The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,45

you told me.”

Delaney’s hand clenched around her teacup, and she flashed Sebastian a petulant look, grossly dissimilar to the one that had made him lose his mind in the quiet of his bedchamber a few short hours ago. A stiff cock and an unquenched thirst had kept him up most of the night, and from the dark slashes beneath her eyes, she hadn’t fared much better. Remembering what he’d done to calm the beast, twice, and who he’d imagined doing it to, was giving him a blinding headache.

Unable to build a case for delaying sharing what he’d learned, he’d sent a note to Julian and Humphrey at dawn and briefed Finn over breakfast. Rounded up her brother, Case, who’d drowsily mentioned he preferred to slumber until noon. Now the four men sat in Sebastian’s dungeon in a random assortment of chairs his footman had hauled from storage, varying expressions of interest on their faces. Only Humphrey remained standing, because Sebastian didn’t have a chair in the dwelling that would fit him. Sebastian had chosen to sit on his desk because he wanted to lord it over the group, play judge to the League’s jury.

Victoria sat on the steps outside the room, a relaxed place for an expectant mother. Her job? To keep Finn from reading minds, Sebastian from starting fires, Julian from receiving visions, and Delaney from sneaking into her attic.

Delaney picked at the tattered velvet on the parlor chair upon which she perched, like a hawk waiting to take flight at the first unguarded moment. “The story is simple. You could have conveyed it just as well as I. Not had me sitting here like a criminal being tried by a court of her peers.”

Sebastian snorted and plucked a violin string, the instrument removed from its case to give his hands a constructive project that did not involve touching Delaney Temple.

Sighing, she cracked her teacup atop the side table. “I stepped into my attic at an auction in Charleston when I was fifteen. Then I made a comment about a piece, a painting, information I shouldn’t have known, couldn’t have. Case intervened, hustled me out of there. But it was too late. There was a man who heard the entire exchange. A reprobate who’d swooped in during Reconstruction and purchased most of the property around my family’s farm. Of course, he wanted that, too.”

Her brother gave a terse whistle and rose to his feet, pacing the chamber as the group observed the twins’ silent interplay. “That’s not all he wanted,” he murmured and yanked the iron loop on the far wall as he passed it.

If she’d shrugged the objectionable comment off, Sebastian might’ve believed the boy mistaken, but the glance Delaney slid his way was remorseful. And haunted.

Sebastian ran his thumb along a string, hoping his sudden fit of fury didn’t show on his face. “Like a fine wine, the story matures.”

“He didn’t touch me,” she said in a voice not quite strong enough to convince, the room contracting until every man sitting between the stone walls wished he were somewhere else.

Sebastian cursed beneath his breath. He wouldn’t have forced this little show if she’d told him this.

“Del,” Case warned, an edge Sebastian had presumed he lacked seeping into his voice.

“Truthfully, well…” Circling her teacup on the table, she flashed Sebastian an anxious glance. He didn’t know if it made him feel good or not to know he was the one she feared sharing this particular detail of her story with. “He did touch me. He tried. It wasn’t prolonged. I got angry after he tore my nightgown, then I pushed him down the staircase.” Her words came out in tight, emotional bursts.

Nightgown. Sebastian blew a breath through his teeth, the violin trembling in his hand.

Julian looked up from his sketch, his face impassive. Which meant he was listening to within an inch of his life. “I’m speculating that he didn’t survive the fall.”

She shook her head, fists going into a tangled knot in her lap and her gaze following.

“And your brother took responsibility?”

She came halfway out of her chair, finally taking flight. “Oh, oh, no. No one knows he’s dead except—”

“Your extortionist,” Finn said in awe, figuring out the mystery.

Sebastian plucked a string hard enough to snap it. Finn needed to get out more if he found this disaster engrossing.

“Where’s the body?” This from Humphrey, who’d gone to stretching his shoulders with pops and snaps that Sebastian could see were making Delaney uneasy. She’d grown up around men,