Of course it was. Of course there was only one life for her, anymore. She’d picked a path, and this was the road she now traveled. But that . . . he’d asked her. That he made her think and challenged her . . . Wasn’t that . . . friendship?
It was all so confused. Everything in her mind.
She dug her fingertips into her temples and began to pace. But then, Wayland had always flipped her thoughts and world upside down. “He was the one,” she said.
Willoughby stilled.
“At Peterloo,” she clarified, even as she turned and caught the unlikely-for-him gravity stamped in his features, and knew he knew. “I was . . .”
“Meeting him,” he murmured. “The dashing love of your life.”
“The very same,” she muttered, her cheeks heating with a blush. And yet, just like in their every dealing, he didn’t pass judgment, instead urging her on with his silence. “And he has a fiancée. Or an almost-fiancée.”
“And this bothers you?” he asked, his tones belonging to one who sought to sort it all out.
“No. Yes.” She stopped abruptly and scraped a hand through the curls hanging about her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she confided.
He pushed away from the table. “Do you know what I believe, Annalee?”
She shook her head. “No.” It was part of the reason she’d come. In the hopes that he’d have the answers she most desperately needed sorted out, when she couldn’t speak to Valerie or the ladies of the Mismatch.
He stopped before her and glided his knuckles down her cheek and along her chin, bringing her gaze up to his. “I believe he makes you remember a different time. And you see yourself as you once were . . . and the life you might have had.”
I will love you until the day I die, Wayland Smith . . . We shall have the most glorious babies . . .
Her throat muscles moved under the memory of that last day that life between her and Wayland had existed as a normal courting relationship, when the possibilities had been endless and the future bright with the dreams she’d carried for them.
Willoughby continued. “But you aren’t that girl, and he isn’t that man,” he said with a bluntness that brought her crashing hard back to earth and reality. “He is a proper bore who, at best, if he’d entertain a future with you, would seek to change you.”
She’d had the very same thoughts and opinions about this new version of Wayland. Why, then, did hearing Willoughby speak those words make her want to plant him a facer?
“And Annalee,” he said, recalling her to the moment, “that is at best. As you’ve indicated yourself, he’s already set his sights upon the proper miss who will be his bride. And you?” He brought her hands to his mouth, pressing a kiss upon the tops of them, one at a time. “You will only find yourself hurt, and I’d not see you as you once were.”
Her gaze caught on the soft fire blazing in the hearth, following those flames as they danced and bobbed.
Lost.
She’d been lost.
Searching for herself.
“Precisely,” he murmured, and she started, having failed to realize she’d spoken aloud. “And now, you are found.” Willoughby wrapped an arm about her waist and drew her into the vee between his legs in a way he’d held her so many times before this one. “Now, let me give you the release you desperately need,” he whispered against her neck. He pressed another kiss there, and she shivered. Her lashes fluttered.
He’d always been able to bring her satisfaction, offer her, as he called it, a distraction, if even for just a brief moment in time.
Just take it . . . Take what he is offering . . .
For soon, her time with Wayland would be at an end; he’d go his way, marrying his perfect Lady Diana, and Annalee would be left . . .
Her mind balked and shied away from imagining what her life would be when he was again gone. Everything would go back to what it had been since Peterloo. And she wanted that. She did . . . didn’t she?
She dimly registered Willoughby trailing a path of kisses along the bodice of her dress, and as if she were watching another, she stared down at his bent head . . . wholly unmoved.
Willoughby brought his mouth to hers, and just as their lips would have met, Annalee turned. His kiss fell upon her cheek. “Not this time, Wills.”
He stilled, then dropped a kiss atop her forehead. “This is even worse than I feared, love.” He patted her on the hip and set her away. “Have a care, Annalee. You’re playing with fire where that one’s concerned. He’ll happily bed you, but he’s never going to wed you. And thinking that it might be more is only going to see you brought back to that point you were . . .” When he’d found her.
Broken. And even worse off than she found herself now.
“I know what I’m doing, Wills,” she insisted, though she wasn’t sure if she sought to convince him or herself.
And for that matter, she wasn’t sure she entirely believed the flimsy lie she fed herself, either.
Chapter 20
The Times
The Notorious Lady A’s reputation precedes her. So wicked she was turned out by her own mother and father, none were surprised to discover her entering, and then exiting, a certain Lord W’s household. What one is left to wonder is about a certain and seemingly forgotten Lord D . . .
She’d gone to Lord Willoughby’s.
The following morn, Wayland sat at the breakfast table . . . frozen inside. Numb.
The man was a rake whom Wayland saw on occasion at White’s; they weren’t friends. They weren’t even acquaintances. Hell, in the rare instances they were in attendance at the same events, neither of them so much as acknowledged the other with a bow or inclination of the head.
And mayhap it was because Wayland had known, and read the sprinkle of sentences within newspapers, about Annalee and the marquess. Known that she had given herself to that man in a way that Wayland had once known her.
Fire licked slowly at his insides, and like a spark, it sizzled through his veins, a furious heat born of the taste of his own jealousy. As potent as any poison, and powerful enough to devour.
With a snarl, Wayland wadded the sheets of the damned gossip rag and hurled it across the breakfast table. The bottom of the page caught the flicker of the candle; the edges of The Times immediately curled and then went up in flames.
Much like Wayland’s damned mood that morning.
Bloody hell.
He exploded to his feet.
Alas, several of the more quick-footed footmen were already there, tamping out the fire eating up the silk tablecloth.
That was the manner of damned day he was having, one where he’d set his own damned household ablaze.
A certain Lord W who was certainly not Wayland.
Not Wayland.
A W belonging to a different name.
All these years, he’d denied feelings of jealousy about whom Annalee took up with. He’d denied any and every feeling. All these years, he’d come across Annalee’s name just as he had now in some scandal sheet or another. But he’d forced himself to read on. He’d told himself he didn’t care. They and what they’d shared were in the past.
He’d done such an impressive job of lying to himself all these years that he’d actually come to believe it. Until now.