One Wicked Wish by Anna Campbell

Chapter 18

Within its first hour, the Tierney ball was pronounced a raging success. The orchestra that Lady Tierney had imported from Paris outplayed any band from London. The decorations were spectacular. The catering was lavish. So many people had accepted invitations that everyone complained about the party being a dreadful crush, the height of praise for a ton gathering.

Even the weather blessed Lady Tierney. For the beginning of May, it was warm and fine and in contrast to the Lumsden ball a couple of weeks ago, the well-lit terrace and garden proved popular with guests seeking a breath of air after the stifling heat inside.

Stella sat with the chaperones and leveled blind eyes on the whirling crowd of dancers. Around her, the endless tide of gossip that buoyed the ladies through event after event rose and fell. She paid it no heed.

All she knew was the ache in her heart. The pain had been with her ever since she left Gray’s bed. A pain that all too often rose to a howl of anguish.

It had been so difficult to leave him, even though she knew that what he offered would end up destroying her. But each day since, her misery had worsened. She hadn’t realized how missing him would turn every minute to dust. She hadn’t realized how the compulsion to see him would cut at her like a knife. Nor how on the two occasions that she did see him, the sight would stab even deeper than his absence.

It was too cruel having him within touching distance yet utterly, eternally out of reach.

He hadn’t attended many events this week. Gossip had him staying at Prestwick Place for a few days after his guests left. When Stella had caught sight of him at the Bourton musicale three days ago, her reaction hadn’t just been a massive wave of futile longing. She’d been appalled at how ill he looked.

While she’d never doubted that he’d prefer to continue their affair, she’d assumed that someone so used to women moving in and out of his life would recover from his disappointment in the blink of an eye. Seeing Gray haggard and desperately unhappy was a horrid shock.

Perhaps under other circumstances, she might be flattered to know that she’d made such an impression on him. But she couldn’t summon any triumph. Instead she felt an excruciating sadness that he was no happier than she was. Nor was there any prospect of relief ahead for either of them. Because she loved him with such depth and devotion, his suffering only increased the burden of hers.

Gray was here tonight. He’d danced with Imogen and with Lily and with Lady Tierney. At the moment, she couldn’t see him. She supposed that he and some willing lady strolled in the garden. Or he’d finished strolling and had retired to a private glade, designed for kissing. For more than kissing.

Her jealousy undermined her noble wish for his contentment. If some hussy dared to set her claws into Gray, Stella wanted to scratch the trollop’s eyes out. He belonged to her.

Which was absurd, when they were apart and destined to stay that way. He might languish without her now, but she was realistic enough to understand that he’d soon find another mistress to divert him.

Lucky little bitch.

“Miss Faulkner?”

Her fantasies of eviscerating the next occupant of Gray’s bed – and every occupant after that, for good measure – came to a sudden end. A footman hovered beside the uncomfortable gilt chair that was de rigueur for chaperones at London balls.

“Yes?”

“You’re required in the small salon as a matter of urgency.”

The words were worrying enough to pierce her brooding. She surged to her feet on a burst of concern. Her eyes sought out Imogen, but she couldn’t see her.

“Where is that?” She’d visited this house when Imogen called on Elizabeth, but she didn’t know her way beyond the drawing room.

“I’ll take you there, miss,” the man said.

Stella collected her reticule from where she’d placed it on the floor. Making her excuses, she threaded her way through the other chaperones and along the edge of the crowd. If Imogen had taken ill, a quick trip home and an early night might solve the problem.

The small salon was at the end of a long corridor, hung with inept watercolors that she suspected the ladies of the family had painted. The footman pushed open the door and stepped back with a bow.

As the door closed behind her, Stella rushed inside. “Imogen, are you all right?”

The room appeared to be empty. Puzzled, she turned around. When she saw the tall man resting his back against the door, her poor suffering heart contracted in painful longing.

“Gray…”

He didn’t straighten, although he bent his dark head in a brief bow. “Good evening, Stella.”

As confusion ebbed, anger replaced it. She’d said all she intended to say to him. That had been hard enough. Having to endure more arguments now when the outcome could never change verged on torture. He must know that.

Her reticule dropped from nerveless fingers. “What game are you playing?”

