The Wolf of Mayfair
: Chapter 18

Virtue and taste are nearly the same, for virtue is little more than active taste, and the most delicate affections of each combine in real love.

—Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho

A low-pitched rumble slipped into Helia’s deep, dreamless slumber.

She tried to open her heavy lashes, but far too content to burrow into a warm, welcoming heat, she gave up the fight.

The edge of consciousness she hovered on drew her back, deeper and deeper into that blissfully welcoming, calm nothingness.

Then there came another reverberation. This time, more resonant, it lightly shook Helia’s frame and released her from her torpor.

She managed to open her eyes, only to have them meet a curtain of inky blackness.

Still hazy from the fog of sleep, Helia blinked several times to adjust her gaze to the dark.

What in blazes? Where am I?

All the while, she attempted to make sense of her whereabouts.

Her eyes more adjusted to the dimness, Helia looked about . . . and froze.

Then it all came rushing back. The shameful, wicked, wanton, and God help her, wonderful climax Anthony had coaxed from her body. The feel of his tongue inside her. The lewd words he’d rasped against her womanhood—she’d loved every single one. She’d thrilled at the things he’d done to her and said to her and—

A low, sonorous rumbling—that same sound which had penetrated her sleep—cut into her unchaste thoughts and she glanced down.

Her heart stopped.

Anthony.

Her hair lay in a tangle of curls about his soundly slumbering form.

His body, rock-solid beneath her, conferred a delicious heat that erased any chill from a long-extinguished fire.

She was ruined.

She’d known that the moment she stepped through the doors to this house, and that’s why she didn’t feel panicked and horrified.

But this was a different sort of ruined.

Anthony, the Marquess of Wingrave and future Duke of Talbert, Helia’s lover, had ruined her for all men.

“Lover,” she whispered, tasting the sound and feel of it.

All her life, there had been expectations of her and for her. Her parents had envisioned a respectable Scottish husband for Helia. Mr. Draxton sought to make Helia his wife. There’d always been dictates about her and chains around her. She’d just not realized it until now, when she was fully and completely ruined, in every way.

Only, her life hadn’t turned out the way she’d thought it would. And now she found herself Lord Wingrave’s lover, and without a single regret.

Helia angled her head up and studied him.

Why would she regret having lain in his arms? She’d been ruined in name, which was ruined in every way. At least, she’d have known this wonderment she found with Anthony and in his arms.

From his slackened lips, slow, even breaths escaped him. Sleep lent a gentleness to the marquess’s otherwise harshly beautiful features. In rest, an aura of peace and softness hung over him. As if only in his body’s absolute quietude could Anthony truly let his walls down.

Helia laid her cheek upon his lightly furred chest. Underneath her ear, she heard the solid, steady, reassuring thump of his heartbeat.

Sighing, Helia closed her eyes and absorbed his warmth and strength. She gently stroked a hand back and forth over his shoulder.

How peculiar. Even in rest, Anthony managed to confer a consolation that all would be well. Even though she knew he’d despise it were he to know, in Anthony, Helia felt . . . safe and protected.

Despite his often-crass words and cynical sneers, at every turn, time and time again, he’d cared for her.

He—

A low, resonant rumble started in his chest, and then Anthony emitted an unmistakable but immensely endearing snore.

As though angry he’d nearly awakened himself, Anthony frowned and stirred faintly in his sleep.

She held her breath until his own, once more, settled into a smooth, even pattern.

Helia’s lips turned at the corners in a smile. Why, he managed to be cross with even himself.

Anthony’s big, broad form shifted under Helia. That slightly restless repositioning sent a loose black strand falling over his brow and lent him an even softer, more approachable air.

Helia melted inside.

She closed her eyes.

I am not falling in love with him. I . . . love him.

Helia waited for the dread that discovery should bring. Terror, however, did not come.

Rather, she found herself filled with an absolute sense of calm. Nay, not calm. Rightness. From the moment he’d met her in that foyer, barefoot and filled with fury, there’d existed something between them.

At least on her part.

She chewed at her lower lip.

Except time and time again he’d shown he felt something for her. That was, something other than annoyance and disdain. Those were the only emotions he allowed himself to reveal with his eyes and words.

With his actions, however, he showed the manner of man he truly was: one who’d venture out on a cold winter day and, like a knight of old, champion a lady in peril.

And the way he’d touched her and kissed her . . .

