Page 16 of Lady Petra and the Wolf

“She made me swear on my honor to try with everything I had.”

Wolf nodded though he doubted John could see. “Your errand that takes you away. It will allow you to try?”

John brought his hand down to his side. “It should,” he said quietly.

“Then for her sake, do it.” Wolf said tightly. Unsettled by this new sensation of want within him, he stalked back to the ballroom, but he could not find the object of his desire.

He had lost her to the night. Perhaps that was for the best.

Chapter Six

After her conversation with Lord John, in which she apologized for her father’s actions and her assumptions, Petra rose with all the pride she could muster and trudged back to the ballroom. Lady Brawning, who had been kind enough to accompany her as a chaperone to the garden, left Lord Wolfridge and hurried after her. Petra paused to let the much older woman catch up to her, feeling a previously unknown kinship with the biblical Daniel when he faced down the lion den.

As they passed through the French doors, Petra was cognizant of curious and judgmental eyes turning her way. Yet nothing could have prepared her for the glare of her own father, who attempted to maintain his calm façade as he stalked towards her and casually gripped her arm like a vise. While he gave the appearance of politely escorting his beloved daughter home to their hosts and the rest of haute ton, the second the carriage door closed with a snick, the atmosphere grew as heavy as a lead curtain.

“Where is my cousin?” Petra steeled herself, determined that not a single tremor of the cold dread pooling in her chest would betray her to her sire. Though his palpable fury emanated from him in waves, she recognized the truth that kept her safe: she remained a vital piece upon his chessboard. A prized asset whose utility he was not yet prepared to forfeit. But Jillian…

“I sent that Jezebel home. She will be gone within the week.”

“Gone?” Petra gasped out, any poise wilting like an evening primrose at dawn.

“I had the perfect marriage settled for you, Pet. With a gentleman even you did not fight me on. Yet you could not hold onto him.” Her father did not move a muscle, yet his disgust with her failure emanated off of him in waves. Petra had to remind herself that it was not her fault Lord John was in love with someone else.

“Papa, you know as well as I there was no official betrothal, no real understanding—”

“How could you let yourself become an object of ridicule? Why could you not hold his interest?”

“Because he loves Jillian!” Petra at last found her voice. “And I shall do nothing to tear them asunder. Indeed, I will do everything in my power to promote their union.”

Her father went silent, his features assuming a mask of cold, assessing indifference that seemed to drain the very warmth from the carriage. For the first time since she entered the oppressive confines of the conveyance, Petra felt a tremor of genuine fear unfurl within her chest as her mind was drawn back to that day many years prior when she realized exactly who her father was and how little she truly meant to him. The day she solved her first mystery: why the maids were disappearing so rapidly.

Petra viewed the initial instances of it occurring almost like a spectator watching a play, as if the events belonged to another person’s life. How she had so blindly trusted her father to take care of things when his dinner guest had cornered her on the way to the retiring room. How mortified she had been when he had asked her why she was so upset. She hadn’t even been able to get the words out the first time a lecherous old goat had groped her once her father had absented the room. It was the third time that her father asked her what happened and he confronted the gentleman that she had begun to see what was really happening.

“Lord Royce, a moment.” Her father was always a study in the economy of movement, barely glancing up from his desk as Petra and a peer of the realm stood before him.

“Ah, my Pet,” her father had given her a ghost of a nod. Back then she had liked it when he called her that. As if she was precious to him. That was the day she had begun to despise when he called her that diminutive. “My Pet tells me that you may have cornered her in the hallway.” Her father looked up at Lord Royce with a bored expression despite his accusatory words. As if defending his daughter’s honor was wasting time he could have spent in other pursuits.

“I—I am a married man sir, and that-that—she, she offered—”

“My daughter, a gentlewoman years shy of her first Season, offered herself to you, Lord Royce? Is that what you are telling me?”

Finally allowing his disdain to show, her father speared the man with his glare. Yet, he had not moved since the man first entered his study, aside from lifting his head.

“Well, you know that foreign blood. She must have inherited…”

“My daughter has my blood running through her veins as well.”

“My lord, of course, I was not suggesting…” Like everyone else, Lord Royce had been two steps behind her father as Kemberley tutted with feigned sympathy at the sputtering earl.

“What would your dear lady wife say about you attacking a gentlewoman like that?”

“Keep her out of this, Kemberley.” For the first time, the color drained from Lord Royce’s chinless face and his bluster began to diminish in the face of a superior opponent.

“I could.” Her father cocked his head slightly to the side as if weighing whether he wished for port or brandy. “The Limited Liability Bill. I heard you mention you were to block it at every turn, Royce.” He said this off-handedly, as if it were of no great importance, when it hit sixteen-year-old Petra that this was the purpose of the entire endeavor. Her father straightened his head and gave a small sigh. “Such a shame your wife would have to find out about this. You seem to get along so well. How her heart will break when she learns she has been sharing her bed with a lecher all these years.”

“You bastard,” the man spat.

“Ah, ah,” her father chided without much emotion. “There is a lady present.”