The Wolf of Mayfair

O! useful may it be to have shewn, that, though the vicious can sometimes pour affliction upon the good, their power is transient and their punishment certain; and that innocence, though oppressed by injustice, shall, supported by patience, finally triumph over misfortune!

—Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho

The following morning, Helia and Anthony, without any fanfare, and with only servants as witnesses, were married.

The ancient-looking vicar, with nascent tones, who’d been unable to deny the future Duke of Talbert’s demands, performed a perfunctory ceremony that joined Helia and Anthony until death did part them.

She and Anthony had promptly adjourned to the dining room for their wedding breakfast, whereupon her husband had ordered the servants to leave. The door hadn’t even fully closed behind the last footman when Anthony placed Helia on the edge of the dining table.

He’d lifted her skirts and feasted upon her. Anthony, like a flesh-and-blood Lothario, had wrung climax after climax from Helia, until her center had pulsed and gone nearly numb from the intensity of his loving.

Then he’d left.

And she’d not seen him since.

Helia, curled up on the throne-like chair she’d commandeered in the duke’s office, rested her chin atop her right fist, and stared out at the single yew tree in the distance.

Absently, Helia played with the chain Anthony had placed around her neck, with the ring that marked her as his.

Even now, thinking of all the things he’d done to her this morn left her shamefully wet between her legs.

Helia didn’t doubt he desired her. Countless times he’d made her body sing and taught her something new in the art of lovemaking. He hungered for her the very way she ached for him.

Of course, knowing Anthony’s reputation and his lusty appetite, she’d anticipated they’d spend hours making love—which they had.

Aside from that, she didn’t know what else she’d expected of their marriage—

Helia pulled a face. “Liar. You know precisely what you expected.” And still expect.

When Anthony had barged into her chambers last evening, he’d filled her ears with the most beautiful of promises. With all that and the security, safety, and stability he vowed, how could she want for more?

Furthermore, although he’d not said he loved her, Helia knew with every other word he’d uttered that he cared for her, respected her, valued her, and wanted her to be his partner in life.

But she wanted more. She was the greediest of creatures, having so very much from Anthony, but only truly wanting the one thing he withheld—his heart.

Groaning, Helia dropped her head along the back of her seat.

From their first meeting he’d been clear—he didn’t deal in that intolerable thing called love.

Where Helia had been born, raised, and nurtured by that emotion, Anthony’s almighty parents had withheld it. The one person he’d freely loved had been taken from him.

“Is it any wonder you became the man you did?” she whispered.

He saw that grand emotion as the greatest weakness and had fully insulated himself from all people.

Incorrectly and heartrendingly, Anthony had come to the erroneous conclusion that his loving others brought with it pain, loss, and weakness.

Helia took in a shuddery breath.

Wind knocked at the windowpanes in Mother Nature’s forlorn assent.

This time, Helia felt him before she heard him.

Anthony slid his arms over the back of the chair. “Look at you, taking over the duke’s offices,” he whispered against her ear. “My wife. My marchioness.” With each claim, he took a bite of her sensitive lobe. “My future duchess, my queen.”

With a maddening slowness, he ran his skilled hands over her body.

He still wore his fine leather riding gloves, an indication—and reminder—that he’d only just returned.

Anthony filled his palms with her breasts.

Her breath caught sharply in a telltale sign of her desire.

He chuckled, a deep, throaty rumble that indicated he knew all too well the effect he was having on her.

How easily he roused her to an all-consuming lust. And yet . . . she wanted more than that.

If she let Anthony have her now, without any hesitation on her part and with no discussion of his abrupt departure today, she’d never truly be his equal.

With a strenuous effort, Helia pushed his palms away.

He grunted. A man of his talents would never be familiar with any form of rejection of his attentions. The reminder of how many women there’d been before her left her more than a little piqued.

“I prefer it here, Anthony,” she said evenly. “The view of the gardens is superior. That is my reason for being here.”

“Do you know where you’d prefer it more, dearest Helia?” he asked, tempting her as he slipped another hand over her breast. “In my arms. In my bed. On this desk. Hell, anywhere and everywhere.”

This time, with a far greater struggle, she gently but firmly took his wrists, so her fingers made a makeshift shackle around them.

Not that she deluded herself into believing he couldn’t or wouldn’t break that weak binding were he to so wish it. Her fingers didn’t even manage to go all the way around Anthony’s wrist.

But in this instant, he allowed her power over him and this exchange, and she loved him all the more for allowing their relationship to be one where they were equals.