An increasingly familiar ache built between her legs. She yearned to shift and squirm in a bid to relieve some of that pressure, but she bit her lip and fought the urge so as to not wake him.

Surely a man could not do the things to her that Anthony had and not feel some affection and regard for her.

When he’d rubbed his erection through his trousers, he’d shown in a most vulgar way he desired her. She wasn’t so naive in the details surrounding copulation. Helia understood men spilled their seed when they achieved the desired state in lovemaking.

Yet he’d restrained himself and given only Helia pleasure.

Helia propped her chin atop his chest and gazed up at him. “Who are you, Anthony?” she whispered. She moved her gaze over his resting features. “Angry marquess or wounded man who is afraid to let anyone in?”

She, however, knew the answer.

She yearned to help break down his barriers so he could be free to be the man he truly was.

Her heart faltered.

For she wouldn’t be here. As he’d pointed out, he’d not found any link between their mothers, and ultimately, when he decided she was well enough, he would show Helia the door.

Would he be able to do that?

And yet, what was the alternative? That he’d allow her to remain indefinitely as a guest of his family?

All the warmth and contented satiation lifted. Restlessness ran through her.

Unable to sleep, even with his body snugly pressed against hers, Helia carefully climbed off Anthony.

A loud, shuddery breath escaped him and Helia remained motionless above him, until he’d shifted back and forth on the sofa.

Anthony flipped onto his right side so he faced the back of the sofa and then resumed snoring.

Helia glanced around the office. Her gaze landed on a blanket draped over a green embroidered Gainsborough armchair tucked in the far-left corner of the room.

On stockinged feet, she hurried over, fetched the throw, and then stopped.

Unblinking, lest the image change, Helia stared at the soft blanket she held in her hands. Close as she was to the soft, woolen fabric, she now took in the details which had been previously obscured by the room’s darkness: the weathered pink and even paler sea-green checkered pattern. That proud tartan of Clan Fraser.

Helia gasped and her fingers flexed reflexively.

The blanket fell to her feet.

Heart hammering, she hurriedly rescued the blessedly familiar throw and clutched it close to her fast-beating heart.

Surely, surely, this could be no mere coincidence? Why should the duchess, who by Anthony’s own admission kept no secrets from her powerful husband, own the checkered fabric which belonged to people whom the duke despised?

Not only that, what were the chances the duchess would, and that it should also happen to be Helia’s family tartan?

Another bleating snort split through the quiet.

Helia jumped.

While her thoughts whirred, Helia returned to Anthony’s side.

She traced her gaze over his sprawled frame. He’d curled up into himself as though in sleep he sought to make more space for his large, powerful physique.

Mayhap that pink and sea-green was nothing more than a coincidence. Those beautifully delicate hues proved an ideal match for the ebulliently decorated room.

“And maybe you’re just so very desperate to be connected to the Blofields so you won’t have to be separated from Anthony,” she whispered to herself.

His deep, sonorous breathing proved the only response to her musings.

Coming out of her thoughts, Helia gingerly brought the throw over his resting form. She remained motionless for several moments more so as to not wake him.

Once assured he slept still, Helia turned her focus to the mess he’d made of the duchess’s office.

Don’t you mean the mess you both made of her office? a deprecating voice reminded her.

An image of Helia perched on the edge of the delicate mahogany desk played like a stage performance in her mind. Her fingers tangled in Anthony’s hair as she shoved his face into that most intimate place.

She pressed her palms to burning cheeks.

Those efforts didn’t do anything to dull the heat.

For a second time, she’d behaved like a wanton. She’d not only surrendered to his advances, she’d shamelessly embraced Anthony’s every kiss, every caress, all of it. All of him.

Helia, determined to bury those sordid memories, dropped to her haunches and gathered up those papers at the foot of the Duchess of Talbert’s desk.

She stacked them neatly, and tapped the pile lightly upon the floor to make that stack even, then moved her attention to those on the right side of the desk.

“You taste so good, Helia,” Anthony breathed, and stroked his tongue over her clitoris.

She whimpered.

“Aww, you’re in pain,” he crooned. “I’ll help you, love.”

Helia exploded to her feet. “Enough,” she whispered furiously. Do not think of what took place on this desk and in this office.

Helia finished collecting every neglected page and returned them to the desk. She had begun to set the messy surface to rights, when her gaze alighted upon a crisply folded newspaper. The sheets were entirely too perfectly inked and faded white to be aged by time.

