The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,71

is trying at times. It really is.” With a sigh, Humphrey fixed his gaze on the ceiling. “Simon’s adolescent years are killing me, where Finn’s were a walk in the park.”

One of Sebastian’s soldiers, a sergeant named Dawkins, hesitantly peeked inside the doorway. “A moment of your time, Major Tremont?”

Sebastian experienced a moment’s panic. Dawkins had been assigned to guard Case Temple. “What’s he done?”

Dawkins scrubbed his hand over his ruddy cheeks and rocked from one scuffed boot to the other, his shoulders so wide they bumped the doorframe on both sides as he debated whether he should come in or deliver bad news from the hallway. He looked positively jammed in the space. “He’s run off with that cheeky chit. The disappearing one. The one named after a cat. Headed to Scotland, they are. And if they make it over the border, you know the Scots don’t give a good shite who they marry. It will be done in a flash.”

Sebastian blinked, convinced the burden lifting off his chest, a pressure point directly over his heart, meant he was in deep trouble. But maybe it was trouble he wanted. Certainly not trouble with a woman named after a cat. Rather a twin, half of a terrible set. “You’re telling me Case Temple ran off with Lady Hazelton?”

The sergeant wagged his head like he’d said just that and wasn’t sure why he had to validate further. Grunting, he dug in his pocket, offering up a slip of crumpled paper. “She left a note.”

Sebastian didn’t care about the note. He cared about—

Delaney.

It was all he considered, the only person he wanted to tell—

Well, he wasn’t sure what he was going to tell her, but the impulse to find her, immediately, was overwhelming. And his fingertips weren’t tingling. Not. One. Bit.

He was halfway across the room before Finn’s mocking words hit him in the backside.

“She’s not here, Your Grace.”

He halted in place, close to Dawkins and the doorway. Glancing over his shoulder, he raised a brow, daring them to comment. They were smiling, damn them. Each in their way. Julian, furtively. Finn, gleefully. Humphrey, smugly.

“Your hellion and my loving wife are back at your castle.” Finn yawned into his fist. “Delaney had the megrims from her trip to the attic, so a contingent of ducal mercenaries escorted them home. My best guess, check the dungeon.”

Home. Delaney. Sebastian let the words roam around his heart just long enough to hurt.

“Nothing to say, Fireball?” Humphrey lifted his glass in a toast, an energetic grin splitting his cheeks. “When another young lass done run away from ya’?”

Sebastian bowed from the waist, tipped an imaginary hat. “Gentleman of the League, it looks like I’ve been unofficially jilted for the second time. But for now, I must bid you adieu.”

With their laughter ringing in his ears, he went in search of the woman he wanted.

Chapter 14

The prickle of awareness started between her shoulder blades and dribbled down her body to puddle like rainwater at her feet. Brushing her hair from her eyes, Delaney turned to search the darkness from her crouched spot on the archery range. She’d been shooting to relieve the tension thrumming just beneath her skin. Tension Sebastian had placed there with his deft touch.

Where was he?

Alarmed, she checked the placement of the rising moon. She’d retreated to her attic to review a text on how to grip a bow properly. Thenar eminence, or the pad of the thumb. Had she been gone ten minutes or an hour?

A flicker of light in the duke’s bedroom window had her gaze lifting. Hands braced on the ledge, Sebastian leaned into the night, his attention focused on her in a way a man’s had never been focused before. Never, not once.

The jolt of panic and exhilaration, an awakening she craved and feared in equal measure, sent her body moving before her mind had time to catch up. On a choked breath, she bolted, heading for the service entrance off the side garden, thinking only to place a locked door, any locked door, between them.

She hadn’t been able to see the look in his eyes, but the look on his face…

She was being hunted.

He was waiting at the bottom of the narrow staircase when she snatched the door open, his chest heaving from his effort to arrive before her. Feet bare, shirt untucked, cravat loosened and hanging limply around his neck, he looked like a lion set loose from his cage. Jaw darkened with stubble, eyes heavy with desire.