The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,23

rooms, you see. With all else on my shoulders, the duchy and the League, I must’ve been mad to acquire it. A feverishly low point of vulnerability.”

Delaney traced another age-old stone crevice, liking him more, blast it, every minute. Because the Duke of Ashcroft was, quite deliberately, letting her in. A dignified, delightfully modest invitation into his world. “You love it.”

“Love is a strong word, Temple.”

It was.

“Are you ready to tell me?” he asked after a long pause, his voice worn, fatigued. “About being caught in Julian’s house, just down the lane from here, a few months back? Wearing a horrid bonnet and using one of your assortment of rather threadbare English accents to gain entry into the room housing the chronology. Ten minutes. Not enough time to do any damage, one would imagine, so we didn’t worry, a thousand-page tome too much to take in that quickly. But now someone is contacting you about the Soul Catcher.” His dark brow rose, just the one, a neat trick. “Are those events related? Seems coincidental to me, but what do I know? I worry you’ve got that entire book in your head.”

He wasn’t far from figuring it out. She felt panicked, pressed into a tight corner. One of the headaches she’d started getting of late began to thump in her temple. “Are you ready to tell me about Finn’s wife, Victoria? Why she walks into a room, and your blazes extinguish?”

“Nothing to hide. Not anymore.” Sebastian perched his hip on the desk and withdrew the Soul Catcher from his trouser pocket. Prisms dotted the wall as he spun the gem in his hands, his long body shifting for better purchase. “Victoria’s a blocker. Just as it sounds, she obstructs when she’s within a hundred feet of someone with a supernatural gift. Finn can’t read minds, and he’s never been able to read hers. My fingertips cool. Julian receives no visions when he touches an object. Simon, who sees ghosts if you didn’t know, sees fewer. Or, rather, they keep their distance in a way they don’t when she’s not around. She’s like a balm for the tortured mystical soul.” He stared into the stone’s facets for a long moment, then at her. “Did you go into your attic when she was around? Did you try?”

Delaney thought back to those harried hours when the duke was floating in and out of consciousness, and his friends had been anxiously attending him. “I don’t know.”

He clicked his tongue against his teeth and calmly polished the Soul Catcher against his trousered thigh. “Will be interesting to see if you can.”

“Interesting to whom?”

The duke laughed at that, not clueing her in on what he found amusing. Placing the stone on the desk, he closed the distance between them, extended his hand and pulled her to her feet. Crowding her with the peppery scent of his skin and the heat rolling off his body. “Since we’re experiencing trust issues, or you are, I propose a wager to move our relationship forward. You seem like the competitive type, billiards to win a horse and all that.”

She frowned—relationship? Without any warning, he lifted his hand to buff the mark between her brows. A neat tuck her brother said meant her temper was distilled and ready to taste.

“What are the terms?” she asked, hating the slight quiver threading her words. Hating that she was so competitive she couldn’t tell him, in his vernacular, to sod off. She was bewildered, speech a challenge. His touch had sent summer sunlight washing through her body where it was now collecting, quite inappropriately, between her thighs. She wasn’t experienced with men, but she wasn’t stupid, either, and she knew what that meant.

Sebastian pressed his carved-from-marble lips together to hide what looked like approval that she’d swallowed the hook, dropping his hand to his hip and letting air reenter her lungs. “A simple race. I have acres of woodlands perfect for riding. There’s this nifty path through the forest, two jumps, maybe three-quarters of a mile in total. The winner gets two questions.”

“Why should I gamble when you’ve already told me everything?”

His expression froze before it collapsed in mirth. “Really. Have I?”

“I could ask anything?” she challenged, starting to get ticked because he seemed so delighted with himself. The English were so smug. “Any old thing? Not about this chronology you think I stole or the League you talk about constantly when I have no idea what that even is. And no fire talk. You