Page 13 of Lady Petra and the Wolf

“How do you think she snagged an invitation to such an event as this?”

“She’s Kemberley’s niece,” another lower voice exclaimed. “He has the power to snap his fingers and things are how he wishes.”

“He isn’t Midas,” the other voice scoffed. “He cannot make silk from a sow’s ear. Her father was dissolute, her brother is a murderer, and her mother was…Greek. Besides, I believe she married some little foreign fellow, as if that would make us forget—”

“Excuse me,” Petra did not wait to make her presence known. While she was not fond of heavy set-downs, she could not let any censure of her cousin stand. “But Midas did not make silk, he made gold from his touch. And any half-Greek, such as myself or my cousin, Mrs. Eden, could tell you thus. In fact, I believe Mrs. Eden could recite all of Lemprière better than an Oxford don, can you imagine that feat?”

Petra now recognized the two young gossips of the ton gawking at her like chickens caught outside the coop. Petra smiled at them serenely. It appeared quite certain that the pair possessed not the slightest inkling of the distinction between their Lemprière and their Tennyson, a conclusion corroborated by the vacant, almost glassy expressions within their pale blue eyes that peeped from amidst an over-abundance of meticulously arranged ringlets. She sighed as the two women squawked and scurried on, unable to insult Petra to her face and also unwilling to suffer the social ill will if they did. While fans were mostly ornamental these days, Petra withdrew hers and fanned herself for a moment before tapping her own chin. That dance with Lord Wolfridge had unsettled her in a way she found difficult to analyze within herself.

While Petra adored the new stories that were coming out, those of mystery, she only truly appreciated a certain kind of mystery. On one hand, she loved the unknown, uncovering the motives for why a person might steal or, worse, commit a murder. On the other hand, she did not care for stories with elements of chaos, where the incident was unplanned, just an accident or a spur of the moment decision. Lord Wolfridge, despite his tall, lanky handsomeness and his appearance of a gentleman, had leapt into her life like a pure agent of chaos sent to throw her thinking off of its axis. Taking a deep breath, Petra purposefully opened and closed her fan, intending to put the thing away.

“Today is not the day,” she reminded herself, as she remembered her focus ought to be on her cousin. She had let a pair of cool, bottle-green eyes disturb her peace for far too long that evening.

“Not the day for what, my lady?” a familiar baritone asked from behind her.

“Oh!” Petra whirled around quickly, her fan still in her hand as she whacked Lord Wolfridge across the chest.

Directing his gaze to his chest before meeting her eyes once more, a slow, predatory smile unfurled across the gentleman’s lips.

“You wound me, Lady Petra. Twice in one evening.”

“What are you doing here, my lord?” She had not even entered the retiring room, as she had been thrown by those two peahens who were gossiping about her cousin. How silly she must have appeared to him leaning against the wall and brandishing her fan.

“I—” For a moment the smirk left his face, as if no charming response came immediately to mind. “You appeared unnerved before, my lady. I sought to make sure you are quite well.” Petra glanced up at him to again try to discern his motive. Avoiding her gaze, he added, “As your pretend courtship partner, it seemed my duty.”

Petra sighed and leaned further into the wall, or as far as her crinolines would allow. That made sense. Lord Wolfridge needed to appear to be attuned to her well-being and good cheer if he was in any kind of a courtship with her. “I am quite well, my lord. Though I should like to check on my cousin. This is her first ball.”

“Then let me escort you, my lady.” Lord Wolfridge offered his arm and another small zip of energy coursed through her, even through the fabric of her gloved hand and the multiple layers of his sleeves. Pushing that fanciful thought aside, she concentrated on locating Jillian. Petra knew a waltz was about to begin. She had purposefully denied others the waltz, as it would not have been appropriate to dance with anyone besides Lord John. Her eyes widened as she realized she had barely thought of the man all evening. Where could he be?

As she and Lord Wolfridge began their descent down the grand staircase, the answer to both of her questions appeared on the ballroom floor before them. In the dim candlelight, Petra witnessed Jillian executing a graceful curtsy before Lord John, who returned the gesture with a bow of formal elegance. Yet, the very instant their gazes locked, Petra felt the air leave her lungs. The look shared between the two was one she could only describe as pure longing. The man Petra had been certain she would marry pulled her cousin close, beginning a dance of the most intimate nature.

