The Wolf of Mayfair

Do you believe your heart to be, indeed, so hardened, that you can look without emotion on the suffering, to which you would condemn me?

—Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho

The Marquess of Wingrave—icy as the dead and devoid of a heart. The nobleman’s name couldn’t have suited him more had it been hand-selected by the bean-nighe, that Scottish messenger from the Underworld and bringer of death.

Everyone had heard the dark tales of the Marquess of Wingrave.

Those forbidding and wicked stories had even found their way into Miss Helia Wallace’s corner of Scotland. Lord Wingrave, notorious rake. Vied for by women upon whom he scattered his attentions but never his affections. Fighter of duels—and winner of each of them—and yet unpunished because of the power he and his family possessed.

No warmth on the outside, no warmth on the inside . . .

Such were the words familiarly uttered about the stonyhearted Marquess of Wingrave, who according to all, came from a long line of cruel, callous dukes.

The duke possessed a reputation for browbeating his wife and anyone and everyone around him.

The marquess, on the other hand, was known for being cold as ice and as depraved as Caligula.

As such, Helia would take a malevolent, vainglorious lord over a Lothario.

In fact, so salacious had been the stories surrounding the marquess that Helia’s ma, dear friend to the Duchess of Talbert, had barred any papers mentioning Her Grace’s son, and threatened to remove from their employ anyone who spoke ill of Lord Wingrave.

But ripping all that fodder from Helia’s fingertips several years earlier and silencing servants and guests had not and could not erase everything Helia already read, heard, and knew about the infamous marquess.

Now standing in the sinister shadow of this pitiless gentleman, Helia discovered that, for once in her late mother’s life, the countess had been so very wrong.

The gossips had gotten everything written, whispered, or spoken about Lord Wingrave correct.

Desperation, however, left Helia no other option.

Burrowing deeper into her cloak, she drew the garment more tightly closed.

Ah’m no simpering lass, though. Ah’m a stouthearted, proud, hearty Scot.

She’d been raised to believe so and grown into that which her parents insisted she was, and now she dragged forth that mantra as a reminder.

It helped.

Some.

“Come all the way from . . . Scotland, I take it, by that ghastly accent,” Lord Wingrave cheerfully remarked, “and you don’t have a word to speak?”

“I’ve learned to speak like an Englishwoman, but when I’m . . .” She stumbled.

He arched a cool brow.

“There are times I slip in my speech,” she finished.

She’d not admit to him that nervousness or emotion brought out her Scottish.

“And it is a brogue,” she murmured. A man such as he wouldn’t care about the distinction, and yet as a proud Scot, it felt so very important to educate him on the difference.

The marquess stared at her.

“’Tis just,” she explained, “Scots have a brogue, not an accent, my lord.”

He looked at her with a palpable disdain. “Thank you for that fascinating lesson.”

Helia took her cue from his nasty response and met the marquess with silence.

Lord Wingrave folded his arms at his chest and proceeded to walk a predative path around Helia.

She kept her gaze forward and made herself remain motionless.

All the while Wingrave walked around her, he assessed her with that wintry, opaque stare.

Her garments did nothing to mute the marquess’s incisive gaze; it sheared through the fabric of her cloak and riding dress and cut all the way through her.

And here these past weeks, Helia had thought there could be no greater peril than the threat posed by Mr. Damian Draxton, the dastardly cousin who’d inherited after her father’s recent passing.

It hadn’t been enough Helia’s beloved father had died, passing the title of earl on to him. Cousin Damian was determined to wed Helia, bed her, all in the pursuit of her dowry.

That isn’t altogether true, a voice at the back of her mind pointed out. When you fled to London to meet the duchess, you feared Mr. Draxton might be here, too.

But Helia had been so desperate, and so fixed on escaping one threat, she’d not considered this danger until the moment she came face-to-face with the infamous Lord Wingrave—dark rake, feared by all, and possessed of a reputation as the very worst libertine.

Like a shark who’d got a scent of its prey, he continued his slow circle around her.

Her hands instinctively curled into balls and uncurled.

You will not be here alone with him.

The Duke and Duchess of Talbert resided here. Someday this stark, austere kingdom would belong to the inveterate rake. But for now, the current duke and duchess ruled over this place.

After this exchange, that could—and would—be the last she’d see of him. This residence was big enough to house all of London’s poor and, as such, certainly was big enough to avoid a hateful man like the Marquess of Wingrave.

That reminder should bring some solace.

It brought none.

Not until Helia found herself free of his company—and in that of the warm, kindly woman her mother had spoken of often—would she breathe easy.

