Page 20 of The Wolf of Mayfair
Her wide-eyed gaze went to the twelve-foot, crystal-top, gilded-leg table positioned—undoubtedly strategically—at the center of the room, near enough the window that passersby might view the regal occupants breaking their fast, of which, at the present moment, there was justone.
From where he sat at the far left end of the table, Lord Wingrave glanced up from his plain toast, a bite suspended near his lips.
His steely eyes locked on Helia; from those cynical depths radiated a self-possession that glittered with some level of surprise.
Only a man so wholly confident in his self-worth and strength could manage such firm eye contact, and Helia, who’d never been without a word at the ready, found herself tongue-tied.
Sharpening that perpetually hard gaze upon Helia, Lord Wingrave set his partially eaten toast back on his pretty porcelain plate.
Say something.
In the end, the marquess took the onus of issuing the first greeting.
“What do you think you are doing here?” His voice rumbled like the violent wind that battered the windows.
Her heart jumped.
In the name of the wee man.
Helia found her voice. “Forgive me,” she said, grateful for the steady, solid delivery of her words.
She sank into a deep, respectful—albeit, belated—curtsy.
Aye, she trusted a powerful sort such as Lord Wingrave, a future duke, didn’t take well to not being shown his due respect.
Helia turned, and as she did, out of the corner of her eye, she caught the way some of the tension eased from Lord Wingrave’s excellently broad shoulders.
Uneasily humming the tune of “Auld Lang Syne,” Helia made her way over to the gilded buffet, which was stocked with such a vast selection of breakfast foods, she wondered whether the duke and duchess had returned, and arrived with company for the winter season.
All the while she made the seemingly endless march to that offering, she felt Lord Wingrave’s gaze following her every move, boring through her.
When Helia reached the sideboard, she favored the footman standing on duty with a smile. “Good morn, Mr. ...”
He stared with a blankness identical to that of the two Mr. John Thomases upstairs.
“I trust you have a name?” she gently inquired. She flashed him a gently teasing smile. “Unless all the footmen are known as Mr. Thomas as a matter of convenience for the master and mistress?”
Color splotched his cheeks, confirming just that.
She rocked on her heels. This chilly treatment toward one’s staff was not something Helia understood.
“Do you have a problem with that, Miss Wallace?”
That frosty question from over her shoulder brought Helia spinning around.
Lord Wingrave’s cold-eyed stare briefly suspended the words on her lips and the thoughts in her head.
You were right in your first assessment of this man and this place. Run. Hide. Flee.
He arched a glacial black brow, daring her to speak.
“N-no,” she sputtered.Except ...“Aye.”
“Which is it?” he whispered.
Helia’s legs trembled and she pressed her knees together to keep them from knocking, lest he see the effect he had upon her.
“My family, we treated our servants as an extension of our family,” she murmured in explanation.
