The Wolf of Mayfair

In death there is nothing new, or surprising, since we all know, that we are born to die; and nothing terrible to those, who can confide in an all-powerful God.

—Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho

Helia was cold, so very cold.

No matter how deep she burrowed into the soft mattress and under the blankets, the chill racked her from the inside out.

She tossed and turned, bringing her knees close. She wrapped her arms about those quaking lower limbs in a bid to find any hint of warmth, but there was none to be found.

The world had gone ice cold, and that same numbing gelidity had invaded every corner of her body, until there was no escaping the unadulterated, bleak misery it wrought.

If only she could get warm.

She wept and wailed.

“You are going to be fine. Do you hear me?” a distant voice called. “You’re too stubborn and strong to die.”

Whoever uttered that assurance sounded deuced angry about it.

“I . . . I can’t,” she wept.

“You’re a hale and hearty Scot, remember?”

A hale and hearty Scot? Only, she didn’t feel either of those things.

Another tremor overtook Helia’s frame.

She whimpered.

And then she saw them. Her ma and dad. They stood side by side, their arms linked, and Helia’s mother’s head rested so serenely against the laird’s shoulder.

They smiled and gave her a little wave.

“P-please,” she implored, through chattering teeth. Why would they allow her to hurt this way? “W-won’t you give me more b-blankets?”

Why were they smiling? Why, when she was racked with agony?

An inky darkness crept in, swallowing their smiling visages.

And then, the blankets she did have were removed, and she was forced back to this horrid place of suffering. Only, someone was determined to torture her. For they now mocked her earlier pleas for warmth by casting her into an inferno.

“Noooooo,” Helia wailed. Tears stained her cheeks.

“I’m sorry.” That apology came ragged and harsh.

“Make it s-stop,” she begged, flailing and thrashing in a bid to escape the heat.

Why would her parents . . . ? Only, they wouldn’t. They loved her.

And then she recalled . . . they were no more.

Helia wept all the harder.

Mr. Draxton’s loathsome visage materialized, mocking her, taunting her.

He’d found her.

And there was no escaping.

She was trapped.

She was going to die.

Wingrave had reached that conclusion two days earlier, even before he’d set Helia down on the very mattress she now writhed upon.

The ague killed, and spunky of spirit though his Scottish guest may be, the fact remained, she wasn’t so strong that she could defeat such an infirmity.

His brother hadn’t.

Wingrave almost hadn’t.

And the only reason he’d managed to survive was because the Lord hadn’t a use for his rotted soul and the Devil didn’t want a wretchedly imperfect fellow with a useless ear.

Standing over Helia, his hands clasped behind him, Wingrave stared down at the feverish woman so very still in the bed.

But this woman?

She was a delicate, diminutive fairy, possessed of a wholesomeness that couldn’t be feigned, and such souls were not destined to last long in this world.

With the fever’s hold, she’d thrashed and writhed so much these past two days, she now lay motionless and limp under the thin white cotton counterpane.

A light rapping at the door brought his attention from his musings about the minx who’d upended his life and his household.

“Enter,” he barked, his gaze fixed on Helia’s still form.

“My lord,” Mrs. Trowbridge said. “Dr. Hembly has arrived.”

Another doctor.

The floorboards groaned and shifted, announcing the approach of the latest physician to visit Helia.

He stopped beside Wingrave. The man, younger by a decade or so than the previous ones who’d come and gone, was near in height to Wingrave.

“My lord,” the doctor greeted. He set his black medical bag down on the Louis XVI bedside table with its butterfly veneer. “If you would—”

“I’m not leaving,” he snapped.

The last time he’d done so, one of the more contumelious fellows had stuck several of those bloodsucking leeches on her wrist.

This latest physician proved just as insolent. “It would be best—”

Wingrave leveled Hembly with a single black look that managed to effectively quell those objections.

Dr. Hembly flushed and cleared his throat. “Very well.”

