Page 51 of The Wolf of Mayfair
And then she recalled the terms under which he’d allowed Helia to remain.
Suddenly, the heavy brocade curtains were drawn wide, sending so much of that blindingly bright and cheerful light streaming through the thin, gossamer undercurtains that Helia shielded her eyes.
When she’d managed to accustom them to that great, torrential luminance, she looked fully at the window.
Sun.
So very much of it.
She’d always loved the sun and had first entered the world at the highest point of a Sunday, no less.
And yet . . .
This time proved different.
For at some point, the storm had stopped, and the skies had turned a vibrant blue ... which meant ...
“I have nowhere to go.”
“Bah, you are not fit to go anywhere, my dear.”
Helia looked dumbly at the still-smiling housekeeper.
It was a moment before she registered she’d spoken those five words aloud.
Panic began to clamor and build inside her chest, and it was all she could do to keep from saying both she and Mrs. Trowbridge had been right: Helia must leave, while at the same time, she wasn’t fit to go anywhere.
Wingrave, who’d been clear in his annoyance with her from the start, had only been further inconvenienced by Helia falling ill and burdening him with her presence.
She felt the familiar prick of tears at her lashes.
“He is going to throw me out,” she whispered.
A man of Wingrave’s reputation would hardly make a mistress of a bedraggled waif.
Worse, what did it say about Helia’s circumstances that becoming the marquess’s lover was the best option available to her—only, it wasn’t even available.
“His Lordship?” Mrs. Trowbridge scoffed. “Hardly. Why, what would be the sense in that ...?”
As the kindly housekeeper continued, Helia’s head had already begun to swirl with her deepening dread. She couldn’t return to Mr. Draxton.
“I understand he’s quite menacing,” Mrs. Trowbridge went on, her voice shifting in and out of focus.
A shudder racked Helia’s frame. If the insults and threats Mr. Draxton had doled out before had been bad, what would they be like when she showed up on her family’s doorstep after having outmaneuvered him and run away?
She shook her head, already dispelling the thought. She’d sooner starve on the streets than turn herself over to that miserable, hateful bounder. She might have nothing, but she did have her strong Scottish pride.
“... but as they say, timid dogs bark worse than they bite ...” The housekeeper’s consoling managed to penetrate Helia’s blinding panic.
Timid dogs . . . ?
Through the fog made by fear and her recent illness, it was a moment before Helia registered that the motherly housekeeper in fact spoke of ...
“Lord Wingrave?” Helia’s voice, still rough from lack of use, emerged as a croak.
Mrs. Trowbridge nodded. “The same. And he’ll be most glad to know you’re up and talking.”
And despite the foreboding future awaiting Helia and her desperate circumstances, a laugh spilled past her cracked and dry lips.
