Page 114 of The Wolf of Mayfair
Wingrave looked toward the corner, where his mother even now listened. She’d stood up to the duke once—and only once—before.
“Perhaps this would be a good time for you to point out my wife is also your goddaughter, Mother?” he called, offering her the opportunity to speak up, and also understanding if she couldn’t.
His mother stepped slowly from the shadows. There she was, that woman from the church ...
“Goddaughter?”the duke thundered, his bulbous nose flaring.
Wingrave’s mother disappeared into the shadows with a far greater speed than she’d stepped out of them.
He understood.
Through the years, Wingrave had been all too happy to secretly provide her with the funds the duke had denied her—for the pleasure he found of thwarting his sire, of course. But were the duke to decide to commit the duchess, there was nothing Wingrave could do. To the world and the law, the duchess was a possession that could not be taken away.
“You stupid, stupid man!” The duke wagged a wrinkled finger at Wingrave. “You, with your broken ear and defiance—it should be your brother who lived.”
Before Wingrave could issue a droll reply, Helia spoke up. “How dare you?” She glared at the duke. “You evil, evil soul. Your son? He is onethousandtimes the man you are and is the one truly good thing you’ve done in your life.”
Veins along the duke’s big, broad brow bulged.“You,”he raged. “You’vedone this.”
Blinded by fury that anyone would dare speak to Helia so, Wingrave took a furious step toward the duke when Helia spoke.
“If by that you mean I fell in love with your son, then, yes, you are correct,” she said, with such stoicism in the face of the duke’s wrath, Wingrave growled with fierce approval and hunger for his queen.
Ruddy color suffused the duke’s cheeks.“Love?”he scoffed. His Grace turned all his fury back on Wingrave. “Isthathow this one tricked you? With some innocent act and words of that false, puling emotion oflove?”
Helia took another beautifully bold step toward the duke. “Given the horrid way you’ve treated your son and clearly bully your wife, I can say with absolute confidence love isn’t real ... at least for someone such as you.”
I seek to protect you, Anthony.
That avowal she’d recently made Wingrave, the one he’d rebuffed, he now let in, a feeling still unfamiliar but ... right, and welcomed.
“You are incapable of and undeserving of that sentiment,” Helia continued. “But for your son, your wife, and every other person with an actual soul and heart in their beings, love is very much real.”
The quiet calm in Helia’s voice proved more powerful than any of the duke’s bellowing, and Wingrave fell only further under her siren’s spell.
She’d managed the impossible—to silence his sire.
The duke’s cheeks grew mottled and more florid. “You talk about love. The only thing youtrulylove is that you’re now set to be a duchess,” he hissed. Spittle formed at the corner of his mouth.
Helia didn’t back down in the face of his fury. “No, Your Grace. One does not love power. One craves and needs power. Love, on the other hand, is unselfish. It requires nothing and gives everything.”
Suddenly, the duke narrowed his eyes. “I know what you did. You waited until I’d gone and then came here.” He spoke thatdiscoveryto himself. Rage blazed all the brighter in his ruthless eyes. “You seduced my goddamn rake of a son.”
He looked to Wingrave. “Couldn’t you have just made her your goddamned mistress? You could have tupped her anytime and marriedan estimable, well-bred Englishwoman who brought something of value to—”
The duke’s vitriolic diatribe ended on a squeak.
Wingrave had wrapped a hand about the old bastard’s thick neck. “Do not ever, I repeat,ever”—he tightened his grip for emphasis—“utter so much as a word about my wife that isn’t the highest praise and adulation, or I will happily end you, and make her the duchess she was and is now destined to be.”
He’d not been able to protect his brother. The duke had threatened to send Wingrave’s mother to a madhouse were Wingrave to intervene on the duchess’s behalf.
But it ended here. It ended now.
“Anthony,” Helia murmured, resting her hands on the muscles that bulged even through the heavy fabric of his greatcoat. “Mercy,” she whispered.
Wingrave lingered his hold a second more. “It is only because of my queen’s benevolence that I don’t happily end you.” He abruptly released the duke.
His father’s expression turned black. “I’ll petition the king, Wingrave. I’ll have it annulled.”