Through this latest examination, Wingrave stood as the same silent sentry he’d been during the six others she’d endured.

The young doctor gently lifted Helia’s flaccid hand in one of his and touched two middle fingers to the place at the center of her wrist.

All the while, Wingrave stared intently at her. Against his better judgment, he’d allowed the minx to remain until the storm broke. And what had she done? She’d gone out in that blasted storm, and would now get herself killed for that carelessness.

His fingers curled tightly into his palms, his nails leaving familiar impressions upon the flesh.

After an infernally long examination, Dr. Hembly made a clucking sound with his tongue and shook his head regretfully.

Sparks of red rage dotted Wingrave’s vision. “For the love of God, man. You aren’t a damned chicken. Words. Use words.”

Wingrave had never been known for his patience, and with Helia Wallace of Scotland dying in his household, he’d even less of that virtue now.

The physician flushed red and lowered Helia’s palm back to her side. “The lady is weak, my lord. By everything reported to me by your housekeeper at my arrival, and based on my own evaluation here, I do not expect she can last much longer.”

Wingrave knew as much, and had been expecting such a prognosis from the doctor. And yet, even so, the muscles of his gut clenched like he’d taken a fist to them.

“She’s not to die,” he said on an icy whisper. He had the loss of his brother on his soul; he’d not add the chipper, cheerful Miss Helia Wallace to the list of his blacker sins. “I don’t care what you do, but you are to save her.”

A somber Dr. Hembly inclined his head. “In speaking to Mrs. Trowbridge, I understand you are opposed to bleeding the young lady.”

Opposed? More like, he’d cut off the hand of the man who thought to employ that useless medical technique upon her and inflict a different type of bleeding upon a person.

“However,” the doctor went on, and that single word quelled Wingrave’s last hope of a physician being able to help her, “I am afraid the only course is to ble—”

“Finish the thought, and I’ll finish you.” Wingrave issued that threat on a deep, velvety purr.

The doctor frowned. “My lord,” he persisted. “I understand you are opposed to bleeding the young woman; however, it is the only course of treatment that may save her.”

“And you finished the thought,” he said, with a cheer to rival Helia’s.

Paling, Hembly took several quick steps away, proving himself not a complete lackwit. “My lord, it is a tried-and-true method we employ for all number of illnesses and ailments.”

“Sucking the lifeblood from a person hardly seems like it would be bolstering to their health.”

Dr. Hembly pounced on that. “On the contrary. The illness is in her blood, and the only way to draw out the illness is by drawing out the poisoned blood.”

“By that logic, wouldn’t all her blood be poisoned and the only way to rid it of illness would be to remove all of the sickened blood?”

That gave the other man pause. Several lines creased Hembly’s brow in a palpable confusion. “I . . . It is the only way,” he finally said. “The hope is that we may draw out enough of the poisoned blood so that the healthy fluid might then, in turn, exceed the pois—”

Wingrave growled. “Say the word ‘poisoned’ one more time.”

This time, more wisely, the other man shut his demmed mouth.

Hembly bowed his head. “Forgive me, my lord. If I am not allowed to perform the treatment I believe the lady requires, I cannot be of any further assistance to you.”

“You have been no assistance to me,” Wingrave said nastily. “You are right about one thing, however.”

The physician brightened.

“Something is poisoned in these chambers,” he hissed. “The time I’ve given of my life, listening to your ancient, half-witted drivel.”

Clearing his throat, Hembly drew his shoulders back. “There is a reason they are anci—”

Wingrave narrowed his eyes into thin, unforgiving slits.

This time, the young man took proper warning. Swallowing noisily, Dr. Hembly packed up his bag. When he’d snapped it closed, he avoided Wingrave’s eyes, dropped a bow, and made a hasty retreat.

And Wingrave and Helia were alone once more.

The moment that fraudulent pretender to medical skill closed the door behind himself, Wingrave whipped his attention back over to Helia.