“Are you cross with me, love?”

Love . . . Her heart skittered a beat. This time, that endearment emerged with a softness he’d never before infused within it.

“Ye’ve been gone,” she said huskily.

Anthony stared at her for a long moment. “And?”

And she dreaded the discussion about what had sent him running but wanted to have it. “Ye left on our wedding day,” she said, a gentle rebuke.

He continued to study her, and then a flash of understanding sparked in his eyes.

Suddenly, Anthony scooped her up.

Helia emitted a squeak as he flipped their positioning so he sat enthroned upon the ducal chair and she, with her skirts rucked high about her waist, sat astride his hips.

“Oh, kitten,” he murmured, a soft smile on his hard lips. “Never tell me you believe I’ve gone to find pleasure with another woman.”

Actually, she hadn’t. She’d been far more concerned he’d gone into hiding because he’d married her and now felt stuck.

“No.” She paused and wrinkled her brow. “Is that something I should be worried about?” She found herself possessed of an all-potent, venomous jealousy for every woman who’d come before her, and for every one who’d seek a place in his bed even with him now married.

He made a tsking sound. “Oh, Helia, you still have not gathered that forevermore you are the only woman I will ever have in my life and bed.”

Anthony brushed a palm over her cheek, and she leaned into that intoxicating caress. “You are a fire in my blood. I will never tire of you, wife. I will continue to discover new ways to worship your body and make love to you and will only run out of them when I either die or the earth folds into darkness.”

He gave her a sharp look. “Do you understand me, Helia?”

She trembled, liquefied by the devotion of this once great rake. For me. He swore his fealty and fidelity to her.

Helia nodded.

Anthony tweaked her nose playfully. “I still did not answer your question, though, did I?”

“No.” Some of the tension went out of her; inner coward that she was, they’d not have the discussion about her declaration—at least not now.

“Do you want me to?” he teased.

“Only if you wish to tell me.”

“Very well. If you aren’t curious . . .” He started to rise, but Helia wrapped her arms about his neck and held firmly on to him.

“I may be mildly curious, husband,” she murmured.

“Only mildly curious?” Again, Anthony made to stand.

Laughing, Helia clung more tightly to him. “Very well. I am outrageously curious. Are you satisfied?” she managed to get out through her mirth.

He covered her mouth with his, in a punishing kiss that robbed Helia of breath, and she kissed him back with a like fury and passion.

All her earlier questions and worries of where he’d been faded. Not a single cogent thought could exist in her head when he made love to her.

A commotion out in the hall suddenly reached them, and then rapidly approaching footsteps. “Where the hell is he?”

That austere, commanding tone could belong to only one man—the Duke of Talbert.

Bloody hell.

The office door exploded open, and Wingrave’s parents stood frozen at the threshold.

The duchess was regal as ever, her features largely untouched by age, but for a few slight creases at the corners of her eyes.

His ashen father, with a height similar to Wingrave’s and far greater bulk from too many spirits and candied fruits, had presence alone that would have roused a man to fear. That, however, coupled with a ducal title that went back to 1326 made the Duke of Talbert a chilling menace.

For anyone and everyone—everyone other than Wingrave.

The duchess gasped and promptly covered her eyes.

Her husband, on the other hand, took in the tableau of a pale Helia and Wingrave’s hold upon her. As he did, his eyes grew wider and wider until rage made them large circles.

Any other time Wingrave would have thrilled at having his father find him in the goddamned ducal office and claiming this space as his own.

Not this time, not with Helia’s legs dangling on either side of his lap, and him a handful of front falls from plunging himself up and in her.

Wingrave carefully helped Helia to her feet and made sure her skirts were drawn into place to provide deserved modesty, and then stood beside her.

“You have terrible timing, Duke,” he drawled. “You should have remained in the country. Your color is shite.”

The duke, previously never speechless, found his voice. “I would still be there if I hadn’t received word about what you’ve been up to!” he thundered.

This meeting had been inevitable. It’d been clear that eventually word of Helia’s presence here would slip out, carried by some servant’s loose lips, or as witnessed by someone during the lady’s many ventures outdoors.

“Is something wrong with both of your goddamned ears?” the duke hissed.

There’d been a time that insult would have hit the very mark his sire intended. Now, Wingrave flashed a cold, mocking smile.

Bright-red, angry splotches formed on the duke’s cheeks. “You dare to insult me?”

“I wouldn’t give it a second thought.” Wingrave arced an eyebrow. “In this particular instance, however, I’m merely speaking the truth.”