After a full, threatening rotation, the marquess stopped so he stood face-to-face with Helia.

How was it possible for one man to ooze such malevolence, contempt, and indifference, all at the same time?

A derisive grin formed on lips as hard as this palace. “I most certainly do not remember you.”

He wouldn’t, because they’d never met before now. And thank the good Lord for it.

She was too relieved by his indifference to be insulted by his disparagement.

The sooner she could speak with the mistress of Horace House, the sooner she could be free of Lord Wingrave’s malevolent company.

Helia reached for the clasp of her cloak.

“Making yourself comfortable, are you?” he jeered.

She immediately dropped her arm to her side. “No doubt yer wondering my reason for being here.”

“You’re wrong,” he said flatly. “I would have to be curious or interested. I am neither.”

That brought her up short. She found her voice.

“I’m here to see the Duchess of Talbert,” she quietly explained.

“Are you?” he drawled, taunting, mocking, playing Helia as though she were the mouse to him, the cat.

“Aye, my lord. Ah ken ah’ve arrived at a late hour and Her Grace is surely abed, my lord.”

Which was why Helia found herself in the unfortunate position of explaining her presence here to a man who clearly did not wish to be having this exchange.

“The Duchess of Talbert retired to the country, more’s the fortunate for me.”

So emotionless in his reply, it was a moment before she registered what the marquess had said.

Helia blinked. Nay! She could not have escaped Cousin Damian, braved the long, arduous journey from Scotland—on her own—only to finally arrive and discover the duchess gone.

Her ears buzzed like a hornet’s nest had been knocked loose inside her head. Through the incessant hum, Lord Wingrave’s apathetic voice came—but from a distance.

“Now, Humphries, if you care to continue your employment, I’d suggest you work up the nerve of handling this person . . .”

Helia came rushing back to the horrifying moment.

“The duke,” she rasped, pulling both men’s attention back to her. She’d heard the current duke was a monster, but desperation gave her no other choice.

Helia’s breath came in quick, noisy bursts. “Then ah’ll see His Grace.”

“I am even more pleased to share the duke worked himself into a small apoplexy—even more fortunate for me—and was encouraged to recuperate in the country.”

Ah’m going to throw up . . .

“Your sister?” she whispered. Even as Helia asked, she knew she merely grasped at air, that dream as elusive as the help she desperately needed.

“My sister? Most days I forget I have one,” he said with a glib casualness that somehow made the horrifying admission all the uglier.

“Ye cannae throw me out,” she entreated.

Lord Wingrave frowned. “Of course I’d never do something so uncouth as to personally escort you outside. My butler will do that.”

Dismissing her like she was some street urchin he’d sullied himself by speaking to, the marquess lifted his hand and waved it in a circular motion.

The butler dashed over.

Helia blanched and moved beyond the servant’s reach.

The callow fellow cast a desperate look in his master’s direction.

“What is it?” the marquess demanded, and there was a steely warning layered into those three words. “I’m growing tired of this exchange.”

“My ma,” Helia begged. “My ma, she spoke often of ye.”

“Yer ma,” he said in a perfect rendition of a brogue that would have impressed her, were he not making a mockery of her speech. “You think I know your mother?”

She faltered. “Aye?” Unease tipped her response into a question. “She spoke often of ye and yer ma.”

The ghost of a grin iced his lips. “Your ma spoke of me?”

Hope stirred in her breast.

She nodded frantically. “Often. She regaled me with tales of ye.”

His smile became salacious. “Did she now?” he purred.

Helia gave another nod.

At last, she had managed to reach him. Relief swept through her, so profound it nearly brought her to her knees.

The marquess caught his obdurate chin between a thumb and forefinger and contemplated her with actual interest this time. “A Scot,” he murmured to himself. “I do not recall a Scot among my long list of former lovers.”

Helia strangled on her spit. “She was most certainly nah one of yer bed partners,” she whispered, filled with equal parts horror and indignation at the thought that her loving, beautiful ma would ever debase herself so.

“More’s unfortunate, that,” he said, with a trace of real regret. “I’ve never tupped a mother and a daughter, and I confess that prospect does hold some appeal.”

He’d have allowed her entry into his household if he’d been interested in bedding her.

All the horrid stories and whispers had not done proper justice to the marquess’s wicked ways. For Lord Wingrave proved even more dissolute than the world knew.

Helia’s fingers scrabbled with the sides of her skirt, until she caught the marquess’s knowing gaze on those movements.

She made herself stop and tried again, with slightly different words. “The storm has picked up and promises to be a mighty tempest, and I have nowhere to go.”

