Page 23 of The Duke is Wicked
Delaney looked at him then, her hands going into tight fists in her lap. “I don’t need you. Or this League of yours. I memorize things. That’s it. Nothing like starting fires or reading minds or touching objects and seeing the past.”
“Your talent is why someone is blackmailing you. Causing you to venture into Seven Dials alone. Asking for information about the occult. About the chronology. We know. Everyone at this table knows you sneaked into Julian’s home three months ago to take a look at it.”
Delaney’s lips parted in astonishment. She wasdesperateto tell someone. He wanted to know why they’d run? About her gift? Her blackmailer? Her past? Her secrets?Fine. She would tell him everything and see what he thought of her then.
They reached at the same time, hands bumping in the narrow space between their plates. A tremor raced through her fingers and down her body as an image of the Duke of Ashcroft bending to capture her lips beneath his flashed through her mind. Shaken, the door to her attic blew open, a flood of bright light spilling out to blind her. Heat dusted her cheeks as smoke filled her nostrils. When the glare settled into a misty haze, she peered through it to find Humphrey pouring a pitcher of water on a smoldering section of the carpet and Sebastian next to her, face buried in his hands, Piper crouched beside him, her hand resting on his shoulder.
“Your Grace,” Delaney whispered.
“Go,” he said in an anguished voice.
Piper caught her gaze. There was acceptance there, but also distrust. She had no friends in the world, not even this odd one.
No one except her brother, and he couldn’t understand.
Shoving her chair aside, Delaney raced from the room without looking back.
* * *
“Her brother found her in your tack room. She saddled her horse and rode out, but took Case and a groom with her. The one who can shoot an apple off someone’s head at fifty paces.” Julian trailed the toe of his boot over the blackened edge of the dining room carpet as he passed it. “Would you like to tell me what happened?”
Sebastian turned from his inspection of naught through the open window, rolling the Soul Catcher between his palms. “Not really.”
“You were hard on her, or should I say, everyone was. She feels like an interloper, and we did nothing to demonstrate she’s not. She has no one to turn to, except a brother who is blessedly unafflicted. One of the normal ones, the lucky sod. Even if I don’t trust the girl, and I don’t, Ifeelfor her. I didn’t create the League to turn away people with a supernatural gift. My suspicion is placing me at cross purposes with my objective.” At Sebastian’s questioning look, Julian held up a fork. “I received a detailed account when I touched this after she did.” Shrugging, he slid into the chair Delaney had occupied at breakfast. “Underhanded tactic, but effective.”
Sebastian squeezed the Soul Catcher, the facets cutting into his skin. “What did you see?”
“The room, her attic, I believe you said she calls it. Looks exactly like a miniature version of one I visited while at Oxford. The rest of what I’m telling you is what Ifelt.”
Releasing an exasperated gust between his teeth, Sebastian settled across the table from his friend. “I’ll bet half my wealth the design was planned. She has a fascination with ancient dwellings.”
“I think the better question is, what didyousee?” Julian asked, and tapped the fork’s tines on the table three times until Sebastian was forced to rip the utensil from his hand.
Tossing the fork aside, Sebastian spun the Soul Catcher on the table like dice. He moved his hand in and out of the bloodshot color blocks firing off the gem. He wasn’t about to admit what he’d seen—to anyone except himself. Delaney stretched beneath him, tangled in indigo sheets he recognized as his own. Her hair dark as midnight, as dark as the sheets. His climax close, hers, hell, they’d been in the middle of...
In the split second before the fires ripped through him, he’d looked into her smoke-gray eyes and seen…
Wonder. Desire.Love.
“It’s not always a lightning strike, Your Grace. Sometimes it’s dense mist you suffer through until you find yourself drenched.”
“Is that your quixotic way of describing falling in love?” Sebastian wasn’t going to admit that when he’d touched her, he’d been felled by precisely that, a lightning strike.
Julian withdrew a pad and pencil from his coat pocket and began to sketch. “No, more the bond you feel with some. Like Victoria, when Finn started dreaming about her, Miss Temple is one of us, even if she doesn’t believe she is. Or want to be. Even ifwedon’t want her to be. Who chooses this life, I’d like to ask her? My gift destroyed my family, in part, and sent me running to Seven Dials, an impulsive decision I hoped would provide salvation. You can’t hate yourself for feeling a connection with the woman when most of this confusion is beyond our control.”
“She’s memorized the chronology.” Sebastian laughed and gave the Soul Catcher another spin. “AndDebrett’s.”
Julian rocked forward in his chair, the legs skidding along the floor. “How do you know? If she has, we can begin to analyze our research about children inheriting gifts. I’m worried about Lucien. He’s having intense dreams for a five-year-old.”
“I don’t know. Not for sure.” Lifting his arm, he rubbed the gem across his chest, over the spot that ached when he remembered how desperately he’d wanted to kiss Delaney when she’d whispereddown, boyin his ear.
He’d never been so aroused in his life.
Julian tapped his pencil on the table. “How could she have memorized it in ten minutes? That was all the time she had, at most, in that room.”
“She’s drifted away, gone into her attic, then been surprised at how much time had passed when she returned. Why does it have to be relative, this exchange? Maybe she goes in, and one hour on her side is like a minute in ours? It’s certainly possible. As much as a duke shooting sparks from his bloody fingertips.”
“And this person coercing her?”