The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,67

was fighting for, he had another think coming.

She’d been battling men her entire life and was quite comfortable chasing the norm.

“Don’t let their rowdiness concern you. They do this at least once a month. Sebastian still trains with his men, and for a few years, he’s gathered the League’s contingent to do the same, the rather wretched assortment you see there on the lawn. He says it’s good for maintaining their combat skills. When he’s the only one ever involved in combat.”

Delaney turned to Piper, Julian’s viscountess, who’d moved beside her on the veranda. She had a tiny chocolate handprint on her skirt, a brown streak on her chin. A spoon covered in icing in her hand. Making cookies with her children, Delaney guessed. The pang of loneliness shot through her like a bolt of lightning, but she shoved it aside. She wanted children. She did. But she’d be damned if she was going to stand there ogling a disinclined duke while wishing they could be his. Not after his stinging rejection amongst his blasted orange trees. “I’m not concerned. I grew up with these shenanigans, participated in them even. Though I see nothing advantageous from a training stance about it. My opinion?” She shrugged, grasping that wearing his coat was hypocritical while she complained about the man. “The duke wishes to bully someone.”

Piper dabbed at the chocolate on her chin, then licked her thumb with a knowing chortle. “And he can’t bully you?”

Delaney lifted her arm to hide her smile and ended up inhaling the treacherous scent wafting from the duke’s sleeve. What he’d done to her in his orangery, his hand angling her head for a liquid kiss while his finger twisted and thrust inside her…

She’d been unprepared for the assault, those feverish, forbidden moments waged after the fact. An attack occurring a hundred times a day. The memories—how Sebastian had made her feel, how she’d reacted, how she’d been blind with need—were a deluge.

“Am I in your attic?” he’d asked in a forsaken tone, the only element of this situation, the only one that kept her from storming up to him and demanding to know. What he felt for her—and what he was going to do about it. The fact that he was flustered, her formidable, imposing duke, had inspired a maternal impulse she was abashed to feel, but helpless to ignore.

The glimpse in his eyes of the boy by the fountain destroyed her. She didn’t have it in her to intimidate him. Consequently, here she was, caring more about his reaction to this tangled affair than where it left her.

Protective mode, like the Duke of Ashcroft was her puppy. Or her brother.

While she explored this unsavory actuality, Sebastian swept his muscular leg out and sent Humphrey, a man twice his size, tumbling to his bottom. Then he rocked back on the balls of his feet and stretched his broad shoulders in a masculine show of bravado that made Delaney’s knees tremble hard enough to have her grasping the veranda’s ledge to steady herself.

Definitely not the fascination she’d feel for her brother.

“He’s an honorable man,” Piper said, getting to the subject she’d obviously come to discuss. The outspoken viscountess wasn’t known for being subtle. She had her own rather scandalous reputation within the ton. “Sullen and conceited, not the easiest man to befriend, but kind once you do. More than kind. Loyal, fiercely so. When there aren’t many loyal people in our mystical world. He and Julian are family now, brothers when neither has one of those. Or at least not anymore.”

Delaney had found Piper to be curious, meddlesome, and friendly. Funny and approachable. The American half. The English half probably insisted on ironed drawers, or aromatic sachets jammed between the towels. Fresh flowers in every room or off with the servant’s heads.

Truthfully, Delaney liked her—and she wanted a friend. Desperately needed a friend. Also, everyone suspected their five-year-old son had inherited a supernatural ability, so maybe the viscountess needed a friend, too.

Fixing her gaze on the men, who’d now moved to backslapping and shoulder-bumping and other forms of juvenile admiration, Delaney picked at a pill on Sebastian’s coat, pretending her words didn’t matter as much as they did. “You should list his attributes for Lady Hazelton.”

Piper lifted the spoon to her lips and licked at the icing. “Kitty, as she now wishes to be called, isn’t wearing the duke’s coat. She doesn’t, from merely being in his vicinity, compel him to glance over every minute to