Lady Wild by Máire Claremont

Her father, the Earl of Darlington, had had his own glorious town home, where her parents had entertained the glittering haute ton . That house now belonged to her half-brother, and she’d not seen it, nor him, since their father’s death. She hoped she never did.
    This house?
    She tilted her head back to study the painted ceiling, marveling at the beauty of the Greek gods painted in Restoration fashion upon the ceiling. Athena bared her breast and notched her bow as she took sight of a deer. At her lithe heel, a gray, virile wolfhound waited to be given word to chase down the goddess’ prey.
    Other gods watched, their colored robes a rainbow against the forest backdrop of Athena’s hunt. Was it a warning? A symbol that all who entered into this foyer of Stark’s home might be hunted, stalked, taken in?
    So far, everything led her to believe so. Even his crest was that of a bear.
    Lord Stark had lured her in with the promise of comfort for her dear mother and the delusion that he would leave her unsullied. Her dear mama truly believed in the young man. Truly believed the strange lord would not betray them. She didn’t wish to call her mama a fool, or even herself for giving in, but she couldn’t allow her heart to trust.
    Her patched slippers slid easily over the Turkish blue and white carpets as she went to her mother to see if she had completely collapsed from the journey. The last hour had been hell. “Mama?”
    Lady Darlington sat on the delicate chair, somehow managing to make the spindly construction look like a bastion of oak in her weakened conditioned. She lifted her chin under her feathered bonnet, an effort purely astonishing. “My dear?”
    Ophelia sucked in a shuddering breath and forced the remnants of a gracious smile to her lips, one she had learned from her mother. The dowager had known how to manage servants beautifully once upon a time. She turned toward the butler. “Lady Darlington needs immediate rest.”
    The man nodded. “Your rooms are ready, of course. They are at the rear of the house and will offer you protection from the noise of the square.”
    And the eyes of visitors and the spectators off the street.
    Ophelia nodded, then lifted her gaze to the stair, trying not to let regret stain her heart. A noise drew her attention, and she spotted Lord Stark. Their gazes locked.
    All stopped.
    The noise of the street. The butler’s disdain. The shame of her luggage and frock. Even her mother’s illness disappeared. In his eyes for one brief, holy moment, the world spun in a different direction, touched by beauty, touched by hope, touched by a strange sort of wonder.
    He stood on the stair, stubble blackening his square jaw. His jet hair was wild about his face, and again, his linen shirt hung shockingly loose about his neck, exposing even more muscles than he had before. She’d only ever examined such in an anatomy book, and she could not stop herself from staring.
    “You came,” he said.
    Those honeyed, dark words drifted down, stealing over her skin, and she shivered. “I cannot surmise if I would have been a fool to stay in Derbyshire or am a fool to have dragged my mother halfway across England.”
    “Your mama is sitting right here,” Lady Darlington said, her breath catching raggedly.
    Ophelia winced. It grew harder and harder to hear her mother’s voice, once so melodious, change into something as frail as a translucent shell.
    “My lady,” Stark said as he descended the stair.
    At first she could not tell if he addressed her or her mother, but as he approached, it became clear his focus was entirely upon her mama.
    He knelt before Lady Darlington, took one of her small hands in his, his palm virtually swallowing up the small bones of the older woman’s appendage. “You grace my home, and I am an ass to keep you in the foyer but a moment.”
    “Such language,” Lady Darlington tutted, managing a smile despite her exhaustion. She even batted at his shoulder in a play of