Page 68 of The Wolf of Mayfair
That didn’t mean Anthony’s caustic words didn’t remain like well-placed arrows stuck in her breast, but it also didn’t mean she should let her misery drown out the beauty of the day.
Forcing aside her hurtful exchange with Anthony, Helia drew her shoulders back.
After losing her parents, it had been all too easy to see the awful: the sorrow. Uncertainty. Mr. Draxton and his intentions for her.
Aye, her heart would never stop hurting over her ma and da being gone, but since their passing, she’d lost her way. She’d been raised to look for the good. And for all the ways in which life had become harder than it’d ever been, there also remained a whole host of things she had to be grateful for.
In the heart of a storm and illness, she’d been afforded a warm bed, roof, and food. She’d nearly perished but been nursed back to health by the marquess. And even after Anthony uncovered nothing linking their mothers, and believed Helia to be a liar, he’d still promised she could remain until she was fully recovered.
The rousing thrill of joy and excitement that hung over the Frost Fair made it impossible for Helia to feel anything but a boundlessly potent energy that hummed in her veins.
The previously inauspicious chill that had overtaken her on that rise now harkened Helia all the way back to the harsh but gloriously brilliantScottish winters. Those heartiest and most loving remembrances of her homeland filled Helia anew with a fresh wave of gladness.
As she’d done as a girl frolicking in the snow with her father, Helia raised an imaginary pipe to her lips and exhaled little puffs of white clouds to the skies above.
While she walked, Helia breathed deep of the pleasing aromas of roasted venison, roasted ox, and the sweeter scents of gingerbread and chestnuts wafting through the air.
As she meandered amongst those crimson, sapphire, canary-yellow, and emerald-green tents upon the frozen Thames, the happy whine of fiddles and violins and throngs of carolers singing along the shore grew louder.
Helia made her way over to a young merchant.
A bright blue, red, and green canvas was draped over the top of the peddler’s big wood wagon, offering a splash of radiance amidst the grey that had reclaimed the London sky.
From the hooks along the perimeter of his rectangular cart hung a vast array of objects: silver spoons, handkerchiefs, ribbons which danced in the wind.
When she reached the cart, Helia trailed alongside the clever shelves built alongside the wagon and perused the various items brimming from within.
She skimmed her hand over books, toys, and trinkets—and then stopped as her gaze fell upon a brown, red, and green painted wood ornament of a rowan branch.
Helia gently picked up the crude carving. As she fingered the trinket, the snowy garden exchange between her and Anthony whispered around her mind.
“The lore has it that in doing so, any bad feelings of mistrust between friends will be cleared away.”
“For . . . me?”
Helia nodded. “For you.”
“I’ve never received a gift,” Anthony said gruffly.
“Surely you’ve received something, through the years?”
Only, he hadn’t.
In one uncharacteristically candid moment, he’d opened up about himself. He, a future duke, and in his own right a powerful marquess, had never received something as simple as a present.
And all because his stonyhearted father forbade the giving of gifts.
An unfamiliar but black, unalterable hatred for the duke she’d not met—and now, never would—singed her veins.
Was it any wonder that Anthony, who’d had such an austere upbringing, became a man so harsh and so hard?
For all the uncertainty and peril she now found herself in, Helia still wouldn’t have traded so much as a single day with her parents for the wealth, power, and holdings enjoyed by Anthony’s family.
He, however, hadn’t a choice in the life he’d been born to.
Absently, she ran a gloved fingertip over the red-painted berry.
Who would you be if your life had been different, Anthony?
