Chapter Eight
“Silas?”
Shock crushed every other reaction, even outrage. Caroline felt like she’d set out on a stroll to the end of the garden and landed on the moon instead.
“Yes, it’s me.” His voice held a grim note and his stern expression was familiar from the picnic.
“What are you doing here?” She remained too bewildered to make sense of his presence. “Where’s Lord West?”
“Safely back in London, as far as I know.” Silas rose, but was wise enough not to approach her. He was in shirtsleeves and he’d changed from breeches to loose trousers. With a sick feeling, she realized she’d been stupid—again. The coat on the chair was dark brown. West’s coat today had been blue.
Finally anger stirred and pushed through her confusion to become paramount. Anger and a crushing humiliation that felt like a physical blow. “So you’ve been playing with me all this time. You and West must have had a good laugh, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t find it particularly amusing.”
He looked horrified. “There’s no joke, damn it.”
“There certainly isn’t.” Hot tears stung her eyes. Compared to the enormity of Silas’s betrayal, West’s was no worse than a mosquito bite. Another sign that love was the work of the devil. “Just a pair of spoiled and spiteful boys toying with a lady the way they’d pull the wings off a fly. I thought better of you, Silas.”
Anguished regret tightened his features and he took a convulsive step toward her. “Caro, no, you mistake me.”
“I certainly have in the past,” she said bitterly. “Well, you’ve both had your fun at my expense. I’m delighted I provided such fine entertainment. Now I wish you good night.”
She stumbled back toward her room. Luckily she’d left the door open when she came in. In her current state, she didn’t trust herself to negotiate the simple mechanics of the latch.
“Caro, wait.”
“No,” she said in a constricted voice. How could he do this to her? Whatever sins she’d ascribed to him, she’d never thought he’d be wantonly cruel.
“Please.”
Despite her frantic need to hide away with her misery, something in his voice made her hesitate. He sounded much nearer. She braced for him to touch her, knowing her brittle control would disintegrate if he did. But instead, he reached past her to draw the door shut.
She stared unseeingly at the varnished wooden barrier. “You can’t trap me in here.”
“You’re free to go.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him. But when she placed one hand on the door and pushed, he didn’t move to stop her. Behind her, she heard him sigh, the sound weighted with a regret that made her wonder if she’d mistaken his motives. Then she pictured him conspiring with West to dole out her favors between them and her hand fisted against the wood.
“Please let me explain,” he said softly.
“You just want to mock me,” she said thickly. She was trembling as if she had a fever. Strangely while escape lay inches away behind a stout door with a key to keep him out, she didn’t move. She lowered her hand to bury it in her skirts.
“On my honor, no.”
On a burst of hurt fury, she whirled to face him. “You owe me better than this.”
He raked a shaking hand through his thick tawny hair, and even angry as she was, she recognized his remorse. His face was pale and drawn and a muscle flickered in his lean cheek. “I do.”
The soft admission of wrongdoing made her stomach clench. “I never want to see you or Lord West again. You are both beneath contempt.”
Silas’s shoulders slumped and he turned away to collapse into a chair. “I’ve made such a hellish mess of all this.” His eyes, dull with regret, focused on her. “Don’t blame West. This is all my doing.”
“He told you of our rendezvous.”
“No, he didn’t.”
She frowned, backing against the door, although he didn’t budge from the chair. “Then how did you know I’d be here? You didn’t follow me from Richmond. You arrived at the inn before I did.”
The guilt in Silas’s expression intensified. “I stole your note before West read it.”
She’d taken a step toward him before she remembered that he was the enemy. “But how?”
Silas ran his hand through his hair again and his gaze settled on her with a bleak resignation that, despite everything, made her want to take him into her arms. “You’ll loathe me.”
“Probably,” she said, while her rage evaporated drop by drop. With each second, it grew more difficult to believe that his wretchedness stemmed from a nasty prank gone awry. She missed her anger. It lent her a strength she feared she was going to need. “Silas, tell me.”
He firmed his jaw. That little muscle in his cheek still danced. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a joke. He looked as austere as a funeral. “I went to West’s house last night to challenge him for you.”
