Page 3 of The Duke is Wicked

A muffled curse broke through his trance, a boot stomping the floor. Dammit, he’d missed his mark.

Try again, he urged silently, rubbing his fingers together.

The sound of parched pine igniting was as hushed as a fallen branch striking a snowbank. Sebastian braced his hand on the wall and exhaled gustily. Yanking his fingers through his hair, he turned to find his friends relaxing into their poses with corresponding expressions of relief as they watched flames gather in the hearth.

Humphrey dusted the toe of his boot across the smoking edge of the Aubusson rug. “Close, the first try. Three feet away. We’ve definitely seen worse.”

I’m getting better, he wanted to tell them.I am. Nothing stronger than gin to assist in months. This unspoken avowal directed at Julian, who’d dragged him from a doss house with a promise it would be the last time he’d ever do it.

Sebastian didn’t want to wage a war he couldn’twin. Certainly not with himself. He’d finally bestowed a value on life, currency he was unsure how to spend.

But hewastrying.

“Spit it out, boyo,” Humphrey barked with a hot glance thrown Finn’s way. “The duke is getting antsy, and we all know what that’ll bring.”

Finn circled his hand in a theatrical gesture, then shook his head and began a circuitous trek around the salon. Twice, before Julian lost patience with a whispered oath. Halting in place, Finn shifted from one perfectly-polished boot to the other. He’d been through the same scuffle as the rest of them but looked like he’d just been released, with glowing approval, by his valet. “Last night, I finally saw her face.”

Coming out of his slump against the wall, Sebastian took a halting step forward, ignoring the tingling in his fingertips. He’d known this day would come, known Finn’s dreams,hisdreams, meant something. Known they were being directed to a person connected to the League. Known they were being directed, incredibly, to someone connected tohim. “Who is she?”

“It’s not good. At least I don’t think it is.” Finn reached to straighten a cravat that didn’t need straightening, his words picking up speed as he explained, “Delaney Temple. I know the face because she about ran me down once, tearing through Hyde Park in her cabriolet. High-perch, no groom. The wind slapped my face, she got so close. Drives to the inch, she does. Imprudent chit. Unfashionably reckless. And I say this when my wife isn’t the most gracious herself, as you know.”

“Temple?” Sebastian frowned, pressing the heel of his hand to his brow, his head beginning to pound. “The eccentric American who’s said to assist Scotland Yard? The one with the twin brother who gets in his own fair share of trouble? What do they call them…?”

“The Terrible Two.” Simon flipped a card in the air and caught it with a graceful snatch. “That ain’t all they say about her. Disguised herself as a page boy, snuck into White’s and beat the Earl of Essex at billiards. She wanted a horse he cut her out of at Tattersalls.’” Simon tucked the ace of spades up his sleeve, a smirk tilting his lips. “Rumored to be smarter than most men, which is unforgivable. But a man can forgive a lot, and I do mean a lot, when the chit is so flipping beautiful, she makes your eyes sting.”

Sebastian grunted, unconvinced. Simon was at an age where women were a fresh obsession, and what he discerned, he’d learned from lightskirts and pickpockets, experiences they’d tried over the past nine years to help him forget. The boy didn’t yet realize there were gorgeous womeneverywhere. “Her father was in trade, wasn’t he? Tobacco?”

“The ultimate insult. Trade.” Humphrey gave a dismissive toss of the dice and rolled a tight ten. “The man was rich as Croesus on nothing but being a fancy farmer. The girl followed her brother here a year or so ago. The rest of the family is deceased, I think. Story is, there was a scandal. A dandy who wouldn’t ante up with a marriage proposal when they were caught in arealterrible two.” Humphrey scratched his chin with the pointed corner of the dice. “Virginia, maybe? No, no, it was South Carolina. I always get the southern states mixed up. Society won’t touch her. Common as a halfpenny. You know how thetonloves the ordinary ones who can buy them ten times over during the length of a good sneeze.”

Sebastian looked to Julian, who sketched without comment. But the viscount’s mind was working in double-time, Sebastian knew.

