Page 101 of The Wolf of Mayfair
Helia’s bitterness seemed to penetrate Anthony’s apathetic accounting. He sharpened his gaze upon her.
“Do not look at me like that,” he ordered, his voice harsh.
A tear squeezed out.
His nostrils flared and he jabbed a finger at Helia. “Like I didn’t tell you, like you didn’t know exactly what type of man I am.”
Another drop slipped down her cheek, and another.
He glared. “Like that! Stop!”
“A-all right,” she whispered, her voice wobbling.
Fury blazed from his eyes. He took an angry step toward her, and she automatically backed away.
Helia’s hip collided with the corner of Her Grace’s desk. The wood bit sharply into her side and she welcomed that pain, as around her, the notes she’d assembled took a second tumble to the floor.
And then, every last horrible thing that happened this day hit some manner of peak, and at last Helia cracked under the weight.
Anthony blanched. “Stop.” This time there was a note of desperation in that command.
“A-all r-right,” she repeated, and unable to meet his horrified eyes, she dropped her gaze to the pretty floral Aubusson carpet underneath her, and then froze.
Through the cloud of that shimmery water at her eyes, she registered the duchess’s name on a folded note.
It wasn’t, however, that which froze Helia where she sat, but rather, the familiar scrawl.
Her focus locked on the old letter. Helia quickly grabbed the sheet, unfolded it, and shock slammed into her.
She worked her gaze over the page again and again, but nothing changed: not the meticulous, graceful lettering. Nor the name inscribed at the very bottom of the loving note.
Emotion welled in her breast. In each word written, Helia heard her mother’s lyrical voice as she regaled her friend, the duchess, with tales of Helia’s first hunt alongside her father.
She read and reread those treasured lines and then slowly lifted her gaze.
From under black lashes, Anthony stared back with hard, cruel eyes.
Helia stumbled over her thoughts, before finding the courage to challenge him. “It appears, of the two of us,youare, in fact, the liar, my lord.”
Chapter 19
To him alone her heart turned, and for him alone fell her bitter tears.
—Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho
She’d stopped her weeping. That was good. Wingrave abhorred those drops as signs of weakness. Oh, there’d been plenty of false ones from mistresses who’d sought grander gifts when he’d tired of their affections. But those, he took for what they were—a manipulative attempt to wheedle more gifts and more money and more of his time in their beds.
This display from Helia, however, proved unnervingly real—she didn’t cry because she desired something from him, but rather, because of him.
Why should that stir this peculiar discomfort in his chest?
Suddenly, her shock and sadness lifted, to be replaced with an indomitable spark.
The lady was a quivering, apprehensive, weepy chit one minute, and the next a fierce, ferocious spitfire who boldly called Wingrave out.
That contradictory display of shy kitten and tempestuous lioness fired his blood.
“You’ve gone silent, my lord.” Helia raised a delicate red eyebrow. “Nothing to say?”
