Page 118 of The Wolf of Mayfair
Dismissing the physician outright, Wingrave returned to the duke’s door.
His ashen mother worried her hands together. “A-Anthony?” she whispered.
Anthony. He was finally Anthony again. Perhaps she’d already gleaned the news and sought to reclaim some ownership of herself and her decisions.
Wingrave placed a hand on her shoulder, leaned down, and whispered the duke’s fate.
She sucked in a shaky breath and emitted a small, indistinctive sound from her throat.
He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, and then with her standing in wait, he let himself inside the dark, shadowy room.
His father, attired in a long gown, and with a sheet and coverlet draped over him, lay as still as death upon the big mattress.
Wingrave stopped at his bedside and looked down.
Like a hot sun had melted his face, the duke’s features drooped on both sides. Drool pooled at the corners of his mouth.
Wingrave, not taking his gaze off his father’s frail form, dragged a nearby chair over and seated himself.
Steepling his fingers, he stared over the tops of them. “You were a terrible duke, you know,” he stated, matter-of-factly, into the quiet. “I didn’t realize I was becoming you, and wouldn’t have realized, had it not been for the glorious woman I made my wife.”
The duke’s lids lifted; his gaze was surprisingly sharp, despite his condition, so much so that Wingrave wondered if the bastard had struck a deal with the Devil, all to defy the fate Hall had laid out for him and to retain the power he so coveted.
“Ah, the beast awakens,” Wingrave remarked.
The duke’s slack lips wobbled, revealing a tongue as dead as the old man’s heart, and no words emerged ... only more saliva.
“How awful this must be for you,” Wingrave murmured. “Not anyone else. You were a miserable cur. But I’ve not come to tell you all the ways in which you were a malevolent duke, father, and husband. With you unable to speak, where would be the fun in that?”
The duke continued to stare vacantly back.
“I will keep this quick.” Wingrave dropped his hands atop his lap and leaned forward. “You’ve scared your daughter, wife, servants, and, for that matter,anyone, for the last time. They will not miss you. They will not mourn you. They will not even visit. You will exist as nothing more than a ghost who goes unseen amongst us.”
His father’s gaze remained vacant, but for a distant glimmer indicating that somewhere in there, the duke not only heard but understood exactly what Wingrave said.
Wingrave flattened his lips into a hard line. “Your time as duke is done. Your reign ends and belongs to me. It all belongs to me, and with Helia, my wife, we will rule with strength and a benevolent good for those who are deserving and a relentless might for any who dare cross us.”
A choking, rasping sound started in his father’s chest and got stuck in his throat as a low, wet gurgling.
Without a backward glance, Wingrave left his past and marched on to his future.
Chapter 21
“Why all this terror?” said he, in a tremulous voice. “Hear me, Emily: I come not to alarm you; no, by Heaven! I love you too well—too well for my own peace.”
—Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho
Her knees drawn close to her chest, Helia sat on the floor in the corner of the same guest chambers she’d occupied upon her arrival, days, weeks—a lifetime—ago.
Even with the sun glaring brightly through the filmy curtains, the room remained chilled from the absence of a fire in the barren hearth.
That cold filled every corner of her numb being.
Anthony had worried that those who were close to him ultimately suffered. Helia had struggled to help him realize differently.
She didn’t delude herself into believing Anthony carried any affection for his father. How could he, after all?
What her husband would take from this was that his actions had brought about another death.
