She shoved to her feet with a reckless burst of umbrage, the scheme coming together in her mind.
She was going to alert the house to Finn’s departure.
Provide details about her dreams.
Then convince Julian—enlisting Piper’s assistance if necessary—that Finn needed his mind free of other’s thoughts when and if they found his sister. Keen, Victoria’s ability to block and thereby protect him.
She would present it just so.
While hiding her desperate desire to be by his side during what could be the most significant event of his life. She only knew, a soul-deep feeling, that she must be there.
And she wasn’t up to talking herself out of the decision.
Which meant she and the long-suffering, sniffling Aggie were going to accompany Humphrey on the chase.
Turning her back on the beautiful man and his beautiful plan, Victoria went to pack.
“Another daft scheme, this one. And I couldn’t talk you out of it. The years are catching up with me, it’s certain. Absolutely certain.”
Victoria turned from her penetrating review of the countryside outside their swiftly-moving carriage to her perturbed companion. Agnes looked as if she’d not only bitten into a lemon but swallowed it whole. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”
“Don’t try that with me, young lady. Not when I’ve been around for all your heedless life. I won’t be easily fooled.” Agnes yanked a handkerchief from her reticule and sniffed into it. “As if discussing your prank with a clairvoyant viscount wasn’t bad enough, now we’re loping off after his equally-magical brother, a blue-eyed devil who gawks at you like a sweetmeat when he thinks no one is looking. He’s not so skillful at secreting, that one, even with all the stories. And the way you look at him”—she jabbed the scrap of lace-edged linen like a sword—“not much better.”
Victoria huffed, hoping it sounded like outrage when inside, a warm glow traveled from her chest to her knees. She would like to be Finn Alexander’s sweetmeat, which was a hopelessly pathetic aspiration. As for what she’d like to do to him, it didn’t bear repeating to a woman who’d slept on a cot in her nursery for the first two years of her life. “We’re colleagues of sorts. Friends. Research associates.”
Agnes stuffed the handkerchief in her reticule and closed it with a snap. “Is that what they’re calling it now? I’m not so old that I don’t remember those blistering looks. Or the menace they bring.”
Victoria laughed and dropped her puzzle book to the velvet squab. She didn’t know much, not nearly enough, about Aggie’s past. “Care to tell me about that, Aggie? More interesting than the scenery.”
Her companion’s cheeks flushed the same color as the crooked initials embroidered on the corner of her handkerchief. “Not on your life, missy. I wouldn’t want to give you any ideas.”
Finn’s lips covering hers and setting fire to her body was something Victoria would never forget for as long as she lived. His long fingers curving around her hip and drawing her against him. The stunned look on his face when he finally drew back and looked into hers.
She needed no one to give her ideas when she had so bloody many herself.
“This is against my better judgment.”
Victoria peered at her puzzle book without seeing one word on the page. “Understood.”
“We could stay with your cousin, Alphonse,” Agnes chirped in that way she did when she knew she was fighting a losing battle. Like air was trapped between her tongue and her teeth. “I had no idea your father would let the house in Belgravia the moment we headed to Oxfordshire and your mother to Scotland. The situation must be even more dire than we thought.”
Victoria groaned and dropped her head to the seat. “Alphonse pinched my bottom the last time I shared a drawing room with him.” The thought of it still made her skin crawl.
Agnes tapped her reticule with a sigh. “He’s out then.”
“Beauchamp House is fully staffed. Finn doesn’t live there. We won’t be occupying the same house. It’s perfectly suitable.” She said the words, having no idea if they were entirely true.
“Doesn’t matter where he lives if you plan to run him to ground the minute you get to London.”
“You’re going to make me wish I hadn’t told you about the dreams. I’m not going to let him meet his sister without me there to block the thoughts. I won’t make him go through that when I can help.”
Agnes gestured to the hulking man riding his stallion alongside them. “What does he think of this?”
Not much, Victoria could have admitted. Humphrey had reacted precisely as Finn said he would. Requesting every detail about the dreams, swiftly packing his bag, arguing with Piper and Julian about taking her with him, then giving up with a furious look that said someone—likely Finn Alexander—was going to pay for his predicament.
Finn knew the exact second they caught him.
She caught him.
It was three days later, when he stood on the lawn of Ashcroft House and Lady Parchant-Bingman’s lurid thoughts dribbled away like tea through a cracked cup, leaving his mind crystal-clear. He’d only come to discuss his sister’s whereabouts with the duke’s investigator and had instead gotten coerced into attending a soiree he’d no wish to attend. One he wouldn’t have been invited to if not for his unusually close relationship to the host. Now, he could only gulp a breath of night air scented with a wretched combination of lemon verbena and the Thames while accepting that the unstoppable flood of relief and joy at Victoria’s arrival meant he was truly buggered.
I’ve missed her, he realized and threw back the champagne he hadn’t wanted and had, damn it to hell, promised himself he wouldn’t drink. And I’m not surprised she joined the chase.
Incredibly dangerous, the game they played.
One he nonetheless found himself very much wanting to play.
Lady Parchant-Bingman glanced over her shoulder, and upon seeing she and Finn stood behind a fountain that hadn’t filtered water in centuries, a nifty distance from the celebratory horde gathered on the lawn, hooked her finger beneath his shirt cuff and tugged him a step closer. He went, well, not willingly, but obligingly. It was hard to break old habits when he had absolutely no intention of doing anything else.
Of course, that’s how Victoria found him.
Standing too close to a woman he didn’t know in a biblical sense but appeared to. Her greedy finger tucked in his starched cuff, her gaze lifted as if she expected a kiss and wasn’t leaving without one. Finn stepped back awkwardly, surprising himself and the lady, while two foreign concepts peppered his unfettered mind. Shame at being caught in this situation when it was what he did. And jealousy, a spiky flush that stung his skin as he noted Victoria’s fingers resting securely on Ashcroft’s forearm as he guided her around the fountain.
Moonlight and mist washing over them, the gorgeous couple, a first-rate example of refinement and culture, all the things he wasn’t even though he faked it very, very well.
One look at Tori, and he knew. She would make a marvelous duchess.
It was an odd feeling to shatter inside but remain standing. Julian’s words filtering through and making it worse. Cracks are how the light gets in, boy-o.