The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,18

wall, moonlight glittering off the broken shards and in her eyes. “But I will, I promise you, I will.”

Delaney dropped to her haunches, unfolded the sheet and spread it over her knee. “Oh,” she whispered, because there wasn’t much more to say. Because she was square in a fine muddle, what her father would have called an unholy mess.

Soul Catcher was all the message said.

She looked up to find the duke’s gaze—distinctive enough for a jackleg thief to recognize him at ten paces—fixed on her. Unbending, unyielding. Nothing charitable about it. She could do little else but look back to the note to escape his censure. “I’ll explain this. I can, you know. Sort of. I’m not a danger to you or your friends. You must believe that. I’m only trying to save myself.”

He went to his knee beside her, cupping her chin to bring her eyes to his. The ruby on his signet ring glinted in the moonlight. “These people you threaten, they’re more than friends. They’re my family.”

“My brother is my family.”

“And this”—he nodded to the sheet lying limply on her knee—“you do for him?”

She swallowed the heat choking her throat, a stranger’s touch, an unexpected invitation to a world she wanted no part of. A world in which he hungered to belong.

She couldn’t share her past, couldn’t invite anyone into her future.

Once again, she was stuck in the crack in-between.

“Tell me what this is about,” he whispered, his hold on her tightening. One of the few times, she’d bet, that he’d asked for something and not been sure he’d get it. “You can trust me, even if you don’t think you can.”

Unbidden, choosing body over mind, she reached to cover his hand where it lay against her cheek. He startled and sucked a shallow breath through his teeth, his lips falling open in what might be interpreted as encouragement. His fingers trembled, curling more gently around her jaw as his pupils expanded. His thumb swept her bottom lip, a tender attack. Unsure what was happening, she nonetheless let it happen.

Let herself be tempted, enticed.

You’re a fool, Delaney. Not the first, not the last, but oh, she was a fool.

But this man was worth a moment’s torment.

Sebastian Tremont was, without doubt, the finest specimen she’d ever seen, crouched there in a filthy alley in a city, a country, for which she had no love. A country holding no love for her. Not only was he stunning, he was stalwart. Honorable, a trait that seeped like the scent of leather and spice from his skin. Possible, a relationship between them, if they’d lived in another time, without mystical talents and problematic pasts, and titles that held exalted and finalizing significance.

As they stared, lost to the malady overwhelming them, the smell of rotting vegetables and burnt newsprint dissipated in the mist. The riotous sounds of a city night trickled away like tea from a cracked pot, until all she could hear was his exhalations mingling with hers.

Why him? she wondered in delight and dread.

Followed immediately by, of course. Him.

Sebastian rocked back on his heels but didn’t release her. “I’m betrothed. Practically, that is,” he whispered in what she sensed was a singular bout of gracelessness.

Delaney withdrew from his grasp, slipped the damning note in her trouser pocket and rose to her feet. If the man was going to reject her when she’d not asked for anything, at the very least, he should suffer for it. “Allow me to guess. Daughter of a viscount. How innovative.”

Leveling his hands on his thighs, Sebastian shoved to his feet with a muffled observation she was thankful fluttered like smoke into the mist. “An earl. Annesley.”

Delaney laughed. She couldn’t help it. And in a reckless move, she closed her eyes and entered her attic. Because the cat had, days ago, left the proverbial burlap sack. A spiteful undertaking, taunting a formidable man with secrets he wished to know, secrets she would have to tell him soon.

But not yet.

Snatching her copy of Debrett’s off a bookshelf, she flipped pages. “Annesley, Earl of. A title created in 1692 for the third Viscount Lumley. Best remembered as one of…”

“Stop.”

“…the Immortal Seven who invited William of Orange to invade England and depose his father-in-law James II.”

The book fell from her hands as Sebastian yanked her from her attic and back into the alley with him.

They were breathing heavily, bodies pressed, as if they’d run a race to arrive at this moment. “You confirmed my decision, Temple, with that heedless