Page 40 of The Duke is Wicked
Sebastian dropped his hand and stepped back, putting a proper distance between them. A good thing, as the boy racing across the lawn propelled himself into the duke’s arms without a word of warning. “My, you get taller every time I see you,” he said, and gave the boy a toss in the air before lowering him to the ground.
The boy turned to her, blue eyes sparkling. She guessed this was Julian and Piper’s son, Lucien, from the look of him. His father’s eyes, his mother’s face. An enchanting mix that would one day serve him well. “Is that your puppy?” he asked, and wiped his nose with his coat sleeve.
Sebastian yanked a handkerchief from his pocket and thrust it at the boy, who used it to give his nose another swipe, then tucked the length of embroidered linen away without thinking to give it back to its owner.
“This is Miss Temple. Miss Temple, Lucien Hale Alexander, Baron Saxson.”
She crouched down until their eyes were level, trying hard not to laugh at a child of five or six having a title, a ridiculous crown placed on his head. Nonetheless, she loved children and rarely had the chance to interact with them, especially a baron. “He’s mine, indeed. As of only yesterday. I named him Hephaestus. Hep for short.”
Lucien reached for the puppy, who took a faltering leap into his arms without a hint of objection, where he proceeded to clean Lucien’s cheek with his tongue. They presented an adorable picture, standing there on the lush lawn, boy and dog. “You have a funny accent.”
“American.” She pointed into the distance. “Across the sea.”
Lucien wrinkled his nose. “I dreamed about that place. You had dogs there, too. And a field of fluffy white.” He gave Hep’s round, pink belly a tickle. “But not snow. And there was a girl, the sad one. The one in the wrong time.”
“Cotton,” she whispered raggedly, alarm tearing through her. Her gaze found Sebastian’s over Lucien’s head. The duke’s cheeks had gone pale as parchment. “I bet he’d like to play, Lucien, though stay where the duke and I can see you.”
Lucien giggled and put the puppy down, racing toward the archery target with Hep in close, yipping pursuit.
“Did you have cotton fields at home? I’ve read about them but never seen one.” Sebastian’s voice sounded beaten, worn. Their gifts being inherited was, she understood from conversations she’d had with Julian, what theyallfeared. This news would devastate not only Julian, but also Finn, whose baby was mere weeks from arriving.
She nodded, her throat tight. “A sea of cotton bolls stretching to the horizon.” Swallowing past tears, she whispered, “What does this mean? Why would a boy thousands of miles from my home dream of it, dream of me? And a girl in the wrong time.”
Ashcroft whacked the arrow against his thigh. “Why did Finn dream of you for over a year? Why does any of this happen? Why are we connected, this motley syndicate, even if we don’t want to be?” He yanked his hand through his hair, his glorious curls tumbling back in his face. “Congratulations, you’re an official member of the League, darling. The heartbreak lies in this being proof of what Julian’s been dreading. He’s not going to take this well, although I fear he already suspects.”
“You’ll tell him?”
Sebastian cursed and broke the bow with his hands, a hard pop that wrenched it in two.
“Don’t,” she whispered, the image of him huddled in the murky corner of a doss house filling her mind. “Don’t you dare.”
He paused, hands falling to his sides, the shattered pieces of the bow dropping to the grass. His eyes were haunted, filled with pain that made the flecks of gold glow like pinpoints in an ashen sky.
“Don’t go there, don’t goback.”
He turned to look at Lucien and the pup racing around the archery target, the sound of a child’s joy coloring the air, brightening the day like a burst of sunlight had been released from a storm cloud. “How did you know I thought that? Wished for oblivion with all my heart? To lose myself. I could waste a month in that filthy rookery without consequence, without anyone having a care for my being there. The fires came infrequently under the influence of the drug. And the ones that did were inconsequential. I paid for the damage. To the rugs, the draperies.”
She grasped his arm. Heat flowed through her fingertips, unearthing every lonely crevice of her soul. “But you won’t.”
His eyes held hers as the sounds around them faded—Lucien’s laughter, Hep’s barking, the call of a goldfinch, the wind tugging at their clothing— leaving only the pulse of her heartbeat and his thick, unsettled breaths. He kicked the broken bow and yanked his arm from her grip. “I won’t.”
“Because you have more to live for?” The question was uttered so softly she wasn’t sure he heard her.
You fool, as if he’ll tell you what he feels.You haven’t changed his life, not in any way that matters.
Refusing to answer, Sebastian headed back to his castle and a conversation with Julian that would obliterate any hope that his son would live a carefree existence.
Like her attic and Sebastian’s fires, the boy’s dreams were going to disrupt his life.
Halfway across the lawn, the duke halted, his broad back to her. Shoving his hands in his trouser pockets, he shifted from one polished boot to the other, looking like he’d been caught filching money from his grandmother’s reticule. “I was going to say I won’t because I promised Julian. And Finn. God, even Humphrey, who once dragged me out of a doss house in St Giles, then spent the next day in a pugilist’s ring beating me to within an inch of my life.” With a glance tossed over his shoulder, his gaze, bleak but resolute, met hers. “But then I look at you, feel what I wish Ididn’tfeel when I look at you, and I think, maybe Idohave more to live for, even if I don’t know what to do with the feeling. Which isn’t a surprise because I’ve never known.”
Her heart full of whatshefelt when she looked at him, her bow slipped from her fingers to the grass as the Duke of Ashcroft cleared the rise and disappeared on the other side of it, leaving her with fading sunlight and confusion.
She understood. She wished like hell she didn’t feel anything for him, either.
Chapter 12
The note was lying on her bedside table when Delaney returned from dinner.