According to the members of the League, my plotting days are over.” When she trotted out of the stable, Delaney raised her hand to shade her eyes as she turned down the gravel path bordering the estate’s woodlands. For once, in this godforsaken country, the sun was blinding. Rays burned through her clothing to heat her skin…but this was nothing compared to what the Duke of Ashcroft could do with one, teeny-tiny look.
Sebastian loped into a canter beside her, his mount easily keeping pace. She glued her gaze to the winding path and away from the muscular thighs encased in tight buckskin, the firm buttocks she’d mostly avoided looking at while the duke cavorted with his puppies. A task she was finding hard to accomplish as he edged ahead of her and presented this part of his anatomy for her perusal. She was only human, after all.
“You’re annoyed that I offered you a puppy?” he called back to her. “I see that neat dent between your brows. Should I have added that your voice is as pleasing as the call of a lovely, uh, American bird? Wasn’t that what you told me women like to hear? I’m sorry, I haven’t had a chance to use the line with an opera singer yet. When I do, I’ll get back to you regarding the response.”
A balmy breeze washed over them, the air smelling more of him than it did the thicket of roses they passed or the long grass they trampled. Her attraction, no, rather her inability to talk herself out of the attraction, was making her blind with fury. “This amuses you, doesn’t it?” She jabbed her crop his way, the skirt of her riding habit slapping her calves. “The trouble I find myself in?”
He halted so abruptly it startled both horses into dancing sidesteps. Grasping her reins, he drew her as close as her mount would allow. Anger blew a flush across his cheeks as sunlight sent auburn sparks through his dark curls. The unusual eyes, the tousled hair, all combined to make him appear devilishly attractive. “Actually, Temple, I don’t find any of this amusing. Being held responsible for London’s Terrible Two, an enormous inconvenience. Grave concern over the better half, or worse, depending upon how one looks at it, a woman whose mind is a weapon. A weapon she’s reluctant to admit she holds. Unease over the fact that this woman was willing to sell us to the highest bidder while understanding she was forced into a corner without another option. Resentment, slight but existent, that I’m now slotted in the role of protector as we, the League, my friends, my family, search for who could know her secret while desiring ours.”
“I won’t betray you,” she whispered, appalled by how distressed the admission sounded.
He tossed the reins in her lap. “Now you won’t. Because you’re caught.”
She rocked back in the saddle, feelings bruised, when she deserved every ounce of censure he’d tossed her way. She didn’t belong among the League’s outcasts, when her gift should’ve invited lifetime admittance and acceptance. She didn’t belong in South Carolina. She didn’t belong in England. Never had, never would. Staring across the endless emerald vista, the rolling hills and thickets of pine and oak, Oxfordshire both a dream and a curse, the tears pinched, threatening to overflow and show him how lonely she was.
“I’m sorry you’re forced to deal with me when you dislike me so much,” she said, and set her crop to her mount’s flank.
And with a bolting clatter of hooves, Delaney left a stunned duke behind.
He liked her too much. Had the hellion ever considered that?
Sebastian cursed and raced across the field after her, damned glad he’d been forced as a lad to learn to ride, and ride well. His demanding tyrant of a father wouldn’t have accepted less. Because if Sebastian was suited to the saddle, Delaney was magic. Agile ease he’d never seen in a woman, not even Countess Dellucci, who’d learned to ride during her girlhood in France and was the leading female whip in London. Among other things.
Maybe Delaney’s agility was due to her petite frame, which allowed her to bend so low over her mare’s neck they were one. Or the way she intuited her horse’s rhythm, letting the beast stretch its legs, then move into an all-out gallop that tore up the earth without missing a beat.
He only discerned that, aside from her raging intelligence, her gentle joy and boundless daring, her equestrian