Winning Lord West (17 page)

Later. Next time. Tomorrow.

The future shone bright as the sun.

“Hmm, I wonder what that could be.”

“No idea,” she said drily, slithering out of
dress, corset, petticoat and shift.

“You’ve been practicing,” he said in
admiration.

“I have no morals left.” She faced him. “It’s
most distressing.”

He paused to enjoy the lovely view, as she
raised her hands to release her abundant black hair. In fine
clothes, she did a fair job of acting the civilized creature. But
he knew better. He always had. She was free and untamed, and her
fiery spirit would light the rest of his days.

He gave another disappointed
tch.
“You
must still cling to a few morals. You’re wearing drawers.”

Her narrow-eyed look didn’t hide her
burgeoning excitement. “Not for long, I’m sure. Isn’t it time you
removed a garment or two?”

He laughed. Partly at her audacity. Mostly
because he was just so bloody happy. “Devil take you, you’re a
demanding wench. Don’t you want me to woo you?”

Her smile was sizzling seduction. He’d
thought he already tested the limits of arousal, but the wanton
invitation in her expression made his cock swell massively against
his trousers. “Of course.”

He paused in pulling off his shirt.
“Really?”

With greedy hands, she reached for the
buttons on his trousers. “Later.”

He gasped as she opened the front fall and
curled her fingers around him. She didn’t linger past a few
breathtaking caresses. Soon he was naked, and her drawers lay white
and sheer on the carpet.

Backing her toward the bed, he kissed her.
What a fool he’d been to imagine he could live without this. He
pushed her onto the mattress and came down over her. Lacing his
fingers through hers, he slid her hands high and pressed them into
the pillows near her head.

Helena raised her knees to frame his hips.
Her eyes held no hesitation, just joy.

“Don’t make me wait. I feel like I’ve already
waited a century.” Her light tone cracked, and he realized that
she, too, ached for the transcendent joining.

West tightened his hips and plunged into her.
She cried out and clenched hard around him. He went still, letting
the radiance seep into his bones.

He felt entirely possessed, united with
Helena in a way not even their most passionate earlier encounters
had achieved. Knowing that she gave herself without condition or
limit transformed the physical act into a mysterious connection
he’d never experienced before.

At last, he moved, and on another cry, she
convulsed. He rose on his arms to watch her swift climax. She
arched against the sheets, quivering with ecstasy. As she started
to come down off that shuddering peak, his kiss promised her
forever.

Then blindly he sought his own release.
Driving into her hard to stamp his claim on her. She moaned and
rose to meet every thrust.

She was his. He was hers. At the height of
the union, there was no difference.

He released her hands to hold her hips. The
rake of her nails down his back was like a streak of lightning
through the storm.

West didn’t last long. He wanted her too
much, and he’d been too sure that he’d lost her. The mighty surge
began in the soles of his feet, blazed up through his legs, and
centered on his burning balls. He gave a guttural groan as his seed
burst forth into her welcoming body.

Gasping, he slumped over her, crushing her
beneath him. Then with his last strength, he rolled to the side and
separated their sweat-slicked bodies.

Never before had he given so much to a woman.
Masculine satisfaction flooded him as he relished the idea that
they might have started a child.

The air was thick with the scent of sex. In
the early February dusk, Helena’s lithe form gleamed white and
beautiful. Her hair snaked around her as she lay sprawled against
the sheets. She looked exhausted and well used, but contented in a
way he’d never seen her before.

When his pulse had calmed, he caught the hand
lying loose and open on the sheets and raised it to his lips. “I’ll
use more finesse next time.”

Her laugh was a soft puff of weariness. “I’m
beginning to think finesse might be overrated.”

“I’ll look forward to convincing you
otherwise.”

Her free hand gave a floppy wave. “I’ll have
to marry you now.”

“If you don’t, I want Artemis back.”

“There is that.” Then contrary to her
teasing, she turned to curve one arm around his neck and kiss him
as if his presence was as necessary as air.

“Come here,” he muttered, and drew her close.
She rested her dark head on his chest and curled into his side.