He didn’t seem to hear. His eyes ranged over her with an urgency that made her blood pump with a force she hadn’t felt since she’d left him. “By God, you look awful.”

With a self-conscious gesture, she touched her hair. Thanks to Nancy, it was arranged in the curls that she’d sported at Prestwick Place, and she wore one of her own gowns. She couldn’t bear a complete return to the prim creature she’d been before the house party. That would be too much confirmation that her life promised to be an arid desert.

“Thank you very much,” she snapped. “So do you.”

By heaven, he did. At a distance, she’d noticed his tired and dispirited air. Now, from only a few feet away, she saw dark hollows around his lightless eyes and deep lines scored between his nose and mouth. He looked at least ten years older than the lover who gave her such joy a mere week ago.

He shrugged, as if his appearance didn’t matter. “Oh, you’re still beautiful. You’ll always be beautiful.”

Stella doubted it. As bitterness and frustration took their toll, she’d turn into a vinegar-faced crone. But that wasn’t the important issue right now.

She adopted a chilly tone. “Do you have something to say that I need to hear, or are you just playing with me the way a cat plays with a mouse?”

A frown darkening his features, he straightened. “Do I look like I’m getting any enjoyment out of this?”

She fought against the urge to take him in her arms. “No.”

“You’ve made me a complete wreck. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I can’t think of anything but you.” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe what was happening to him. “When I see you now, I wonder if it’s the same for you.”

It was. She’d noticed tonight how loose this dress hung on her. If she didn’t pull herself together, she’d soon be nothing but skin and bones.

But none of that mattered.

“Gray, we can’t be seen together, or all the trouble we’ve taken will be for nothing. Let me go back to the ballroom.”

He didn’t shift away from the door. “I don’t give a damn for scandal anymore.”

“Well, I do.”

Again he didn’t seem to hear her. “I had to do something. I felt like I couldn’t take another breath without seeing you.”

“You’ve seen me several times this week. The Bourton musicale. Lady Freeman’s ball.”

“That’s almost worse than not seeing you at all.” He grimaced. “I feel like a dog chained to a post while someone parades a plate of sirloin a foot in front of him.”

Plague take the rogue, she couldn’t doubt he meant it.

“Hardly complimentary,” she said, although to her regret, she knew just what he meant.

“I don’t set out to compliment you.”

Her anger seeped away. Which was a pity because it left crippling misery behind. “I’m sorry.”

A savage light flared in his eyes. “Is that the best you can do?”

“Yes,” she said on a breath of sound and retreated until she bumped into a chair behind her. One trembling hand fumbled back to grab the chair’s carved back. She needed to hold onto something to stay upright.

Gray looked so hurt. She hated that. She hated even more that she was the cause. Avoiding notice had once seemed the most complicated element of this affair. How naïve she’d been.

“Don’t you want to see me?”

She swallowed to ease a painfully tight throat. “Not if it just opens old wounds.”

“My wounds haven’t started to heal yet.”

“If you keep doing things like this, they never will.”

“Is that all you can give me?” He spread his hands. “After everything we were to each other?”

“What do you want?” Although she knew.

“Since you left me, I’ve been living in purgatory.” That betraying muscle twitched in his cheek. This was a man at the limit of his resources. “I’m not in the habit of begging, but I’m here to beg you to come back, Stella.”

Heaven help her, that was what she wanted, too. “Nothing has changed.”

“Except now we both know what torture it is to be apart. Don’t pretend you’re not in hell as well. I won’t believe you. You’re a shadow of the woman who left me a week ago.”

What could she say? He was right. “You have to let me go. This will destroy both of us.”

“Not being together will destroy us,” he said. “How can you bear it?”

She released the chair, and her hands formed fists at her sides. “Because I have to.”

“No, you don’t. You can come to me. We can have what we had at Prestwick Place. It will be even better, because we won’t have to sneak around and the affair doesn’t have to end until we’re ready. Don’t you want that?”

“Of course I want that,” she admitted, her voice breaking with the tears she fought not to shed. When she went back to the ballroom, it would be hard enough to hide her turmoil, without adding red eyes to the mix.

“Then stay.”

“I can’t.”

“No scandal could be worse than this.”

“That’s easy for you to say. I’ll bear the brunt of any gossip. You’ll just go on your merry way.”

