Page 43 of The Wolf of Mayfair
“P-please,” she implored, through chattering teeth. Why would they allow her to hurt this way? “W-won’t you give me more b-blankets?”
Why were they smiling? Why, when she was racked with agony?
An inky darkness crept in, swallowing their smiling visages.
And then, the blankets she did have were removed, and she was forced back to this horrid place of suffering. Only, someone was determined to torture her. For they now mocked her earlier pleas for warmth by casting her into an inferno.
“Noooooo,” Helia wailed. Tears stained her cheeks.
“I’m sorry.” That apology came ragged and harsh.
“Make it s-stop,” she begged, flailing and thrashing in a bid to escape the heat.
Why would her parents ...? Only, they wouldn’t. They loved her.
And then she recalled ... they were no more.
Helia wept all the harder.
Mr. Draxton’s loathsome visage materialized, mocking her, taunting her.
He’d found her.
And there was no escaping.
She was trapped.
She was going to die.
Wingrave had reached that conclusion two days earlier, even before he’d set Helia down on the very mattress she now writhed upon.
The ague killed, and spunky of spirit though his Scottish guest may be, the fact remained, she wasn’t so strong that she could defeat such an infirmity.
His brother hadn’t.
Wingrave almost hadn’t.
And the only reason he’d managed to survive was because the Lord hadn’t a use for his rotted soul and the Devil didn’t want a wretchedly imperfect fellow with a useless ear.
Standing over Helia, his hands clasped behind him, Wingrave stared down at the feverish woman so very still in the bed.
But this woman?
She was a delicate, diminutive fairy, possessed of a wholesomeness that couldn’t be feigned, and such souls were not destined to last long in this world.
With the fever’s hold, she’d thrashed and writhed so much these past two days, she now lay motionless and limp under the thin white cotton counterpane.
A light rapping at the door brought his attention from his musings about the minx who’d upended his life and his household.
“Enter,” he barked, his gaze fixed on Helia’s still form.
“My lord,” Mrs. Trowbridge said. “Dr. Hembly has arrived.”
Another doctor.
The floorboards groaned and shifted, announcing the approach of the latest physician to visit Helia.
He stopped beside Wingrave. The man, younger by a decade or so than the previous ones who’d come and gone, was near in height to Wingrave.
