Simon Alexander tries to pursue a lady in this historical paranormal romance. But how to manage that, when the lady in question can travel through time? THE HELLION IS TAMED returns to the 1800s when we meet Simon, adopted by a strange men’s club called the League of Lords. Simon was a street urchin but is now being passed off as related to a titled lord on the wrong side of the blanket.
Emmaline Breslin incurred the wrath of the League of Lords in a previous book, when she snatched up a jewel and stepped through time with it. The men have been looking for her ever since, while running gaming hells and helping guttersnipes find employment. In an episode reminiscent of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Emma has been dipping in and out of people’s pasts in St. Giles, London, helping women at the moment they encounter misfortune. But a poor girl needs to eat and sleep, and Simon’s time has piped water, gas lamps, and easy heat--so much more advantageous than her own time eighty years previously. The gem gives her the power to travel almost at will.
Simon has a gift of his own, but a macabre one; he sees ghosts and can converse with them. London is full of the dead. He also enjoys the company of women of easy virtue, be they streetwalkers or the wealthy set. And somehow his habits have made Emma covetous, even though she barely knows him. She is not prepared for him to track her down, although at first, all he has in mind is her jewel.
I found the story took a long time to get started, with Emma learning better-class manners and scoffing nastily at Simon, without his knowing why. They have many conversations but still fail to communicate. Only much later do we learn of a threat to a time traveler. Many characters from the series appear, so followers of the League of Lords series will be pleased to see how everyone is getting along at this later date. More than once, the tale came across to me as having no urgent plot, just a day-by-day account of learning to dance the waltz. However, Tracy Sumner has clearly done a great deal of research and constantly sprinkles details of the lifestyle and environs of her characters. The oddities (like superhero talents) of the League of Lords can’t be publicly exhibited and may be passed to a new generation. That’s if the time travelers live long enough... THE HELLION IS TAMED is a fun adult historical romance with a difference.
Time-traveling lovers navigate the sinister streets of London—while denying their enchantment and desire.
He's a viscount's bastard who sees more than he wants to...
Rescued from the slums and molded into a gentleman, Simon Alexander lost the love of his life to a mystical world he's always spurned. Still searching for the time traveler who stole his heart, he'll stop at nothing to find her. When he does, he finds he can't trust her—or his desire. Will he be able to tame his fear, and his hellion, once and for all?
She's a time-traveling socialite...
Transforming Emma Breslin from a poverty-stricken termagant into an aristocrat is easier than anyone imagined. Nearly overnight, she delights society as a trendsetting sensation. Torn between her obsession with the man who's never forgiven her for leaving and her fight to safeguard the magical gem she stole from him, Emma battles to survive without the man she loves. But when her life is threatened, Simon Alexander is the only person in any time she can trust.
Come along for a passionate story where passion defies time and love conquers betrayal.
Ready for Simon's story of forbidden love, time travel, and intrigue? The Hellion is Tamed is #4 in the steamy Victorian paranormal romance series Publishers Weekly calls, "A superpowered twist on Victorian romance!"
Excerpt
The Duke of Ashcroft played better than her granny ever had, Emma decided as she half-listened to the duchess’s dance instructions and the duke’s meandering tune. Violin tucked against his collarbone, chin resting on the glossy wooden lip, he looked a prime piece standing there, body swaying as he moved through the song. One of those men who was big and broad but still somehow managed to look elegant.
A neat trick, that.
Rather like Simon and his flash of elegance.
To a degree that made her mouth water.
Simon was leaner than the duke but retained a muscular frame his fine clothing couldn’t hide. Lanky, even, a new word in her vocabulary, thanks to Dickens. Restless, his hands in constant motion. Reserved, his emotions sealed. However, she wasn’t fooled. He was passionate beneath that exterior he worked hard to polish smooth as glass. He’d shown his true self to her a few times. While jamming Jonesy’s face into the dirt and for a flaring, hot second when she’d spontaneously spoken to his ghost. Something about that gesture had struck him deeply.
In a place she didn’t think too many people had reached.
Emma peeked from the corner of her eye as the duchess gave her directions she didn’t for a moment hear.
Not when she could watch him.
Standing before the window, hands braced on the ledge, staring out at nothing of interest that she could see. People slinking down a busy London street. Overloaded carts, posh carriages, burdened hackneys. Coachmen in liveried attire. Folks in plain dress, folks in stylish. It wasn’t like it was dark and the lane lit with those incredible streetlamps one could stare at all night. He flipped a farthing between his fingers, defying gravity, not looking down. Muscle memory, the gypsies called it. An effort to calm himself, she’d come to believe. She’d seen hawkers at carnivals who couldn’t do what he could.
It made her wonder, in a mysterious little nook that lit up when she looked at Simon Alexander, what else he could do with those hands.
“He’ll forgive you. If you’re patient…and you play your cards right. As women for centuries have had to. Don’t feel it’s dishonest; it’s simply the mathematics of love.”
Emma flinched and turned to the duchess, her breath catching to realize she’d been caught ogling what accounted, in a distant, supernatural family way, to this woman’s brother. “Play my cards…”
With a groan, Delaney slid gracelessly into the chair her husband had directed a footman retrieve for her. The duke was the height of care and consideration with regard to his duchess, which Emma found a most adorable—and sickening—thing to watch. “He’s the sensitive one in this family. Julian, Finn, Humphrey, Sebastian, none as painstakingly constructed as Simon. As guarded. Still holding on to such a substantial slice of who he was before. So many secrets. Too many secrets. Finn and Julian worry about his struggle, like brothers should. But I”—Delaney took a sip of tea from the cup the duke had snapped his fingers and had superciliously delivered to her—“think he’ll talk to someone, when he finds the right someone. What he’s doing, with these women, I imagine doesn’t require much talking. And is only an effort that brings more loneliness, not takes it away. But men have to figure that out for themselves, now, don’t they? Uncomplicated creatures.”
“Forgive me for what?” Emma asked, the snag in her voice apparent. Anger and…understanding flooding out. Simon was scamp, a rogue, a bounder. And she’d been right in thinking he was upset with her. But she was upset, too. Nevertheless, if he trusted her enough to share his secrets, she’d likely be weak enough to fall right into that trap and share hers back. “What did I do?”
Delaney paused, the teacup halfway to her lips. “You left.”
Emma glanced over her shoulder to confirm the man they were discussing hadn’t moved from his contemplative spot by the window. “I couldn’t come back. My mother was ill, dying. And, then, when I could, after she passed, even with the Soul Catcher, I messed up, over and over. Arrived once before Simon was even born. The other time, in Oxfordshire, but he was a baby in London. Once, I even ended up in Scotland in the dead of winter. Horrible. And then…” Emma glanced at his gloves, still clutched in her hands. She’d lifted them to her nose in the privacy of her bedchamber this morning and breathed his scent into her soul. He hadn’t forgiven her—but he hadn’t waited, either. “I made it back. Five years after I left, maybe six.” She glanced into the duchess’s smoke-gray eyes, the scene coming back to her, a rough pinch to her heart. “There was a woman. Older. A countess or something close to it, I figured. I stepped into a performance I shouldn’t have, then stepped out as quickly as I could. Landed in the wrong year on the way back, which I fixed after a bit of experimentation.”
Stepped back—but not before he’d broken her heart. What she’d always wanted to share with him, those intimate things she’d seen other couples doing in dank alleys and hidden nooks of public houses. Saved herself to share with him. An experience Simon had thrown away on one of a thousand. Just another toff getting his dangly-bits off.
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