Winning Lord West (4 page)

“Will you?” he asked.

“Of course I will. Where the devil else would
I go? Mars?”

“Paris. New York. Timbuctoo.” He snatched a
shallow breath. “Lord Pascal’s bed.”

She should have expected this. West’s fuming
displeasure had been apparent in those unwelcome, irritating,
marvelous letters that she’d insisted she wouldn’t read.

During this last year, London’s handsomest
man had occasionally escorted her in public. The admission that
Pascal meant nothing to her hovered on her lips, but wisdom kept
her silent. “It’s none of your business whose bed I sleep in.”

What little color West had regained leached
from his skin. He looked like an effigy on a medieval tomb. When he
raised his hand, she automatically took it.

“Good God, West, you’re burning up.”

“You have no idea.” He pulled her down beside
him. “Tell me I’m not too late.”

“Too late for what?” Whatever was wrong with
him, it was serious.

“Don’t play coy, Helena. It’s never been your
style.” His words came more easily. “Are you and Pascal in
love?”

She gave a dismissive snort. “I don’t believe
in love.”

At last West opened his eyes. That green gaze
blazed with fever, and determination. His illness hadn’t totally
banished the domineering earl. “You did once.”

“When I imagined myself in love with Crewe?”
she asked in an acid tone.

Her parents had been unable to prevent her
headlong rush to disaster. They’d told her she was too young, and
that Crewe was a wastrel and a rake, but his sins added to his dark
glamour.

She’d recognized her mistake on their wedding
trip to Devon when she’d caught him rogering the inn’s chambermaid.
From there, things had only gone downhill.

“Once you imagined yourself in love with
me.”

“It’s clear I was utterly brainless when I
was young.”

“Cruel goddess,” he said without force, then
his voice turned thoughtful. “Not brainless, but ardent, and eager
to launch into life.”

“Brainless.”

“Incautious. Headstrong. Passionate.” His
grip on her hand tightened, and like an idiot, she didn’t pull
free. If he’d been his usual king of the universe self, she’d find
no difficulty sending him away with a flea in his ear. But his
illness made him cursed vulnerable, and she hated to kick a man
when he was down.

“Brainless.”

“Adorable.”

She gave a snort of sour amusement. “I can’t
have been too adorable. You forgot me easily enough.”

“I never forgot you.”

She shot him a disbelieving glance. “Fever
must affect your memory. You toddled off to Oxford after that
summer, and decided I was of no interest whatsoever.”

“Good God, Helena,” he protested. “Don’t tell
me you’re holding that against me. I was a stripling of eighteen
who suddenly had the whole world before him.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You know why I
can’t forgive you.”

“Well, it’s time you did.” He regarded her
with exasperation. “It’s not my fault you made such a fool of
yourself over Crewe.”

“You brought him into our lives.”

“Damn it, half a dozen fellows stayed with me
at Shelton Abbey that summer. You’re the one who settled her fancy
on the only ne’er-do-well. Every one of the other five turned out
to be pillars of society. I know hating me helped you weather the
miseries of your marriage, but Crewe has been dead for two years.
It’s time you placed blame where it belongs. With an unworldly
girl’s romantic longings and a blackguard’s wiles.”

She leaped up and stared at West in hurt
rage. Right now, if he fainted in front of her, she’d let him lie
where he fell. “You’ve grown spiteful in Russia.” She turned away
in a swirl of vermillion skirts. “I’ll send a servant to help you
back to your bed.”

He surged to his feet and caught her arm
before she marched out. “Wait, Hel. I don’t want to fight.”

She struggled to ignore how white he’d gone.
“Yet you set yourself to anger me.”

“Just tell me I’m not too late.”

“You were too late eleven years ago. I won’t
be your mistress.”

He released her and slumped back on the bench
in a quaking heap. “It’s worse than that, my cranky Lady
Crewe.”

“Nothing could be worse than that.” She
hardly heard what he said. “Let me take you back to the house. You
should be in bed.”

“You’re still offering to join me?” But his
question lacked the usual spark.

“It wouldn’t do me much good, by the look of
you. You don’t need excitement. You need a warm brick wrapped in
flannel and a dose of laudanum.”

