The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,19

presentation. Consider this your formal invitation to my manor, Adey Castle. For further discussion about your gift. Finn’s dreams. The Soul Catcher. We leave tomorrow morning at six.”

She shook her head. No.

He smiled ruthlessly, and heat flooded her body, that she should find him fascinating when he wasn’t on her side, the ultimate betrayal. “Oh, yes. Tomorrow morning, the Terrible Two will accompany the Duke of Ashcroft to his Oxfordshire home. A summer country gathering is how we’ll present it. To discuss the ramifications of our impromptu Hyde Park kiss. You can claim I asked, and you rejected me. It’s happened before, the asking and my being rebuffed. Although I’m not opposed to kidnapping, if it comes to that. There, where you have nowhere to run, you’ll tell me everything.”

As an enraged duke dragged her from the alley and into the night, Delaney worried that divulging her secrets was precisely what was going to happen.

Chapter 5

If Sebastian could have gotten away with it, he would’ve claimed his unwelcome reaction to Delaney Temple in a rookery alley the previous evening was due to his weakened state.

Nearly dying from a bee sting enough to throw anyone off-kilter.

Even a duke.

Nonetheless, as he watched the little hellion slumber on the tufted velvet squabs across from him, hand curled beneath her cheek, face a shockingly youthful display in the splash of lamplight washing over her, he decided lying to himself wasn’t beneficial to resolving his dilemma.

For a long, tortured instant in that alley, he’d been tempted to fold her into his body and see if she tasted as beguiling as she looked.

Who, he questioned, was the stone pulling whom under? If he gave the woman any leeway, it was because he didn’t know the answer to that question.

He turned to her brother, Case, who sat rigidly as a guard next to him, the young man’s gaze just a shade darker than his sister’s and fixed on the countryside they passed at a swift clip.

“Why did you leave America?” Sebastian whispered the question, not wishing to wake his nemesis and face additional mental daggers being thrown, as they had been when he’d hustled her into his conveyance at dawn. If it was a scandal involving a man, discussing it within earshot of the woman in question wasn’t decorous on his part. But he was too damned curious, the sizzle in his belly that felt like jealousy worrisome enough for him to choose the impulsive route, when he was not a reckless man.

“I should be asking why we’re traveling under armed guard without much choice in the matter.” Case didn’t turn from his study of the storm that had rolled in as they were switching horses at the posting station halfway between London and his Oxfordshire estate. Tracing a raindrop that streaked the glass pane like a tear, the young man laughed, sounding so like his sister that Sebastian’s heart took an infinitesimal, unforgivable leap. “She said to watch out, that you’d jump right in, forgo the niceties. Blunt curiosity. Very un-British of you, Your Grace.”

Sebastian tipped his head against the carriage seat and considered his options as if they were scribbled on the Clarence’s ceiling. The Terrible Two didn’t trust him—and he didn’t trust them. But they needed information from each other. Too, the girl was gifted, powerfully gifted, Sebastian feared, whether she wanted to accept this fact or not. Julian had spent his adult life creating the League, all of them, at some point over the last ten years, risking theirs to protect it. The organization’s unwritten charter asserted protection for those with a mystical talent, even if they were tangled in a web of thievery or outright deceit.

Or both.

Working through this justification in his mind, Sebastian decided to go with honesty and see where that got him.

“I was a third son who bought an army commission to escape a supernatural curse, only to find my family wiped out by cholera when I returned. A dukedom I was ill-equipped to manage landing like a boulder on my chest. You see, I’m still adjusting to this life. The ducal life. The other, as I’m guessing your sister told you, being my noteworthy penchant for starting fires.” He scrubbed the heel of his hand over the knife strapped to his hip because it made him feel calmer every time he did it. “I never imagined bringing someone normal into this life. For that, I apologize.”

Case sputtered a laugh and turned to Sebastian. The young man was painfully