Town mischief and find out who we really are. This supernatural predicament, notwithstanding.” She gestured to whatever lay beyond the house. “In the wilds of Oxfordshire, no less. As a betrothed woman, I’m safe from your charms. And you can’t read my mind, so falling back on your old standby won’t work. An exchange: enlightenment for friendship. As we explore my gift and you forget, at least in my company, about yours.”