Julian flipped to a new page in his folio. “Describe what’s in the room with her.”

Finn halted by the desk and dropped himself atop it, long legs hanging over the side. “Books. But it’s not a room.” He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, eyes famous for their startling shade of blue dimming as his lids lowered. “It is, but it isn’t. Smaller. A closet. It’s like she’s touching the walls on all sides.” Finn laid a broad hand on his belly, his attention drifting into the middle distance. “I think she’s researching the occult. Maybe researching us. Ifeellike she has a copy of the chronology. Farfetched, am I right?”

“Not possible. It’s under lock and key in Oxfordshire.” Julian lifted his head, his stroke across the page going wide. “If we had an item of hers, I’d touch it and see what visions come to me.” He tapped the pencil on his pad. “Why would she be researching the occult? I’ve heard this woman helps with burglaries and such. A fact-finder. If anyone is investigating us, possibly our children, I want to know why. And I want to knownow.”

Finn blinked, seemingly startled to find he’d taken a mental stroll away from them. “I don’t know why. I’m a mindreader, Jules, not God.”

Sebastian glanced to his clenched fist, his perspective sharpening until it felt like he was gazing down the barrel of his Baker infantry rifle. This story didn’t add up. The chronology was a one-hundred-year-old volume containing much about their world and the people in it. Julian’s primary goal in life, aside from protecting his family and the League’s members, was to complete it. “Remember that curious woman who showed up at your estate, Jules? Wearing spectacles and an atrocious bonnet covering most of her face? She’d had a minor carriage accident, a snapped lead, and your groom helped repair it. What was it…three months ago? Didn’t Humphrey find her near the room the chronology is in? Wandering down the hallway? Something’s always perplexed me about that episode.”

Julian dusted his cheek with his hand, leaving a charcoal streak across it. “She was only in the back parlor, the entire house, for less than an hour. Who could copy a thousand-page tome in that time?”

Humphrey flicked his wrist, giving the dice another roll. “Harmless snoop. Figured she wanted to know more about the secret life of a viscount, friend of the infamousDesolate Dukemaybe. Reporting for one of those gossip rags. She giggled and danced around when I found her, saying as much.” He dragged the dice back into his cupped fist. “Anyway, this was no stunner burning Simon’s eyeballs up. She was a homely chit. Tiny. Mousy. And English. Maybe even a shade cockney. Nothing American, lovely, or compelling about her.”

“Homely?” Julian puzzled over the word, his fingers tightening around the pencil. “Was she homely?”

Humphrey tilted his head in deliberation. “Wasn’t she? I remember ugly, but maybe it was the hat.”

Julian flipped to a blank sheet and hastily began to sketch. After a moment, he rocked forward on the settee, slapping his drawing to the table. Sebastian stepped closer, Finn moving in behind him. Loosely-drawn in vivid strokes, the woman’s face peeking from beneath the atrocious bonnet, etched in splendor. Hidden to any but an artist’s eye. “Is that her?” the viscount asked, his gaze landing solidly on his brother. “The American from your dream?”

Leaning over the table, Finn circled the sketch into view. He drew a breath and let it out with a sigh. “It could be.”

Sebastian traced the mottled scar on his wrist he’d gotten outside Meerut in the Indian Rebellion, the pulse beneath it thumping wildly, wondering why he was experiencing the same pinch in his belly that he’d had when stepping onto a battlefield.

Julian retrieved the drawing and slipped it inside his folio. “We need a personal item of hers, this Temple woman, half of London’s Terrible Two. Something I can touch. Anything will do. A glove, a scarf, a hairpin. A button. She rides every day along Rotten Row.” He glanced at the men assembled in the room. “How hard can it be to make that happen?”

They stood in a tight circle, united except for Simon, who fiddled with his cards and whispered to someone Sebastian didn’t want to imagine. They suspected he had a crush on one of his haunts, which was horrific to envision. As if adolescence wasn’t tricky enough without falling in love with a ghost.