His father’s eyes bulged, and it was a wonder they didn’t pop out of the old bastard’s head.

Wingrave’s bold and brave wife cleared her throat, and as the duke swung his gaze her way, Helia made herself the target of his wrath.

She dropped into a flawless curtsy. “Yer Grace. It is verra lovely to meet—”

“What have you done, Wingrave?” the duke thundered over the rest of her greeting.

Helia drifted nearer to Wingrave.

Wingrave gritted his teeth. He wanted her in his rooms and away from this ugly—about to get uglier—exchange.

With that goal in mind, Wingrave collected Helia’s palm in his and headed for the door. “Step aside, old man.”

“The hell I will,” the duke barked. With an impressive speed for a man his age and size, Wingrave’s father stormed inside. The duchess only just made it into the office before her husband slammed the door and planted his bulky frame between Wingrave and Helia’s escape.

Wingrave’s mother hurried to the corner of the room.

“Anthony. Are ye all right?” Helia whispered, hesitant and made timid by his goddamned father.

But she did not run.

“I am more than fine, love,” he murmured. “Just a blustery old man.”

“Love? Anthony?” the duke roared. And it was a testament to his rage that the duke ignored the slight on his character. “Why the hell is this Scot calling you ‘Anthony’?”

From the corner of his eye, Anthony caught his mother hurrying to hide behind the long velvet curtains. “Goddamn it, answer me this instant, Wingrave.”

To protect her from the old bastard’s wrath, Wingrave positioned himself between Helia and the duke. He locked stares with the man who’d sired him but had never really been a father. Not in the ways Helia had described her own.

“This proud, beautiful Scot?” Wingrave asked in suitably solemn tones. “She is my wife.”

His Grace’s cheeks grew mottled; his eyes flared so big all the whites were exposed.

In anticipation of the impending storm, Wingrave reached a hand behind him and found Helia’s fingers; they were steady and warm, as they would be, his magnificent, undauntable goddess.

The duke boiled with rage. “You stupid, stupid man,” he whispered. “You did this to best me.”

“Actually, I didn’t.” Wingrave flicked a cool, bored gaze over his sire. “I’d have to care one way or another about you or your opinion and I don’t.” He steeled his jaw.

Before Wingrave knew what Helia intended, she stepped out from behind him and took her place at his side.

Wingrave glanced briefly down at his wife; Helia looked up and gave his fingers a squeeze in support.

“I married her because she is a bold, courageous, strong, honorable woman who I am proud to have as my wife and the next duchess.”

“She is a goddamned Scot,” the duke hissed.

“Indeed.” He inclined his head. “Also, that is likely what makes her all those things I so admire her for. She’s not some vapid, puny English miss who’ll cower in the shadows.”

Wingrave looked toward the corner, where his mother even now listened. She’d stood up to the duke once—and only once—before.

“Perhaps this would be a good time for you to point out my wife is also your goddaughter, Mother?” he called, offering her the opportunity to speak up, and also understanding if she couldn’t.

His mother stepped slowly from the shadows. There she was, that woman from the church . . .

“Goddaughter?” the duke thundered, his bulbous nose flaring.

Wingrave’s mother disappeared into the shadows with a far greater speed than she’d stepped out of them.

He understood.

Through the years, Wingrave had been all too happy to secretly provide her with the funds the duke had denied her—for the pleasure he found of thwarting his sire, of course. But were the duke to decide to commit the duchess, there was nothing Wingrave could do. To the world and the law, the duchess was a possession that could not be taken away.

“You stupid, stupid man!” The duke wagged a wrinkled finger at Wingrave. “You, with your broken ear and defiance—it should be your brother who lived.”

Before Wingrave could issue a droll reply, Helia spoke up. “How dare you?” She glared at the duke. “You evil, evil soul. Your son? He is one thousand times the man you are and is the one truly good thing you’ve done in your life.”

Veins along the duke’s big, broad brow bulged. “You,” he raged. “You’ve done this.”

Blinded by fury that anyone would dare speak to Helia so, Wingrave took a furious step toward the duke when Helia spoke.

“If by that you mean I fell in love with your son, then, yes, you are correct,” she said, with such stoicism in the face of the duke’s wrath, Wingrave growled with fierce approval and hunger for his queen.

Ruddy color suffused the duke’s cheeks. “Love?” he scoffed. His Grace turned all his fury back on Wingrave. “Is that how this one tricked you? With some innocent act and words of that false, puling emotion of love?”

