Winning Lord West (20 page)

No woman could miss how attractive Silas was,
but so far, she’d admired his spectacular looks as one might admire
a fine painting. A brooding Lord Stone became unacceptably
compelling. She forced a laugh and wished she sounded more natural.
She snapped her fan shut and tapped him on the arm. “You’re
teasing.”

Still he didn’t smile. “Am I?”

A horrible thought arose, scattering her
archness. “Good God, Silas, don’t say you disapprove of my plans? I
never imagined you’d be mealy mouthed about a few adventures, not
when you’ve been mad for the girls since you went to
Cambridge.”

The grim expression didn’t lighten. She’d
never seen him so stern. “Apparently Helena’s been spreading tales
about more than this evening’s entertainments.”

His unfavorable reaction left her flummoxed.
Lord Stone’s beautiful manners were touted as society’s ideal. His
careless wit and graceful demeanor were much praised. Yet he
responded now with neither wit nor grace, when she’d expected him
to applaud her daring.

Caroline became annoyed. With Silas Nash, of
all people. “I was a good and faithful wife to Frederick Beaumont.
And I nearly perished of boredom as a result. If I choose to take a
lover or two now, it’s entirely my decision. If that doesn’t fit
some hypocritical view you have of respectable women, that’s too
bad. I won’t apologize.”

She waited for him to respond with equal
heat, but after a fraught second while she braced for a scolding,
he sucked in a breath and the temper faded from his expression.
“Let’s not quarrel, Caro. Not tonight when you’re basking in your
success.”

“Your censure oversteps the mark, my lord,”
she said stiffly, telling herself to accept his olive branch. But
worse than anger, she was hurt that someone she’d counted as an
ally turned against her.

His lips quirked and abruptly he became the
easygoing companion who had helped her weather all those humdrum
tea parties. “‘My lord?’ Oh, the pain. I’ll never recover. You know
how to strike a man down, Lady Beaumont.”

Despite her disquiet, she couldn’t suppress a
faint smile. “I probably shouldn’t have told you my plans. I’ve
become too used to confiding in you.” She studied him searchingly.
“If I lost your regard, I’d be cast low indeed.”

He expelled his breath with a hint of
impatience. “Don’t be a goose, Caro. You haven’t lost my regard.
You never could.” He glanced around the packed room. “I’ll prove it
by asking you to dance.”

The familiar benevolence settled on his
features, but she hadn’t mistaken his anger in those brief moments
of discord. She battled the uncomfortable suspicion that she didn’t
know Silas Nash at all.

“I must check on the supper,” she said
quickly, although it wasn’t true. She needed to gather her
composure. Their discussion had come too close to argument and left
her on edge. Fear beat in her blood, chilled her on this warm
night. If Silas withdrew his friendship, she’d miss him like the
devil.

“Given the interest our contretemps has
aroused, a waltz would be the wiser choice.”

She started. Good heavens. What on earth was
wrong with her? She’d forgotten where she was. She’d taken so much
trouble to establish herself in society. Now in bickering with a
rake, she risked all she’d gained. A quick reconnoiter indicated
more than one pair of eyes focused on her. She caught Helena’s
concerned dark gaze and sent her a reassuring smile.

“You’re right,” she said, still reluctant to
step into Silas’s arms for the dance. Then she squared her
shoulders and damned the world, and Lord Stone with it. She’d lived
too long as a mouse. Now she meant to be a tiger.

“Shall we?”

The orchestra she’d brought from Paris played
the introduction to the latest waltz. Ignoring the disquiet
churning in her stomach, Caroline stuck a brilliant smile on her
face and nodded. “We shall.”

***

And that, sir, was how
not
to court a
lady.

What a blockhead he was. Silas had known from
the moment he met beautiful and stubborn Caroline Beaumont that if
he intended to win her, he needed to tread carefully.

For over a year, he, famous for his various
but fleeting amours, had done just that. Until now, he’d never
taken trouble over a woman. If the one who caught his fickle
interest wouldn’t have him—and he was arrogant enough to note how
rarely that happened—there was always another equally appealing
candidate to occupy his brief attention.