Curiously, Helia availed herself of the copy of The London Times.

She stole a peek over in Anthony’s direction. Once she confirmed he remained sleeping, Helia carefully unfurled the newspaper.

She quickly skimmed the contents and then stopped at the top center.

Scandal of the Century

What lady should not wish to be the next Duchess of T?

Helia paused and her pulse picked up.

Certainly, wedding the distinguished and powerful Marquess of W is a dream to all . . . except, that is, the one lady he’d been slated to marry—the Season’s most breathtaking beauty, a Diamond of the First Waters, betrothed to the marquess before she’d even formally debuted.

The future duke found himself left standing at the altar as his betrothed walked off with another man, the Viscount C, a lesser gentleman—in every way. Only an uncouth cad would dare interrupt a wedding ceremony in progress and declare his love with the groom at the bride’s side.

This author expects Lord W may have any woman he wants . . . that is, if his heart might recover from this greatest of degradations.

Helia’s heart thudded in a sickening beat against the walls of her chest.

“Oh, Anthony,” she whispered, her heart breaking for him . . . and herself. “No wonder you’ve become such a curmudgeon,” she murmured to herself, rereading those sad words inked in black.

Was it not enough he’d suffered the abuse of his father and the neglect of his mother? He should replace his heart broken, too?

“And what reason is that?”

Helia gasped. She jerked her head up so fast her neck muscles wrenched.

At some point, Anthony had not only awakened, he’d stood. He now rested, with a hip dropped upon the arm of the sofa he’d slept on only moments ago.

Anthony’s near-obsidian black lashes swept low until they’d swallowed up his sapphire eyes. He studied Helia with a cool smile on his hard lips.

A knot formed in her belly.

“Interesting reading,” he remarked, in a pleasant voice that belied the steel within it.

Blinking furiously, Helia dropped her gaze to the stiff, oversize sheet clutched damningly in her fingers.

When she looked up, Wingrave remained there, contemplating her with an incisiveness in his icy eyes that swiftly killed the illusion of a lazy boredom.

Unnerved as she’d never been, not even during Mr. Draxton’s browbeating, Helia dipped her tongue out and traced the seam of her lips.

The marquess sharpened his eyes on her. Nay, not her, rather that slight movement of her tongue.

Anthony’s eyes glowed with an incandescent heat that could have melted the immense snow the storm had left upon the London streets below.

She immediately flattened her lips.

He chuckled, straightened, and started over with long, languid steps.

He’s trying to unnerve me.

He’s trying to scare me.

To cow me.

To send me running.

Alas, if her fleeing proved his ultimate goal, he’d best do better than don menacing, seductive looks. The peril behind her was far greater than the danger before her.

He stopped a pace away. “Tell me, sweet, who is the curmudgeon you spoke of?”

Through the haze he’d cast by his presence alone, she recalled belatedly, he’d discovered Helia reading—and more and worse, he’d been awake long enough to hear her talking about him.

Alas, she’d long ago discovered honesty proved the most effective means to disarm a person.

Helia cleared her throat. “Y-you,” she managed.

Anthony blinked those coal-black lashes slowly.

She found her feet. “I was talking about you, Anthony,” she repeated. “You are the curmudgeon.”

He sent an icy brow arcing up. “Ah, and I take it you’ve gathered the cause of my curmudgeonness.”

“‘Curmudgeonness’ isnae a word.”

“Neither should be ‘curmudgeon,’ but here we are,” he said sardonically.

She gave him a gentle look. “I ken what you are trying to do, Anthony.”

Crossing his arms, he leaned down and whispered, “Just what is it you ken I am doing?”

She ignored the mocking emphasis he placed on that particular word he’d appropriated.

Helia tipped her chin up. “Ye are trying to divert my attention away from . . . from . . .”

“Yesss.” Anthony flicked his index finger across the tip of her nose. “Why don’t you be so helpful as to enlighten me about this astounding discovery you’ve made.”

The jeering glimmer in his beautiful blue eyes dared her to speak.

She didn’t fear him. She didn’t believe she ever really had.

“You had your heart broken,” she said softly, and even as she uttered that avowal, her heart cracked.

Surprise replaced the marquess’s customary cynicism. In fact, in the time she’d been here in the duke’s household, it marked the first crack in his otherwise unflappable demeanor.

“You must have loved her greatly,” she managed past a tight throat.

