The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,61

He was dressed more casually than she’d ever seen him, even during his illness. Collarless shirt untucked and flowing around his hips, sleeves rolled high to expose his muscular forearms, trousers stained, a rip near one knee. Her toes curled into the chilled flagstones as air left her lungs in a whoosh.

His feet were bare, too. Long and narrow, slim toes, high arches. She scowled, her fingers crushing the lapels of his coat. How could a man’s feet be beautiful?

“My coat looks good on you, Temple. Better than it’s ever looked on me.”

She snapped her gaze from her lingering perusal of his body and fixed it on his face. His cheeks were covered in a moist sheen, dark hair curling wildly about his head. Raising the hand holding the trowel, he scratched his jaw, leaving a dirty streak she was tempted to wipe away with her tongue.

Using the tool to anchor himself, he rose to his feet. Miles and miles of him laid out before her. Unaware of her hunger, he stretched his back and neck as she struggled to keep her mouth closed. Muscle and sinew covered in only a thin layer of cotton and ragged buckskin. Skin tanned and golden from the sun. Broad shoulders, slim hips, long legs.

His body was a work of art.

He rocked back on his heels and tapped the trowel against his thigh. “I need to sack your guard. And talk to your brother about the way you’re looking at me.”

Ignoring the latter statement, she moved into the building, trailing her fingers along a wooden bench housing various garden tools and terracotta pots. She didn’t have many books on gardening in her attic, but she had a few. “It was his piddle break. Not my fault he’s regular as clockwork. Anyone could figure out his schedule. Maybe I should’ve mentioned this earlier.”

Sebastian blinked, an enticing crease forming between his brows. “Piddle?”

Delaney flipped her hand in a lazy circle, her cheeks heating. “You know. Piddle.”

He smiled, trying to hide it behind the trowel. “Puppies piddle, men piss.”

“Well, thanks to my guard’s timely break, I didn’t have to climb out the window.”

Sebastian halted, trowel frozen where he’d been set to plunge it into a bucket of dirt. “You’re joking.”

She strolled to the third orange tree while he stood at the fifth. A fair fighting distance, two citrus pots between them. She was wicked, because Sebastian’s discomfiture always delighted her, placing her for one moment on a step above him on the staircase of life. Flipping her arm over, she nudged her sleeve high and traced a thin scar on her forearm. “I got this climbing out a second-story window, first to you Brits. Skinnied right down this old pine but got caught on a jagged branch at the bottom. Case thought it never would stop bleeding. Alas, there’s no suitable tree outside my window here.”

“Thank God.” He tossed the tool on the bench, then sighed out the question, “What are you doing here, Temple?”

“I came to revel in your burning wit, your accomplished charm.” Laughing at his fractious expression, she tunneled two fingers in her bodice and snaked the note free. His gaze tracked the movement, his hand clenching into a fist at his side. Her breath skittered, what she believed was need rippling from him in waves strong enough to make her want to take a step back. Studying her from head to toe, a lazy, sensual review, his gaze halted to linger for a long moment on her bare feet.

“I received another communication,” she said in a throaty whisper, and flipped it to him.

He snatched the folded sheet from the air, his bicep bulging beneath his sleeve. Moving to the bench, he smoothed the note flat, squinting as he read. “Why does the parchment look so old?”

“Because the person who wrote it lives in the past.”

He glanced back at her. “How do you know this?”

“Remember what I told you after I tumbled off my horse? The woman who stepped in my path? Antiquated clothing, hairstyle from a different era. I could…I saw through her. It would explain how she knows my secrets. How she’s visited me here and in London.” She shoved her hands in his coat pockets, shifting from foot to foot. “Easy, if one can travel through time.”

Sebastian gave the pruning shears on the bench a thump and glanced away, through the moon-streaked windowpane.

Delaney took a step forward, leaving only two pots between them. “Why do you look so troubled? We’re figuring