The Hellion is Tamed Read online

  The Hellion is Tamed

  #4 League of Lords

  Tracy Sumner

  THE HELLION IS TAMED

  Copyright © 2021 by Tracy Sumner

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Elizabeth J. Connor, www.marginatrix.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Also by Tracy Sumner

  Newsletter Info

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  The Lady is Trouble

  Chapter 1

  Also by Tracy Sumner

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  Also by Tracy Sumner

  Garrett Brothers Series

  Tides of Love

  Tides of Passion

  Tides of Desire: A Christmas Romance

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  Southern Heat Series

  To Seduce a Rogue

  To Desire a Scoundrel: A Christmas Seduction

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  League of Lords Series

  The Lady is Trouble

  The Rake is Taken

  The Duke is Wicked

  The Hellion is Tamed

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  Multi-Author Series

  Tempting the Scoundrel

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  Chasing the Duke

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  Prologue

  The Past

  1802, An Unappealing Public House on the Thames

  Wapping, London Borough of Tower Hamlets

  Her smile told lies. Made promises. Worked an angle.

  Simon Alexander recognized the angle even at twenty candlelit, smoke-filled paces, because he’d worked it so many times himself.

  Out of desperation, then later, when he no longer had to hustle, out of self-preservation and a low threshold for boredom. Thief, liar, swindler. All parts of the pathetic boy he’d supposedly left in the slums. When in actuality, he’d taken the despicable pieces with him, dusted them up with fine clothing and a fancy education. Society had no clue a renowned pickpocket, legendary on the filthy avenues of St Giles for sleight of hand unlike any the city had ever known, wandered their ballrooms and danced with their daughters.

  A legend no one wanted to be—engulfed in a life no one wanted to live.

  Until his rescue, he’d spent his boyhood in a wretched locale a mere twenty-minute carriage ride from the dreary public house he currently found himself in. Streets he’d vacated when a viscount with expertise in the occult, and a calling to save those afflicted, heard about a gifted pickpocket who spoke to the dead and came to retrieve him.

  A starving, neglected urchin, Simon wouldn’t have made it out alive without his adopted brother, Julian. The man who’d created his narrative of being a deceased viscount’s byblow.

  He wouldn’t have survived without Finn. Humphrey. Piper. The Duke of Ashcroft.

  In the early days, he’d stolen from them, rejected every kindness, snubbed every offer. Until the morning his view of the world changed. Shifted on its axis. He remembered the exact moment it hit him, sunlight streaming through his opulent bedchamber window and tumbling across a silk counterpane that cost more than any one item he’d ever owned. His heart cracking open like a locked trunk, emotion spilling free.

  No one was abandoning him.

  He’d finally understood that, unlike his abusive mother and his mislaid father, his new family wasn’t going anywhere.

  Like he wasn’t going anywhere until he retrieved the Soul Catcher, the mystical gem the hellion sitting across the crowded den from him had stolen from the League, Julian’s faction of supernatural misfits. She’d lifted it right out of the Duke of Ashcroft’s pocket all those years ago, her image like a faded daguerreotype. He’d been unable to touch her, could only beg her with his eyes.

  And she’d left anyway. Gone back to her time, never to return.

  Consequently, he’d followed her into the past the moment—after ten years of study—he’d figured out how to do it.

  He laughed beneath his breath and took a lazy sip of truly rotgut whiskey. He was going against his instincts on multiple fronts—but still, here he was. Fighting battles for the League, a group he’d resisted joining in the first place. But love led a man where it led a man, and he loved his brother. Hence, Julian’s objective was becoming, in part, Simon’s own, the lines dissecting life blurring, as they did the longer one walked this earth, he supposed. Layer upon layer of inconsistencies, contradictions. Until you didn’t know who you were anymore.

  The woman he’d tracked eighty years into the past had no idea what he’d done to reach her. Left his home, his cherished gaming hell. Walked through a portal he’d spent years researching when he had no way to return. Chasing a woman he’d never spoken to but who’d haunted him since he was a boy. Not his usual type of ghost, either. A daring girl who’d stepped in and out of his existence, a wordless, yearning presence, like his haunts. Yet so very alive when he was surrounded by death.

  Then, one day, as if she didn’t need him anymore, she was gone for good.

  Much like his mother.

  Simon dug his boot heel into the pitted plank and swallowed the rest of the whiskey and his resentment. He’d gotten over the slight long ago. Forgotten all about her.

  Although, believing he’d found his person when she was not his person at all had been as devastating as watching his mother willingly step in front of a cart to her death.

