Page 46 of The Sound of Seduction (Miracles on Harley Street #4)

And then her eyes found Stan. The one person who shouldn’t have been caught in the shadows of their fury.

He was standing a little apart from the group, his shoulders taut and his face a portrait of guilty concern.

Was he afraid to meet her gaze—or terrified of Nick?

She couldn’t decide, and the nervous energy bubbling inside her wasn’t helping.

Wendy blinked rapidly, heat rushing to her cheeks. She’d prepared herself mentally for Stan’s part in this chaos. She hadn’t accounted for a full jury watching her, ready to tally her sins.

Andre came nearer until he was directly below her.

Was he bracing himself? Oh dear, did he truly expect to catch her?

She blinked down at him, then at Nick, who was gesticulating wildly and shouting, though she still couldn’t quite hear him over her throbbing heartbeat.

And Stan, her handsomely disheveled Stan, looked…

helpless. He stared up at her as though he wanted to climb up himself but didn’t quite trust the scenery.

Wendy opened her mouth to say something—anything, really—to ease the tension or, perhaps, to bolster her own resolve.

But before she could, a firm hand shot out, grasping her wrist with enough strength to anchor her in place.

She turned her head just in time to glimpse Felix stepping halfway into the room and rushing toward her, one hand gripping her arm, the other snatching the back of her gown like she was an unruly child caught at the edge of a pond.

“Wendy.”

The voice carried nothing of the chaos from below. It was calm, decisive. And frustratingly familiar.

“What on earth are you doing?” she spluttered, trying to twist away.

Her grip on the windowsill tightened to counterbalance the awkward tug.

She didn’t want to get caught, not by Nick, not Felix, not any of them.

Just this once she wanted to speak to them about being a grown woman in love and not the little sister in need of protection.

“Saving your sorry, pretty face from plummeting to the gravel,” Felix replied evenly, though his tone carried a distinct lack of patience.

“Don’t!” But, yes please!

“Do you know what your face would look like after a fall from this height? Because I do. Teeth smashed, jaw tilted at an unnatural angle, a set of injuries that I’d be tasked with fixing, mind you.”

Wendy froze at his words, the sting of their imagery rooting her in place for just a moment. She craned her neck to glance down again, her stomach flipping as the ground beneath her seemed to tilt precariously.

“It’s not that high,” she lied, her voice soft and doubtful even to her own ears.

Felix snorted. “It’s high enough.” Then, swiftly and unceremoniously, he pulled her back through the window, wrenching her balance loose before she had the presence of mind to protest. Her feet scraped along the wall, slipping in her stockings as Felix’s arms locked around her, one beneath each of her arms. Without ceremony, he lifted her like he had when she was a little girl, planting her firmly on her bed.

Her heart pounded as she steadied herself, blinking up at Felix as he stood over her, panting just slightly but with the faintest trace of a frown between his brows.

“You almost fell,” he said, the words so soft they held more weight than any of the shouting from below.

“I didn’t,” she corrected with a stubborn little spark.

But even as she said it, her voice wavered, and she winced.

Wendy looked at his face, his eyes warm despite their sternness, and she felt something unexpected—a pang she hadn’t recognized in a long time.

She was like that little girl again, the one who believed Felix could fix nearly any scrape.

“You fell, though, didn’t you? The other kind of falling, I mean.

” His voice shifted, quieter now, the sharp edges softening.

Felix crouched before her, his dark eyes searching hers as he took her hands in his much larger, steadier ones.

His grip was light, but unwavering, as though to shield her from anything that might try to break her further.

Wendy’s throat tightened. A knot formed slowly, climbing upward until her lips trembled and her vision blurred at the edges. “Very much,” she admitted, the words unspooling faster than her mind had time to stop them. She sniffed and blinked a tear away stubbornly.

Felix exhaled and looked down for a brief moment, his head shaking just slightly.

“You’re in love with the prince,” he said matter-of-factly.

It wasn’t a question. He lifted her hands a little, folding them together carefully between his palms as though he could somehow cradle her heart there along with them.

Wendy’s lips parted to protest, but she knew that whatever she said she wouldn’t believe herself.

Instead of replying, she gazed at his face.

He knew—he always knew—long before she did.

It must be the prerogative of a man who once loved with body and soul, as he usually said, and then lost. And for all his frowning and lecturing, Felix was still here, holding her steady.

His lost love was a cautionary tale, and Wendy knew in that moment that she wouldn’t— couldn’t —let Stan go.