“You went—”Caroline needn’t have worried about her absent anger. Her breath escaped with an indignant huff. “The devil you did. I don’t belong to either of you and I don’t appreciate being the subject of asinine male contests.”
Gloomily he examined the rush matting covering the floor. “I knew you’d hate it.”
She shifted closer. Mere feet now separated them. “What on earth did you think to achieve?”
One elegant hand made a dejected gesture. “I know it’s mad. I know if you really wanted West, I could beat him to porridge and it wouldn’t make a jot of difference to the outcome.” He settled a blistering gaze upon her. “But you’ve driven me insane ever since I met you, Caro. Have an ounce of pity for a poor fellow out of his head with unrequited love.”
She really didn’t want to soften. She really, really didn’t. All his palpable misery and declarations of love didn’t alter his unsuitability as a temporary lover. Yet her traitorous heart swelled at his grudging admission. When she’d met Silas, he’d been such a model of common sense and gentlemanly behavior. She dared any woman alive to resist feeling flattered to know she’d turned that self-sufficient rake into this wreck.
“Something’s definitely unhinged you.”
His relentless gaze drilled through her. “Love. It’s a confounded disaster.”
She couldn’t argue. She’d suffered a few unhinged moments herself. She folded her arms in front of her to try and hide how she was shaking. “Go on. You may as well tell me the rest.”
Silas’s lips turned down. “West laughed at me, told me I was an idiot.”
“He was right.”
Silas ignored her remark. “He might have been less amused if he knew I’d broken his trust and read his mail. Worse, stolen it so he never knew you’d written to him.”
“That was low,” she said, trying to summon appropriate disgust. Silas’s love must be mighty indeed if it drove him to such lengths.
He buried his face in his hands. His voice emerged as a muffled undertone. “The worst of it is I’d do it again.”
“If I mean to have West, I’ll have him.” She struggled to sound like that might still happen, when she knew the moment for taking Vernon Grange into her bed had passed, if it had ever existed at all.
Slowly he raised his head and for the first time, his eyes held a speculative glint instead of an ocean of self-castigation. In an instant, the balance of power in the room shifted, like an earthquake beneath her feet. Her fingers clenched in her skirts as icy trepidation slithered down her spine. Any advantage that his confession had given her now disappeared.
His regard was penetrating. “Yet it seems you don’t want him.”
She swallowed, cursing that Silas had heard her pathetic ramblings. “You make too much of what I said in the grip of temporary panic.”
He definitely came back to himself. His hands curled over the arms of the chair and he sat straighter. “You didn’t sound panicked.”
“Never mind that.” Nervously she saw that she’d ventured close enough for him to catch. She retreate
d a shaky step and stood shifting her weight from foot to foot. “You’ve behaved disgracefully. What did you imagine would happen when I discovered you in West’s place? That I’d just smile and shrug and throw myself into your arms?”
“A man can hope.”
“A man would be a fool if he did.”
He stood and despite the distance between them, his height left her feeling intolerably dominated. Intolerably dominated, but alive with excitement. She shivered as she recalled yesterday’s incendiary kisses. His intent expression indicated he too remembered.
A wry smile lightened his face. “I am a fool. Your fool.”
“Stop it. You don’t mean it.” She faltered back another step, berating herself for failing to run when he was too sunk in despair to follow. He no longer looked ready to cut his throat for his sins against Caroline Beaumont.
Instead, he looked…predatory.
“Yes, I do.” He loomed closer. “Who are you in love with, Caro?”
“West,” she said, tilting her chin in defiance.
He laughed softly and shook his head. “No, that bird won’t fly, my darling. You said too much in that touching little recitation.”
Mortifyingly true. She narrowed her eyes on the tall man prowling toward her. “I don’t see what business it is of yours. You’re a mere acquaintance.”
He shook his head again, those perceptive eyes fixed on her in a way that made her skin prickle with dread. And anticipation. “Fie, Lady Beaumont. Only a hardened flirt would kiss a mere acquaintance the way you kissed me yesterday.”
Her cheeks heated. Of all the men in the world, Silas Nash alone put her to the blush. Argument enough, should she need another, to avoid him. “A gentleman wouldn’t mention that unfortunate incident.”
