Page 5 of When Hearts Are Wylde
The garden was cloaked in shadow, its narrow gravel paths winding through sculpted hedges and moonlit flowerbeds. The air was warm, heavy with the scent of night-blooming jasmine, and the occasional flickering light oflanterns cast long, wavering shadows over the neatly trimmed greenery. From beyond the tall windows of the ballroom came the muffled strains of a waltz, accompanied by bursts of laughter and the rhythmic thump of dancing feet, all of it a distant murmur now, lost beneath the thunder of Hermione’s own pulse.
She stood alone beside the balustrade overlooking the lawn, her bare shoulders rising and falling with the sharpness of her breath. The wind teased her curls free from their pins, and her satin skirts rustled softly, but she didn’t move. The quiet should have calmed her. It didn’t. There was a weight pressing down on her chest, making it hard to breathe. She had come out here for clarity, for a moment alone to think—but there was no clarity to be found, only the nauseating certainty that someone out there held her fate in their hands.
She heard him approaching long before he spoke—the quiet crunch of his boots on the path, the steady pace of his steps unhurried and unapologetic. Her spine stiffened, but she didn’t turn.
“I’m beginning to feel hunted, Miss Waring. Were you following me?” Leo asked in slow drawl, his voice carrying that same maddening blend of amusement and detachment he wore like a well-fitted coat.
“I needed to speak with you,” she replied evenly, though her voice felt tight in her throat. “I wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
“Charming,” he murmured, stepping further into the light. “And yet oddly familiar. You said something rather similar the first night you let yourself into my bedchamber.”
She turned at that, eyes flashing as the moonlight struck her features. “That was different.”
“Was it?” he asked, coming to stand a few feet away from her. “Forgive me. I must have misunderstood the nature of that visit. I’d thought it a rather deliberate choice. As deliberate, perhaps,as tonight. Is that your aim, Hermione? A forbidden tryst in the moonlight?”
She stared at him, taking in the familiar arrogance of his stance—the careless elegance with which he held himself, hands in his coat pockets, chin tilted just so, as if the whole world amused him and he hadn’t a care in it. But his eyes, dark and sharp as obsidian, watched her too closely for his indifference to be genuine.
“I received a letter,” she said, forcing the words past the constriction in her throat. “Anonymous. It references what occurred between us. In detail. It threatens exposure.”
He stilled, just enough for her to notice. For the briefest moment, something flickered in his expression, a narrowing of his gaze, a tightening of his jaw—but it was gone as quickly as it appeared.
“And naturally,” he said with clipped precision, “you assumed I was the source of the leak.”
“Not directly, no. But you were the only other person involved who would know such details,” she said. “I have to assume that you’ve been indiscreet?—
He laughed then—a short, hollow sound with no humor in it. “So that’s it? You imagine I tossed your secrets about like breadcrumbs at a house party? That I bragged about what we did like some spoiled schoolboy boasting over a conquest?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” he snapped, stepping closer. “You think I’m so careless, so utterly without honor, that I’d risk your name—yourname—for what? Entertainment? Sport? You trusted me enough to come to me in the dark, to give yourself to me, and now you’d have me believe I treated that gift like some sordid tale to be passed around?”
She faltered, overwhelmed by both the stress of the letter and by his very apparent animosity toward her. “Why will you notlisten? Where are my letters to you, Leo? Those very detailed and damning letters that we exchanged when we were unable to meet?”
He paused then. “I burned them.”
It was a lie. She knew that instantly. But why would he resort to deceit over such a thing? Unless he truly was involved. The very thought was like a knife to the heart.
“I’m frightened, Leo. Someone knows. They know what was in those letters, or at least claim to. And they’ve threatened me—threatened to expose everything.”
“And instead of coming to me for help,” he said, his voice low and bitter, “you came to accuse me.”
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she whispered, the strength draining from her as quickly as it had come. “You don’t exactly make it easy to trust you.”
“I never made it difficult, Hermione. You made it difficult when you let your fear speak louder than what you know of me.” His voice softened, but the hurt in it cut far deeper than his anger had. “I may be many things—dissolute, cynical, and damned more often than not—but I never once treated what we shared as anything less than sacred. Whatever you think of me now, believe that much.”
She stared at him, speechless. His words hit her like a blow, stripping away the safe distance she had tried to maintain. She had expected indifference from him. Mockery, perhaps. But not this—this sharp and wounded honesty. And still, beneath it all, the heat between them surged.
He stepped even closer, close enough that she could see the tension in his jaw, the barely checked emotions behind his carefully composed mask. His hand lifted, hesitated, then brushed her cheek with aching gentleness, fingertips tracing the line of her jaw, sliding down to rest lightly against the hollow of her throat where her pulse fluttered madly.
“You regret it,” he murmured, his voice barely more than breath. “Tell me you regret it, and I’ll walk away right now.”
She shook her head once, eyes wide. “I don’t.”
The air between them snapped with tension. She could feel the heat of him, the wild press of desire barely restrained. He leaned in, and her breath caught. His mouth was so close, she could feel the ghost of it across her lips.
But just before they touched, she turned her face away, stepping back.
“I can’t,” she said, the words cracking. “Not again.”