She lay there, so very still and, but for the flushed red splotches on her cheeks, pale as a ghost.

A ghost is what she will become . . .

Wingrave forcibly shoved the thought aside.

“You’ve continued to make a bother of yourself, Helia,” he growled. “Forcing me to entertain fools.”

As an afterthought, he muttered, “More fools, that is.”

After all, the whole reason she lay in that bed and Wingrave met doctor after incompetent doctor was that she’d been daft enough to hie herself outside, in the midst of a bloody snowstorm.

A snowstorm which ironically had ceased, started again.

Wingrave picked up a neatly folded white linen cloth and dunked it into the long-cold washbasin water.

“I’m not happy with you,” he snapped.

He wrung the towel out and pressed it against Helia’s forehead. Before, when he’d done so, she’d thrashed and turned. Now it was as if the fever had left her too weak to do anything other than whimper.

That only added to his crossness.

“How dare you go from strong, spirited, indefatigable she-devil to weak kitten.”

She remained still as death.

He deepened his glare on her. “And do not think you’re going to get off so easily and do anything like die before I’ve had the chance to take you to task for running outside like a ruddy idiot.”

Her silence was his only response.

“Oh, forgive me,” Wingrave taunted. “I should be a better host, you say? Well, I’ve far greater burdens to attend . . . namely, the one involving looking after you.”

He yanked the towel from her brow. Her fever had turned the previously cold fabric lukewarm, an unnecessary reminder of the fact that she lay feverish, dying in her bed. Worse, dying in his bed. Because even after the servants carted the bodies off, the reminders lived on. They dwelled in this house and one’s mind, until a man managed to wrestle his demons and squash those weakening thoughts.

Only, a different thought now intruded.

May good fortune and health be ever with you.

Thoughts not of death but of a different exchange between Wingrave and this insolent imp, who lay still before him.

You may not have had friends before, but you have one now . . .

And despite himself, despite the misery of these past days, and despite the fact he never smiled, a wry grin dusted his lips.

A friend.

God, he’d never believed there existed a guileless, optimistic innocent such as this one.

Wingrave contemplated her still form.

Perhaps that naivete accounted for why she’d defied his orders and why, when no other man would dare to, Helia, despite the fact he clearly intimidated her, met Wingrave’s gaze and did not back down in speaking her mind.

And in the end, no matter how mighty of spirit, it didn’t matter.

His smile withered.

For the inevitable outcome remained the same.

Nor, for that matter, are your musings altogether accurate. Didn’t the lady flee your presence . . . ?

An emotion dangerously close to guilt slithered around, unwelcome and unpleasant, inside him.

Snarling, Wingrave tossed the lukewarm fabric into the brass bowl. Water pinged over the edges and dotted the floor like tears the washbasin shed for the impending fate of its temporary mistress.

Like tears the washbasin shed?

He recoiled.

Good God. Insane. I am going utterly insane.

The lady’s madness had proven contagious; she was turning him into a demmed bedlamite.

Angrily squeezing out the cloth, he wrapped the fabric about one of her wrists and then, fetching another, repeated the same for her other hand.

Determined to remain with her until the end, Wingrave dragged the chair he’d stationed at her side closer and dropped his tired frame into the thick upholstered folds.

Slouching into the chair, he sank his palms upon the mahogany arms of the throne-like seat and stared from veiled lashes at the lifeless miss.

“What manner of witch are you, Helia?” he murmured. First, she’d managed to wheedle her way past the butler, and then him. She’d convinced Wingrave to let her remain the night, and now, having fallen sick, he couldn’t make himself leave her side.

Now he’d taken on the role of damned nursemaid.

Granted, he’d done so out of the absolute incompetence of everyone else. But that was neither here nor there.

Either way, he wished that she’d get on with it . . . live or die. That way, Wingrave could get back to living as he’d been since his brother’s death—alone and unbothered by anyone.