Piper laughed and wagged her fingers at her son. “Oh, Minnie, give him his cookie. How can you resist that brilliant smile?”
“Spoiled rotten is what he is,” Minnie grumbled as a cookie lifted from her apron pocket, two tries before it floated into the boy’s hand. She frowned and brought her fist to her brow. “It’s hard to do that with her in the room, you’re right, my lord Julian. She’s bringing the quiet to my mind, deafening quiet. Like trying to run through butter.”
Victoria clicked her tongue against her teeth. Ah, this was the lady’s maid who moved objects with her mind.
“Fig,” Lucien said around a mouthful of cookie.
Unable to tear her eyes from boy and man, her heart squeezed as Finn brushed crumbs from Lucien’s bottom lip with a tender touch.
They were a family, this odd assortment of people, unconnected by anything as lofty as blood. When Victoria had found blood to be a most tenuous connection herself. Her marriage to the Grape could produce offspring, an adorable little thing like Lucien. Maybe two, if she could endure the process to create them. She was terrified of children, of course, but assumed she’d very much like her own.
Though she wasn’t looking forward to seeing a naked Grape.
Finn glanced at her, his gaze pensive, that subtle way he had of reading her—when she knew he wasn’t reading her as he was accustomed to. A new experience for them both. He nodded to the boy in his arms, shrugged a broad shoulder, his smile for once posing a genuine offer. Would you like to hold Lucien?
The envy was robust and shocking. She shook her head wildly and crowded into the velvet cushions. He blinked slowly, thoughts churning, the shift to indigo as sympathy filled his eyes apparent across the short distance separating them. Recognition erupted like champagne bubbles beneath her skin and scrambled dangerously along her nerve endings. He had the disturbing ability to reveal her until she felt stripped to her drawers, a sensation both embarrassing and arousing. She released a fast breath through her teeth.
There was no place in her life for what he made her feel, no place at all.
“You’ve had your treat, young man. It’s off with you now,” Minnie commanded and took a wiggling Lucien from Finn.
“Fig,” he repeated as she carried him out of the library. “Bye-bye.”
Fig, Victoria thought and felt her heart not just sink but crumble. Like the biscuits she’d baked last night to calm herself, one of which was clutched in Lucien’s tiny fist.
“I’ll do it,” she said when the door closed, without touch, behind them. “Research, notes for your chronology, assessment of my parlor trick and how it can help the League, whatever best suits. I’ll be an able soldier, all in for the cause. One month, then I must return to London. I’ve already put off the Grape for as long as I dare.”
And the dreams, she added silently when Finn turned with a raised brow.
She would gather her courage and tell the charming Fig about her dreams.
Even if he hated her for sharing them.
Chapter 8
This day was getting worse, Finn decided as he watched Simon pace the library in one of those adolescent moods that took hours to recover from. “You can’t possibly go with me to London when I return. Your life is here, your tutor is here, your family is here.”
“You don’t know how bad he gets,” Simon threw over his shoulder. “I’m in prison!”
“You jest. I know exactly how domineering Julian is, God do I. Still breathing down my neck even at this age. That’s what you have to look forward to, by the way. Although you must remember, the undue attention is given with love.” Brandishing his penknife, Finn fractured the seal on a letter he’d selected from the pile the domineering man in question had left for him to parse through. Dispatches arriving from the League’s contacts spread across the continent, warnings of threats to someone in their community, most written in languages Finn could translate with at least moderate proficiency. He’d appropriated the library, covering every surface with ledgers, language primers, and correspondence related to the management of the Blue Moon, a surprisingly time-consuming business to keep afloat even if Julian felt he’d stepped down a level by taking too great an interest in it. “I survived, and so will you. Or rather, I am endeavoring to survive.”
Simon mumbled a curse, then closed his mouth at Finn’s sharp look. “If it’s the women,” the boy said in an aggrieved tone, “I’ll ignore them like I do every dead soul who follows me through life. The trollops and the classier ones, mum’s the word. I won’t tell Julian a thing. I can sleep through all sorts of racket, aside from the haunts. Come home blotto for all I care. I’ve seen the inside of a gaming hell, you know. Picked more than one pocket in the Devil’s Lair back in the day. Went through an entire room in minutes and left with a king’s ransom, best in the East End.”
“Except the time you were caught and beaten to within an inch of your life.”
Simon rotated a coin between his fingers, sunlight glinting off the metal and casting sparks on his striped waistcoat. At one time, he’d been the most renowned cutpurse in London, to this day able to perform sleight of hand better than any magician could hope to. “You’re starting to sound just like him. A boring, old toff.”
Finn felt his second sizzle of temper, the first occurring when Humphrey dragged him from the kitchens. He rarely got angry in London, but his family had the uncanny ability to rouse him in seconds flat. It broke his heart to imagine the ‘racket’ Simon had to sleep through before the League found him living in St. Giles, a hellhole even worse than the one he, Julian, and Humphrey had escaped from. The fact he had to endure daily conversations with ghosts—or haunts as he called them—had made for an unbearably troubling childhood. Losing patience with himself and Simon, Finn ripped into an envelope like he was slitting a throat. “Do you imagine my dissolute lifestyle is a suitable model for a young man to witness? We’re trying to separate you from depravity, Si, not draw it closer.”
Simon’s face took on the rosy shade of a beet as he shoved to his feet. He gave his nose a vicious swipe. “You could change your life if you wanted to. Less debauchery, less everything, for your family. Find a wife and make a proper home, then take me with you. You’re my brother, too, not just his, and you left when I needed you! Do you think it’s easy with all these people in my head, standing by my side? Living life with me! Telling me things I don’t want to hear?” With a hand that trembled, he shoved the coin in his pocket. “But the blasted women mean more than I do, I guess,” he said on a tear-laden breath and sprinted from the room, slamming the door behind him.
“Brilliant,” Finn ground out and yanked his hand through his hair. The tender age of fourteen was proving to be a difficult one for Simon to navigate. The scar on Finn’s chest chose that moment to throb, reminding him of Freddie and the real reason he’d been keeping his distance for months. One boy reminding him of the other. A venomous circle of guilt and worry, and then more guilt.
It was frightening to love someone and still be unable to make everything better. Make everything perfect. Smooth their path so they’d never stumble.