He sighed and shook his head. ‘Are you determined to hate me for all eternity, Lydia? Because I don’t hate you...although Lord only knows I probably should.’ And there it was again. That flash of humanity in his eyes which wormed its way past her defences and made her want to believe it. Idiot! She loathed herself for that weakness. Loathed him more for taking advantage of it. ‘It’s been ten years.’
Ten years, two months and one day to be precise, when one dreadful moment in time changed everything. One second she had been blithely hurrying down the path to her future when the path disintegrated beneath her feet and there suddenly was no future. Or at least not the one she had wanted. Her heart still didn’t want to believe it. Her head still struggled to comprehend how one moment, one ominous tick of the clock, could possibly change everything.
‘Hate assumes I care enough to be bothered when I am indifferent, Mr Wolfe.’ A complete pack of lies. Everything about him set her emotions off-kilter. Always had. Always would. Nobody else had ever quite measured up and now she was about to be punished for her fickle heart’s foolish desire because of the sorry truth of it. An arranged marriage. To a very wealthy man who might well be the dreadful Marquess of Kelvedon—because he certainly met all the criteria, exactly as Owen said.
Another dreadful moment in time. Another path crumbling beneath her feet. Another future, albeit a lesser one, gone, too, in the blink of an eye.
The walls began to close in, but she looked down her nose defiantly.
‘Go back to your shadows, Mr Wolfe—they suit you so much better than the chandeliers.’
Lydia did not wait to see his expression. She slammed through the door and into the frigid garden, then tore across the lawn. The Aveley stables were housed on the same mews as her own. In two minutes she would be home and she could think. Perhaps miraculously come up with a plan to save her family and the estate and all the workers who depended on it which did not involve marrying a lecher. Not that marrying a stranger at such short notice was any better. A loveless marriage had never been what she had envisioned. The same foolish and romantic heart which had once loved Owen Wolfe so completely before he broke it, still yearned to love unreservedly once again and be loved in return. It still craved passion and excitement and laughter and joy.
But needs must and beggars could not be choosers. It was her turn to replenish the Barton coffers after taking from them so freely for years. Her father was adamant she must do her duty and her brother was doomed if she didn’t. Damned if she did. Damned even more if she did not.
With hindsight, Lydia cursed herself for being too picky. In the seven Seasons she had been out, there had been no end of suitors and several advantageous proposals, meaning she could be safely married by now and not burdened with this unpalatable chore. Yet she had turned them all down politely because none of them had ever made her heart soar the way she knew it could. She had been waiting patiently for the one—only to realise too late she had compared every titled gentleman to the hollow, calculating stable boy who had ruthlessly used her, then betrayed her when he had shown his true colours. Colours she should have seen if she hadn’t been so besotted with him to look.
The truth of it made her blood boil.
Her heart would never soar again. There would be no other one. No happily ever after. Just a marriage of convenience to a man she would probably never love. And if it was indeed Kelvedon, she wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of either!
Heaven help her.
The Aveley grooms stood to attention as she marched past. She didn’t pause to greet them as she normally would. The tears were too close to the surface and she couldn’t trust them not to fall. The mews was crammed with carriages, coachmen and stable hands played cards around overturned barrels as they waited for the ball to end. She wove around them, pushed past, her sights set on the blessedly silent Barton mews just a few yards away.
‘Lydia...’ She felt the unexpected touch of his hand on her arm all the way down to her toes and froze. She frowned at it before directing the full force of that frown at him. For a big man, he moved with impressive stealth. A predator. Like his namesake the wolf. Except he was every disarming inch a wolf in sheep’s clothing, preying on the weak and the stupid. And she had been both. A veritable lamb to the slaughter! And of course, he had to have stopped her here to witness her unshed tears and her patently obvious utter defeat—in the place where it all started—to rub salt into the reopened wound. An ironically fitting end to the second-worst day of her life.
‘What could you possibly want now?’ Her words were clipped, as hostile as she could make them, the urge to slap his handsome face simply because it existed causing her to clench her fists until her nails bit into her palms.
‘If I am right about Kelvedon... If you need...anything...’ those clever blues eyes were uncharacteristically stormy now, drawing her in, luring her to trust him as his grip loosened and she felt his thumb caress the bare skin of her forearm as if he cared ‘...you know where to find me.’
‘I won’t.’ She tugged her arm away, remembering exactly how foolish she had been all those years ago each time he touched her, when she had believed he cared and how shamelessly he had used her on the back of it. ‘I wouldn’t come to you if you were the last man on
