The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,15

She elbowed him in the side. “And don’t try to be clever. Don’t be a hero. Leave this to me. I know what I’m doing.”

“As easy as sneaking into White’s to wager on a horse.”

“Child’s play.” Looking both ways when they reached Regent Street, she led him across the busy lane, dodging carts and hacks, sweetmeats vendors, foxed patrons spilling from gin palaces and bawdy houses, a superb display of London life. “I wanted that bay so badly I could taste it. I would have paid fairly; I offered more than he was worth. The earl defined the manner of his misfortune. Why he picked billiards, I’ll never know. Because I’m a woman, I imagine, when I could have beaten him soundly when I was ten years old. He’s one of those halfwits who think owning a table means they know how to play the game.”

“I bet the halfwit wanted more than the horse.”

Delaney halted beneath a lamppost, the gas’s glow sending an amber wash close to the color of his eyes over them. His statement held a possessive tone. A tone she hated. A tone that thrilled her. She didn’t know which inclination to follow, vexed woman or attracted one, the scariest notion she’d had in years. In the end, she took the coward’s route and merely shrugged. “So what if he did.” Not an answer, which her domineering duke wanted. No virgin’s blushing stammer to contradict what he’d placed between them, a staged chess set ready for play.

Was she or wasn’t she?

The question every man wanted to know. Until they didn’t.

Let him imagine what he wanted. Contempt, she was used to. “Are you coming with me, under my direction, or is your plan to stand here scrutinizing my misdeeds? Shall we start with yours? Wasn’t there an opera singer you jilted with the token dash of jewelry tossed in? A dowager countess of something or the other who threw a tantrum at a ball when you ended your association? A melee at the Epsom Derby last year?” She tugged her hat brim low as a couple, arms entwined, lips locked, stumbled past them. “Another fracas days ago at the Blue Moon, your favorite haunt from what they say. I’m inquisitive enough to read the gossip sheets, Tremont. Worse, I remember every word.”

His jaw clenched, a muscle beneath his ear pulsing, his temper looking like it wasn’t far from erupting. He’d been a soldier, she recalled, and she’d wager a new American dollar this scowl, plus a weapon or three of his choice, were what he’d taken into battle with him.

He pulled his collar high as a fierce gust redolent of the Thames swept over them, rushing people who looked like they didn’t wish to be rushed past. “I’m coming, provided we don’t kill each other first.”

“Excellent,” she returned and marched off.

“How do you know these streets so well?” He fell into step beside her, his broad body blanking out the gaslight of every lamp they passed and throwing her in pulses of shadow. “It took me years to manage it, when I was born here.”

“A map.” She tapped her temple before remembering she shouldn’t answer his questions. When she’d first moved to London, she’d studied a street diagram for ten minutes, then stored it in her attic, memorized in full. She pulled it out for review when required. The Duke of Ashcroft, looking dispassionately ferocious, didn’t need to know this. Didn’t need to know any of it.

For some reason, however, he made Delaney want to tell him, another frightening consideration.

The crowd they muscled through swelled, the sounds and scents of the city increasing in volume and potency the further they advanced into the bowels of an exceedingly impoverished neighborhood.

With a curse, the duke dodged a pile of refuse recently dumped from a window. “Where are we going? And to meet whom?”

“Beneath the lamp outside the Rose and Three Tuns. Little Earl Street.”

Sebastian shoved a man who faltered into their path back a step and growled, “You thought to go to Seven Dials alone?”

She tilted her head until she could see his glaring visage from beneath her hat brim. A big, handsome ball of fury. “I misjudged. I’m sure you don’t have reason to come here often. My apologies, sir.”

He laughed huskily, inviting a crude proposal from a lightskirt lounging against a fish wagon they passed. “I’m well-acquainted with the area. My preferred opium den is around the corner. Advice for you, Temple. Studying a map provides names but