He glared at her. “Do I look particularly merry to you? Your good name hasn’t done you too many favors. Wouldn’t you rather be happy and notorious with me than respectable and lonely?”

Oh, dear God, he tempted her. But her self-respect wouldn’t let her become his doxy instead of his equal. That self-respect awoke a scrap of defiance. “I won’t talk to you about this, when you block the door and stop me leaving. Is this how it would be, once I’m in your power? You’ll bully me into getting your own way every time my will clashes with yours? Pardon me if I don’t leap at the chance to surrender my independence.”

He paled at her accusation. Which she knew wasn’t entirely fair. If she insisted on leaving with anything that sounded like firmness, he’d let her go.

“Your independence? When you grovel to that toad Deerforth for every morsel you eat? When you’re at Imogen’s beck and call? When you’re so afraid of attracting notice that you can’t say one word to a man you fancy? A fine freedom you rejoice in, madam.”

Stella flinched under his attack, knowing much of what he said was just. She scrabbled to retrieve her anger, but it had vanished as if it had never been.

“Yes, that’s all true.” Her voice emerged laden with despair. “But none of that touches my soul. Being your whore would. It would tarnish everything between us. It would tarnish me.”

She hurt him all over again. She could see that. The lines on his face etched even deeper. With a theatrical flourish, he stepped away from the door. “So go, then.”

She should. Oh, how she should. But her feet remained glued to the floor.

Something told her that this was their last chance to be alone together. Despite the conflict and sorrow, she felt alive for the first time since she’d left him. How could she rush away from that, whatever the risk of discovery?

“Stella, have you changed your mind?” he asked, after the thorny silence stretched out to breaking point.

“I can’t.” She blinked back tears, although it turned into a losing battle. “Our arrangement was a few days at Prestwick Place, then we go our separate ways.”

“Fuck the arrangement,” he bit out. “I want more. I need more.”

So did she, God help her. But she couldn’t relent. She was wise enough to know that an extra day, an extra week, an extra year only promised an even more agonizing goodbye. And with every day, the chance of discovery grew.

“Gray, this has to be the end.” At last the tears began to fall. “Damn you, you’ve made me cry.”

He looked stricken. And heartbreakingly remorseful. “Oh, my darling…”

He strode across the room. Given his earlier behavior, she expected him to grab her, but his touch was gentle as he folded her into his arms.

That proved disastrous for her control. “How dare you make me cry?” she wailed, her fist hitting his chest. “Everything’s been so vile without you, then you pull this trick and make it all worse.”

“I know. I’m a beast and a brute.”

“You are.” She snaked her arms around his waist, fitting herself without thought into his body as she’d done so often before. “How can I go back into that ballroom, looking like I’ve been bawling my eyes out?”

Gray’s embrace tightened. She should feel confined, compelled. Instead she just felt warm and safe. Which was mad, when alone with him in this room, safe was the last thing she was.

“It’s all right. I won’t torment you anymore.” He cupped the back of her head and pressed her face into his black superfine coat. His rich, spicy scent filled her senses and reminded her of the hundreds of previous times when she’d rested in his hold. How it broke her heart to think that the last time he touched her, it was to comfort not to seduce her.

After a long silence, he bundled her up in his arms and drew her onto a chaise longue in front of the unlit fire. Stella was too upset, too worn out, and too bereft to protest.

“I’ll arrange for a footman to call your carriage,” he said.

She regarded him through bleary eyes. “To take me back to Lorimer Square?”

“Or we can forget your carriage, and you can come home with me.”

His voice was grave, and his eyes were steady. Stella saw such longing there that her heart crashed against her ribs. For one charged instant, she wondered if she could run off with Gray.

Was reputation more important than love? While becoming his temporary mistress meant that he’d send her away when he lost interest, would that be worse than these last few days without him?

If she said yes, she’d have more of Gray. More pleasure. More tenderness. More laughter.

Then she remembered Imogen. And she also recalled the careless way Gray referred to his mistresses, like toys brought out for his amusement and discarded once a new toy came along. She felt sick to think he might ever view her in the same light.

She had to remember that he wasn’t a good man. He’d never pretended to be.

Although he’d been good to her.

