The Wolf of Mayfair

One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world.

—Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho

A madwoman had invaded Wingrave’s residence.

Nay, worse. He’d allowed a madwoman into his midst.

There was no other accounting for the chit’s gumption.

And he, a master of self-control, found the threads of his restraint frayed. “What the hell do you think you are doing?”

Miss Wallace looked up at him with enormous, plate-size green eyes. “Eating?” she whispered.

He narrowed his eyes into thin slits. “What was that?” He added a note of warning to that query, one that, in frosty tones, spelled out clearly that his was a hypothetical and her silence was expected here.

The minx pressed three fingers near the right corner of her mouth and spoke, this time more loudly. “I . . . Eating,” she repeated. “I am eating. Or . . . attempting to. Unless you make it a habit of not allowing guests to dine?” she ventured, with a sheepish smile.

Wingrave’s brows shot up, and for the first time in his life, he found himself taken aback.

Why, was she actually attempting to jest with him?

He flared his nostrils. My god, the brashness. The insolence. People didn’t joke in his presence and certainly not over anything he said.

He swiftly found his footing, and latched on to the last foolish thing she’d uttered.

“If you harbor any kind of illusion you’re my guest—”

“Your mother’s guest,” she said softly, all seriousness once more.

His mother’s guest? And wonder of wonders, he found himself capable of humor, after all. No doubt she referred to herself so only because the alternative terrified her—and rightly so—out of her virginal mind. That she kept company with him, London’s most notorious rake and womanizer.

“You find that amusing, Lord Wingrave?” she asked, stupidity making her bold as brass.

“If you think that my mother would give so much as a single thought to one such as you, then you clearly don’t possess any actual knowledge of or connection to the Duchess of Talbert, or for that matter, anyone in this family.”

He may as well have hit her for the pain that contorted her features. “Impossible! The beneficent, warmhearted woman my mother spoke of would never—” Miss Wallace stopped.

Understanding sparkled in her big eyes. “I see what you’re doing,” she whispered.

What he was doing?

Don’t ask. Don’t ask. Don’t—

“What is it you think I’m doing?” A combined annoyance with her as much as himself brought that sharp question past his reluctant lips.

She looked at him like he’d lassoed a star for her. “You seek to protect her.”

Protect her? “Who?”

As if energized by the prospect of Wingrave being some sort of protective, devoted son and not the heartless bastard he in fact was, Miss Wallace continued prattling on.

“You said your mother is soft. Tenderhearted, and you wished to protect her from people preying on her.”

He snorted. Madness. It was madness that afflicted the lady, after all.

“I said she is soft,” he snapped. “Weak. Easy prey for one such as you.”

“You and I? We are saying the same things.”

His mouth moved . . . but no words came out. He found himself . . . thunderstruck.

That was the conclusion she’d come to?

With perfect aplomb, his Scottish visitor resumed eating.

He’d stepped onto the stage of a farce. That was all there was to explain any of this.

Dumbstruck, he glanced around for the other players. His gaze landed on the two footmen stationed near the sideboard; both servants’ eyes were wide with wonder and shock.

Good God, she’d even managed to crack the implacable facades of the cheerless staff here at Horace House.

At catching their master’s glare, their demonstrative expressions died a swift death. Both servants went instantly stone-faced.

“Get out,” he whispered.

The servants scattered at various points throughout the breakfast room all made a hasty retreat, leaving him and Miss Wallace alone.

Wingrave turned his ire back to the one deserving of his wrath.

As the last footman drew the door shut with a soft click, the imp of a lady stared frantically at the panel. She paled to the point that the freckles marked the only bit of color in her face.

He expected tears. He waited for her to flee.

He did not, however, anticipate the way she turned her attention back to him. Then, after looking perfectly unbothered as she slathered her roll with strawberry preserves, she took a big, healthy bite better befitting a man Wingrave’s size.

“I’ll ask you one more time, Miss Wallace,” he whispered. “What are you doing at my breakfast table?”

The minx paused mid-chew, and craning her head back, she met his gaze with an unflinching and astonishing directness.

She didn’t quaver. She didn’t look away. And she, the first person to do so, unnerved the hell out of him.

Mayhap she was a sorceress, for the otherworldly shade of her green eyes knocked the thoughts from his head.

The lady finished her bite, dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin, and lowered that crisp white linen back to her lap. “I think it should be clear,” she said.

Was anything clear any longer? Certainly not since she’d stormed his foyer.

“I said I was eating, Lord Wingrave.”

And with her succinct explanation, she continued doing just that.

Whatever magnetic pull she’d had over him, that moment of madness, shattered.

Wingrave curled his fingertips into the edge of the mahogany table and leaned forward. “My household, Miss Wallace,” he seethed. “Why are you in my household?”

