Page 18 of The Duke is Wicked
“I haven’t dreamed about her since your mishap with the, um, with the insect.” Finn loosened his impeccably knotted cravat with a smirk. “It’s like you stepped in, and the cosmic world transferred her from me to you.”
Fuck, Sebastian thought, and dropped his chin to his chest.
“Did you find out more about her secret weapon? This room she goes into? I know you wish she didn’t have a magical ability, but experience proves, if I dream, there’s a reason. If you recall, I dreamed about Victoria for months before we met.” Finn caught Sebastian’s sour look and rushed to add, “But that turned out marvelously!”
“I know. I’m the reason you married her, remember? Pushed you over the cusp by allowing thetonto believe she jiltedme,while wholly supporting the union. A duke’s endorsement. Because I’m such a good friend.”
“The best,” Finn agreed, his lips curling in to suppress a smile.
Sebastian sighed in exasperation. Finn had been the happiest man alive since securing his wife’s hand, which in turn, made Sebastian queasy and envious. And lonely. “Miss Temple calls it an attic. Any question she has, she steps out of the present and goes in there to look it up. A trance similar to the one Julian puts himself in when he touches things. Like there’s this vast library in her head. She even has a copy ofDeBrett’sup there.”
Finn gave the iron loop another punitive tug. “Why in the hell would anyone want that silly book in their head?”
“It’s quite clever. If you moved to a country where titles mattered above all else, and every day you were forced to try and remember them during introductions or when someone cut you on the street, as I imagine is mostly what she’s getting, what book wouldyouchoose? Furthermore, I suspect, and I know this sounds ridiculous, although it will light Julian up like magnesium, that she memorized the chronology in—”
“Ten minutes,” Finn finished for him, his voice pained. “When she pleaded a carriage accident and snuck into the chamber where we house it.”
Sebastian’s gaze clashed with Finn’s because they were both thinking the same thing. “How dangerous a weapon would an information attic in someone’s mind be to possess? You could pass messages, reams of documents, without writing anything down. How many sadistic people would love to get their hands on that?” Onher, Sebastian realized with a sickening twist in his belly, the stupor Delaney entered when she went there, vulnerable as a babe, traveling his mind.
“A person with this gift would be a treasured partner for the League. Our enemies would find that to be the case, too. Frankly, the British military would probably love a go at her. Wonder if she’d be any good at codebreaking?” Finn tipped his head to stare blankly at the ceiling. “I’m guessing she’s well-guarded? Considering the impromptu jaunt she thought to take through Seven Dials.”
“My men are stationed below her bedchamber window, at each door, at the gatehouse.” He exhaled softly and drew the bow across his wrist. “We’re surrounded, as you are at Brook Cottage, as Julian is at his estate.”
“We must protect those we love.”
“Love presents a dangerous disadvantage. As a man intent on following a sensible scheme, I say thanks, but no.” Sebastian spied Finn’s pitying expression, and his temper flared. “Victoria mitigates your gift. Hell, she mitigates mine. Piper heals, giving us all more control. You and Julian are fortunate that your wives soothe the beast. Delaney Temple makes me want toburndown the bloody city, block by block. She can’t fix me or help me even, and I’m not sure I can help her. We’re not, as they say, a good mix.”
“And Honoria Hazelton is? Once you work up the courage to ask for her hand, that is.”
“If I admit that Lady Nuisance doesn’t rouse so much as one hair on my head, does that make me sound callous? At least, the fires don’t rage when she’s around. My fingertips remain cool. Happily unaffected.”
“Happily unaffected,” Finn whispered woefully, at a loss, this conversation one they’d had many times since he and Julian jumped into the bottomless sea of love. Like all martyrs, they wanted every man to sink to the bottom with them.
“According to the Alexander men, extreme fondness is an essential part of the marital bargain. And I do mean extreme. Passion, unlike any ever experienced.” Sebastian tossed the bow on the desk and reached to rub his forehead, a headache brewing. He hadn’t shared all of his past with his friends. His parents’ troubled union, his abuse at the hands of his father. He wasn’t exactly sure what lovewas, but he was sure he didn’t trust it. It had betrayed him every time so far. “It isn’t enough that the woman I choose will become a duchess? My affection for her must forever alter me? That sounds like a trap.”
“But the woman you’re thinking of choosing…” Finn shrugged, discomfited, looking like his coat had shrunk three sizes.
“Lady Hazelton is suitable. Damn-near perfect when one considers her uncanny ability to disappear from one space and randomly show up in another. It’s not as exhilarating as starting fires, but it’s quite something.”
“What if she uses that trick when you’re in bed with her?” Finn tilted his head in consideration. “Could be good, could be bad.”
Sebastian had no interest in bedding Honoria Hazelton, which he understood was aproblem. “She’s part of the League. She needs a husband who can protect her. I need an heir. End of story. Give it a rest, Finn.”
Finn ran his thumb across a crack in the stone wide enough to sink a pencil in. “Weren’t you the one who told me my lack of a title didn’t matter? That being a viscount’s byblow didn’t matter, which isn’t even an accurate accounting of my dreadfully impoverished lineage? The biggest lie of my life is a monumental stepup. Victoria’s an earl’s daughter as well and too good for me. But being a lady isn’t the reason she is. She’s simply too good for me. But she said yes anyway.”
Sebastian rounded the desk and headed for the arched doorway leading to the stairs, wishing to remove himself from this advice session. He wasn’t sitting through this for anotherminutewithout a glass of gin or brandy in his hand.
“So you have a plan, do you?” Finn called from below. “To get the American to tell you what she knows?”
Sebastian smiled. He did indeed.
He was going to beat Delaney Temple at her own game. Or one of them.
And use his fastest horse to do it.
* * *
The girl was sitting on the terrace steps, weeping, face buried in the arms she’d folded atop her knees. Her hair, as pale as the moonlight falling over her, hung in a chaotic tumble near to the ground. She looked like a forlorn heroine from a fairy tale, surrounded by misty, gossamer twilight—when Delaney felt like an intruding gnome. The chirp of crickets and whisper of rustling leaves permeated, not unlike the sounds filling the night when she had been in South Carolina.