For a long time, they lay in the gathering
twilight. Gradually West’s heart found its natural rhythm.

He spoke the words he’d kept hidden for more
than a year. “I’m sure a woman of your enormous intellect has
already worked out that I love you.”

The silence that greeted his declaration
seemed to last a month.

Then she rose on her elbow to study him
through the shadows, her eyes like a starlit night. “Of course I
hoped. Especially once you started acting like a hero, afire to
save my honor and sacrifice yourself for my happiness.”

He gave her a sheepish smile. “The result of
temporary madness. I promise to return to being a selfish swine
forthwith.”

She smiled back and ran her hand down his jaw
with a tenderness that made him ache. “The problem, West, is that
for a woman of such vaunted intelligence, I’ve always misunderstood
you. I think it’s because you stole my heart when I was a silly
girl, and I never got it back.”

Stole her heart? He brightened. That sounded
damned promising.

Attempting his old sardonic manner, he arched
an eyebrow. “You weren’t a silly girl. You were smart enough to
choose me.”

She kissed him softly. “I was, wasn’t I? But
not smart enough to see that under your arrogance, you were a man
of honor. And I should have seen that. Even when I was sixteen and
mad about you, you restricted yourself to a few kisses, although
you must have known I was ripe for seduction. Crewe certainly
knew.”

West didn’t want to talk about her vile
husband. Not now when she said things that made him hope. “You were
my best friend’s sister.”

“See what I mean? And you’ve verged on Sir
Galahad in the last few days. Bone-headed, I think you’ll agree,
but unwaveringly gallant.”

“Would you rather have a clever cad?”

Another of those bewitching, enigmatic
smiles. “Cads don’t go the distance, in my view. I’m all for
knights in shining armor these days, even when they choose to wear
a bedsheet instead.”

With care, he picked his way through her
words. This was too important for him to get wrong. “So you’ve
decided you like me?”

A brief laugh. “I’d better, given what we
just did.”

“And you want me?”

“Oh, yes, that’s in no doubt.”

Devil take her, why wouldn’t she say it? “And
do you think you can bring yourself to call me Vernon?”

She frowned. “That seems very intimate.”

“Damn it, Helena,” he growled.

Her hand rested above his thundering heart.
“Will you give me Artemis?”

“She’s been yours from the start.”

She lowered her eyes. “In that case, there’s
no hiding the sad truth.”

Tension filled him. “Sad truth?”

Helena shook the mane of hair back from her
face and grinned at him with all the mischief of her childhood
self. A mischief the years had almost ripped away from her.

“Yes, the sad truth that I’m head over
heels.”

That was close, but not close enough. When he
covered her hand with his, the contact radiated through him. He was
counted a brave man, but it took all his courage to take the next
step. “Say it, Helena.”

His ruthlessness sparked a flash of
excitement in her eyes. Then her expression turned serious, and at
last she opened the gates of her soul to him. He read the answer in
her face before she spoke. Although when they came, the words were
sweeter than honey.

“I love you, Vernon. I’ll love you
forever.”

Grosvenor Square, London, February 1825

In Caroline’s opulent drawing room, Helena
sat in her usual place by the hearth and studied her friends.
Dashing Widows no more, but vibrant, fulfilled women who had found
love and happiness and purpose.

“What is it, Hel?” Fen asked, sensitive as
ever. She still took charge of the tea table to save the Meissen
china, although these days, various offspring posed a greater
threat to the porcelain than Caro’s dramatic gestures.

Helena gave her a smile. “I was thinking that
it’s almost five years to the day since we swore to set the ton on
its ear.”

“We succeeded,” Fen said, smiling back.

“You certainly did, Lady Kenwick.”

Not long after marrying Fenella, Anthony had
received an earldom, and he was now acknowledged as a major power
in government. Gentle Fenella had unexpectedly emerged as an
influential political hostess. Her ability to bring warring sides
together had become legendary.

“We also swore never to marry,” Caro said
drily from where she stood near the window. Against the blue and
gold brocade curtains, her body was round with pregnancy.

