Page 54 of The Wolf of Mayfair
In response to that urging, Mrs. Trowbridge pressed her lips closed and shook her head.
“Please,” Helia implored, somehow desperate to know the secrets Anthony kept. Mrs. Trowbridge herself had confirmed he’d not always been this way. Each detail shared offered another piece of a puzzle, which once completed would paint a picture of why he’d become the guarded man he had.
The housekeeper remained silent, then spoke reluctantly. “You know,” she whispered, as if the marquess were within earshot. She pointed at her left ear.
Helia puzzled her brow. “I do not understand.”
Her expression grew serious once more. “One winter, the former Lord Wingrave fell ill and died. Those lads ...” Tears filled Mrs. Trowbridge’s eyes; she fished a kerchief from her pocket and dabbed the moisture from the corners. “They were as close as two brothers could be, until—”
The older woman stopped to collect herself. “After Lord Wingrave’s brother died, His Lordship hid away in the library and pored over books. I’d bring him tea and biscuits throughout the day. He’d mumble his thanks but never so much as picked his head up from his research.”
Helia hung on the woman’s every word. There’d been a time when Lord Wingrave mourned a brother, and researched books, and thankedservants. It was anathema to everything she’d read, heard, and herself witnessed about the marquess.
“One night, His Lordship burst from the library and went running through the halls, shouting for the duke. His Lordship demanded the surgeon be removed as the family physician for having killed his brother.”
“What did His Grace do?” Helia whispered.
An chilling and out-of-character rage darkened the older woman’s face. “For having awakened the household, the duke beat His Lordship.”
Anthony’s father had beaten him?Oh, my god.The stories surrounding the Duke of Talbert were true, and even worse. Sorrow and anger filled her breast.
Mrs. Trowbridge must have seen horror reflected in Helia’s eyes.
The older woman grunted. “Forget that,” she said, in a stern directive.
“Of course,” Helia lied. She’d never break the woman’s confidence, but neither could she forget everything the housekeeper had revealed about the marquess.
“All you need to know is His Lordship remained by your side until the fever broke, and he was certain you’d recover.” Mrs. Trowbridge grunted. “Anyway, His Lordship is not a bad man. Or he wasn’t.” Sadness slipped into her voice. “An angry one, yes. But angry men are angry for reasons, and only if one cares for that person do they take time to understand why.”
Questions swirled and sprang to Helia’s lips, demanding to be asked.
“Uh-uh,” Mrs. Trowbridge said, and patted her shoulder. “That is enough talking for now. You need to rest so that you can heal up right quick.”
Helia opened her mouth to protest, her hunger for information about the marquess far greater than even her long-overdue need for sustenance, when there came another light scratching at the door.
The one person in possession of, at the very least,someinformation about the gentleman brightened and turned toward the door. “Splendid!”
Helia wanted to rail at that untimely interruption that kept her from asking more questions about Lord Wingrave.
The housekeeper whisked across the room and drew the door open for a quartet of maids who stood in wait, each holding trays and pitchers and linens.
The moment the young women came pouring in, Mrs. Trowbridge offered Helia another smile, dipped her curtsy, and left.
While the servants gathered about Helia and proceeded to care for her, she contemplated all the words the head housekeeper had spoken ... and found herself gripped by the need to know more about the future Duke of Talbert.
Chapter 11
How short a period often reverses the character of our sentiments, rendering that which yesterday we despised, today desirable.
—Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance
Seated upon the gilded, throne-like chair his father had commissioned upon his ascension as the latest Duke of Talbert, Wingrave sifted through the old bastard’s mahogany desk. Wingrave searched for some sign, some hint, some word, or anything in the duke’s records, notes, or files about Miss Helia Wallace.
He’d committed himself to finding out whether the woman he’d taken for a charlatan was, in fact, just that, or whether, by some extraordinary, outrageously unlikely chance, she was actually a ward or goddaughter or something to his parents.
Thus far—unsurprisingly—Wingrave had discovered absolutely nothing.
Having already inspected the entire contents of the right-side pedestal of drawers, Wingrave turned his attention to the remaining ones.
