Page 4 of The Wolf of Mayfair
If he were a man given to humor and laughter, this waif defending a grown man, more than a foot taller than her, would certainly have moved him to mirth.
The fool brought her palms up as if in supplication. “Please, do not punish him,” she pleaded.
His lip drew back in a reflexive sneer. He despised little more than those pitiable souls who cowered and beseeched.
“Whyshouldn’tI?” he demanded silkily.
As if the wench realized too late she’d drawn the attention and wrath of a dragon, she retreated a step.
Of course she did. Wingrave had yet to meet a soul unafraid of him or having his anger turned on them.
“It is not his fault.”
So unaccustomed to people uttering a single contrary word in his presence, it was a moment before Wingrave registered that faintest and most defiant of whispers.
Wingrave turned all his undivided, wrathful attention on the one most deserving of his displeasure—the woman who’d dared force her way inside his kingdom.
“No, it isn’t, is it?” he purred. “Then tell me, whoshouldbear the blame for my anger this night?”
The freckled place between the lady’s brows came together into a fear-filled little furrow.
Ah, she’d realized too late then that silence had been her safest course.
His butler, on the other hand, wisely dissolved into the shadows and allowed the braver one who’d defended him to take on Wingrave’s wrath.
Wingrave didn’t suffer cowards.
He suffered fools even less.
The waif before him retained eye contact. The noisy whir of her skirts and cloak, on the other hand, betrayed her attempt at intrepid warrioress.
“You demanded to see me,” he said coolly. With a flourish, Wingrave spread his arms wide. “Well, you have my full, undivided attention.”
Chapter 2
Do you believe your heart to be, indeed, so hardened, that you can look without emotion on the suffering, to which you would condemn me?
—Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho
The Marquess of Wingrave—icy as the dead and devoid of a heart. The nobleman’s name couldn’t have suited him more had it been hand-selected by the bean-nighe, that Scottish messenger from the Underworld and bringer of death.
Everyone had heard the dark tales of the Marquess of Wingrave.
Those forbidding and wicked stories had even found their way into Miss Helia Wallace’s corner of Scotland. Lord Wingrave, notorious rake. Vied for by women upon whom he scattered his attentions but never his affections. Fighter of duels—and winner of each of them—and yet unpunished because of the power he and his family possessed.
No warmth on the outside, no warmth on the inside ...
Such were the words familiarly uttered about the stonyhearted Marquess of Wingrave, who according to all, came from a long line of cruel, callous dukes.
The duke possessed a reputation for browbeating his wife and anyone and everyone around him.
The marquess, on the other hand, was known for being cold as ice and as depraved as Caligula.
As such, Helia would take a malevolent, vainglorious lord over a Lothario.
In fact, so salacious had been the stories surrounding the marquess that Helia’s ma, dear friend to the Duchess of Talbert, had barred any papers mentioning Her Grace’s son, and threatened to remove from their employ anyone who spoke ill of Lord Wingrave.
But ripping all that fodder from Helia’s fingertips several years earlier and silencing servants and guests had not and could not erase everything Helia already read, heard, and knew about the infamous marquess.
