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 of The Daily Telegraph.
Even touching her arm that time on St. James, as she rushed from a hatter’s shop, had brought him naught. That was 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 read others, 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 were they—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 daughter of, 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.
Lady Hamilton’s defiance seemed insignificant on the surface—stolen kisses; midnight fountain dips; ballroom floors covered in glass, a diversion he’d created to give her time to remove herself from an unfortunate situation with a debauched heir to an earldom.
Insignificant, when the stuff of Finn’s dreams was not.
In truth, the turmoil surrounding the lady captivated him. In his darkened midnight and outside it.
Perhaps he was lonely. Bored. Angry. Guilty. Emotions urging him to embrace chaos in a way he’d never felt the need to before.
Chaos. Which, in lethal tones of late, Julian claimed Finn was addicted to.
The thought of his brother slipped a forlorn cloak over Finn’s mood. Humphrey, another brother of sorts, would be even more cross with him. They were allowed. It had been months since he’d been home, ignoring pleas from a family worried, and with just cause. Months spent trying to forgive himself for misjudging a situation and costing a boy his life. A boy who’d come to the League, Julian’s community of supernatural outcasts, with the same challenge—saddled with a gift he couldn’t control.
Finn shoved his hand deep in his pocket to keep from reaching for the scar on his chest, a throbbing reminder of his failure.
Failure that had injected fear in his veins for the first time since Julian and Humphrey dragged him from that filthy hovel all those years ago. Made him stumble when he’d previously sauntered. Revealed a man struggling to hide his true self under layers of sickening but accomplished charm, a convoluted package he couldn’t take home to Harbingdon just yet. When someone loved you, they noticed things you tried to conceal. At least his family did. Julian, Humphrey, Piper…
They would see how bloody damaged he was, straight off.
As if on cue, Lady Hamilton gave the baron/marquess a jaunty half-wave and backed through the terrace doors. Finn smiled, lips curving against crystal, snagging the interest of Countess Ronson, who paused next to him with a wink. Although Finn warmly recalled her very talented mouth, he was already on the move, his focus solely on his prey. The crowd’s hushed attention hammered him as he worked his way across the ballroom and out the terrace doors. A high-born bastard, he was considered acceptable entertainment, an appealing party favor.
The woman he chased seemed indifferent to him, however, having never once cast a look his way. Which was not the norm, he admitted with absolutely no pleasure. In any case, her disinterest made it easier to track her because she never looked back. That, and a gown the color of the hibiscus bush that bloomed beneath his bedchamber window at Harbingdon each spring. Would be blooming now, in fact. The hue glowed like a beacon, pulling him along in its silken grip.
The season was ending. It was time to retire to the country, to go home. The smell of cut grass and turned earth and pine sap flowed from his memory to his heart. He palmed his aching chest as he trailed Lady Hamilton around the corner of the townhouse, her gown flaring like a wisp of smoke behind her. Her scent, piquant, spicy, close to cinnamon but not, suffused the air, eroding the lingering note of cheroots, bergamot, and the moist promise of rain.
Mocking his endeavor, the storm chose that moment to announce itself with a soggy release that had everyone scattering, shrieking, through the terrace doors and back into the ballroom.
Not his lady, however.
Without hesitating, she slipped through a darkened servant’s entrance and into the private quarters of the house. Hell and damnation, he thought and followed, the smell of hearth fires, boiled cabbage, and mold sucking him into a narrow, uninviting service hallway. He hoped to avoid another rescue, especially as the damsel was unaware of his chivalry.