Then his brilliant, troublesome, but beloved
sister Helena had held a tea party on a cold March day. His wayward
attention had landed on a lovely woman whose fiery spirit made a
mockery of her widow’s weeds. He’d spent every day since then
telling himself that love at first sight was a poet’s stupidity—and
eating his heart out over Caro Beaumont. For a man of thirty-one,
it was distinctly lowering to suffer romantic yearnings that
rivaled any adolescent Romeo’s. Even more lowering to recognize
that the object of his inconvenient passion hardly regarded him as
a man at all.

Payment, he supposed, for all those casually
discarded ladies.

He curled one arm around Caro’s slender waist
and took her gloved hand in his, and his heart leaped with an
excitement he hadn’t felt since he was a stripling. It was
humiliating. It was disturbing. It was unacceptable.

And after this long enchantment, he
acknowledged that it was inescapable.

Since she’d cast off her mourning, he’d
danced with her several times. Usually she was light and supple in
his arms, responding to his body’s signals with a readiness that
boded well for her bedding. Now tension stiffened the delicate
muscles beneath his hand.

Blast. Impatience had brought him close to
blowing his plans. Caro did a fine job of pretending enjoyment, but
he saw beneath the sparkling surface to the old wariness. From the
first, she’d been skittish. Like a highly strung thoroughbred
mistreated early and as a result, disinclined to trust to any
handler, even the kindest. How she’d loathe knowing that Silas had
immediately recognized her fear—she was a proud creature, as
befitted a thoroughbred, and worthy of a gentle wooing.

Damn it, he verged so close, yet he could
still lose the prize. How far the rake had fallen that he’d counted
gaining her trust as a victory. He’d built that trust step by step,
through a hundred innocuous gatherings suitable for a new
widow.

He never ventured into deeper waters with
Caroline. Instead, he’d set out to make her laugh—some instinct
told him laughter had been a rare visitor to her life. In return
she’d gifted him with a friendship that, to his shame, counted as
his most rewarding relationship with a female outside his
family.

Tonight, like a fathead, he’d put all that
dedicated hard work at risk.

But dear God, he’d wanted to smash his fist
into the wall when, after a year without so much as a kiss, she
spoke in such an offhand manner about taking a lover. A lover who
was not Silas Nash, Viscount Stone.

“Silas, you’re holding me too tightly.”

He emerged from his fit of the
sullens—confound it, no woman but Caro pierced his sangfroid—to
find her watching him curiously. And with more of that dashed
wariness.

Careful, Silas.

He made himself smile and loosened the hand
clutching her waist the way a falling man clutched an overhang on a
mountainside. “My apologies.”

He’d imagined that their friendship would
offer him some advantage over other predatory males. Now he
wondered if he’d made a basic mistake in his strategy. He’d become
part of the furniture of her life when she was on the hunt for
novelty and excitement.

His fear of competition was well founded. In
this room a host of men, good and bad, watched the beautiful widow
with avid eyes. He could hardly blame them. In unrelieved black,
she’d been lovely. In a red gown with gold embroidery and a
décolletage that skimmed the edges of propriety—and a few other
things—she was breathtaking. With difficulty, Silas kept his
attention on her face and not on the wealth of white skin displayed
below her collarbones.

As he whirled her around the room, her smile
became more natural. “No, I’m sorry. I spoke inappropriately. It’s
partly your fault. You’ve become a mainstay of my life since I came
to London. Like Helena or Fenella.”

Bugger him to hell and back. He only just hid
a wince. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”

Which was true, if not the whole truth. He
intended to be the man to introduce her to sensual delight. She’d
only ever mentioned her married life in passing. But hints—and the
few stultifyingly dull occasions when he’d met Freddie Beaumont, a
good soul, but as thick-witted as a sheep—had led him to some
interesting conclusions about her sexual experience. She was ripe
with womanly promise, but every instinct screamed that all her
bottled-up passion had never yet found outlet.

His declaration left her unmoved. “I intend
to have some fun, Silas. I’m not looking for anything
significant.”

He knew it was a mistake to ask. What point
torturing himself? And worse, inviting another set-down. “Have you
decided on a lucky candidate?”

