One Wicked Wish Read online

  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.

  Chapter 19

  A week later, Stella remained raw after that grueling encounter with Gray. She’d feared Imogen might make a fuss about her early departure from the Tierney ball, but the girl had been uncharacteristically reticent. And much less demanding than usual. She’d even taken to knocking and waiting for permission before she came into Stella’s room.

  Given that since she’d made a final break with her devilish lover, even the act of breathing hurt, Stella was grateful. The signs of maturity she’d noticed in her cousin when they visited Prestwick Place were still in evidence.

  Today, they were in the drawing room, spending a rare afternoon at home. There was another ball tonight. Stella’s appetite for the season’s entertainments, never robust, had waned even further since her return to London. Warmer weather meant late nights in a close, noisy atmosphere until she felt like screaming. Today, like most days, she battled a headache.

  And weeks of hectic social activity extended ahead.

  At least she was spared one ordeal. Since that fraught scene in the Tierneys’ small salon, she hadn’t seen Gray. She waited in agony to learn that he’d set up with a new mistress. But for once, the notorious Lord Halston did nothing to stir up talk. He remained in London, she gathered, but beyond that, she heard no news of him.

  Speculation was rife on whether Halston’s house party heralded a proposal to one of the young ladies he’d invited. But as he was yet to make his choice, if any, known, and his disappearance from ton festivities deprived curious eyes of further information, nobody had anything fresh to report.

  The problem was that Gray’s absence didn’t stop Stella thinking of him and missing him. And crying herself to sleep in the early hours, when at last she could shut the door on the world and stop pretending that nothing important had happened at Lord Halston’s beautiful country house.

  Imogen shut the lid on the pianoforte that she’d been tinkering on without any great enthusiasm. She drifted across to join Stella who sat on the chaise longue with Lord Byron’s latest poem open in front of her. In reality, the words massed together into unreadability.

  Stella had spent most of the last hour staring into space, wondering whether she should have cut off the chance of continuing her affair with Gray. She reached a point where she didn’t much care about her good name or the future. In return for one more kiss from the man she loved, she’d give up every claim to virtue.

  “Good book?” Imogen asked.

  Stella shrugged. Byron’s unhappy hero couldn’t hold her attention when she was so busy yearning after her own wicked lover. “I don’t know.”

  Imogen’s blue eyes softened with compassion. “You miss Lord Halston.”

  Stella turned away on the pretext of putting the book on the table. “Let’s not talk about it.” The last thing she needed was for her uncle to come in and find her bawling.

  “I’m sorry you’re so sad,” Imogen said.

  Stella gave her eyes a surreptitious wipe and faced her cousin with what she hoped was a brighter demeanor. “I’ll get over it.”

  Imogen’s expression hinted that this attempt to make light of her misery failed. “Will you?”

  She very much feared that she wouldn’t get over it. But surely time would blunt the worst of her unhappiness. It was a mere week since she’d seen Gray, a week before that that she’d shared her body with him for the last time. Give her a decade or two, and with a bit of luck, she’d be back to her old self.

  Her gesture was apologetic. “I’m not much fun at the moment.”

  Imogen didn’t smile. “You don’t have to be fun all the time.” She paused. “I’ve got something to talk to you about, but we’ve been so busy that I haven’t had the chance.”

  Stella tried to summon some interest in what Imogen might say. Sorrow, she learned, was a supremely selfish emotion. Right now, it was a struggle to care about anything except her futile longing. Perhaps her cousin meant to confess her penchant for some young man.

  “We’re alone today. For the rest of the week, you’re back to being the toast of the season.”

  Imogen didn’t smile at that either. “I was talking to Eliot about you.”

  Horror flooded Stella. With a strangled cry, she lurched to her feet. “I can’t believe you broke my confidence. I don’t want anyone to know about Gray. This is too bad, Imogen. I thought better of you. I really did.”

  “Don’t be a henwit, Stella.” Imogen glanced at the closed door and lowered her voice. “As if I’d say anything about that.”

  Stella sucked in a deep breath and tamped down her panic. The idea that she might suffer all this lonely anguish and still end up sparking a scandal was too much to endure. “I’m sorry. I’m on edge at the moment. Of course you didn’t tell Eliot.”

  “Of course I didn’t. So sit down and let me finish, before you fly up into the boughs again. You are on edge.”

  “At least your papa hasn’t noticed.” Feeling sheepish, Stella sank down beside Imogen. “I don’t think I could take one of his scolds right now.”

  Imogen took Stella’s hand. “You must hate being beholden to him.”

  “Your father has always been very good to me,” Stella said, cringing at how insincere she sounded.

  “No, he hasn’t. He treats you like a servant, not like a niece. I’ve been thinking about your situation ever since the Lumsden ball.”

  “Have you?” Stella was surprised. She’d known Imogen was preoccupied with something. She hadn’t imagined that it might be with her companion’s circumstances.

  “Yes. I should have thought long before this. But at Hamble Park, you didn’t seem quite so oppressed. Or perhaps you were and I never noticed. Coming to London has made everything much clearer.”

  Stella pressed her cousin’s hand. “You’re just getting older and wiser.”

  Imogen released a puff of self-derisive laughter. “Not before time.”

  “I told you I don’t mind serving you.”

  “But you shouldn’t have to.”

  “I have no choice.”

  “That’s what I talked to Eliot about. And he agrees with me, or at least he does now that I’ve told him how Papa takes ad
vantage of you.”

  Stella bit back a sigh. “Are you about to offer me a home again?”

  “That offer still stands. But you’d still be taking charity from a relative. And living at someone else’s behest.”

  “Are you going to marry me off to some worthy gentleman?” Stella tried to lighten the discussion, but still Imogen didn’t smile.

  “I would, if you weren’t head over heels in love with Lord Halston. You deserve a chance at a husband and children and a home of your own. If I hadn’t been so selfish, I’d have seen that long ago.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself.” Once perhaps Stella might have settled for a steady marriage that offered some small independence. Her uncle’s dismissal of those previous suitors still rankled. But how could she wed some respectable lawyer or merchant or military man when her heart lay forever elsewhere?

  Imogen studied her face. Stella had the odd feeling that the girl saw more than she ever had before. “Grandpapa set aside a large dowry for your mother. She was quite an heiress.”

  Stella’s lips turned down in wry acknowledgement. “Until she ran away with an artist and found herself disinherited.”

  At last, Imogen smiled. “Well, Eliot and I are going to un-disinherit you. It turns out he’d already decided to settle some money on you if you married. Because I’ve explained your situation, he’s going to give it to you now.”

  Stella’s stomach lurched. An independent income? A chance to break free and decide her own future? Was it possible? “It’s more charity.”

  Imogen’s delicate jaw set with the stubbornness that Stella knew so well. “We knew you’d say that, but it’s not charity. It’s a restitution of your rights.”

  “Your father won’t like it.”

  “No, he won’t. But even if he cuts off Eliot’s allowance, Eliot inherited a fortune from his godmother. He could set you up a hundred times without noting the lack.”

  It was true. Without factoring in the riches that came with the Deerforth title, Eliot was plump in the pocket.

  “That’s…that’s very kind of him.”