Helia took another beautifully bold step toward the duke. “Given the horrid way you’ve treated your son and clearly bully your wife, I can say with absolute confidence love isn’t real . . . at least for someone such as you.”

I seek to protect you, Anthony.

That avowal she’d recently made Wingrave, the one he’d rebuffed, he now let in, a feeling still unfamiliar but . . . right, and welcomed.

“You are incapable of and undeserving of that sentiment,” Helia continued. “But for your son, your wife, and every other person with an actual soul and heart in their beings, love is very much real.”

The quiet calm in Helia’s voice proved more powerful than any of the duke’s bellowing, and Wingrave fell only further under her siren’s spell.

She’d managed the impossible—to silence his sire.

The duke’s cheeks grew mottled and more florid. “You talk about love. The only thing you truly love is that you’re now set to be a duchess,” he hissed. Spittle formed at the corner of his mouth.

Helia didn’t back down in the face of his fury. “No, Your Grace. One does not love power. One craves and needs power. Love, on the other hand, is unselfish. It requires nothing and gives everything.”

Suddenly, the duke narrowed his eyes. “I know what you did. You waited until I’d gone and then came here.” He spoke that discovery to himself. Rage blazed all the brighter in his ruthless eyes. “You seduced my goddamn rake of a son.”

He looked to Wingrave. “Couldn’t you have just made her your goddamned mistress? You could have tupped her anytime and married an estimable, well-bred Englishwoman who brought something of value to—”

The duke’s vitriolic diatribe ended on a squeak.

Wingrave had wrapped a hand about the old bastard’s thick neck. “Do not ever, I repeat, ever”—he tightened his grip for emphasis—“utter so much as a word about my wife that isn’t the highest praise and adulation, or I will happily end you, and make her the duchess she was and is now destined to be.”

He’d not been able to protect his brother. The duke had threatened to send Wingrave’s mother to a madhouse were Wingrave to intervene on the duchess’s behalf.

But it ended here. It ended now.

“Anthony,” Helia murmured, resting her hands on the muscles that bulged even through the heavy fabric of his greatcoat. “Mercy,” she whispered.

Wingrave lingered his hold a second more. “It is only because of my queen’s benevolence that I don’t happily end you.” He abruptly released the duke.

His father’s expression turned black. “I’ll petition the king, Wingrave. I’ll have it annulled.”

He smirked. “I assure you, this union is very much consummated, Duke.”

The duke slammed a fist into a porcelain urn that rested on a nearby side table. The tall, cobalt-blue vase exploded into a sea of tiny shards upon the marble flooring.

Blood dripped from the old bastard’s wrist.

Helia stared on with horror in her revealing eyes.

“And I’ll have you know,” Wingrave continued, the calm to his father’s storm, “your threats of sending your wife away end this day. Should you attempt to have her placed in an institution, I will freely speak about how your own insanity led you to place a woman most respected, revered, and appreciated by the ton into a cell.”

Spittle formed at the corners of the duke’s limp mouth.

Done with the duke, now and forever, Wingrave looked to the shadows, where his mother remained.

He motioned for her to join them.

The duchess inched out.

“How dare you threaten me?” the duke shouted, and the echo of his vitriol sent her into hiding once more. “How dare you seek to control that which is mine?”

“I do so very easily, Father,” he said mockingly. “Because your days on earth are numbered and power is mine. You know it, and you hate it.”

With that, Wingrave looked to Helia. “Come,” he murmured, guiding her toward the door. He’d not have her see any more of this.

There’d been a time when Wingrave would have relished nothing more than a good row with the nasty bastard. Now, however, with Helia in his life, he’d no interest in battling his father and instead had a desire to spend every goddamned moment of his life loving her and simply existing in her presence.

“Where are you going, Wingrave?” his father bellowed. “We are not done. This is not done. Return this instant.”

Behind them, the duke cursed and shouted.

There came a great, resounding crash.

Helia paused and glanced back.

Like some wild, rabid beast, Wingrave’s father grabbed everything in his sight and upended it.

He grabbed a gilded clock in one hand and a vase in the other and hurled them at the wide double doors.

The crash of shattering glass came over and over as he chucked every fragile piece that adorned the room until he stood amidst the shards of his crumbling empire.

Panting and crazed as any madman bound for Bedlam, the duke flitted wild eyes about.

Wingrave’s sire, with every delicate piece now broken before him, squatted and, with a savage roar, hefted a gilded and marble console table over his head—

“Oh, my God,” Helia whispered.

“There’s no god in this,” Wingrave said, guiding her face away from the melee. “This is the Devil’s work.”