  Today, his goal was straightforward and didn’t involve benevolence, deviation, or mooning over the past. The girl had filched something that belonged to the League—something he was going to reclaim or die trying. If he witnessed a stray spark of remembrance in her bloody blue eyes, for him or what he’d thought she felt for him, then he’d take that curious nugget back to 1882 and feel damned good about it, like a winning hand or fortuitous roll of the dice.

  Unmistakably rotten luck, since he was thinking about luck, when his was usually good, that his time travel had landed him in the correct year, the correct month, but in the middle of a dank pub, his target surrounded by cutthroats, during a game of hazard she actually looked to be winning. Fucking luck, Simon thought with a grim laugh he wisely kept to himself.

  The girl was reckless.

  The type of hazardous distraction that Emmaline Breslin would expire from in two years, knife wound to the chest in a tavern two streets over, if she didn’t travel back to 1882 with him.

  This knowledge that he’d lied to himself all along about why he’d come swirling through his mind and his belly, twisting both, Simon squinted through the hazy candleli
ght at the girl he’d once loved.

  His greatest fear wasn’t facing Emma again.

  Or the mission he’d sent himself upon.

  It was his inability to state with utter assurance that he didn’t still love her.

  The next concern, reasonably significant, being his return to 1882. He didn’t think he could travel back without his troublesome time traveler—and when she’d last left him ten years ago, he and Emma hadn’t been on good terms. Her leaving and never coming back, that is.

  So, he couldn’t guarantee she’d escort him home. Or that he’d be able to convince her.

  Of anything.

  Blowing a breath through his teeth, Simon curled his hand into a fist in his trouser pocket and slapped his glass on the window ledge at his side.

  If only she hadn’t grown up to be so beautiful.

  An unsightly woman would have significantly assisted his cause.

  Not ugly, this one. The flames a dazzling amber wash over her, bringing forth streaks of auburn in her dark hair, highlighting the gentle curve of her flushed cheek. A face carved from marble, a stubbornly gorgeous face one wouldn’t forget. Couldn’t forget. Unrelenting shadows and a raucous crowd encircled the threadbare table before which she sat, some men in rags, others in more suitable attire the likes of which Simon had only seen in aged paintings hanging on gallery walls. All stinking drunk, their curses and ominous portent charging the air, the clamor mingling abrasively with the sound of waves cuffing the Wapping docks. The bitter hint of London’s brume, familiar when nothing else about this time was, riding a velvety fog and pushing an element of despair into the room.

  With a shiver, Simon glanced around in joyless uncertainty.

  He’d learned to limit contact with ghosts in his time, but in the past, in her time, they swarmed him, their eyes bloodshot, their hands grasping. What he imagined was their hot breath striking his cheek. He couldn’t provide the reprieve from misery they sought.

  To save himself, he’d discovered he must, at times, care for his deliverance above theirs.

  Simon straightened from his casual repose as the man seated across the table from his prey took her wrist between his meaty fingers and gave it a punishing squeeze.

  Simon fingered the knife in his ragged coat pocket, taking a swift step across the uneven plank floor. The shabbiest piece of clothing he’d worn in years, a calculated effort to blend into the environs. All part of protecting the girl, and hence, protecting his family. Retrieving the damned stone. He wasn’t above killing, should anyone stand in his way.

  Although he wasn’t planning to have to kill her. He hadn’t spent years exploring how to travel back in time and locate the one woman who’d haunted him, only to lose her now.

  Emma. He whispered her name, his voice as unbending as the blade in his hand.

  Emma.

  He would never let her mean anything to him again. But he would save her.

  “You think to twist this game of hazard, darlin’?” The ruffian wrenched Emma’s arm, which she allowed. However, Simon noted the tensing of her lips, the leach of color from her cheeks. “Ramsey don’t like bein’ tricked. Even by the gel said to be the shrewdest sharper in Tower Hamlets. Dark Queen of the East End, innit it? That be a kind name, my girl.” He leaned until his shadow fell across her, shrouding the vivid glints sparking her hair. “Some say you’re touched. Here one day, vanishin’ the next. Gallows down the way, a pirate hanged this very night, should ya be thinkin’ to toss me a crooked slant of the dice. A constable on my payroll, don’t ya’ know. He has no tolerance for mystics.” Ramsey reached, trailing his knuckle down her jaw as she winced. “Don’t frown so, gel. I reckon even queens ever so often meet their match.”

  Emma inched away until her back hit the chair slats, the abused wood creaking. Lifting a chipped glass to her lips, she tossed back the contents, then wrenched her arm from her captor’s hold with a ferocity Simon had been expecting to see…but was a little afraid to.

