The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,6
near the tallest man in London. “I told them to stay back today. The haunts. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don’t. I want to be a full member of the League. I’m ready.”
Sebastian grunted beneath his breath, uncertain about that passionately uttered statement. But it was too late—and young Simon could be of great assistance. He did have the fastest hands in the city, outside a Whitechapel whore.
Flipping the collar of his greatcoat high, Sebastian huddled into it and threw his gaze to the gravel and grit beneath his feet. A faint murmur was threading through the crowd strolling the park’s perimeter, the gentlemen riding their horses along the winding drives, the ladies spinning their parasols in gossiping delight. Titters of curiosity he tried valiantly to overlook. He’d no interest, not a flicker, in gossip, in society, in women. Not in months. He was starting to worry he’d never feel anything again.
“You’re legendary.” Simon adjusted the collar of his coat as he’d seen Sebastian do and bowed into it. “They all want a piece, they do. Hungry eyes, the lot of them. Like those starving dogs when I was a lad in St Giles, roaming the street looking for something, anything, to sink their teeth into.”
“It’s the title.” He angled south down a footpath, the hem of his coat slapping his shins, the scent of blooming flowers and dust kicked up by carriage wheels and pounding hooves stinging his nose. “It has nothing to do with me.” He suspected the fervor would increase in pitch if, and when, he announced an engagement. Hence his decision to purchase an Oxfordshire estate he didn’t need, but for some reason, desperately wanted.
A place to hide. Maybe forever. Maybe even from the woman he was considering marrying.
“How will we recognize her? I don’t think I’ve ever laid eyes on the woman,” Sebastian asked when they came to the fence bordering Rotten Row.
“You’ll know her when you see her.” Simon pointed to the drive running parallel to the horse path, where carriages swept by in a thunderingly steady pace. “The time she nearly ran us down, she was zipping along, just there.”
Sebastian spent an hour chronicling Rotten Row’s bustle, evading exchanges, engaging in those he couldn’t with enough indifference to bring the conversations to a hasty demise. If anyone wondered why he lingered with Julian Alexander’s bastard half-brother—the same justification Julian had thrown out to explain Finn’s sudden appearance years ago, when there wasn’t a drop of blood shared between the men—no one said a word.
No one dared.
He turned to Simon, set on telling the young man this endeavor would have to wait…
…when there she was.
As Simon had said, he would know the moment he saw her.
Sebastian Fitzgerald Tremont, fifth Duke of Ashcroft, would never forget his first sight of Delaney Temple.
Not until the day he died.
Driving hell for leather along South Carriage Drive in the sleekest cabriolet he’d ever seen, the lone horse needed to pull the gig a gorgeous bay Sebastian would bet was the one she’d procured during her rogue game of billiards at White’s. The hood was open, leaving her in full view, should society wish to gaze upon her. As unruly as her prancing mount, midnight hair fleeing a loose chignon, straw hat tipped low over her eyes, similar to the way she’d worn the ugly bonnet when she’d posed as a lost traveler and talked her way into Julian’s country home.
It was, indeed, the same woman.
The same reckless, impossible woman from Finn’s dreams. From his lone dream.
She raised her delicately-twined whip to direct her bay to the side of the track, not thirty feet from where Sebastian stood, the sleeve of her riding ensemble slashed from wrist to elbow and showing a dazzling crimson lining. Sebastian pressed his belly into the fence bordering the track—repelled, attracted, bloody fascinated.
For just a moment, unaccountably speechless. Without thought, action or plan, one of those little mysteries life didn’t take time to explain, he was staggered by the sight of her.
Simon elbowed him in the ribs. “That’s her.”
Sebastian swallowed tightly. “I know.” He shoved off the railing with a bracing inhalation. “Here, stay. When I give you a nod, come over and swipe what you can without making a disturbance. Remember, size doesn’t matter. It only has to be something she’s touched for Julian to read it. As insignificant as one of your blasted toothpicks.”
Simon tipped his head in acknowledgment, and Sebastian strolled in Delaney Temple’s direction, making a show of checking his