Status Updates From The Wolf of Mayfair

“Children, they need assurances of warmth and kindness.”

“What good will that do them? Better they understand the world is a cold, dark place.”

“Better they are armed with affection and love so that they are prepared to face the cold, dark world you describe.”

“I challenged him. I pushed him—”

“Helia, my father’s actions and behavior this day, and every day, belong only to him.”

“You are mine,” he rasped. Anthony gave her a slight shake, and the chain bearing his signet ring rattled about her neck as if to add further weight to his affirmation. “And I am yours. Do you hear that?”

“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.”

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

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.

One does not love power. One craves and needs power. Love, on the other hand, is unselfish. It requires nothing and gives everything.

Trembling, Helia touched her fingertips to a shackle that, when conferred by Anthony, brought her, as its wearer, a liberation from fear and the strictures binding her as a young, unmarried woman.

🤔

“Helia, what were the reasons he did not deny you meals?” He snapped out each syllable of that question.

“He didn’t, on account that he didn’t want a wraith for a bride and couldn’t have me dying on him as he needed my dowry.”

An unholy rage descended over his vision.

“I believe it’s possible for one to tell oneself with words they don’t love anyone or anything, but that doesn’t keep the emotion from living in here.”

Geyser - Narrator said GEE zuhr … is Helia’s cousin old? 😅

Just then, the man shot out a hand and grabbed Helia by the upper arm. She twisted and wrenched against his hold—to no avail.

A low, instinctual, primitive rumbling reverberated in Wingrave’s chest.

Dead. He’d kill him, resurrect him, and then murder him all over again.

Her father had often said the moment she’d been born, she’d chased away the dark clouds that had gripped the Highland skies, and the first sun after a winter of gloom had marked her a daughter of the sun.

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.

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 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.

Alas . . . in addition to family, friends, resources, and funds, the lady appeared to be equally lacking in common sense.

The chit was driving him to madness, or . . . she’d already done so, because he was seeing her everywhere.

Nothing else accounted for why, after she’d persuaded Wingrave to offer her shelter from the elements, in the midst of this raging storm, she’d chosen to go traipsing about his family’s snow-covered, wind-battered gardens.

flecks of ice-mixed snow pattering against the windows like little crystalline teardrops the skies had stirred to life from memories of long ago,

Gloves?

I thought she just suddenly fled from Wingrave … when did she stop to get gloves and is she wearing gloves with no coat or cloak?

A rowan tree. Amongst the Scottish, it’d long been a sacred symbol of wisdom, courage, and protection.

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

Quoting Gibbon and now Aristotle.

she’d long ago discovered honesty proved the most effective means to disarm a person.

“Why, even the prince regent has attended the festivities and—”

“I don’t care if God and Satan united on the bloody event and struck an eternal accord,” Wingrave snarled.

“I’d rather be unworldly and optimistic than so jaded by the world that I can’t see there are people who care about me.”

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

Quoting Gibbon and now Aristotle.

The six-foot-tall cast stone fountain of Venus stood with a bronze tray stretched over her head. From that metal platter, ice dripped like frozen teardrops that hadn’t been free to make their final descent to the Fiore Pond below.

“I don’t have a conscience.”

She stared confusedly at him. “But everyone has a conscience.”

“Not I.” He’d destroy a man as easily as he’d fuck the same man’s wife and never look back.