  Giving a jaunty salute with the glass that made Simon’s stomach clench, she laughed. A sensual vibration that lifted the hair on the nape of his neck. The first sound he’d ever heard from her, as she’d been silent in his dreams. Trapped in a soundless world during her visits to his time, they’d only communicated with their gazes. He remembered the feelings she’d aroused in him as he’d watched her lips, stained from mulled wine, curl in a knowing smirk any man would be compelled to destroy with a kiss.

  What would she taste like? Simon wondered in absolute insanity.

  What would this impossible woman he’d once thought of as his taste like?

  Ramsey leaned back in his chair, hard-edged and without humor. Flinging the dice across the table, he gestured with a fierce jab of the smoldering cheroot in his hand. “You goin’ to get this game rollin’ or wot? Lots with a bit of blunt jus’ waiting, gel. For the queen. My lady, she’s waitin’, too. Her naughty bits prefer a full pocket, if you catch my meanin. Swivin’s always better when things are full.”

  Emma tilted her glass into the candlelight, lifted one shoulder in a languid shrug as she gazed through it. “Handsome swell such as yerself? Full pocket, empty pocket. What’s the difference?”

  “That an invitation?” Ramsey asked and pressed his barrel belly into the pitted wood, rocking the table on its spindly legs. “I heard tell the queen never extends ‘em. Not to nobody. Touches no knobs, no sir.”

  Emma took the dice in hand, pursed her lips and blew across them. Not an answer to the question of how many knobs she touched, but a challenge, moving her a step closer to catastrophe, which she seemed to wildly welcome.

  Simon opened his knife with a deft move and tucked it in his sleeve, crossing the room until he stood within reach two paces behind her.

  Because she was careless. Encouraging notice—when he’d learned to hide. At some point, everyone with a supernatural talent learned to hide in the shadows. Control the situation—every situation—by being in control. The preternaturally gifted didn’t have the benefit of attracting attention.

  How had she survived this long if she’d not learned this?

  When he could see she hadn’t.

  She rolled the dice, the pinkie on her left hand twitching as she flipped them in her favor. Blood pounded in Simon’s temples as black edged his vision. He would have slammed his hand over hers to hide the tell if he could have. He owned a gaming hell and could spot even the most discrete tic, blink, stutter. This wasn’t good; Emma wasn’t as clever as she thought she was. He could smell the piquant edge of fear sliding into his nostrils.

  His and hers.

  A man who’d acquired his morals from cutpurses and lightskirts, thieves and degenerates, Simon Alexander knew trouble.

  Emma Breslin, Dark Queen of the East End, was trouble.

  More than he’d encountered in his twenty-seven years.

  Nevertheless, he decided, repositioning his knife for better access. He was going to fucking save her. Save the woman who’d visited him for a year when he was fifteen, then cruelly stolen his heart, his family’s treasure, and left him to his haunts and his solitude.

  “Guv, can anyone join this game?” Simon asked, slurring his words as he stepped into the low-lit circle, giving the shaky table an intentional bump that sent glasses tumbling to the floor. He let the knife slide into his hand with the disruption, bringing it by his side in a move he knew no one noticed.

  Because he still had the fleetest touch in England. 1802 or 1882.

  He didn’t duck his head as Emma gasped, turning at the sound of his voice. Her eyes were as blue as he remembered, a heartbreaking shimmer in the candlelight. The startling color of blustery skies and bottomless oceans. Places one didn’t want to inhabit. His heart gave a fierce thump, unwelcome desire for a woman he was determined to liberate only because she had something he wanted tolling through him like St George the Martyr’s bell.

  He had to remember that she’d never come back for him.

  “Simon,”
she whispered, the last vestiges of color draining from her cheeks. The dice she held slipping from her fingers to roll across the table.

  His pulse danced as her gaze did a sluggish survey from his head to his feet. But he held himself steady, warning her with a fierce look once she tracked back, to follow his lead.

  “Out of here, guttersnipe,” Ramsey snarled and vaulted to his feet, the legs of his chair scraping across the planks and bringing conversation in the fetid space to a halt. He crushed his cheroot beneath his boot with a vicious stomp. “This be a private game, a private club.” Skirting the table, he grasped Emma’s wrist and yanked her from her chair. “I can see in yer’ face what you come for. And no one’s gettin’ to the queen before me. I’ve played the long game me whole life.”

  Simon felt the corner of his mouth kick up. Guttersnipe. True, he’d been that very thing.

  Rocking back on his heels, the pounding in his temples picked up speed as Ramsey tugged Emma against his hip, a possessive move that should’ve mattered little when one was only liberating. An undeniable risk to show he had a weapon, but Simon nonetheless decided to, using his knife’s pointed blade to scratch his cheek. “Care to wager for ‘er? I’m willing. To stick my neck out, that is.” He tilted his head, ran his tongue over his teeth. “For a queen and all.”