He leaned back and shut his eyes. “Don’t
fuss, Hel.”

Her gaze narrowed. She might care about his
wellbeing—purely as one human to another—but she hadn’t forgotten
she was annoyed. “As far as I’m concerned, sir, you can curl up in
the straw and shrivel away to nothing. But I doubt if Silas wants
his best friend giving his last gasp a week before his wedding. It
would cast a pall over the celebrations.”

West’s lips twitched. “So sharp tongued.”

“Now aren’t you glad that I refused you?”

“Your nagging doesn’t scare me.”

“It should. No man wants a harridan for a
mistress.”

He opened his eyes. The green was glassy, and
his shivering was worse. Dear heaven, this malady was nasty. “I
don’t want a harridan for a mistress.”

She frowned. He must be delirious. “So what’s
all that nonsense about missing me?”

He sighed. “Oh, all that is as true as I
live.”

“Stop teasing, West. It’s not funny.”

“I’m deadly serious. More serious than I’ve
ever been.” His voice was deep and slow, and terrifyingly sincere.
“Our timing has always been out of joint, Hel. We were too young
when we played at sweethearts. By the time I realized that I was a
blockhead to let you go, you’d married Crewe. I waited through your
year of mourning to make my move, then damned Liverpool sent me two
thousand miles away. But now I’m brooking no more delay. You’re
here, and I’m here, and no man will say me nay.”

She scowled to hide her alarm. For someone on
the verge of collapse, he sounded remarkably self-assured. “No man,
perhaps. But this woman will never be your mistress.”

“I told you I don’t want you to be my
mistress.” That burning gaze didn’t waver. “I want you to be my
wife.”

Before she could respond to that astounding
statement, his eyes fluttered shut, and he slid to the ground as if
he didn’t have a bone in his body.

West cursed this damned inconvenient fever as
he sat beside the fire in Silas’s unpretentious drawing room. It
was two days since he’d crumpled into a humiliating heap after
announcing his intentions to the woman he’d decided to marry. This
was his first full evening downstairs.

For nearly a day after blacking out, he
hadn’t returned to full awareness. When he did, he’d found himself
lying in the bedroom he always used at Woodley Park, going back to
his earliest boyhood. He’d grown up with the Nash children, and now
he hoped to bring that relationship closer, one of family instead
of friendship.

At least his dead faint had saved him from
hearing Hel’s answer. He wasn’t optimistic enough to imagine she
appreciated his offer. Had ever man set himself to win such a
reluctant bride?

The sight of his lady where she sat across
the room talking to Fenella Deerham would deter a weaker man. He
must have Helena to thank for getting him off the stable floor, but
she hadn’t come near him since. Caroline and Fenella had called to
see him. Even Fenella’s hulking lover Anthony Townsend—what a
dashed disparate couple that was—had stumped his way up to West’s
bedroom to wish him a brusque northern-accented recovery.

But Helena’s absence had been eloquent. As
was the way she kept well out of his way tonight, and avoided
addressing him directly.

She did her best to make her rejection clear.
Unfortunately for her, he knew her well enough to read beneath the
discouraging manner.

Nobody who saw the striking black-haired
woman in an emerald gown that set off her olive skin and flashing
dark eyes to perfection would discern her abject terror. Nobody but
the man who had been first to kiss her, and knew her better than
anyone else on earth.

He and Helena had always understood each
other. Their long estrangement hadn’t changed that.

But that didn’t mean he underestimated the
obstacles ahead. Crewe, that selfish bastard, had hurt and
humiliated her. West had loved the young Helena’s generous heart,
but that generosity had left her dangerously vulnerable to a rake’s
lures. Now like a half-broken horse, she shied from another
rider.

“They make a right bonny pair, don’t they?
Sunlight and shadow,” a rumbling voice murmured behind him.

West had been so busy staring at Helena, he’d
missed Townsend’s approach, which was a joke when the fellow was
the size of a house.

“Heaven and hell,” he said, before he had a
chance to censor himself. He’d only met Townsend in the last day or
so, and the big, dark man remained something of a mystery.

Townsend gave a grunt of laughter. “If you’re
calling my Fenella hell, I’ll have to shoot you.”