Confusion filled her enormous, expressive emerald eyes. “I . . . You . . . allowed me to remain at least until the storm had abated and you’d confirmed for yourself my connection to your mother.”

He gawked at her.

That was the conclusion she’d reached?

“I did no such thing.”

The lady’s high, freckled brow creased. “You didn’t?”

He may as well have kicked a cat for the misery contained within her question.

“No, I most certainly did not.”

“You did,” she said entreatingly. “You—”

“I did not,” he thundered.

Aghast, Wingrave reeled back on his heels.

For the first time in the entirety of his life, he, who’d forever been a master of himself and who’d prided himself on not possessing the weak emotions of everyone else around him had lost control.

He’d hand it to the lady. She barely flinched.

Nay, instead, with a calm to rival the sternest tutor the duke had employed to school Wingrave, she dusted her palms together and then stood.

No more than three inches past five feet, but with the regal authority with which she stood and looked down her pert, freckled nose at him, she may as well have soared past the foot in length he had on her.

“I allowed you to spend the night, Miss Wallace. Not a moment more. I wasn’t suggesting you remain indefinitely,” he said.

“And I’m not looking to stay indefinitely.” She paused. “Please, when the storm lets, allow me a carriage to seek out Her Grace.”

This again.

Her insistence on some manner of connection to his family.

It was an impossibility.

Her staying with his mother also meant the minx would, in fact, be remaining indefinitely with Wingrave.

Briefly setting aside his annoyance, he gave her another look.

Attired in a drab brown dress that did nothing favorable for her trim, slim-hipped figure, in the light of day, Miss Wallace certainly wasn’t the manner of woman to appeal to him and certainly not to earn a place in his bed.

Wingrave stared at the dauntless lady before him. “Given your insolence and brass, I trust your mother possessed a like disposition.”

A wistful smile stole across her features, momentarily transforming her from ordinary chit to fetching fairy and, in the process, transfixing Wingrave.

“Aye, she did,” she said with an affection and warmth he’d never before known where his own mother was concerned. “She also had the biggest spirit and biggest heart.”

Her lilting musings proved as hypnotic as her physical metamorphosis.

As from the far fringes of the furthest corner of his mind, a long-ago memory whispered forward.

Wingrave, racing across the paved stone between the neatly trimmed boxwoods, heading for the three brick steps that led to a grass terrace above and the wrought iron bench that sat there.

Then, tripping on those same steps, coming down so hard on his knees that he wore the faint scars of that innocuous tumble all these years later.

And then, his mother, swiftly scooping him up and holding him close to her chest, softly singing. Those strains of a forgotten-until-now lullaby echoed in his head.

“Lullay, mine Liking, my dear Son, mine Sweeting,

Lullay, my dear heart, mine own dear darling.”

Miss Wallace gave her head a shake, and it was as though that slight twitch of her head cleared his own and freed his words.

“My father would never allow my mother any connection to a woman with spirit,” he finally said.

“Och, but don’t you ken, women are possessed of all manner of secrets and courage.”

Not all women. This stalwart minx, yes.

His mother, absolutely not.

“Not my mother,” he said with absolutely certainty. “The duchess does what the duke wishes and orders her to do.”

A twinkle set her eyes aglow. “I trust he believes that and you think it.”

“Trust, I know that,” he said flatly. The duchess hadn’t fought the duke when he’d at last had need of Wingrave, and demanded his new heir’s every hour be spent with him and devoted to learning the workings of the dukedom.

Wingrave thumped a hand against his leg. “We are at an impasse, Miss Wallace.”

“Aye.” That deservedly worried glint returned to her eyes. “But if you agree to allow me to stay, at least until the snaw relents, then the impasse would cease.”

He could.

Just as he could easily throw her out.

And it should be easy.

“Lord Wingrave?” she ventured.

“Quiet,” he said inattentively. “I’m thinking.”

He was heartless and hardened and unmoved by anyone.

So why didn’t he toss her on her pear-shaped buttocks?

Could it be, she’d been correct earlier? Could it be that all men—even soulless ones, such as him—possessed . . . a conscience?

Wingrave shrank. Impossible.

The remorseless wind howled and battered against the windowpanes.

From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Miss Wallace as she slipped away from him, and for a moment, he thought she’d at last come to her senses and left of her own volition.

Instead, she wandered over to the winterscape on full display in the wide french windows.

Presenting Wingrave with her back, she gripped the edge of the mahogany and stared at the storm raging outside.

“I always loved the snow,” she said softly. “And in the Highlands? There’s so much of it.”

He’d asked her for silence. Of course she’d been unable to grant that request which had been more of a demand.

Peculiarly, he found himself unable to shoot that retort her way. Strangely, he found himself . . . angling his undamaged ear so he could hear the whole of her telling.

