Page 19 of The Wolf of Mayfair
Helia took mercy on him. “What is your name?” she asked in the plainest way possible.
That directness did not, however, cure the man of his befuddlement. “My name? Is ... John Thomas?” With that, he straightened into his previously assumed position, clasped his big hands behind him, and stared sightlessly ahead with a blank stare to rival all the marble busts in the hall.
“Mr. Thomas, Lord Wingrave was so good as to make me a guest of Horace House, and I’d like to speak with him. If you would be so good as to share where I may find him at this hour?”
Helia favored him with her most winning smile.
The small, circular, black birthmark at the corner of the servant’s mouth disappeared under the grim line his lips formed.
“His Lordship breaks his fast at this hour,” he confirmed in a timorous voice.
Her grin deepened. “Splendid! Thank you so much for sharing that.”
Helia remained fixed to the floor and awaited further information.
They continued to stare blankly at her.
“Will you be so good as to provide me directions to the breakfast room?”
Both men appeared a breath away from crying.
“His Lordship will be expecting me,” she promised.
Their dubious expressions matched her inner self-ruminations, and for a long moment, Helia thought they intended to ignore her request, but then the silent-until-now servant on her right provided taciturn instructions.
Forcing a lightness she didn’t feel, Helia gave each servant a little wave and then went in search of the breakfast room.
As she went, she took in her surroundings.
Marble busts sat proudly on display upon French Louis XVI carved pedestals, accented in gold. The lifelike renderings of noble-looking strangers, whose hostile expressions and merciless eyes, frozen in time, dared a soul to do something as foolish as remain in this cold, forbidding place.
She reached the middle of the hall, which led to another like-decorated corridor, and stopped before a bust of a familiar visage—Lord Wingrave.
Bold and unflinching, the man who’d posed for this piece didn’t angle his gaze downward as the other subjects had.
The sculptor had expertly, masterfully, captured the likeness of the future Duke of Talbert and committed to stone a clear glimpse of the formidable, unyielding lord.
Helia drifted closer and stopped directly in front of the column. Unbidden, she stretched her fingertips out and traced the rendering of the marquess’s stern, perfectly proportioned mouth, lips as hard and unbending in stone as they were on the man himself.
Riveted, drawn in just as the artist had no doubt intended, Helia cocked her head and remained locked in her study.
The bust, not unlike the flesh-and-blood man, possessed a flinty gaze which silently commanded a person to look away, and yet the searing intensity of this marble stare also pulled a person in.
The enmity spilling from Lord Wingrave’s stone stare dared the creator of his piece to find a hint of warmth for his work. And yet ...
Helia traced her fingers along the chiseled planes of his cheeks, lower, and then stopped.
The artist had found and eternalized the one and only softening of his subject—a faint cleft at the center of Lord Wingrave’s rock-hard jaw.
How could a man rumored to melt hearts and have women throwing themselves at his feet also be so cold as to abhor company?
How could these two opposing things be true?
They couldn’t. It ... just wasn’t possible.
Helia had to force herself to look away from the marquess’s likeness and continue on to meet the flesh-and-blood Lord Wingrave.
At last, Helia reached the breakfast room.
