The Wolf of Mayfair

How suddenly one comes to be happy, just when one is beginning to think one never is to be happy again!

—Ann Radcliffe, The Italian

A short while later, along the tideway of the River Thames, the world lay before Helia, a veritable winter wonderland of snowdrifts and ice amidst which had sprung a makeshift carnival of merchants and frolickers of all ages.

The frozen waterway found itself a temporary home to peddler tents; they sat in the distance, a collection of symmetrical forms and vibrant colors.

From within those booths rose the boisterous voices of peddlers hawking their wares. The din of that bustling activity melded with the rollicking laughter of the merrymakers.

For all the joy the Frost Fair had brought to London, Helia moved along the edge of that revelry, like a lost soul who’d been forced to dwell amongst the lucky living.

Though there felt nothing fortunate in this anguish sluicing away at her insides.

Since the moment she’d availed herself of the marquess’s carriage and servants and set out across London to put distance between her and the man who’d broken her heart, the memory of each cruel word he’d uttered had played over and over again, like a lash upon her heart and mind.

You think I care about you. Why? Because I had my hand up your skirts and your hot quim in my hand?

Helia quickened her stride, all the while wishing she could outrun each hated utterance that had crossed his lips. The memory of his hateful declaration, combined with the pace she’d set, caused her breath to come in harsh, uneven spurts. They slipped from her lips and left little clouds of white upon the frigid air.

She willed the echo of his voice to cease repeating in her mind—to no avail.

The thing about you, Helia Mairi Wallace, with your cheery outlook, despite the supposed death of your parents and a villainous cousin on your trail, and your always smiling face, is that in your naivete, you see good where it doesn’t exist. You expect there will be someone there to help and that things will get better. But they won’t.

Helia caught her lower lip between her teeth and bit down hard. Since the loss of her parents, hope had sustained her—hope that there was, in fact, safety, security, and happiness awaiting her. That charity all hinged upon just one woman and her family.

What she’d not anticipated was meeting the duchess’s enigmatic and clearly hurting son, Anthony. She’d not anticipated being drawn to a man so cynical and angry and with a thousand fortresses built about him.

You deluded yourself into seeing parts of him that aren’t really there. You let yourself believe he cared. And why? Because he gave you shelter from the storm? Because he sat beside you through your illness . . .

Only . . .

Aye. That’d been precisely what she’d thought.

Helia abruptly stopped on a slight rise overlooking the festivities. As the cold winter wind whipped her cloak about her legs, Helia ran a vacant gaze over the fair that existed as a blur down below.

Gentlemen didn’t tend to sick young ladies. But Anthony had.

Surely those glimpses she’d caught of him were real and—

The world is a shite place, full of shite things and shite people, Helia. People that lie. Just as you’ve done, Miss Wallace.

Helia yearned to clamp her hands over her ears to drown out the remembered viciousness of his charges and tone.

She blinked slowly, and at once the world came rushing back in an explosion of beautiful sound and color.

What is wrong with me? Melancholy? Woolgathering? That wasn’t who she was.

He was trying to scare me. To hurt me. She knew that. He had done so in a bid to avoid presenting himself as vulnerable in any way.

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 brilliant Scottish 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?

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.

“Mulțumesc,” 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 do you think, 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?

As she parted ways with the peddler, another strange, tingling sensation took hold. She did a sweep of her surroundings.

Excited energy thrummed amongst the throngs of revelers. A small cluster of dapperly dressed gentlemen each held drinks of their own. The lofty lords chatted and laughed uproariously. Bright-eyed, giggling children dashed and darted around the slower-moving adults.

“You are being ridiculous,” she muttered. Even knowing as much, when Helia resumed walking, she did so at a quickened pace.

Excited screams and trilling laughter filled the frozen fairgrounds.

Helia paused when she reached the portion of the frozen water where wild-looking sled races took place. How many times had her father pushed her in that way so that she’d soared and sailed so fast over Loch Morar, she’d felt a breath away from taking flight?

“Care for a roide, missus?”

Looking down at the tiny owner of that coarse Cockney, Helia smiled. The young boy couldn’t have been more than eight or nine.

She paid her fare, and soon she was squealing wildly as two young boys shoved each sled.

She went racing across the Thames, past the twirling skaters and the games of ninepins that’d broken out upon the ice.

Laughing, Helia held tight to the makeshift bar the boy had fashioned onto the sled.

The dizzying speed with which Helia sailed over the frozen river sent her hood whipping back; her curls tumbled over her shoulders. That same frigid air slapped at her face and stole her breath.

Over and over she went.

Time melted away.

All her troubles and worries faded along with it.

The gap-toothed, freckled boys gave Helia a final push, one that went cockeyed and sent them diverging in an uneven line.

As the world sped past, she closed her eyes tight, tipped her head back, and freed herself fully to the joy.

Until, too soon, the speed of her sled gradually slowed, then suddenly came to an unexpected jolting stop.

That abrupt finish brought her eyes flying open . . . and she froze.

A gentleman in a costly deep-blue, fur-lined cloak and a chimney-style, black top hat stood with a black riding boot propped on the edge of her sleigh.

Her stomach churned and fear exploded in her breast, a crippling terror that kept her paralyzed.

“Dearest Helia,” Mr. Draxton murmured in smooth, silky tones too hard to ever truly be warm. “My goodness, you’ve given me quite the chase.”