He tried to tug her free, but in the face of mayhem, Helia lingered still.

“Helia,” Wingrave said loudly over the duke’s din.

“We are not leaving her with him, Anthony.”

Wingrave looked toward his mother’s hiding spot and stretched a hand toward her.

Amidst the duke’s destruction, the duchess rushed to join them. Without hesitation she placed her fingers in Helia’s welcoming ones.

Wingrave gave his wife and mother cover.

As he shut the door behind them, the cacophony of furniture flipping and the duke’s unintelligible shouts and curses continued behind them.

“He is not always like that,” the duchess whispered, when they’d reached the end of the corridor.

“He is.” Wingrave wouldn’t lie about what a monster the duke was.

The duchess’s steps slowed, and Helia allowed the older woman to stop.

His mother cast a distracted glance over her shoulder.

“What is it, Your Grace?” Helia asked softly.

“I must go to him.”

He and Helia spoke as one.

“No,” he said, his voice sharp where Helia’s was gentle.

“Your Grace, you do not,” his wife murmured. “He just needs some time to release his anger, and then I expect he’ll be in a better frame of mind.”

The duke wouldn’t.

And the duchess knew it. That was why Wingrave’s mother had a worried glimmer in her eyes and wrung her hands together the way she did.

Suddenly, the duchess ceased those frenetic movements, and as she drew back her shoulders, she had more the look of that brave woman who’d stood up in the middle of a church in challenge of her husband. “I am the one who calms him, Anthony. You know that.”

He knew she was the one verbally battered by the old codger, and that whenever Anthony had intervened, the old bastard had made it worse for her.

“Don’t go to him,” he said quietly, all the while knowing what she intended and that there’d be no stopping her.

The duchess gave him a watery smile. “You’ve always been a good boy, Anthony.” With tears in her eyes, she glanced at Helia. “I am so very glad my son has found you.”

Helia made to speak when a thunderous bellow cut into the tender moment, ending it all too quickly.

“Go,” the duchess urged, and when neither Helia nor Wingrave made a step to leave, she hurried off the way they’d come, back to the fray.

Several corridors later, the unmistakable sound of the duke’s rampage continued, only slightly muted this time.

Helia’s eyes bled with grief; sadness lined her every exquisite feature. “Oh, Anthony—”

He grunted. “I am sorry you were subjected to that. We will not remain here. I have holdings of my own and will all too happily take you away from—”

Helia pressed two fingers against his lips. “I am not hurting for m-me,” she said, her voice catching. “I am hurting for your mother and sister. But more, I am hurting for you and the life you’ve known. I will have you know, with me as your wife, I promise you will only be loved and live in a household filled with that emotion you’ve been denied and are so deserving of.”

His throat . . . it moved in the oddest of ways. Something in his eyes pricked, making it hard to blink.

He’d feared loving anyone made him weaker, and put anyone he cared about in peril. Only to discover, love somehow made him stronger. Nay, this woman’s love. He’d fought it—and her—at every turn.

“I am done fighting,” he murmured, more to himself, and he found . . . peace in that, a sense of absolute rightness made all the more profound by a final, noticeable thump and then quiet from downstairs.

Helia’s eyes softened. Joy glowed from their dark-green depths.

He pressed his forehead hard against hers so that their gazes met. She’d been long deserving of the words she’d spoken to him so many times now. Ones he’d been too much of a coward to give her. Not anymore.

“Helia,” he said gravely, “I—”

A horrible, drawn-out, animalistic wail cut off the rest of his avowal.

Wingrave stiffened.

“No. No. No. No. No.” That single-word litany rang out, over and over, in his mother’s shrill cries.

There came a clamoring and the rush of footfalls. As one, he and Helia looked, just as a breathless Mrs. Trowbridge rounded the corner. “M-my lord,” she rasped, her cheeks wan, her eyes stricken. “His Grace, the duke . . . is dead,” she whispered.

Eight hours later

Wingrave stood in wait outside the duke’s grand suites; his back braced against the wall and his arms folded at his chest, he stared unmovedly at the adjacent door.

All the while, his mother, the duchess, sat on an upholstered armchair which had been stationed outside her husband’s rooms and wept quietly into her kerchief—just as she’d done since she and Wingrave had taken up position here.

Devoid of disdain and filled more with pity, Wingrave glanced at his mother’s bent head.

How . . . odd. How strange. It was illogical in every way. His mother . . . actually cared about the duke. Maybe even loved him.

A time before, Wingrave would have felt disdain for her having any sense of devotion to the man who’d been her—and their entire family’s—oppressor.