She’d returned from an exciting, sometimes
dangerous year in China with the news that she’d conceived. Her
daughter Roberta, a rambunctious two-year-old, played upstairs in
the nursery with Fenella’s baby son Henry, and Helena’s
three-year-old twins, Margaret and Silas.

As her husband had suspected, Helena’s fears
of barrenness had proven unfounded. In a secretive gesture, her
hand dropped to where another child grew. It was so soon, she
hadn’t told Vernon yet, although something in Fenella’s blue eyes
hinted that she guessed the secret.

“You can’t say you’re sorry,” Helena said.
“We won’t believe you.”

Caro and Silas split their time between
Woodley Park and this house, when Silas wasn’t traveling with his
family to lecture, or search out new species. His cherry tree, the
Caroline Nash
, promised to cause a sensation on its
commercial release next year.

Since her marriage, Caro’s dreams of seeing
the world had become reality. This afternoon tea was a rare
reunion. Caro and Silas had recently returned from Madagascar.
Anthony was in London for meetings, and he’d brought Fen and the
children up to Town with him.

Caro stared out into the street with sudden
interest, and she answered Helena without turning around. “I
wouldn’t dare. I still run in terror of your sharp tongue.”

Helena made a dismissive noise. “These days,
I’m so domesticated, I can barely summon a critical word.” Proving
herself wrong, she asked, “What on earth has you grinning like a
loon into thin air?”

“Our men are back.”

Noise in the hallway outside heralded a
tumble of vigorous masculine bodies into the feminine space. Silas,
tall and rumpled and full of life. Anthony, large and steadfast.
Brandon Deerham and his best friend Carey Townsend, both at sixteen
on the verge of manhood.

Last and most beloved of all, her dearest
Vernon. Tall, dark, and devilishly handsome. The silver frosting
his black hair added maturity to his spectacular features.
Recurring bouts of fever had taken their toll, but, thank God,
during the last two years they’d become more infrequent. He hadn’t
suffered a relapse in six months, the longest respite they’d had.
Helena cautiously hoped that the worst was over.

His glinting green gaze found hers. The bond
between them still thrilled her. She only had to think back to
herself five years ago—to the others, also—to realize how
generously the years had treated them. Anticipating his pleasure
when she told him about the baby, she sent Vernon a private
smile.

“Mamma,” Brandon said, loping toward Fen on
his long legs. Like his half-brother Henry, he was golden fair and
bore the look of his mother. “Uncle Vernon is giving Carey and me
our choice of colts from this year’s foals. Isn’t that grand?”

“We trounced them into the ground, and that
was the deal,” Carey stated emphatically. Along with his swarthy
looks, he’d inherited his uncle’s forceful character.

Fenella turned aghast to Helena’s husband.
“Vernon, that’s too much.”

He shook his head as he crossed to kiss his
wife and lounge on the arm of her chair. “They had a devil of a
convincing win at football. A bet is a bet.”

Since marrying, Helena and Vernon had become
infrequent visitors to the capital. They spent most of their time
at Shelton Abbey, raising the best horses in the country. Or so
Helena proudly believed. That opinion had some justification.
Artemis’s first foal had won last year’s Derby by a length and a
half.

Nor had Helena given up her charity schools
or mathematical work. Earlier this year, she’d started
correspondence with an enterprising young man called Charles
Babbage, who had plans to design a universal calculating machine.
The possibilities were intriguing.

“I hope you both said thank you.” When Fen
glanced at Anthony, he shrugged his helplessness to interfere.

“They played a right bonny game,” he said in
his rumbling bass.

“They must have,” Fen retorted.

“Where are the holy terrors?” Silas asked,
looking around.

“Upstairs with their nurses,” Caro said. “We
couldn’t get a moment’s peace with them here. And it’s such an age
since I saw Fen and Hel.”

“I’ll go up and release them from captivity,”
Helena said, rising swiftly. Too swiftly. The room wavered in front
of her, and she wobbled on her feet. “Oh, dear—”

“Helena?” Vernon leaped to his feet and
whipped his arm around her waist.

She gulped for air as everyone crowded
around, until Fenella, bless her, came to the rescue. “For heaven’s
sake, step back, and let the poor woman breathe.”