Page 69 of The Wolf of Mayfair
But she knew. Gruff though he may be, without a doubt, Helia knew from the care he’d shown her that—
“You’ve visited the finest wagons, you have.”
Helia looked up quickly.
The peddler, who had the dark good looks and olive coloring of a Rom, had since finished with his previous customers and joined Helia.
At her silence, he flashed a wicked, lopsided grin.
Coming back to the present, Helia returned his smile. “Hullo, sir.”
Both corners of his lips quirked up and he raised a wood decanter. “Can I persuade you to try a dram?” he asked. A heavy West Country–sounding accent laced his speech.
As a Scot out of place in the heart of England, Helia immediately felt a kindred connection to the handsome Romani. “I dinnae require any persuading. I’d been harkening this way with your rum in mind,” she said, before remembering she still held one of his trinkets.
She held the wood ornament up. “Och, and glad I am for it as ah found this beautiful piece, too.”
After a short negotiation, Helia turned over five shillings and placed the rowan branch in her cloak pocket.
At that generosity, the young man bowed his head. “It is God who brought you.” With a slow, flirtatious wink, he handed over her drink and pocketed his coins.
“Mul?umesc,” she murmured.
Those beautiful cobalt-blue eyes flared with his surprise.
“My fowk employed a Rom traveler,” she explained, and then took a sip of the smooth, fruity drink.
Welcoming the immediate warming effect of those spirits, Helia lifted her tankard. “Kushti—good,” she praised.
The merchant opened his mouth to speak, but another patron came over, and his interest and attention in Helia instantly vanished as he returned to making his coin.
Helia took a step and made to drink from her glass when, suddenly, another forbidding breeze stirred the air around her.
Her skirts snapped angrily about her ankles. With her spare hand, Helia futilely slapped them down.
Her nape tingled and pricked.
Helia glanced frantically over the bustling fair. The frozen Thames brimmed with revelers of all ages. Men and women, lords and ladies, and children, they all mingled in a blur of humanity.
Just then, a black cat darted across her path and Helia gasped; her heart pounded painfully in her chest.
That omen of ill fortune kept Helia frozen to her spot on the ice. Gooseflesh popped up on her arms.
“Good luck, they are.” That deep, accented voice snapped across her fearful musings.
Dazed, Helia looked at the handsome Rom presently serving a new customer. “Ah’m sorry?”
“The black cat,” he clarified as he poured another tankard.
She mustered a weak grin. “It ... The Scots have a different view of the cat.”
“But what doyouthink, inima?”
Helia finished off her dram. “I have a black cat,” she said, and handed him back his glass.
He laughed. “There you are, then.” He flashed another one of those winks that would have devastated any other lady.
Somehow, Helia could see only the Marquess of Wingrave in her mind. What was it about a cynical, hardened Anthony that so captivated her while she remained unmoved by the charming, flirtatious attentions of a handsome, smiling man?
