Page 33 of Lady Petra and the Wolf

“I can’t say that I have, no.”

Petra hummed again. “She writes of something called a honey trap, in which a woman uses her wiles to trap a man, often blackmailing him. You could almost say my father set up honey traps. Yet, I am not sure if it would be called a honey trap if one does not consent to be the bait.”

When Wolf spoke next, he spoke very slowly, unsure if he could believe what he was saying. “Your father…used his servants against their will to trap men?”

“Not just any men.” All warmth had gone from Petra’s voice and it reminded him of her tone after they were caught at the Stillwell Ball. “Any peer or member of Parliament who he needed something from. His greatest target was married men rumored to be lechers.”

Wolf tilted his head, managing to glance back at Petra from the corner of his eye.

“According to my father, while married men of such station are expected to keep mistresses, they are not expected to, as my father so genteelly puts it, ‘tup the domestics’.”

“Your father spoke to you about this?” Wolf almost made to get up but again remembered his precarious position.

“I figured it out, you see.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a slow, sad smile cross Petra’s face. “Love a mystery, me. I was even able to get him to stop in a way.”

“In a way?” Wolf repeated.

“Unfortunately, in our society, a lady’s word against a gentleman holds a great deal more water than a domestic servant.”

Wolf truly did sit up at that. No longer able to lie prostrate before her, he gathered the linen around himself and turned toward her.

“No.” He could not believe, could not comprehend that a father would offer his daughter in such a way.

Petra was staring down at her scissors and string as if unable to look up at him. “The first few times, I did not understand what was happening.”

“Did they…” Wolf found himself unable to finish his question, bile coating the back of his throat at the implication.

“No, they did not complete the act, Lord Wolfridge. My father still wanted me to be untouched as a future bride.” Petra steadfastly declined to raise her gaze, her fingers nonetheless remaining preoccupied with the labor of winding the thread into a compact ball before her. “I was so innocent, I did not understand, I only knew I did not like it. It was only after the third time that I confronted my father about what was happening and the disappearing maids. And we came to an agreement.”

Though a pervasive dread began to settle within his bones at the prospect of her revelation, he recognized with a grim finality that he possessed no alternative but to attend her every utterance as she raised her gaze to meet his eyes.

“If he left the servants alone, then he could continue to use me in his traps,” she said quietly.

“Petra,” Wolf moaned. His wounds seemed small and insignificant as he began to comprehend the depths to which the earl would stoop. The devastation he had inflicted upon his daughter. “No.”

“Perhaps I am impure in your eyes, Lord Wolfridge.” That was the second time she had called him that, as if to distance herself, protect herself from any censure. But he could never condemn this thoroughly decent, needlessly noble angel. His heart broke again as he realized the depths of his betrayal in appearing to work with her father. No words came, yet he needed her to know how much he understood. How greatly he admired her.

“No, never,” he bit out.

“At the same time,” Petra pressed on, as if she had not just shared how her father engaged in the most despicable, villainous acts he could imagine. “I was in touch with my grandfather’s estate.”

“The Greek one?” Wolf asked, although he sensed he already knew the answer.

Petra gave a small nod, as though acknowledging the unspoken truth amongst the ton that her grandfather was foreign. Not that it made any difference to Wolf, but Lord Kemberley liked to keep quiet that the source of his first wife’s great dowry was a man from the Mediterranean.

“My grandfather had set aside a not insignificant sum of inheritance for myself, Jillian, and her brother Stephen that was only to be touched by us. My father had always assumed it would go toward a dowry, so he hasn’t looked into it in years. However, my grandfather’s man of business was very loyal to him, and I was finally allowed access once I turned one and twenty.”

Wolf nodded, he was beginning to see the shape of where she was going, but he was still at a loss for where they were.

“So, once I had access to the funds, I wanted to create a place where people, women in particular, could go if they were…interfered with by their employers. Because how could they escape without risking being unemployed with no reference?”

“A sanctuary,” Wolf said, his voice thick with unabashed awe.

“Yes, exactly.” Petra finally stopped fiddling with the thread and looked at him fully. For the first time since she had begun her story, her eyes brightened. “I wanted to create a sanctuary for workers, especially women, to escape. And they are welcome to stay here for as long as they desire. However, they can also learn skills for new positions if they do not wish to go back to domestic work. Reading and writing to be a secretary. Nursing work. Of course, it is difficult because they are not a part of the new nursing schools, but one of our instructors served in the Crimea, and we have had several of our trainees find positions, if not in England then abroad,” she added with a note of pride.

“But,” Wolf sputtered, “how are you able to do all of this, my lady? How have you stayed undetected, especially from your father?” Wolf was impressed beyond reason, but he could not quite comprehend how Petra had built her own empire under her father’s nose.

“I dare say, you enjoy mysteries as well, do you not? Can you not guess where we are? What would your American poet’s inspector do?”