He flashed another one of those empty, mocking grins. “My dear, I’d have to possess a heart to have it broken.”

“That’s what a man with a broken heart would say.”

“Nay, that’s what a man with no heart does say.” He considered her a long while, before speaking. “It must make you feel better.”

She tipped her chin at a defiant angle. “What?”

With slow, sweeping, pantherine steps, Anthony walked a languid circle about her.

Helia didn’t back down. Rather, she turned her head as he went, following his every move.

He stopped just beyond the edge of her right shoulder so she had to crane her neck back or turn and face him.

Anthony made the decision for her.

He placed a hard, possessive hand on her right shoulder, and his left, upon her hip. “If you believe I’m capable of love, Helia,” he breathed against the shell of her ear, his words a husky threat mixed with a promise, “then you’ve no idea what I’m capable of.”

Despite her resolve and faith in the marquess, a shiver traipsed over her spine.

His brows dipped, and she couldn’t sort out whether his blue eyes reflected back her own desire, or a like yearning on his part.

“I’ve already told you, Anthony, I’m not afraid of you.” And . . . she meant it. He did, however, unnerve her as no one had before.

His icy smirk said he knew it.

Only, he didn’t know. Not really. Not truly. Helia’s fear . . . it had nothing to do with Anthony, but instead, with everything he made her feel. And if she were being honest with herself—what he made her long for. Things no good, virtuous, innocent lady should long for.

Anthony flicked his tongue over the shell of her ear, and she trembled as that whispery sough of his breath both tickled and tormented.

She wavered on her feet, and her back found purchase against the hard, muscled wall of his chest.

Then he filled his palms with her breasts and rubbed the pads of his thumbs over the peaks pebbled not with cold but from a shameful desire.

“S-stop,” she croaked.

Anthony instantly ceased his stroking and extended his arms, so they framed Helia on either side.

“Is that what you really want, Helia?” He dangled forth that husky temptation. “For me to stop touching you?”

Her lashes fluttered wildly, and she gave thanks he couldn’t see her body’s reaction to him.

Shamefully, wantonly, she wanted him to do all those things he’d already done to her and with her over and over.

“Well?” he prodded seductively. “Shall I cease my caresses or give you more of what I gave you earlier?”

His thick, rigid erection prodded her buttocks.

Helia’s center throbbed, and she shifted and squirmed in search of relief from that ache.

Still, without bringing his hands in contact with any part of her body, Anthony touched his lips along the curve of her neck. The tenderness of that kiss belied all the coldness that’d met Helia since he’d awakened.

That gentleness threatened to undo her.

Helia reflexively tipped her head to allow Anthony better access.

“Hmm?” he whispered. “What is it to be, love?”

She closed her eyes. What was it to be? Or what did she want it to be? Helia well knew, in this instant, Anthony only used her body’s hungering for him as a means with which to distract her from a topic he didn’t wish to discuss.

Slowly, Anthony raised his arms and brought his hands closer, ever closer, to her breasts.

She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood, and then with a silent curse, she managed to replace her voice.

“Aye, Anthony,” she said, not knowing where she discovered the might to resist his magnetizing pull. “Ah want ye to stop.”

He stilled; his body tensed.

He’d not expected her rejection.

But then, why should a man so skilled and capable in the art of lovemaking expect anything other than a woman’s capitulation?

Anthony placed his mouth near that sensitive spot on her neck once more. “Liar,” he whispered.

She swallowed spasmodically. Aye, he knew her in so very many ways. Helia was afraid she’d never recover when they were brought apart.

Anthony let his arms fall to his sides.

As though he’d not set her body afire, he casually stepped away and stood so they faced one another.

By the granite look he leveled on Helia, she may as well have merely imagined all beneficence in his earlier embrace.

“Let me take a moment and clear your innocent head of any imaginings you cooked up,” he said bluntly. “The duke and duchess hand-selected Lady Alexandra Bradbury to be my bride on account of her impeccable bloodlines.”

Unlike Helia, whose Scottish blood made her someone the duke would never approve of. It shouldn’t smart. Helia was a proud Scot, and yet somehow, knowing she’d not be considered enough for Anthony left her hurting all over.

“No,” he continued, pulling her back from her own pitiful ruminations. “Their efforts would one day spare me from the onerous task of replaceing a bride of my own.”

