Page 16 of Crying Wolfe
She paused, considering his words.
Hewasalarmingly large, her intended. Hard and scarred and dusted with dark hair. He didn’t just occupy space, he claimed it. Claimed it with his wide shoulders and his deep chest. A chest chiseled with grooves and sculpted with swells that sophisticated British men didn’t possess. Indeed, there was nothing at all elegant about him. His hands were rough and square, both his palms and his voice heavy and abrasive as brick.
Emmett lay back on her bed with what she could only identify as a dreamy sigh. “Doesn’t it seem like he could protect you from—well, from just about anything?”
Rosaline joined her brother, staring up at the canopy as little creatures romped and clawed their way over and around them. “It does,” she agreed softly.
But who would protect her from him?
CHAPTER5
Eli couldn’t remember the last time he’d so viciously wanted to shoot something. Or hit something. Or snap something over his knee and beat something else to death with it before lighting both things on fire and sending them to hell.
He’d never been so happy to return to a quiet, empty house.
After a late morning with Morley and their lawyers—whom the Brits called solicitors, though he could find exactly nothing solicitous about them—he’d had his own business to contend with.
Contend being the operative word.
Land deals sure meant the world to people who called themselves lords, and even more to those lords whose families had owned said land for hundreds of years. Sometimes longer.
Apparently, after business, men in this town went for “a bit of sport,” which sure as hell meant something different than where he was from.
Though Eli did his level best to enjoy a night of drinking, gambling, and carrying on with flirtatious women drenched in heavy gems and perfumes, he just…couldn’t. It wasn’t that he felt any sense of fidelity to his bride-to-be. He’d never even had a proper conversation with her.
He was just…getting too damn old for this shit. The noise and the odors and the vibrant colors, he’d once found them dazzling. Had been drunk on the fact that he could walk into a room and buy anything, or anyone, in it. Power was such an effective intoxicant. Wealth, a heady seduction.
It was freedom.
Or so he’d once thought.
Yanking away the silk noose at his neck, he had one button of his collar thrown before he’d reached the first-floor landing of Hespera House. Flexing and stretching his right hand, he examined the few superficial cuts on his knuckles. They’d be swollen and sore tomorrow.
Though not as sore as that Viscount’s smarmy face.
Eli’d never met the man in his life, and still the worthless lordling had the gall to sneer at his ‘crass American money.’ He’d mocked Eli’s callused palms and his sunbaked skin, as if his own limp, smooth lady-hands were something to be proud of. Proof he’d never worked for anything he owned. When unable to get a rise out of him, the young man, surrounded by a pack of pathetic mates, announced Eli’s engagement to a club full of men like a fucking matron clucking gossip at a church social.
And here he thought news traveled fast in small towns.
Apparently, London had a few telephones installed, and it seemed the days a man could outrun what was said about him were over forever.
Eli had held his temper. Held it like a fucking champion until the buck-toothed bastard insinuated that the youngest sister of a country Baron who had to work as a shipping entrepreneur might just be unrefined enough to deserve the likes of him.
Back in Nevada, you try and take digs at a man’s work or his woman? You sucked the end of his barrel until he ejaculated lead and gunpowder through the back of your skull.
The lad wasluckyto have escaped with only a broken jaw.
The way his compatriots scampered, Eli imagined they’d not realized the complete height and breadth of him until he was scowling down at them, itching for another face to plant his fist in.
Or they’d underestimated his willingness to commit physical violence when dining at a table with three members of Parliament.
Eli conquered the second- and third-floor stairs two at a time, looking forward to a hot soak and—
What the—?
A seam of light from beneath the door to the observatory broke his step.
He checked his watch. Ten thirty. Mrs. Clarkwell barely made it to her wheelchair these days, let alone to visit the treasures he promised she could come and stare at any time.
