The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,30
mental photograph. Another of her hidden talents.
Delaney exhaled and dropped her gaze to a weed growing through a crack in the stone beneath her feet, her cheeks heating.
Arrogant? Yes, in spades, but she’d never met someone less stuffy. The Duke of Ashcroft laughed often, and not dryly. Although part of that was him laughing at her, not with her. Also, in Delaney’s estimation, he was more handsome than Finn Alexander. More interesting. Like a book she wanted to absorb every line of. A treasure to lock in her attic.
Those long looks he gave her, his eyes hooded, searching.
What was he searching for?
He recognized her in some way she’d yet to do herself, which was absurd.
She’d never wondered what a man was thinking, never wanted to kiss the smile off his lips.
Never wanted to comfort.
She’d taken turns sitting by his bed for three nights, listening to air leave his lungs in shaky fits and starts. Swabbed his fevered brow and forced lukewarm tea down his throat. Murmured when he woke in a confused stupor. He’d said things about his father. Unbelievable cruelties from a boy’s mind reflected in a man’s voice.
They’d shared more than he understood. More than she wanted to admit. And then, to walk into that fantastic dungeon and hear haunting notes drifting from his violin…
“Kitty is a woman who can make the man she wants fall in love with her, isn’t she, Miss Temple?”
Delaney turned, marveling at the blonde-haired, blue-eyed monster she’d created. Marveling at the unwelcome feelings brewing inside her. She didn’t consider herself an expressive creature, but she felt caught in a passionate tumult. “Perhaps.”
“Then you’ll help me.” With a giggle, she threw her arms around Delaney. “I knew you would. American women aren’t afraid of anything.”
“Help you what?” Delaney asked against a crush of lilac satin, guessing it was not the best time to tell the newly branded Kitty that she was afraid all the time. Of everything.
“Win the Duke of Ashcroft’s love, silly.”
Oh, this is not good, was all she could think.
Because, deep in her heart, she feared she might want him for herself.
Chapter 7
Delaney was late for breakfast.
She’d awoken the following morning before dawn, gone exploring, and stumbled on a parlor containing a chest of Regency-era watercolors, each canvas notated with meticulous historical detail about Adey Castle. So, she’d spent three hours digging through them and taking mental annotations.
Hence, her arrival to the breakfast room, covered in dust and slivers of dried paint, in a gown she wore when she gardened. To find the Duke of Ashcroft had invited every member of his mystical family to the meal. Her brother even sat there, looking uncomfortable but present. Delaney smoothed her hand down her bodice, temper and nerves doing a nimble dance along her skin.
A table that would seat thirty dominated a space overflowing with laugher and conversation, the piquant scent of sausage and kippers, broad bands of sunlight spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows to splash across the lush Aubusson carpet, over the paintings of landscapes and city scenes lining the walls.
And a crackling hearthfire Delaney guessed the duke had lit with his mind.
The space was relaxed and off-putting, like its residing duke.
As if he’d sensed her skulking in the doorway, Sebastian slipped his watch from his waistcoat pocket, then gave her a sardonic side-look. He was dressed for the country in buckskin trousers tucked into a pair of lovingly polished boots, a tweed coat casing his broad shoulders, his cravat looped around his neck just so. Neither fastidious nor careless. He’d run his fingers through his hair from the rumpled look of it, a valet’s disaster and a woman’s dream.
While she looked like a poor country cousin come to call. Grousing beneath her breath, she shoved off the doorjamb, watching a ghost of a smile, hidden to everyone but her, tilt the corners of his mouth.
“Tremont.” She slipped into the empty chair by him. There was one free next to her brother, but she would take this challenge and show the arrogant duke how little he concerned her.
“Temple,” he returned, their cheeky salutations halting the conversation like someone had pitched a glass against the wall.
“You met most everyone during my illness, I believe, so we’ll be casual,” Sebastian said between bites of toast layered with orange marmalade. “Julian, Viscount Beauchamp. His brothers, Finn and Simon. Friend of all, Humphrey. Victoria, Finn’s wife. We’ll proffer the newer introductions while seated, since we’re seated. Thirty minutes ago, actually.” He pointed his toast down the table.