Miss Wallace touched a lone fingertip to the glass, and her index finger left an oval-shaped mark upon the frost. “As a wee lass, my ma and da and I, the moment the storm would let, we would play hide-and-seek. My da was always it first, and would count to thirty.”

As she spoke, her speech dissolved into a thicker, more noticeable brogue that swallowed up nearly completely her crisper English tones.

“A wad trudge throuch as quick as Ah coud an’ jump intae as many drifts as Ah coud, then race an’ hide myself in one. Then, whan he’d come close tae catchin’ me, I’d spring oot an’ hurl a snowball at him, hittin’ him square in the nose, an’ ah’d tak aff runnin’. He’d pretend tae howl an’ shout, but he let me evade capture.”

That bucolic scene she spoke of was something foreign to the Blofield way of life and living. Family closeness and playful moments were not something they partook in.

The crystal panes reflected back the sentimental smile adorning her full lips. “Then, after, we’d return, sit in the Great Hall by the old stone hearth, and sip hot chocolate and sing carols and Scottish ballads.”

Her smile wavered, dipped, and then faded altogether, and it was as if the cold breeze had gusted in the room and stolen the warmth Wingrave hadn’t even known existed until the woman before him.

She cast a glance over her shoulder, back his way, those big eyes now stricken. “And I’m ashamed to say, I loved the snow and wintry months, but I dinnae give a proper thought to all the people who dinnae have a home and warm hearth. Or food.”

As if on cue, her stomach growled, and Miss Wallace reflexively touched a hand to her flat belly. “Until now,” she said, with a palpable shame not a single lord or lady of London could have managed to express.

The lady took a step toward him, and he hooded his eyes.

She stopped a pace away. “Until now. Until this very moment”—she pointed a finger at the floor—“I didn’t know what it was to be reliant upon the generosity, charity, and kindness of strangers.”

“I’m neither kind, nor generous, nor given to charity,” he said flatly, determined to disabuse her of the desperate conclusions she’d come to.

Miss Wallace briefly considered her leather boots. “Mayhap you haven’t been before.” She lifted her eyes to Wingrave’s. “You could be now.”

She believed that. She actually believed that.

A log shifted in the hearth, setting off a noisy hiss and crackle of embers.

Turn her out.

Or . . . let her stay.

What was it to him whether she remained now, or left tomorrow, or the next day? In fact, she’d proven a diversion from the tediousness of London at winter.

Perhaps she could prove an even greater diversion, in more lascivious ways.

“Fine.”

In further testament of the lady’s naivete, her wide eyes grew impossibly round, and an even bigger smile curled her lips up into her matching and deceptively sweet dimples. Her joy transformed Miss Wallace’s elfin features into something . . . almost . . . beautiful.

“Thank you,” she said, full of her customary ebullience, and then as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she took Wingrave’s hands in her own.

Heat from her silken, soft palms radiated into his own larger ones, and his traitorous fingers curled themselves over hers in a bid to be closer to that tremendous warmth.

“May the scent of the heather and Bonnie blue bell waft a message to you that no words can tell.” Her husky, dulcet tones pulled him deeper under her spell. “May the links in our friendship keep steadfast and true . . .”

Friendship? Good God, was that the conclusion she’d drawn? That snapped Wingrave out of his trance.

Her winsome smile deepened. “May good fortune and health be ever with you.”

Wingrave sneered. “If I were really enjoying good fortune, we’d not even be having this discussion now.”

He attempted to pull free of whatever maddening pull and hold her touch had over him, but even slight of frame as she was, she proved as tenacious with her grip as she did with her words. “Now that we’re friends . . .”

How droll. “We are not friends,” he said. “I do not have friends.” He’d people who sought a connection to him for the title he’d one day inherit, but that was it.

Compassion flared in her eyes, and she tightened her hold upon Wingrave’s hands, and that deepening heat in their drawing proved compelling. Lust stirred. From a mere touch?

Nay, it wasn’t a mere touch, but rather that of an innocent whose hands were unsullied and inexperienced.

Now, in his mind, he envisioned guiding her fingers around his hard cock and teaching her the rhythm he so loved.

“You may not have had friends before, but you have one now,” she murmured.

Friends. The half-wit. Had she not yet realized he was not a man who wanted or needed friends?

“I was fine before,” he purred.

Miss Wallace scoffed. “No one is fine without friends.”

Suddenly, he switched the position of their palms so that he’d hers under his, and his fingers curled tightly around to keep her in place.

She trembled but did not pull away, and that show of courage and strength only fueled the flames of his unlikely desire.

“As I said . . .” He drew her closer and placed his lips close to her right ear. “I have no need of friends, Miss Wallace,” he whispered.