For a second, he worried that he’d betrayed
how important her answer was. But after a pause, she responded. “A
few gentlemen have caught my interest.”

He sucked in a relieved breath. She hadn’t
made her choice yet, so the affair remained in the realm of
theory.

She lowered her voice. “Lord West is a most
charming gentleman.”

Shock made Silas trip, he who had learned to
dance at eight years old and hadn’t made a misstep since.

“West?” he choked out, forgetting all his
plans for a subtle pursuit. Luckily his inamorata watched that
popinjay West waltz with Helena a few feet away. Caro was too
distracted to notice that her dance partner contemplated
murder.

“We’ve met several times. He’s articulate and
handsome and seems considerate.”

The unconcealed interest in her dark blue
eyes threatened to make Silas lose his dinner. In an attempt to
rein in his explosive reactions, he looked at Vernon Grange, Baron
West, the man he’d previously considered his best friend. “Until he
moves on to his next mistress. West has an appalling reputation
with women.”

“That’s the pot calling the kettle black,”
she retorted.

He looked down into Caro’s piquant face under
the elaborate coronet of dark brown curls set with glittering
diamond pins. His darling was no fragile beauty like her friend
Fenella Deerham. Her face was too angular and full of character to
be fashionably pretty. But the sight of her transformed his day
from the mundane to the extraordinary.

And she talked about wasting herself on that
scoundrel West.

Silas told himself that a short affair with
another man didn’t toll a death knell to his dreams. But everything
male roared denial. Silas didn’t want Caro Beaumont in West’s bed.
He wanted her in
his
bed. For always.

With difficulty, he found the rhythm of the
music again. “He’ll leave you once he’s bored—and that usually
means after only a few weeks.”

She was back to regarding him like a complete
stranger, blast her. “Stone, I’m contemplating a fling, not
lifelong slavery.”

Slavery? What a clod he was. Finally and
reluctantly, he recognized that her opposition to a second marriage
was real—and deep-seated. Dear God in heaven, all the clues had
been there. He’d just been too lost in a rosy fog of love and hope
to see them.

Given time, that was a problem he could
surely overcome. The threat of Caro tumbling into West’s bed in the
meantime was far more immediate. “He’s a debauchee and incapable of
fidelity.”

She frowned in puzzlement. “I thought he was
your friend.”

He used to be.
“That doesn’t mean I’m
blind to his faults.”

Silas’s blood thundered to haul her out of
that blackguard West’s reach. Not to mention all the other
boneheads infesting this room. He retained enough of his previously
civilized self to resist the impulse. Just.

Love, it seemed, made beasts of men. How wise
he’d been to avoid it all these years.

“You could be useful in my search for a
lover, you know.” Her tone was thoughtful rather than hostile.

Yes, I can kill every one of the encroaching
buggers, until I’m the only man standing.

“I can certainly alert you to the rogues and
wastrels.” Which meant London’s entire male population, except for
the newly reformed Lord Stone. He tightened his hold on her trim
waist and performed a breathtaking twirl, privately claiming her as
his and devil take any fellow with different ideas.

“That’s what I mean.” Despite his childish
acrobatics, she remained disgustingly level-headed. “Ladies are at
such a disadvantage when it comes to what a man is really like. We
see gentlemen all polished and careful of their manners, when any
fool knows that they show their true selves to their friends, away
from the artificial light of polite society.”

Silas regarded her in horror. “You expect me
to pimp you to my friends?”

She blushed again. It was odd—until tonight,
he’d never seen her blush. This made twice in the space of half an
hour. “No, of course not. But if you think I’m making an unwise
choice, I’d like you to tell me.”

His gut tightened with self-hatred. Her trust
remained, despite tonight’s numskullery. Now she invited the wolf
to guard the sheepfold. If he retained a shred of honor, he should
say no. He used to have some principles, for pity’s sake.

“I’ll do my best,” he said, and knew himself
the biggest rogue of all.

She glanced over his shoulder again. “Good.
Although despite what you say, I still think West might be my best
bet—and he’s indicated an interest.”