Page 34 of The Duke is Wicked
“What are you in there plotting with that fine filly of yours?”
“Oh, la, Your Grace, asif. According to the members of the League, my plotting days are over.” When she trotted out of the stable, Delaney raised her hand to shade her eyes as she turned down the gravel path bordering the estate’s woodlands. For once, in this godforsaken country, the sun was blinding. Rays burned through her clothing to heat her skin…but this was nothing compared to what the Duke of Ashcroft could do with one, teeny-tinylook.
Sebastian loped into a canter beside her, his mount easily keeping pace. She glued her gaze to the winding path and away from the muscular thighs encased in tight buckskin, the firm buttocks she’d mostly avoided looking at while the duke cavorted with his puppies. A task she was finding hard to accomplish as he edged ahead of her and presented this part of his anatomy for her perusal. She was only human, after all.
“You’re annoyed that I offered you a puppy?” he called back to her. “I see that neat dent between your brows. Should I have added that your voice is as pleasing as the call of a lovely, uh, American bird? Wasn’t that what you told me women like to hear? I’m sorry, I haven’t had a chance to use the line with an opera singer yet. When I do, I’ll get back to you regarding the response.”
A balmy breeze washed over them, the air smelling more of him than it did the thicket of roses they passed or the long grass they trampled. Her attraction, no, rather her inability to talk herselfoutof the attraction, was making her blind with fury. “This amuses you, doesn’t it?” She jabbed her crop his way, the skirt of her riding habit slapping her calves. “The trouble I find myself in?”
He halted so abruptly it startled both horses into dancing sidesteps. Grasping her reins, he drew her as close as her mount would allow. Anger blew a flush across his cheeks as sunlight sent auburn sparks through his dark curls. The unusual eyes, the tousled hair, all combined to make him appear devilishly attractive. “Actually, Temple, I don’t find any of this amusing. Being held responsible for London’s Terrible Two, an enormous inconvenience. Grave concern over the better half, or worse, depending upon how one looks at it, a woman whose mind is a weapon. A weapon she’s reluctant to admit she holds. Unease over the fact that this woman was willing to sell us to the highest bidder while understanding she was forced into a corner without another option. Resentment, slight but existent, that I’m now slotted in the role of protector as we, the League, my friends, myfamily, search for who could know her secret while desiringours.”
“I won’t betray you,” she whispered, appalled by how distressed the admission sounded.
He tossed the reins in her lap. “Now you won’t. Because you’re caught.”
She rocked back in the saddle, feelings bruised, when she deserved every ounce of censure he’d tossed her way. She didn’t belong among the League’s outcasts, when her gift should’ve invited lifetime admittance and acceptance. She didn’t belong in South Carolina. She didn’t belong in England. Never had, never would. Staring across the endless emerald vista, the rolling hills and thickets of pine and oak, Oxfordshire both a dream and a curse, the tears pinched, threatening to overflow and show him how lonely she was.
“I’m sorry you’re forced to deal with me when you dislike me so much,” she said, and set her crop to her mount’s flank.
And with a bolting clatter of hooves, Delaney left a stunned duke behind.
* * *
He liked hertoomuch. Had the hellion ever considered that?
Sebastian cursed and raced across the field after her, damned glad he’d been forced as a lad to learn to ride, and ride well. His demanding tyrant of a father wouldn’t have accepted less. Because if Sebastian was suited to the saddle, Delaney wasmagic. Agile ease he’d never seen in a woman, not even Countess Dellucci, who’d learned to ride during her girlhood in France and was the leading female whip in London. Among other things.
Maybe Delaney’s agility was due to her petite frame, which allowed her to bend so low over her mare’s neck they were one. Or the way she intuited her horse’s rhythm, letting the beast stretch its legs, then move into an all-out gallop that tore up the earth without missing a beat.
He only discerned that, aside from her raging intelligence, her gentle joy and boundless daring, her equestrian skills pushed him over the brink.
Left him wanting to touch her—more than he’d wanted to touch anyone in years. Hell, ever.
His mind crawled into a masculine cellar full of images like the jiggle of Delaney’s breasts as she cleared a shallow ditch in one elegant leap; the thick length of inky-black hair that had come loose from one of her frivolous knots and streamed behind her like the tail of a flag; the pert bottom popping the saddle in time with her mount’s hoofbeats.
That last one, especially, was having a debilitating effect on his senses.
He was only human. A human whogreatlyappreciated a taut derriere.
In close pursuit but wholly distracted, Sebastian was unprepared for the shot that rang out from the north parklands, a dull discharge that echoed through the air. He reached blindly into his satchel and yanked out his pistol while bringing his mount around with a hard press of his thighs, a fierce effort to keep his body in the saddle atop a startled horse.
He turned in prancing steps, and his heart fell to his knees, his fingertips tingling until he knew, heknew, a blaze was going to start raging around them.
Delaney’s mount was riderless, reins dangling as the mare tore across the meadow. Squinting, Sebastian spotted a splash of yellow fabric amidst the high, green grass. Leaping from the saddle, he crossed to where she lay in five panicked strides, telling himself to control his gift as his fingertips blazed.
She was on her back, motionless when he reached her. Cheeks covered in grass and dirt, a bruise coloring her jaw. “Delaney,” he said and dropped to his knee beside her, jamming his pistol in his waistband. His hand quivered as he gently touched her shoulder, afraid to move her, should she have broken a bone.
“Tremont,” she whispered, her lids fluttering.
He rocked back, so relieved he had to drop his head to clear his dappled vision.Damn this reckless, rebellious chit.Drawing a staggered inhalation, he began to trail his hands along her arms, checking for injuries as he had with his soldiers in the field. “Tell me if anything hurts. Anything at all.”
His gaze inched toward her face, finding eyes the color of rain clouds trained on him when he reached them, a slight smile tilting her beautiful lips. Shocking him, she lifted her hand and threaded her fingers through his locks. “I love your hair.” The scrape of her nails across his scalp, a rudimentary caress he felt along his entire body, the caress unleashing a voracious, long-suppressed yearning.
“I know,” he murmured, her sweet admission stealing his breath and a slice of his heart. And confirming she’d taken a blow to the head. “You realize you fell from your mount, don’t you? And that today is Tuesday?”
“It wasn’t the gunshot. Hunters, only hunters. Metis is used to them.” Delaney frowned and groaned softly, struggling to touch the bruise on her jaw. “She stepped in front of us. Her clothing was odd. Old-fashioned. She’s unhappy, searching. Stuck. She didn’t mean to. I startled her because I…” She swallowed, her lids closing. “I don’t think everyone can see her.”
Sebastian frowned, starting to get worried. She wasn’t making sense. Some people never recovered from head injuries. “Let’s get you back to the house.” He brushed a stalk of grass from her cheek, lingering longer than he should. “Call my physician.”