Page 20 of When Hearts Are Wylde
That gave her pause. “What do you mean?”
His eyes held hers. “You and Felicity have far more in common than you might realize. In fact, you have a common enemy, Hermione. The blackmailer has my betrothed in their sights, as well.”
A prickle ran over her skin. “Miss Wylde?” What had the young woman done to be blackmailed for?
“She has become a target for this person and I find myself curious about the nature of the blackmail itself,,” Phinneas mused.
“What dark secret is she attempting to keep?”
His eyes cut to her sharply. “Do not mince words with me, sister. You never have before. You wish to know if Miss Wylde has behaved scandalously… and she has, though not intentionally. She attended one of Hartley’s parties — a masked ball she’d overheard discussion of in a shop. It was a lark but a dangerous one, as she had no way of knowing what sort of entertainment those gatherings offer. She hid as it was far too late to make a discreet exit. And that is how we met. She has been threatened with ruin if she does not comply with the blackmailer’s demands… and it is not money they are asking for.”
Hermione sat back, absorbing the blow. She could imagine too well the sick, trapped feeling that came with those threats, the gnawing helplessness of knowing one’s reputation was balanced in a stranger’s hands.
“I suppose you are bound together now by more than simple attraction,” she murmured.
“Yes. And I mean to see her free of it.”
Her gaze drifted toward the window where the pale winter sun lay across the snow, dazzling and cold. There was something in his tone, a fierceness that she did not often hear from him. “You care for her,” she noted softly.
He did not deny it. Instead, he studied her for a long moment before asking, “And you? How do you feel about Hartley? Not what you think your future might be with him, nor what you wish it could be. Just what you feel.”
The question seemed to press the air from her lungs. She looked away, because to meet his eyes would be to admit too much. “I love him,” she said finally, her voice low and steady. “I have loved him for years. Long before our entanglement began. I think from my very first season, seeing him across a crowded ballroom and feeling as though I could not breathe and as if my heart would simply take flight from beating so rapidly.”
“That is attraction, Hermione. Not love.”
“True enough. And you can have the former without the latter, but never the reverse… Because I wasdrawn to him,” she pointedly used his own words against him prompting him to stifle a grin. “I watched him. And I saw things in him that others do not and certainly things that he does not see in himself.”
“Such as?”
“He is a man in pain. There is something that haunts him and something that he punishes himself endlessly for,” she stated. “And despite that, despite all his renown vices and wickedness, have you ever to be unkind?”
Phinneas looked down into his glass. “No. I have not. In point of fact, I know the opposite to be true. He gives generously to numerous charities and has provided for many women who have been badly used by others… and with no involvement with these women himself. But turn about is fair play, sister.Is kindness and generosity enough?”
“I does not matter, does it? I am to wed another and he will not bestir himself to intervene.”
“Do you love Mr. Baxter?”
She fixed him with a baleful stare. “Really, Phinneas. Do not be ridiculous. I have accepted him with no illusions. That is hardly the same thing at all.”
“Do you think you could grow to love him then? Or will your devotion to Hartley be an ever present source of pain for you? Can you forget him in time?”
Hermione shook her head. “It has only ever been him and I daresay that is how it will always be.”
Phinneas inclined his head, no judgment in his expression. “Then remember that, Hermione. Whatever else happens, remember it for it may be the only comfort you will have.”
She would. Whether she wished to or not. It, along with the how she’d felt in Leo’s arms, were things she could not forget—even when she wanted to.
The house was silent.
Hartley had stayed up later than he should, the clock on the mantel ticking toward the small hours. The rest of the household had long since retired; even the street outside seemed emptied of sound. Only the low crackle of the fire and the faint chime of the clock marked the passing of time.
He was in his study, his coat and waistcoat long since discarded. A decanter of brandy rested on the desk before him, a healthy portion of it poured into a glass that remained untouched. He could not afford to be in his cups, not when there was so much at stake. Tomorrow — tonight, really — would be the reckoning. The trap would be sprung, and with luck, the blackmailer caught. He ought to have been thinking of nothing else.
But as it had been for days, his mind kept straying to her. Hermione.
He told himself it was only worry for her safety. The kind of concern he might have for any woman with whom he’d shared such intimacies with. But it wasn’t that at all. It was the memory of her pale face at the opera, the tension in her shoulders, the look she’d given Baxter, had lodged too deeply for him to ignore. It was the memory of how his heart had thudded with fear when she’d nearly been run down in the street. It was the hurt he’d seen on her face that last night.
That night—it haunted him. His mind drifted back, replaying the scene for him, as if he might find some tiny nuance in those memories to take away the sting…