“Among those other ‘nowheres’ to go, you’d be wise to include this residence.”

Dread tightened her belly. She couldn’t have come this far only to find herself tossed out onto the London streets, in the middle of an unforgiving storm.

Helia, desperately yearning to see that kind soul her late ma had described, scoured the vast foyer and interconnecting halls.

Panic doubling in her breast, Helia looked past Lord Wingrave and raised her gaze some three stories.

Alas, there came no benevolent duchess sweeping forth to rescue Helia from both the storm and the lady’s son. No formidable duke and censorious father to chastise Lord Wingrave over his reprehensible behavior toward a lady.

“Yer certain Her Grace is not in?” she implored, directing that question at London’s most feared and revered gentleman.

“What, are you not equally interested in meeting with the duke?” he taunted. “That detail does not escape me.”

She pressed her lips together. For she wasn’t. She had absolutely no wish to meet an all-powerful duke whose wife had clearly hidden a dear friendship from him.

Wingrave arched an eyebrow. “Perhaps you’ve heard scintillating tales of how he’s destroyed the reputations and social standings of fellow peers because of even the slightest offense?”

Wingrave’s pastimes included bedding beauties. His sire, on the other hand, enjoyed playing with—and destroying—people’s lives to appease his own moments of boredom.

Helia tried and failed to swallow.

“Or,” Lord Wingrave continued, with apparent glee at her disquiet, “then there are the young debutantes who became spinsters because the duke has blacklisted their families. And do you know why he did that, my dear?”

When she didn’t answer quickly enough, he prodded: “Hmm?”

She managed to shake her head.

Wingrave leaned close and whispered, “He thinks nothing of destroying lives, because it brings him great amusement to do so.”

Helia gasped. She raised her fingers to bury her exhalation of horror—too late.

Cruelty for cruelty’s sake was something she could not understand.

And this is the family to whom you’ve turned, a voice in her head jeered.

Except . . .

“What of your mother?” she asked softly. “What stories do you have of her?”

A muscle rippled along his powerful, square jaw.

“It brings me the utmost pleasure to say neither the duke nor the duchess are in town,” he declared, with the first hint of true mirth she’d spied from him—something she’d believed impossible until now.

It did not escape Helia’s notice he’d not a nasty thing to say about his mother, and she felt hope rekindle in her breast.

That sentiment, however, proved short lived.

Lord Wingrave nodded. Like an obedient pup, his butler trotted over and immediately opened the door.

Wind whipped inside. Snow piled up in a growing mound around the foyer floor.

She looked from the marquess to the threshold, then back to the marquess again.

“Ye would send me out in this?” Only the knowledge that if she were turned away, there’d be absolutely nowhere to go kept her pleading with him.

“Not only am I sending you out in this, I’m doing so happily.” He glanced down the length of his aquiline nose at Helia. “I’ve already shown you greater generosity than this situation merits.”

Never before had she known a soul could be so dark and empty as Lord Wingrave’s. What made a man this way?

“You’ve said enough mocking things about me being Scottish,” she said, needing to know why he detested her so. “Is that why ye’ll so easily turn me out and let me die on the streets of London?”

“My dear,” he drawled, sounding faintly amused. “I’d have to work up the emotion to care that you are a Scot. I couldn’t care either way whether you were Mary, Queen of Scots, returned from the dead or Bloody Mary herself.”

“Helia Mairi Wallace,” she whispered.

He stared blankly at her.

Maybe if he knew her name, he would see her not as a bothersome thing on his doorstep but a living, breathing woman.

Och, my lass, with yer jolly smile and happy spirit, ah couldn’t have picked a more perfect name for ye.

Those long-ago murmurings of her mother flitted through her mind, and in this instant, that remembrance was a bittersweet one.

“My name is Helia Mairi Wallace,” she repeated thickly. “Daughter of the late Laird Kilmarnock and Earl of Buccleuch.”

“Irrelevant,” he muttered coolly under his breath. “The only bearing your name has on the matter is it indicates you are not in possession of any connection to the duke, who despises and detests the Scottish and all things associated with that land and their people.”

“What will ah do?” she asked, the question as much to herself as to him.

He flicked a piece of lint from his sleeve. “My dear, since you were so irksome as to invade my household, I’ve not given a thought to you or what you should, could, or would do—that is, aside from showing yourself out.”

Wingrave turned to go.

“B-but . . . but . . .” Helia lifted her palms up at his back. “It isn’t yer household.”

As soon as it slipped out, she knew she’d said the wrong thing.

He wheeled around.

“The brazenness of you,” he snarled.

