Page 21 of When Hearts Are Wylde
Two months earlier…
It had been one of those nights when the air was still and the city quiet beyond the windows. Mayfair , when the Season had ended, was always a subdued place. The hour was late enough that nearly all the world beyond their own secret bower slumbered. Carriage wheels were few, voices distant, the restless pulse of London slowed to the faintest whisper. They might have been the only people in the world. And still, something stood between them. A barrier of his own making.
Inside, the only light came from a single lamp on the low table, casting a muted glow over the room. Shadows pooled in the corners, the fire burned low, and the woman beside him, the weight of her warm and familiar against him. They fit together as if she had always been meant to be at his side. And that, more than anything else, was what prompted his actions.
Hermione, mostly nude and thoroughly sated, sat curled into his side, her bare feet tucked beneath her, her head resting against his shoulder. Her dark hair wrapped around them and the pale silk of her shift was soft beneath his fingertips where his arm rested along the back of the settee. He could feel the quiet rise and fall of her breathing, the steady warmth of her, the faint trace of lavender from her hair. It was… contentment. A dangerous word for a man like him.
And that was precisely why he had to end it.
He’d been rehearsing the words all evening — sharp, impersonal, designed to sever rather than wound. But the truthwas, there was no version of this conversation that would not cut her. It would cut him, too, though he’d never admit it aloud.
“Hermione,” he said finally, his voice low, almost swallowed by the room.
She tilted her head back to look at him, her eyes as clear as the summer sky. “Yes?”
“It’s time.”
She looked up at him. “It’s hours till dawn still. The night is young, Leo.”
“I don’t mean just tonight. I mean us.” He forced the hateful words out. “We should end this.”
A beat of silence. “This?”
He gestured between them, careful not to touch her more than he already was. “Whatever we’ve been doing. Tonight will be the last time. The risk is too great for us both.”
“You said yourself that there are ways to prevent… consequences.”
“Imperfect ways, yes. There are not foolproof. Should that occur… I couldn’t do what you would need me to do. I will never do that… and I dislike the notion of seeing you cast out in ruin and shame for what was essentially a bit of fun.”
Her gaze didn’t falter, didn’t widen in shock the way another woman’s might have. Instead, her eyes narrowed as she studied him with that unsettling steadiness that always made him feel as though she could see more than he wanted her to. “You think I am expecting you to marry me?”
“I—” He hesitated, caught off guard. He’d expected denial, perhaps tears. Not this. “It would change things between us… if we were forced to make such decisions.”
She shook her head. “I knew what this was, Leo. From the first night. You made certain of that, though in truth, I’d been well aware before I ever darkened your door.” Her voice wascalm, but there was something beneath it — the faintest tremor of hurt, quickly buried.
He steeled himself. “Hermione, I do care for you. Deeply. More so than you will likely ever know. But the fact remains that you are the sort of woman who ought to be someone’s wife. And I have no intention of ever being anyone’s husband.”
Her lips curved in something that was not quite a smile — there was no humor in it, only the faintest thread of mockery. “For a man with no desire to marry, it seems to weigh heavily on your mind.”
The barb struck deeper than she knew, because she was right. He thought of it too often, not only because he wanted it, but because the thought of her with someone else gnawed at him like a fever. “It’s not a jest, Hermione. You deserve more than this.”
Her eyes softened in a way that was infinitely worse than anger. “Perhaps. But it isn’t your decision to make… In fact, making decisions for me is most decidedly a hubsandly behavior, Leo. The sort of which makes me thankful to not be any man’s wife.”
God, he wished she would rage at him, accuse him, give him a reason to shut every door between them. Instead, she simply rose, her movements composed and deliberate. She perched one foot on the edge of the chair and carefully donned her stockings. She dressed before him—petticoat, stays, gown—all without a hint of false modesty. One delicately embroidered layer after another, she armored herself against him and the entire world.
He knew she would go, but part of him — the part he despised — wanted to stop her, to pull her back into his arms and bury himself in her warmth until the sun rose.
But he stayed where he was. Because this was for the best. Because she had an ill-advised tendre for him, and it would ruin her in ways he could never undo. Because he was a cowardwho would rather watch her walk away now than have her stay so that he, in his inherent wickedness, might destroy her piece by piece.
“Good night, Lord Hartley,” she said, her voice steady. “Or perhaps we should put a more definitive turn of phrase to our parting. Good bye.”
And then she was gone, the door closing softly behind her.
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the faint tick of the clock on the mantel. Her absence seemed to expand, filling every inch of the room, pressing against his chest until breathing felt like work.
He sat there for a long time, staring at the empty space beside him where she had been. The warmth of her lingered, as did the scent of lavender, and the memory of the way she had looked at him in those last moments — not with anger, not with pleading, but with a quiet knowing that stripped him bare.
She had seen him. Not the rake, not the charming reprobate or the dissipated libertine, but the man he was beneath it all. The man he would have and could have been had he not given in to temptation. And she had known, even if he could not say it aloud, that he had ended it not to spare her, but to spare himself the inevitable ruin of needing her more than he dared admit.