Near as they were, he felt her body quiver with a physical awareness he doubted she understood.

With his spare hand, he pushed her heavy titian curls away from her neck and exposed that long, graceful arch. He moved his mouth lower. “What I do have a current need for is a mistress.” As he spoke, his lips brushed her skin in an intentional kiss. “Might you be interested in filling that coveted role, Helia?”

Daughter of the sun god, and possessed of an irrepressible aura of light, a more perfect name for the lady couldn’t exist if Helios himself had conferred it upon the effervescent, titian-haired sprite.

The column of her throat moved wildly. Her supernaturally lustrous lashes fluttered.

Satisfaction brought his lips curling at the corners.

Hungry to taste of her innocent mouth, he moved to take it under his—and claim their first kiss.

“Helia.” Her threadbare name in the form of a breathy exhalation froze him.

He stared at her.

“You called me Helia,” she murmured, her eyes heavy with desire and some other soft, sentimental emotion he’d never before witnessed or experienced and as such couldn’t put a name to.

“And?” he snapped, annoyed that she’d befuddled him when all he wanted to do was drink his fill of her mouth so he could at last be free of this malignant spell that, in her innocence, she’d cast upon him.

Her long, sooty lashes lifted to reveal glittering green eyes. “That is the first time you’ve done so.”

Impatient, he repeated himself. “And? What is it exactly you are saying?”

“Well,” she said slowly, “you’ve now referred to me as my given name, but I do not have yours.”

“Wingrave.”

She shook her head. “That is your title.”

“You don’t need to refer to me as anything else,” he said bluntly.

Helia scoffed. “Of course I do, and it can’t be Wingrave, because that is a rather grim title that does not suit you.”

“It suits me beyond perfectly.”

“Aye, with your surly temper, it does, but as Edward Gibbon says, the prediction contributes to the accomplishment.”

“The prediction being my name?” he drawled.

“In this case.” She gave his fingers a little squeeze, as if to pull the information she sought out of him.

“What proper Scottish lady reads and quotes the great essayist Edward Gibbon?” he mocked.

“The same lady whose parents wished her to be well read in many topics.”

They stared at one another—again at an impasse.

He’d hand it to her. If he were in the habit of admiring people, with the unswerving way her gaze held his, she’d have been one he admired.

Helia peered up at him, and when he offered only an answering silence, she sighed. “I am going to find out your name, Lord Wingrave. And not only that, I wager the very generous offer of hospitality you tendered that you’re going to freely give it.”

“You shall be waiting until the cow comes home,” he said dryly.

She waggled her eyebrows. “Ah, a Highland cow, unlike a Sassenach one, is a friendly sort. They never fight, and also enjoy the company of humans.”

She was making that up. He wanted to say so, but the twinkle in her eyes indicated she both knew and waited for that retort.

He grated his jaw. God, what was it about this minx that got his thoughts all topsy-turvy?

The lady sighed, and then with her two hands, she took his right palm in her own and forced a shake. “I’m so very happy to be growing our friendship.”

Growing their friendship?

He flashed a cool smile. “I thought you’d already declared us friends, Miss Wallace.”

“Ah, wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.”

Quoting Gibbon and now Aristotle. He sought to mask his surprise.

The women he kept company with had many years on Helia Wallace. They favored the baubles he bestowed, in exchange for an emotionless connection where he sated his baser urges. Every last woman he’d had any association with read the gossip pages, and not a thing more.

And others? His mother and sister indulged in tawdry, melodramatic gothic novels, certainly not Gibbon and Greek philosophers.

All the while, through his quiet shock, Helia stared at him with warm, friendly eyes.

This was too much. She was too much.

Growling, Wingrave anchored an arm around her waist and drew her close so she could feel the stiff line of his cock.

She gasped, but did not pull away.

“Do you feel that, Helia?” he whispered jeeringly against her ear.

Wingrave rubbed his shaft in a slow circle over the flat of her belly. Her eyes went wide, and her cheeks flushed a pretty shade of pink.

“Feel how hard I am for you, sweet?” He pressed himself against her stomach. “Does this put you in mind of friendship?”

At her silence, he licked at her neck and lightly nipped that damp spot, marking her.

A little moan spilled from her lips and Wingrave grinned.

She wanted him.

Of course she did.

His smile faded.

Her body’s surrender to him somehow proved more potent than that of any of the other women who’d come undone in his arms.

“You are now on your second day alone with me, Helia, and as such, ruined.” He scooped her by the buttocks and pressed her more tightly against his cock. “You may as well allow yourself the rapture that comes with your ruination.”

Her eyes grew stricken.

Then, like a hellcat, she struggled in his arms.

Wingrave released her in an instant.

Her chest heaved, rising and falling furiously.

And without a word, Helia turned on her heel and fled.