castle, he and Delaney waged a silent war.
Chapter 10
Men, Delaney fumed and kicked at the dandelions littering the field surrounding the duke’s stable. Arrogant, intolerable, domineering beasts. She glared over her shoulder at her escorts, two thugs whose broad shoulders were nearly bursting from their lavender and gold attire. She’d forgotten the English term for their costumes, and they were costumes because the men were no more footman than she was a princess. She’d seen a pistol lodged in the pocket of one, a knife strapped to the waist of the other. Skilled with horses as well as weaponry, she hoped, and popped her riding crop against her thigh.
Halting outside the stables, the facts she’d read about its sixteenth-century construction tumbled through her mind. Like the rest of Sebastian’s estate, the riding facilities were stunning, if worn. The main building built of timber and stone, the window frames painted as deep a red as the fires he started, a winding flagstone path leading into the darkened interior.
She stepped inside and drew a cavernous, calming breath, her eyes adjusting to the meager light. Dust specks danced in the air, a mad, tilting glimmer. The fragrance in the dense air was magic. At least to her. Horse, earth, leather and…the aroma hit her before the noise.
Puppy. A whimpering puppy.
Straw crunched beneath her boots as she crossed the broad aisle, past an enormous black and her restless bay, finally locating the source of the sound in a vacant stall at the back of the building. Her breath caught, her heart slipping to her knees before bouncing back to flutter violently in her chest.
Oh, this was not good.
The arrogant aristocrat she could easily rebuff, ignoring every strained smile he’d sent her way this morning over kippers and cinnamon toast, not a problem, but this…
She swallowed and wedged her shoulder against the stall door, her crop held limply in her hand. As her father used to say when things got rough, shit.
Sebastian was on one knee, his back to her, his hands full of puppy. There had to be at least six of them, a wondrous assortment of black, mottled brown and tan. They scrambled over his boots, sniffing and whimpering, yanking on his cuffs as he sought to give their mother, lying on her side in exhausted slumber, her meal. The duke’s dogs ate well, meat and potatoes. She recalled what Kitty had said about him loving his hounds more than her. From the looks of it, the girl might be right.
“Go on with you, little darlings, let your mama eat. If you want dinner later, that is.”
Delaney smiled, hiding her delight behind her gloved fist. Little darlings? She wondered if he’d ever used that tone with a woman, then gave her leg a punitive tap with her crop as jealousy cut a white-hot passage through her.
She sighed, releasing a hushed breath, because she wanted another moment to observe him without the argument that was sure to come once he noticed her. However cross she’d been since the League’s impromptu meeting two days ago, she’d never forget the sight of her proud, protective, supercilious duke—a man the ton called the ‘duke of no one’s heart’ when Delaney suspected this was not the case—laughing as he reached for a puppy who’d tumbled into the bowl of food meant for its mother.
He made it worse, damn him, by bringing the wriggling pup close to his face and giving it unnecessary life advice while she looked on, feeling like she’d taken a blow to the head.
As the duke sat there cooing to his charges, she caught a disjointed, cracked-pane view of the boy he’d been. A frightened child whose father had plunged his hands in a frigid fountain to repel a gift over which he’d had no control. An honorable man who was doing everything in his power to ensure others in their mystical world didn’t suffer as he had. A man doing his best by her when she’d planned to deceive him.
Much to her heart’s dismay, she’d found the scandalous, flame-throwing Duke of Ashcroft to be human after all. The tender look on his face as he nudged a puppy off his boot, moments before he caught her staring, made her want to crawl in her attic and never come out.
The soft glow in his eyes dimmed as he turned to find her standing there. Transforming boy instantly to man. Gaze darting away, he dragged his hand through his tumbledown hair, his signet ring flashing in