Page 2 of The Sound of Seduction (Miracles on Harley Street #4)

“Is List really that dangerous?” she asked before she could stop herself, her voice carefully even. But when Stan’s eyes darkened, a single word slipped from his lips—a warning meant to echo.

“Very.”

Her breath hitched. His voice was an undertow, pulling her further into the uncharted waters that were his blue eyes.

A thought flickered, despite the majestic moment.

Beneath her nurse’s apron, beyond the tools of her daily life, she too could anchor something grander, like a quiet urge to break free from the boundaries she’d always known.

Across the room, their eyes met—steady, searching—and the unspoken promise of change permeated the atmosphere surrounding them.

*

Stan was no stranger to the sharp crack of a rifle. He’d been trained to handle some of the military’s most powerful missiles and endure the brutal toll of battle. Pain was something he could suppress without flinching.

But nothing in his training could have steeled him against the jolt that surged through him the moment Nurse Wendy met his gaze with her beautiful eyes.

Next, a stronger blow followed; she blushed. Not subtly, but with a vivid fury that left no room for doubt, he was the reason.

It wasn’t a mistake. This was deliberate, and it was aimed directly at him with the precision of a gunshot.

He shouldn’t have looked. Shouldn’t have noticed. But he did—and now he couldn’t unsee her.

Not just her beauty, but her bravery. Her restraint. The quiet, stunning nobility in the way she held herself like a soldier under inspection.

And that was the problem. He wasn’t safe for her. He didn’t have a simple life. And getting close to her could mean dragging her into the line of fire.

For her sake, he had to turn away and pretend none of this stirred anything at all.

“Then how do we defend against him?” Nurse Wendy asked. A simple question that had such a complicated answer. It had taken him nearly two months in London to just charter its border—or better, List’s wide reach of that forsaken and corrupt network of near-miss crimes he’d constructed.

There was no defense. Not for this. Not for her.

Certainly not because he wouldn’t try—he would have given half his fortune to conjure up some barrier between himself and the thrumming in his chest—but because he couldn’t.

Every hard-won ounce of discipline, every instinct honed for survival, seemed utterly useless the moment Nurse Wendy entered his proximity—and yet the closer she was to him, the more she could be in danger, like him.

“We stay away,” Alfie said as if he tried to dismiss the idea of Wendy going anywhere near him because it was plain to see that List’s assaults followed him like an unwanted shadow.

“But List won’t stay away from us ,” Andre said.

“He won’t stay away from me .” Stan corrected them. “I’m his target.”

“And now, we all may be,” Andre added.

And that was one of the thousand reasons why he had to stay away from Nurse Wendy. He’d die a death worse than execution at List’s hands if anything happened to his friends, the doctors at Harley Street, or Nurse Wendy.

She took his breath away in ways he couldn’t fathom. And yet, it happened every time he saw her.

He’d seen her before, of course. Many times, in fact—often enough that her presence should no longer rattle him.

As the oculist’s sister, she’d been part of the clinic’s daily rhythm.

She was never insignificant. Her crisp white apron, her steady hands, her voice that calmly directed even aristocrats—she was not just a nurse.

She was the linchpin of this place. It wasn’t just admiration anymore.

It was longing, and that made her dangerous.

He had enemies. Loving her could destroy her.

Last month, when he’d begun staying at the Langley’s townhouse upon his arrival in London, she had flitted in and out as part of the medical entourage for the pregnant Countess of Langley.

The apothecary and the doctors came as needed, their presence a matter of courtesy or necessity.

But Wendy…Wendy was never just a formality.

At first glance, she appeared to be the epitome of modest utility—a pretty girl in her crisp white apron, her hands methodical and steady.

From the beginning, he noticed her attractiveness.

He wasn’t blind, nor was he immune to how her neat braid slipped loose by late afternoon, framing her face with a hint of chaos that contrasted with her precise movements.

He contemplated how to tug at that neatly tied ribbon of her apron, envisioning various angles from which she would fall straight into his arms. The outcome existed only in his dreams at night, for he also imagined how he would unravel that ribbon and catch her—the best part.

Still, he quickly dismissed the idea, much like one might disregard a glimmer on a distant horizon. It was there, yet inconsequential.

But then…

Then, he watched her work.

And that was when the glint became a beacon.

Wendy moved not with the clinical detachment he expected from someone assisting physicians but with a sort of quiet, unyielding purpose.

She wasn’t merely present; she was pivotal.

Her deft hands anticipated what each doctor needed before they even asked.

Her voice, calm but firm, without hesitation, directed aristocratic patients twice her age.

It was in the way she leaned over a patient’s bedside, her brow furrowed not in doubt but in determination, that he realized something startlingly simple yet irrevocably profound.

She healed.

People, objects, even his fractured patience as he waited hours in the Langley parlor for someone to tend to his hostess’ nausea—everything Wendy touched seemed to mend under her care.

And it had struck him harder than any bullet that she wielded her expertise without the faintest trace of vanity.

Wendy simply…did. Wasn’t that infinitely more compelling than any amount of artificial charm honed by the vain aristocratic ladies he’d been presented with for as long as he could remember?

He may bear the title of prince, but that was only a courtesy of his bloodline; there was no kingdom nor principality he ruled over, despite the blue blood in his veins.

Now here she stood, blushing with a fury that seemed to set the room alight, and Stan felt something unravel within him.

It wasn’t her fault. He knew that. She was probably not even aware of what she’d done.

But her cheeks, pink and burning, betrayed something that tightened his chest to the point of absurdity.

This wasn’t admiration. Not anymore. Admiration didn’t lance through a man’s defenses and leave him raw every night—apparently now, also by day.

He should have looked away.

Should have folded this moment down like a military report—studied, filed, and dismissed.

For a moment, their eyes met again, and the air stretched thin between them. He was a soldier, a leader, a man trained to withstand harsher pressures than this.

But what training prepared a man to resist someone like her? Not when her mere presence could compromise his entire mission. And yet, here he stood, utterly unarmed in the face of a woman who didn’t even realize she’d already conquered him.