Page 87 of The Wolf of Mayfair
Her brow wrinkled with a consternation that couldn’t be feigned. “What do you—”
“Surely you aren’t stupid enough to believe we will not discuss your meeting earlier, Miss Wallace,” he interrupted frostily.
“I don’t ...” She shook her head.
“What?” He sneered. “Have any idea what I could possibly speaking about? Not the burly fellow I thrashed within an inch of his life today?”
At speaking those words aloud, Wingrave’s heart pounded hard against his ribs.I lost control. What is happening to me? What is this tiny, innocent imp of a woman doing to me?She was a fire in his blood and burning down the man he’d shaped himself into.
Enraged, with her as much as himself, he took a furious step closer. “Do you have nothing to say?” he hissed.
Her lips parted and formed a perfect little open-mouthed moue. “Oh,” she said weakly. “That.”
His cock gave another randy leap as he imagined slipping the head of his shaft between those lips and rage tunneled through him.
He drew in a breath through his nostrils and reined in his rapidly soaring emotions.
Except as he stood there, the clock ticked the passing seconds, and each grating beat sent his frustration spiraling and spiraling.
“That is what you’ll say, Miss Wallace?” he finally bit out, when it became apparent she didn’t intend to say another word apart from the useless response she’d just given him.
Helia hesitated and then gave a little nod.
And through the maddening rage and frustration, Wingrave found the first spot of amusement in longer than he remembered.
He laughed. “This is rich.”
“What?” she asked haltingly through his fit of hilarity.
“I, who would be content to never speak a word with you or anyone, now find myself compelled to hold a discussion, and you, who are chattier than a magpie, have of a sudden gone silent.”
He stopped laughing and sharpened a stern gaze upon her. “Very well, I’ll be first to do so. Why don’t we begin with an identity of your companion at the fair, Miss Wallace.”
Helia twisted her fingers in the fabric of her nightwrapper. “‘Companion’ suggests a friend,” she said quietly. “He isnofriend.” She pressed her lips firmly together.
When it became apparent Helia would contribute not one thing more, he again crossed his arms and leaned a hip against a nearby sturdy, embroidered armchair.
“Who was he, Helia?” Wingrave asked, with gentleness he’d never believed himself capable of feigning.
It took a herculean effort, but he gritted his teeth to keep from demanding she spit out the bastard’s identity.
His forbearance paid off.
Helia nibbled at her lower lip a moment and then finally capitulated. “Cousin Damian.”
Cousin Damian?He furrowed his brow. “Who the hell is—” Wingrave stopped. The past interrupted the present.
H-he is n-not a guardian. He is my cousin, and h-he inherited after my da passed.
Wingrave rubbed the aching muscles of his nape. Christ. It’d all been true. Every last piece of it: the distant cousin, blackhearted enough to fit the page of even the most fatuous gothic novel.
“Cousin Damian,” he echoed, this time with a humorless laugh. “He doesn’t look—” Wingrave stopped short.
Helia lifted a smart auburn eyebrow. “He doesn’t look like you expected he would?”
Curse the minx for being the only person in the whole of the goddamned kingdom who somehow knew his unspoken thoughts.
She didn’t let up. “What did you expect, a paunch and oily hair and pockmarked skin?”