West regarded him curiously. Until now, his
principal impression of Fenella’s unlikely intended was a
monumental form and a slight roughness of manner. Now he saw the
intelligence gleaming in those deep-set eyes. He recalled that this
man had built a huge fortune from nothing.

“You know damn well that’s not what I
mean.”

“Aye, I do. Which is a good thing. I reckon
yon Silas won’t appreciate a duel on the eve of his wedding.”

“Probably not.”

Silas and Caro shared a couch, staring at
each other as though they couldn’t believe their luck. After their
rocky courtship, West couldn’t blame them for their starry
eyes.

Their closeness threw his difficulties with
Helena into stark contrast. He didn’t begrudge his friends’
happiness, but he was painfully envious. When he looked at Silas
and Caro, he wanted what they had.

And he wanted it with Helena.

“The lass is making every effort to pretend
you don’t exist.”

“Yes,” West said shortly. If a stranger
noticed Helena’s hostility, that meant old friends like Caro and
Silas would, too. Unless they were so wrapped up in each other that
the rest of the world could go hang.

“Which I’d take as an encouraging sign.”

West’s eyebrows rose. “What the devil?”

Townsend released another soft huff of
amusement. “She’s powerfully interested if she has to try so hard
to ignore you.”

“She’s been furious with me for years,” West
found himself saying with unexpected honesty. He wasn’t a man given
to confidences, but something about Anthony Townsend cut through
social niceties. It must. In the five years since her husband’s
death at Waterloo, Fenella had never looked at another man. Yet
within mere weeks, Townsend had persuaded her to marry him. The
couple planned a quiet ceremony in London before Silas and Caro
left for China.

“Aye, I see you’re not in her good
books.”

“I introduced her to Lord Crewe,” West said
gloomily. “A mistake I sometimes fear I’ll pay for until Judgment
Day.”

“He was a bad ‘un, all right. I had the
dubious pleasure of making his acquaintance before he broke his
neck on that drunken gallop and did the world a favor.”

West wasn’t quick enough to hide his surprise
at the elevated circles Townsend moved in, and the man shrugged
without resentment. “The sprigs of the nobility will stomach my
unrefined manners when they want to take advantage of my
money.”

“Silas always spoke highly of you,” West
said. “And the rumor is after you saved the government’s bacon last
year, there’s a peerage on the cards.”

Townsend’s gaze settled on the two women
across the room.
Lovely,
blond-haired Fenella glanced up as if sensing his attention, and
the smile she sent him was unmistakably sensual.
With a
shock that he had no right to feel, West realized that pure,
delicate, proper Fenella Deerham was utterly in thrall to her
fiancé. They’d share a bed tonight, or he was a Dutchman.

West felt even lonelier. Especially as
Helena’s current coldness put her bed more out of reach than
ever.

“I’d like to give Fenella every honor.”

It was West’s turn to laugh. “I doubt she
gives a fig whether you’ve got a title or not. She’s always been
beautiful, but now—”

“She burns like a flame.” The burly magnate
blushed, and West liked him better for the awkwardness. “Pardon me.
I’m not usually given to poetry.”

“Congratulations on your good fortune, old
man. She’s a treasure. In my absence, London’s become Cupid’s
realm.”

“Thank you. Now Helena is the last of our
widows left to find a husband.”

“If I have any say, she won’t be a free woman
for long.”

“So you mean marriage?”

“Of course. She’ll make the perfect wife, if
I can convince her that I’m not another dissolute rake like
Crewe.”

“You might have work to do there. Even I’ve
heard the stories about your many conquests.”

West shrugged, his attention unwavering on
the seemingly oblivious Helena. He didn’t feel guilty about his
exploits. The women had been willing, the liaisons pleasurable, the
partings mostly cordial. He hadn’t owed anyone his allegiance—until
now.

“I had my moments, but it’s time to settle
down and set up my nursery.” The horror in Townsend’s expression
made him pause. “What?”

“I hope you didn’t say that to Helena. Or
it’s no wonder your suit doesn’t prosper.”

Had he wooed her in the stables? He’d been
burning up with fever and hardly remembered what he’d said. “Helena
knows me too well to fall for sentimental twaddle. And too clever
as well.”