As it so happened, now he found himself pitying her.

At last, the door opened.

They looked over as Dr. Hall, the same family physician who’d failed to heal Wingrave’s brother, exited with the same leather bag he’d carried from a different set of rooms many years earlier.

The duchess jumped up.

Dr. Hall looked solely at Wingrave. “My lord, may we speak?”

The message and meaning were clear; the doctor didn’t intend to include the duchess in the discussion about her husband.

Wingrave inclined his head.

He and Dr. Hall walked several paces, putting some distance between themselves and the duchess.

The minute they stopped, Dr. Hall set his bag down, removed his spectacles, folded them, and tucked them in the front of his pocket.

“I fear it is grim,” the doctor began.

“He’s not dead, then?”

“He is not.” Hall’s features grew strained. “However, I am sad to report, the duke will not make the recovery you hope for.”

All the while they spoke, the duchess strained her neck in an attempt to hear the exchange.

Hell would freeze before Wingrave’s own wife ever allowed herself to be denied information from anyone. No doubt she’d have shut herself away in the rooms and guided the incompetent physician’s every action, before ultimately taking them over herself.

“Given His Grace’s collapse,” Dr. Hall was saying, “and his lack of reflexes, inability to speak, and . . . vacant expression, I can safely—but sadly—conclude he suffered some internal hemorrhagic rupture. I am so very sad to say.”

The old bastard had driven himself to an apoplexy. He hadn’t died, but knowing his sire as he did, Wingrave could safely conclude death would be a preferable state to bedbound and without any brain function.

Odd, he found himself capable of some pity for the mercenary duke, after all.

“Thank you,” Wingrave said.

“If there are any services I may provide—”

“None. You are done here. Your tenure as the Blofield family physician ends this day.”

Dr. Hall’s jaw slackened. “M-my l-lord?” he stammered.

“That will be all.”

Dismissing the physician outright, Wingrave returned to the duke’s door.

His ashen mother worried her hands together. “A-Anthony?” she whispered.

Anthony. He was finally Anthony again. Perhaps she’d already gleaned the news and sought to reclaim some ownership of herself and her decisions.

Wingrave placed a hand on her shoulder, leaned down, and whispered the duke’s fate.

She sucked in a shaky breath and emitted a small, indistinctive sound from her throat.

He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, and then with her standing in wait, he let himself inside the dark, shadowy room.

His father, attired in a long gown, and with a sheet and coverlet draped over him, lay as still as death upon the big mattress.

Wingrave stopped at his bedside and looked down.

Like a hot sun had melted his face, the duke’s features drooped on both sides. Drool pooled at the corners of his mouth.

Wingrave, not taking his gaze off his father’s frail form, dragged a nearby chair over and seated himself.

Steepling his fingers, he stared over the tops of them. “You were a terrible duke, you know,” he stated, matter-of-factly, into the quiet. “I didn’t realize I was becoming you, and wouldn’t have realized, had it not been for the glorious woman I made my wife.”

The duke’s lids lifted; his gaze was surprisingly sharp, despite his condition, so much so that Wingrave wondered if the bastard had struck a deal with the Devil, all to defy the fate Hall had laid out for him and to retain the power he so coveted.

“Ah, the beast awakens,” Wingrave remarked.

The duke’s slack lips wobbled, revealing a tongue as dead as the old man’s heart, and no words emerged . . . only more saliva.

“How awful this must be for you,” Wingrave murmured. “Not anyone else. You were a miserable cur. But I’ve not come to tell you all the ways in which you were a malevolent duke, father, and husband. With you unable to speak, where would be the fun in that?”

The duke continued to stare vacantly back.

“I will keep this quick.” Wingrave dropped his hands atop his lap and leaned forward. “You’ve scared your daughter, wife, servants, and, for that matter, anyone, for the last time. They will not miss you. They will not mourn you. They will not even visit. You will exist as nothing more than a ghost who goes unseen amongst us.”

His father’s gaze remained vacant, but for a distant glimmer indicating that somewhere in there, the duke not only heard but understood exactly what Wingrave said.

Wingrave flattened his lips into a hard line. “Your time as duke is done. Your reign ends and belongs to me. It all belongs to me, and with Helia, my wife, we will rule with strength and a benevolent good for those who are deserving and a relentless might for any who dare cross us.”

A choking, rasping sound started in his father’s chest and got stuck in his throat as a low, wet gurgling.

Without a backward glance, Wingrave left his past and marched on to his future.