As Lady Lumsden had said, he harbored the capacity to become a better man. But Stella was wise enough to know that only some major crisis would make him abandon a life of delightful self-indulgence. He’d have to change, and given how entertaining his existence was, why should he?

Right now, he grizzled and griped because the toy he wanted was out of reach. But that didn’t make her a toy in her own mind.

Because she loved him, the best thing she could do for either of them was let him go.

Stella pulled his head down until his lips met hers, knowing that she’d never kiss him again. She didn’t rush the kiss, but infused it with every ounce of hopeless love she felt for this complicated, wonderful man.

When he raised his head, his expression was somber as she’d never seen it. “You mean to leave me.”

“I’m sorry, Gray.”

“I can’t bear it.”

She tried to smile, but she had a horrible feeling that she made a mess of it. “You’ll forget me.”

“Never.”

Dear God, he sounded so convinced. How she wished she could believe him. “Please find that footman and arrange my carriage. Although I hate to interrupt Imogen’s night.”

Gray must have accepted that the time when entreaties or arguments might win the day had passed. If such a time had ever existed.

“She can go home with the Lumsdens. They only live across the square from you.”

Stella nodded, still clinging to him. It was past time to go, but she couldn’t summon the will to leave. She was lucky her uncle wasn’t at the ball. He was attending some political dinner in Belgravia. He’d kick up a stink about Stella using the carriage for her own convenience. “Will you arrange to get a message to her?”

“Yes. I’ll say you’ve taken ill. And I’ll send a footman to escort you out the back way so you don’t have to face that crowd.”

That crowd with their nasty, prying eyes and clacking tongues.

“Thank you.” She made herself stand. Forsaking his embrace felt like cutting off her hand with a blunt ax.

She blinked away more tears. She’d cried enough tonight, and not one single tear changed the stark reality. Her affair with Grayson Maddox was over.

He didn’t rise when she did, but watched her with a hunger that made her ache. “You really mean to do this thing?”

She tried another smile, although she feared it was as ghastly as her last attempt. “I must.”

“So I’m to have no more of you?”

She’d been wrong to think he’d given up the fight. Couldn’t he see that every word drove the knife further into her tattered heart?

Stella swallowed and told herself not to cry. “Only…only my very best wishes for your happiness, Gray. You’ll always have those.”

Those marked black eyebrows lowered with displeasure. “Even though what you’re doing destroys any chance of happiness?”

Her gesture waved his question away. “Don’t exaggerate.”

“I’m not.”

Studying him, she almost believed him. But she couldn’t. Right now, he was suffering. No question. But he’d get over her the next time a pretty face caught his eye.

When her heart would break all over again, to Hades with him.

Her shaking hands twined in her skirts. “Gray, if you have an ounce of respect or care for me, please go now.”

He rose, his jaw set like granite, and gave her a brief bow. “I’ll go, but you’re making a mistake, Stella.”

He sounded so certain. How could he sound so certain?

Stella picked up her reticule and turned away to stare into the fireplace. She couldn’t look at him. Despite everything, she still feared she might weaken.

“Goodbye, Gray,” she whispered, and waited to hear the door close behind him.

***

Halston stood in the shadows by the Tierneys’ garden gate and watched Lord Deerforth’s carriage trundle away into the night. He’d never felt so wretched in all his life. Even in his desolate childhood, he couldn’t remember feeling quite this low.

The irony of it all was that as an adult, he’d done his best to see that life caused him no inconvenience at all. His days were an endless round of pleasure.

His affair with Stella Faulkner was supposed to supply more of that same pleasure. The urgency of his desire had surprised him, but in all essentials, his latest dalliance would only be a more satisfying version of what he’d enjoyed so many times before.

Right from their very first meeting, since that wary, prickly, intriguing encounter in the Lumsdens’ gazebo, things hadn’t gone to plan. By God, if he’d shown an ounce of sense, he’d have taken to his heels then and there. And forgotten troublesome Miss Faulkner in the arms of another opera dancer or bored widow.

But Halston hadn’t shown an ounce of sense. He’d already been too enmeshed in an attraction unlike any other. Every day since had only forged another link in the chain shackling him to this woman.

The awful truth was he was so lost in yearning that he didn’t want to break free. He, whose name was synonymous with love them and leave them.