He snorted. “I couldn’t care less who the duke selected as long as the lady was passable enough to bed. Not that I’m so very particular that bedding my wife should prove onerous,” he added as more of an afterthought.

Helia flinched. For his absolute indifference served as one more harsh, unwanted, but necessary reminder that all the things he’d done to Helia had not meant anything to him. Any woman would have done.

The muscles in Helia’s belly contracted.

She stood before Anthony, talking with him, but it felt like she was on the outside, watching a performance between two actors she didn’t recognize unfold before her.

Each horrid utterance to fall from Anthony’s lips turned each beautiful act between them into something sordid and dirty.

Helia grappled with her throat. “S-surely you cared that you were compatible and friends?” Her voice emerged as a whisper.

“Friends?” He tossed his head back and howled with a biting amusement. When he’d composed himself, Anthony gave Helia a pitying look. “A friendship with one’s spouse?” he repeated. “How plebeian.”

With every brutal word Anthony uttered so very casually, Helia’s horror grew and grew.

She could only stare at him.

He was even more damaged than she could have ever imagined. If she had any sense, she’d take this recent discovery and keep a far distance from him.

What was wrong with Helia that the part of her heart he’d somehow claimed begged her to help him learn to love and feel . . . anything other than this cold nothingness?

“She came to the marriage without a dowry,” he shared about his former betrothed, like it was dull gossip he recounted to some gent at the clubs.

Unlike Helia, whose father had ensured there would be funds for her, even if his estates had been unprofitable since Napoleon began wreaking havoc all over the Continent.

“But she was beautiful,” he said, equally cool and aloof.

But she was beautiful . . .

Despite Anthony’s detached assessment of the woman, he’d been so very close to marrying her it still managed to hit Helia like a kick to her solar plexus.

Anthony proceeded to rip Helia apart from the inside out.

“The lady was a Diamond.” Just as the papers had described. “Fair. Pale blonde hair.”

Also unlike Helia. Who, with her very auburn curls and even more abundant freckles, missed only a tartan to mark her as a Scot.

She curled her hands into tight fists.

“The lady ran off with another, a McQuoid.”

A McQuoid. A fellow Scot. Now his early derisiveness about Helia’s origins made sense.

Anguish threatened to crush her heart.

“Even knowing she’d likely spread her legs for him,” he continued, knocking Helia from her miserable musings and adding more kindling to her jealousy, “I was still willing to overlook her loss of a maidenhead. In fact, I assured her she could continue bedding him after we wed.”

Tears burned her eyes. “How very big of you, my lord,” she said, her voice thick.

Helia’s bitterness seemed to penetrate Anthony’s apathetic accounting. He sharpened his gaze upon her.

“Do not look at me like that,” he ordered, his voice harsh.

A tear squeezed out.

His nostrils flared and he jabbed a finger at Helia. “Like I didn’t tell you, like you didn’t know exactly what type of man I am.”

Another drop slipped down her cheek, and another.

He glared. “Like that! Stop!”

“A-all right,” she whispered, her voice wobbling.

Fury blazed from his eyes. He took an angry step toward her, and she automatically backed away.

Helia’s hip collided with the corner of Her Grace’s desk. The wood bit sharply into her side and she welcomed that pain, as around her, the notes she’d assembled took a second tumble to the floor.

And then, every last horrible thing that happened this day hit some manner of peak, and at last Helia cracked under the weight.

Anthony blanched. “Stop.” This time there was a note of desperation in that command.

“A-all r-right,” she repeated, and unable to meet his horrified eyes, she dropped her gaze to the pretty floral Aubusson carpet underneath her, and then froze.

Through the cloud of that shimmery water at her eyes, she registered the duchess’s name on a folded note.

It wasn’t, however, that which froze Helia where she sat, but rather, the familiar scrawl.

Her focus locked on the old letter. Helia quickly grabbed the sheet, unfolded it, and shock slammed into her.

She worked her gaze over the page again and again, but nothing changed: not the meticulous, graceful lettering. Nor the name inscribed at the very bottom of the loving note.

Emotion welled in her breast. In each word written, Helia heard her mother’s lyrical voice as she regaled her friend, the duchess, with tales of Helia’s first hunt alongside her father.

She read and reread those treasured lines and then slowly lifted her gaze.

From under black lashes, Anthony stared back with hard, cruel eyes.

Helia stumbled over her thoughts, before replaceing the courage to challenge him. “It appears, of the two of us, you are, in fact, the liar, my lord.”