Page 12 of The Wolf of Mayfair
She continued to let those thoughts slip in.
... when you are ruined, you can rely on one truth—I will never marry you. At best, you’ll be my mistress, and then only if I can rouse enough interest to want a place between your legs ...
His rake’s vow plagued and repulsed and, paradoxically, tantalized.
What made a man jaded as Lord Wingate had become? Why, when he’d been granted every gift of wealth, power, and influence, and a set of devoted parents who both lived, and a houseful of servants, should he be so very miserable?
And there must have been something so very wrong with Helia that she possessed a yearning to unlock the mystery around the grim stranger.
Not that you need wonder or worry about what gave Lord Wingrave reason to be so hateful and guarded. You’ll be gone soon enough, and in the safe folds of the Duchess of Talbert’s care.
Letting out an aggravated sigh, Helia lowered the heavy coverlet and abandoned her futile attempts at sleep.
Rolling onto her belly, she swung her legs over the side of the mattress. Her toes danced about in the air as she searched for—and found—the leathered top bed steps.
Shivering, Helia sprinted over to the pink, green, and yellow armoire and drew the lacquered doors open.
She fetched her serviceable white wrapper from within, and quickly shrugged into the garment. Next, she collected a pair of stockings and headed for one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the rear of the duke’s properties.
Edging back the heavy gold velvet curtain, she perched herself on the wide white sill, and as she drew her hosiery on, Helia attempted to take in the scene beyond the windowpanes. Since she’d last looked outside some hours ago, a thick, heavy frost had grown over the glass, making it near impossible for Helia to discern the previously visible grounds.
After she’d donned her white, worsted stockings, Helia straightened; her skirts fell noiselessly back into their proper place.
She rested both palms against the freezing glass; the bite of cold stung her hands, and still she kept them pressed there several moments.Then she scraped away at the melted ice until she’d fashioned a small peephole, and leaning close, she peered outside.
Alas, heavy snow came down hard and fast, worse than any Scottish rain, so that she couldn’t make out anything beyond the violent whorl of falling flakes and the blanket of white they left upon the vast stone terraces and even vaster gardens.
The ice-coated windowpane reflected back her sad smile.
In the not-too-distant past, there’d been a thrill and joy when wild storms ripped across the Highlands.
As a wee lass, such a gailleann had been one she’d welcomed and relished. After the tempest abated, she was always the earliest to rise the next morn. All so she might sneak outside and be the first to leave her footprints upon the fresh fallen snow. Her ma and da would invariably join her, lobbing a snowball her way to alert her of their presence. They’d all frolic in that snow until their cheeks were red and numb from the cold, then race to the kitchens, where they’d sip hot chocolate and eat oat porridge mixed with jam and sprinkled heavily with sugar.
Her smile dipped.
Now, alone in this dark, imperial mansion, that tempest battering the impregnable fortress cast a sinister cloud over this place and all who dwelled within.
Helia’s heart pounded. To get to this point, she’d braved the harshest Highland winter she could recall in all her eighteen years. Recent storms that’d passed through weeks earlier had left the old Roman roads already nearly impassable, all the muddier and more treacherous. Along the way, she’d managed to evade Mr. Draxton, twice. But in order to do so, she had been forced to remain at an inn, alone, unchaperoned, and had gone through too many of her dwindling funds.
She’d finally reached the duchess’s residence only to find a different, but no less grave, peril—sharing a roof with Lord Wingrave.
In remaining here, alone with Wingrave, she risked ruination. But to return to Scotland would mean she’d be raped by Mr. Draxton, forced to wed, and by society’s standards, then she’d belong to him in name and body.
The frescoed ceiling and walls began closing in on her.
Her breath came in hard, fast pants.
Leave.
Now!
Helia, with shaking fingers, grabbed the bronze candlestick beside her bed. She clutched the elegant triangular base so hard the metal left marks upon her palm as she sprinted for the door.
Helia pressed the delicately cast-brass handle, and as she let herself out into the hall, the well-oiled hinges didn’t emit so much as the softest of squeaks.
Helia paused with one foot on the threshold and the other hovering in the air, about to trade inanimate foes for the living, breathing dragon who’d declared his eminence over everything and everyone who set foot inside his kingdom.
He is out there . . .