Halston didn’t much like having the tables turned on him. After that scene tonight, he knew that despite her unhappiness, Stella had no intention of returning.

With most of the women he knew, their will was at the service of their appetites. Stella, he discovered, was made of sterner stuff. When she agreed to give him five days of her company, she’d meant precisely that. None of his blandishments – damn it, none of his anguish – would change her mind.

If he wasn’t so blasted hurt, he might even admire her strength.

The sad truth was that he did admire her strength. He always had. Life had done its best to crush her, but she’d kept her integrity. Even more, she’d kept her heart. Stella Faulkner had no petty emotions. No jealousy. No self-pity. No bitterness.

She was the most remarkable person he knew. Not to mention the most passionate lover. He’d once imagined that he’d show her the meaning of pleasure. What a blind, arrogant ass he’d been.

She’d revealed a new world that beggared his previous experience. He’d fallen completely under her spell, before he’d realized that she lured him from the shallows where he was content to splash around and out into deep, dangerous water.

Now, devil take her, he was drowning, and she wouldn’t even stretch out a hand to rescue him.

He shivered. It was cold here. He told himself he should go back into the ballroom and look around for his next mistress. After all, the best cure for an unhappy love affair was sure to be another love affair.

Except he was never unhappy at the end of a love affair. He was always the one looking to the future. That was why Francene had shot him. Not because he’d broken her heart. He doubted she had a heart to break. But she had a surplus of pride, and Halston hadn’t been careful enough to hide his boredom when pretending to regret the liaison’s end.

Now he looked back and realized that he’d deserved that bullet. Hell, most of the women he knew should have shot him. He hadn’t treated any of them with a shred of respect, however much jewelry he bought them.

The unacceptable truth was that when Stella told him it was over, it hurt much worse than a mere bullet. In his bleaker moments, he feared that she’d inflicted a mortal wound on a man who until now had believed himself unassailable.

Now he skulked around in the dark, feeling like a mongrel cur kicked into the gutter. This without question counted as one of those bleaker moments.

Of course, he could continue to pursue Stella, but he couldn’t see her ever consenting to become his mistress, however much she might miss him. At least that was some small consolation from tonight. He now knew that she missed him almost as much as he missed her. Not that it did him a scrap of good.

Stella, like Francene, was overburdened with pride. That was the only thing the two women had in common.

Something in Halston recoiled from bringing Stella further distress. He loathed seeing her so torn. The damnable reality was that he’d rather cut off his own arm than cause her an ounce of grief.

So it was time to accept grim reality. He must let her go and revive the man that he’d once been. That should be possible. He’d been perfectly content before Stella came to his bed. He’d be perfectly content again.

In about a hundred years.

Maybe.

He blamed emotion for this disaster. How right he’d been to disdain all sentiment in his sexual arrangements. His emotions had focused on Stella from her first smart-mouthed response to his stale enticements.

Except nothing with Stella had felt stale. While he might claim that he’d been fine before she ruined his life, some tiny voice of honesty reminded him that he hadn’t been. Not really. For months, he’d been bored and restless and out of sorts with himself. He only recognized that, now that he’d caught a glimpse of something more substantial.

Caught a glimpse, and now turned his back on it.

How it smarted that he had no right to escort Stella to her carriage when she was upset and unsteady on her feet. A footman had had that privilege, while Halston had to pretend that he had no special interest in the lady’s welfare.

Whereas the lady’s welfare was his dearest, his only concern.

It was deuced lucky that he was such a shallow man. The prospect of feeling like this for much longer was unendurable.

He’d forget Stella Faulkner, the way he’d forgotten her predecessors. He just wished right now that the thought provided a shred of comfort. He’d get over feeling like it was wrong that he couldn’t offer Stella support or comfort. He’d get over feeling like it was wrong that she went home without him.

Halston sighed from the depths of his black heart. In the house behind him, the ball continued. Lilting dance music had supplied a jarring accompaniment to his dark meditations out here in the cold.

He should go back inside and thaw out and ask some beauty to dance. If things went well, perhaps that beauty might favor him with more than a dance.

One last longing glance along the alley where Stella’s carriage had bowled out of sight. Then he went to summon his own coach to go home.

Alone.