Chapter Eight #3
Behind him, Wolf heard the gasps and he craned his head so that his body still blocked Petra but he could see their audience.
Standing in a queue stood several key members of the haute ton, including the Stillwells and Lady Wyestone, their mouths agape in surprise.
Though not Kemberley. The man merely shook his head as a knowing expression crossed his face.
“My daughter, Wolfridge. If you do not marry her, I shall have to call you out, sir.”
While the others likely heard a concerned father, Wolf heard the spider who had led the fly to his web.
Turning back to Petra, her chest heaved as before, but this time the lust was gone, replaced by frustration and anger. Her large eyes narrowed on her father as a V formed between her dark brows.
“He appears pleased,” she murmured. Of course Petra would see past the outward appearance of concern.
Wolf glanced toward the man before returning his attention to the lady at his side. “He is merely reacting to the situation. Come on, Pet, it won’t be so bad. After all, we have this.” Wolf gestured between them, as if he could bottle the chemistry they created together.
Petra went completely still at his words.
“What did you call me?”
Wolf cocked his head as dread began a pronounced crawl up his spine, seeping throughout his being. “I don’t recall, it must have just slipped out.”
Slowly shaking her head, she bit the inside of her cheek before speaking again.
“You called me Pet. The only one who ever calls me Pet is him.” She looked back to her father who was conversing with a frantic Lady Stillwell. “Did you and he conspire together?”
“No, we… I—”
“I heard my father met with a gentleman earlier today. It was you, wasn’t it?”
“He may have called me in to discuss—”
“You did conspire with him.” For the second time in a few short weeks, Wolf was treated to Petra’s heart breaking before him, evident on her usually impassive face.
But this time after her countenance cycled through a dizzying kaleidoscope of fear and sorrow, her face ultimately settled into a rigid, unyielding mask of anger.
“You trapped me.” While the words were heated, he discerned a current of sadness deep below the anger, a discovery that inflicted a visceral ache within his chest.
“No, not a trap, just a way to hurry you along.” Wolf clamped his jaw shut, recognizing only in the cold silence that followed how profoundly wretched his words sounded once they had escaped his lips.
“I see. You and my father had it all figured out.”
“Not necessarily. I am not in league with your father. He made a suggestion, and I didn’t quite disagree.” Wolf winced again at the sound of his own words.
Petra visibly swallowed. “So, all of this, everything tonight, came from my father’s suggestion?”
“N-no,” Wolf was usually much smoother of tongue than this. Why was he stumbling over every other word? “This was real.”
“Was it?” Petra spoke quietly but her voice was uncharacteristically harsh. “I believe we stated this was false from the beginning.”
“Not false,” Wolf bit out.
As she looked up at him, Wolf was seized by another realization that nearly knocked the air from his lungs.
She no longer trusted him. Whatever open and warm quality had filled her eyes earlier in the evening was completely absent, as if it escaped on a gust of wind once the doors opened.
He knew he had moments to convince her before her father whisked her away.
“Petra, while I apologize for the manner of our coming together, I do believe we could be—” Wolf had never had to speak of the heart. Of romance. His liaisons were typically devoid of both. How could he convince her with words? “That we would get on well together…”
“How could we get on well together when I will never trust you again? When I will never love you? I cannot love someone I cannot trust. And I realized recently I should like to have both in my marriage. You and my father can do your worst.” With that, she walked away from him and went to stand next to her father, who immediately began placating Lady Stillwell with promises of a swift marriage.
“Petra,” Wolf pleaded as her word sank in. She was never going to love him.
She gave a minuscule shake of her head as her father approached him.
“I expect to see you first thing tomorrow, Wolfridge.”
Wolf said nothing, his entire focus on Petra, as Kemberley allowed Lady Stillwell to show him a way to quietly leave the ball without fanfare.
Wolf remained rooted within the library’s mahogany embrace, a solitary figure amidst the retreating members of the ton.
Lady Wyestone, as she made her exit, bestowed upon him a final, patronizing inclination of her head that he barely registered.
Collapsing into a leather wingback chair, he buried his face in his palms, the weight of the evening’s catastrophes finally bearing down upon him.
Petra would never love him. The stark truth of it settled in the marrow of his bones, a final and devastating realization that rendered all his previous schemes a bitter mockery.
That compressed ball of longing within the cavern of his chest now flared with an agonizing intensity as he was forced at last to concede the impossible: he would never hold her heart.
And the most wretched irony of all was the discovery, arrived at far too late, that she likely held his own irrevocably in her keeping.