Good God. She was making a mess of all this. “I dinnae mean to—”

“You did not mean to what?” he whispered. “Insult me? Question my ownership of this place and everything I deem mine?”

Helia struggled to swallow. “I’d never insult ye.” At least, not to his face. Alone, she’d let spew every last hateful thought she had of him. “What ah m-meant—”

He took a slow, deliberate, predatory step toward her, and it briefly stalled the rest of her words.

“What ah meant,” she repeated, this time in a steadier tone, “is that the duchess is my godmother, and the residence belongs to the Duke and Duchess of Talbert—”

Wingrave narrowed his eyes upon her. “Finish it.”

She wavered.

“Say whatever it is you intended to say, wench.”

Even as saying nothing was wiser, his low, resonant baritone compelled her to speak. “Yer their son,” she finished weakly.

“I am the Marquess of Wingrave.” His gravelly, low-pitched words had the same effect as if he’d shouted.

“Ah dinnae mean any disrespect, my lo—”

“I am next in line to the dukedom of Talbert. All of this, everything around you”—he tossed his arms wide to display the powerful kingdom around them—“belongs to me. The current duke is merely holding on to it a short while more. He is a mere guardian of what is mine and what will belong to me and mine.”

For God’s sake, what had she done?

“I am set to inherit any number of great things from the duke and duchess,” he said, this time conversationally. “Vast land holdings. A fortune to rival Midas’s. Power to surpass the Savior and Satan combined.”

Lord Wingrave curled his lips in a jeering grin. “My parents’ goddaughters, however, are fortunately not bequeathed to me.”

“Goddaughters?” she repeated dumbly.

“Thought you were so very special, did you? My mother has any number of goddaughters. She is soft. Weak. Easy prey for one such as you. It is why countless gentlewomen seek to form advantageous connections with the duchess. They hope that such an association will pay dividends to their homely daughters. Let me spare you from wondering: it won’t.”

Her stomach dropped. Something in knowing the duchess had served as godmother to any number of young ladies made Helia’s connection to Her Grace both less significant and special.

“Humphries?”

The butler immediately clamored out from behind the enormous hall clock, where he’d taken shelter from Wingrave’s ire.

“Give the lady some coins and show her the door.”

She blinked wildly.

Then Lord Wingrave’s crisp directive penetrated Helia’s misery.

“I don’t need to be shown the door,” she pleaded. “One night. Please, and then ye have my promise I willnae ask for anything more.”

The duke spun so quickly he knocked the rest of that thought from Helia’s mouth.

“You’re dismissed,” Lord Wingrave murmured.

She stiffened, and for a moment, she believed that terse order to be directed at her.

In one rapid move, the butler brought the doors closed and then bolted from the foyer, leaving Helia and the marquess.

Alone.

The penetrating chill his presence wrought proved a greater cold than even the tempest raging beyond those panels.

His silence was ominous, savage.

Finally, the marquess spoke. “All right, you may stay.”

A relief so profound went through her, it brought tears to her eyes, blurring his harshly beautiful visage.

Her joy died a swift death.

“Do you know, Miss Helia Wallace of Scotland,” he said silkily. “For a virginal young lady on her own, with only your virtue to barter for your existence, you seem very willing to throw it away by sharing the same household with a dastard like me. No companions or respectable figures about to shield your reputation and honor . . . just me.”

He sought to scare her . . . and it was working. “Snow will soon blanket London. It is but a night.” She reminded herself of that as much as him. Tomorrow she would be off for the country, with the world none the wiser.

“Ah, but it is not just any night, Miss Wallace.” Lord Wingrave stroked his index finger along the curve of her cheek. “It is a night with me.”

She trembled—not with a deserved fear or disgust but for reasons unknown to her. He glided that long, lone digit in a haunting caress that stirred . . . something, something unfamiliar deep in her belly.

An arrogant grin slashed his lips up.

“And when you are ruined,” he murmured, “you can rely on one truth—I will never marry you. At best, you’ll be my mistress, and then only if I can rouse enough interest to want a place between your legs.”

With a scathing smile and only that cruel reminder of a different threat Helia faced by simply being here, Lord Wingrave stalked off.

The quiet tread of his footfalls, measured enough to match a soldier’s precisive march, faded into nothing, so all that remained was the echo of his portentous words.

Helia stood there, shivering, long after he’d gone.

That previous sense of deliverance was no more.

For she’d done it; she’d managed to persuade a callous Lord Wingrave to grant her a place to stay.

And yet, this night, in putting forth her need to survive a storm, she’d imperiled her reputation—and in that, her very future.