The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,24

start them, they burn. Next. I could ask…” She tried to recall the stories she’d read in the gossip rags, forcibly keeping her eyes open and her attic closed. “About the opera singer.” She snapped her fingers. “Angelina? And you’d tell me?”

“Angelica,” he murmured, his cheeks tinting just enough to be utterly endearing. “You’d have nailed her name if you went into your little room first, am I right? Your attic.”

“I couldn’t possibly wager on this idiocy.” When, obviously, she could. Delaney tucked a twist of hair that had slipped from her cheerless chignon behind her ear. That Sebastian followed the motion with his keen gaze, his pupils expanding enough for her to notice, didn’t make her feel better. Not with this uncertain heat spiraling around them. What in the world was happening? “In any case, I don’t have my horse. I would need her to win. I don’t enter races I can’t win.”

“Oh, didn’t I mention? She arrived an hour after we did. My groom said she was a delight. Fast as a whip, calm but with a nice kick. For future reference, too much temper ruins the ride.”

Delaney stepped in, stabbing his chest with her finger. If he didn’t smell better than a slice of her grandmother’s pecan pie, the chest she poked as wonderfully hard as the ancient slabs she stood upon, she’d tell him she was never speaking to him again and try to mean it. “You had my horse sent to your castle?”

“Your brother thought it a fine idea. To give you a pursuit, keep you out of trouble.”

“Oh, oh, you cur, you beast,” she whispered, flustered and furious with every man she’d ever known. She was out of the dungeon and halfway up the stairs when his voice, a smirk lingering beneath it, caught her.

“Is it a deal? Tomorrow, after breakfast, we ride?”

Delaney looked down to find that devil of a duke standing at the bottom of the staircase, his long body braced against the aged gray stone, gaslight burnishing the tips of his hair, shadowing his cheeks, his nose, his lips. A portrait of a lord in repose. “Why are you doing this? Being charitable when I’ve crossed you. Even if I didn’t mean to, even if I have a good reason, you know I have.”

He paused, genuinely seeming to consider her question. “I think I’m starting to like you, Temple. And maybe, just maybe, I understand what’s driving you, though I’m reasonably sure you don’t see it.”

Delaney swallowed hard and pressed her hand against the chilled stone, the history of this mythical, mystical place vibrating beneath her palm, wrapping around her heart. She had a choice. Continue jousting with this intriguing man, which was turning out to be more enjoyable than thrashing an earl at billiards.

Or run.

She took the stairs to her bedroom two at a time, a duke’s laughter following her up.

Chapter 6

An hour later, Sebastian paced, violin in hand, though he’d yet to pluck a string since Delaney had raced up the staircase as if the hounds of hell were after her, his mind occupied not with music, but with figuring out what to do.

About a woman. One he felt uncharacteristically connected to—and worried about.

An impetuous chit, freed from the tenets society deemed essential to tether a young woman. Flush with funds to do as she damn-well pleased. A brother too young to manage his own life, much less hers. An unconventional upbringing. An imprudent nature. A sound, extremely sound, mind. A simple yet elegant style to her clothing and her conversation.

And secrets. As many, or more, as he had.

It sounded like the formula for a rudimentary explosive device, when Sebastian hated explosions as much as he hated bees.

She’d simply surprised him; that was all. He knew how to handle deceitful women, dissolute women, but was not used to handling sincere, reckless ones.

When they’d arrived at his folly of a country castle, she’d run her hand over the front door with such reverence, thrilled by a bloody rusted hinge, then lifted shining gray eyes to his. He’d brushed her impassioned comment about studded oak aside, when he’d had the overwhelming urge to press her against the aged wood and kiss the breath, the very life, from her, his cock, unfortunately, choosing that moment to awaken from a long slumber with a come-and-get-me bellow.

What if she took it upon herself to memorize his body like she memorized text?

How would he survive such devotion?

Footfalls echoed off the stone as someone traveled down