For the third and worst time that evening, Petra was frozen as a statue. Only her eyes moved while she drank in the scene before her. As they twirled, Lord John gazed down at her cousin as if she were a precious commodity and he needed to ration the time he spent in her presence. Jillian snuck glances at Lord John with a frequency that betrayed a profound wistfulness, as if she were recalling fragments of a cherished memory. Despite their distance, Petra remained acutely attuned to the subtle softening of her cousin’s posture, perceiving with a jarring clarity that Jillian had found a sanctuary within his embrace. The word safe filled Petra’s mind with startling resonance as tears began to prick the back of her eyes.

And then another word, a bigger word, rose out of the abyss of her mind. A word so large and powerful, she had almost never used it. The only people she had ever used such a word about were her dear late mama, and Jillian. If she cared about Lord John the way she thought she did, the word ought to strike her dead. But instead, while she grieved the future she was just learning they would never have, Petra was overwhelmed by the beauty of what she saw before her as memories assuaged her.

Jillian mentioning going off with her old friend, Jack. Jack, a nickname for John, which Petra had never realized could belong to the man she had hoped to marry. Their neighboring estates near Kent that Petra had never visited. While he was unfailingly polite, not once had Lord John ever truly asked for her hand, she recalled with a pang of shame. Despite her father’s constant reminders of a union over the years, no formal betrothal had ever existed.

“There was no understanding between us.” Swallowing hard, she became painfully aware that she had remained motionless upon the staircase, a target for the scrutinizing eyes of Polite Society for quite some time. In a swift, protective maneuver, Lord Wolfridge reached the first landing and turned her toward him, effectively shielding Petra, her cousin, and his best friend from the gathering crowd’s prying gazes. Looking up at him, she glimpsed an expression entirely beyond his usual cynicism, making him appear far younger than she had ever known him to be.

“What can I do?” he asked in a low voice.

Chapter Five

Wolf had never been full of a great amount of empathy for others in his adult life. When he had been younger, empathy had been his friend and companion. He recalled walking with his aunt and uncle one day as they helped a poor old drunk on their way to their offices in Bristol.

“Do you know why we did such a thing, Julian?” No one in his life called Wolf by his Christian name but his aunt and uncle.

Wolf remembered shaking his head, as he held both his aunt and uncle’s hands, skipping between them. It was a feeling of family he had never known elsewhere, yet it pained him to think of all these years later.

“Because poor Mr. Maison was feeling a bit lost after his wife died. He hasn’t been taking care of himself as he should. But if he has some hot meals away from the drink to sort himself out, your uncle can hire him back on a ship. And perhaps the sea will do him some good.” His aunt had squeezed his hand at that as a look passed between her and his uncle that Wolf only now recognized as true partnership. His chest had ached for Mr. Maison, who had only ever been kind and friendly to him before he lost his wife, that he had lost something like what his aunt and uncle had between them.

Rarely these days did Wolf feel any sort of pang in his chest region that was not related to indigestion. Yet, the realization that he had been the source of Lady Petra’s unease earlier that evening caused a subtle tightness in his throat, a feeling akin to a too-tight cravat, that reverberated deep within the cavern of his chest.

That uncomfortable twist was nothing compared to the aching agony at watching Lady Petra’s heart shatter in the span of a heartbeat. Petra stood rooted to the grand staircase, a solitary statue of silk and honey, her features transfigured into a mask of unreadable stillness. Then, in the blink of her eyelashes, her eyes betrayed her, cycling through shock, horror, and what he could only assume was devastation. Wolf’s gaze had followed the trajectory of her own, ultimately landing upon his dearest friend in the world and her cousin in a dance that was so rare amongst the ton, one of genuine emotion. Dare he say…love?

As memories seemed to play across Petra’s mind’s eye, so too did Wolf recall moments in a different context now. John suddenly wishing to go into the shipping business not long after the scandal with Baron Beckforth, the murder of Lady Beckforth, and Jillian’s quick departure to the Continent. That faraway look in his friend’s gaze when he would often stare out the window or at the sea. The way he had acted recently, as if waking from a long slumber to the most wonderful morning imaginable. Wolf thought again of his favorite American poet, how he wrote of these unobtainable, lost women, like Annabel Lee. Jillian must be John’s Annabel Lee. His lost Lenore. And while so much made sense of John’s actions these last years, on the grand scale of right and wrong, he could forgive the man for not telling him. Hell, he could forgive him for falling in love. Although love remained a concept almost entirely foreign to Wolf, he was of the understanding that it was not something one intended to do. Yet, the manner in which John’s distant love had so evidently hurt Petra was a far more difficult draught to swallow.

As if he could shield her cousin and his best friend from the peering eyes of the ton all at once, once they reached the first landing, he spun Lady Petra so that all that she could see was him.