Page 65 of The Wolf of Mayfair
“You think Icareabout you,” he said flatly. “Why? Because I had my hand up your skirts and your hot quim in my hand?”
Helia flinched. Her perpetually rosy cheeks went ashen.
Until now, Wingrave had never given thought to the words he’d spoken after they left his lips. In this instant, for the first time in the whole of his miserable life, he found himself filled with a profound ... regret.
He’d let her too close.
“Why are you saying these things, Anthony?” she whispered, edging away from him.
Good, let her go. That was precisely what he wished for. What accounted then for this disconsolation?
Her. Besieged by a wave of self-loathing for having become spellbound by the woman before him, he ran an angry stare over her. She was the root of all these new, unfamiliar, and more,unwantedfeelings.
“Why am I speaking the truth?” he asked, deliberately dispassionate.
Needing some space and distance between them, Wingrave headed over to his father’s desk. All along that deliberate, measured march, he felt her gaze on his back like a physical touch that followed his every moment.
Only after he’d settled himself back into the duke’s throne-like chair did he speak.
“The thing about you, Helia Mairi Wallace, with your cheery outlook, despite the supposed death of your parents and a villainous cousin on your trail, and your always smiling face, is that in your naivete, you see good where it doesn’t exist. You expect there will be someone there to help and that things will get better. But they won’t. Do you know why?” he asked detachedly. “Because the world is a shite place, full of shite things and shite people, Helia. People that lie.”
Wingrave placed his hands upon the last folders he’d searched through and leaned forward. “Just as you’ve done, MissWallace.” Ultimately, all people lived to serve themselves—even lying about having connections to a family she’d never before met.
The sadness in Helia’s eyes gave way to confusion. She shook her head and ventured over. “I don’t—”
“Understand?”
Wingrave waited until she’d reached him. “Let me speak more plainly, shall I? I’ve searched every corner of the duke’s office.” He spread his arms wide over the piles and piles of papers before him. “Each and every single file, paper, parchment, envelope, journal—anything and everything.”
Helia followed his gesture to those stacks.
“Do you know what I discovered, Helia?” he asked, coming slowly to his feet.
She shook her head dumbly.
“As I’d expected, you don’t have any connection to this family.”
He may as well have delivered a mundane remark about the unseasonably cold winter London enjoyed.
“What?” she whispered.
He nodded. “Not a mention.”
“But—”
“The only mention of anything remotely Scottish pertains to the lands my family holds there and—” He stopped abruptly.
Helia stared at him, silently urging him to continue. “And?” she prodded, as if holding out hope that he’d uncovered something linking them and their families.
And in a small part of him, buried deep inside, in a place he’d never before known existed, he admitted ... he had, too. It would’ve meant she had grounds to stay and—
“Those matters, Miss Wallace, do not involve you or your family in any way, but rather another family of Scottish descent.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered. Helia faltered.
Cursing, Wingrave reflexively stood and rushed around to catch her but caught himself at the edge of the desk.
Of course, the spirited Scottish beauty righted herself, no help from Wingrave necessary.