“It wasn’t unfortunate.” He bared straight white teeth in a wolfish smile.
She’d called him piratical yesterday. She’d had no idea. Her silly heart was beating so fast, she felt dizzy. “Good God, Silas, you were close to having me in your greenhouse, with every kiss on show to the world and his wife. The whole thing couldn’t be much more unfortunate.”
“And of course you’re in love with another man.”
“Of…of course,” she said, cursing the betraying stammer.
“Yet still you mean to give yourself to West. What’s the matter with your beloved?”
Right now she could compile a long list of what was the matter with her beloved. Starting with his arrogance and his determination to plumb all her secrets. “He’s…he’s unavailable.”
Silas’s eyes held a wicked light and the flashing smile didn’t fade. “So you require a stopgap?”
Seriously apprehensive now, Caroline retreated further. “That’s hardly flattering—to Lord West or to me.”
He followed her. “Yet true.”
“Perhaps. As I said to you when I launched this bedamned enterprise, I’m looking for some adventure, not a lifelong attachment.”
He stopped and spread his arms wide, the stance opening his shirt over his powerful chest. “In that case, and in West’s absence, I offer myself.”
He looked utterly delicious. Every drop of moisture in her mouth evaporated, and she fisted her hands to stop them from reaching toward that impressively muscled expanse of skin.
She sucked in a breath and stepped to the side. He followed. She returned to her original spot. So did he. It was like a courtly dance, a reminder of how she’d spent most of the day trying to skip out of his grasp. And hadn’t that turned out a complete waste of effort? Here she was at his mercy, with nobody to blame but herself. After all, he’d given her the chance to leave and she hadn’t taken it.
“You won’t do, Silas,” she said, hoping she sounded more convincing to him than she did in her own ears.
She waited for pique, but he continued to fix that unsettling concentration upon her. “Why not? I promise to show you pleasure. Good God, the heat between us could spark a second fire of London. Yesterday, we were mad for each other.”
“Mad anyway,” she muttered, bumping hard against the wall behind her.
He sighed. “Caro, I’m here. You’re here. We want each other.” He paused as if waiting for another denial, but what was the point? They both knew the woman in his arms yesterday had been incandescent with desire. “You want excitement. I’m happy to supply it. Let’s go to bed.”
Floundering for arguments to win a point she was close to forgetting, she made a helpless gesture. “This could destroy our friendship.”
His expression softened and briefly he didn’t look like a hungry wolf, but like her dear friend. “There is no woman I esteem as highly as you.”
She struggled to remember why sleeping with Silas was a bad idea. “Then don’t you think…relations between us will ruin that trust?”
“I think relations…” He gave the word the same shaky emphasis she had. “..between us will be richer and sweeter because of that trust.”
She turned her head and gazed longingly at the door. Only a few feet away, yet it might as well be a hundred miles. “You have no respect for the women you bed.”
Comprehension widened his hazel eyes. “Is that the problem?”
“One of them,” she admitted in an unsteady voice. “You never take your amours seriously.”
She waited for him to tell her he loved her, but to her surprise—and chagrin—laughter lit his face. “My dear Caro, you appear woefully confused. If you want a short affair, surely it’s best if I don’t take our liaison seriously.”
She made a low sound of irritation. “You twist my words.”
“Then let’s stop talking altogether. You want a lover. I’m eminently qualified. Stop all this havering, sweetheart, and come to bed.”
The shaming truth was that Caroline was powerfully tempted. Beyond tempted. She teetered on the brink of a decision that had once been unthinkable. But how could she resist him? It was difficult enough when she was alone to remember how wrong he was for her. When he stood before her, tall, lean, virile, willing, her longing outstripped good sense.
She waited for the familiar suffocated feeling to return, to remind her why surrendering to this one man meant death to all her dreams. To her surprise, the feeling stayed away. While her heart was racing, her breathing remained unrestricted. At this moment, the problem was that all her dreams focused on Silas Nash.
“You make it sound so simple.”
“Isn’t it? I want you. I hope…I believe you want me. We owe nobody else our loyalty.”
She had a nasty inkling that they both knew she fought a losing battle. “I couldn’t bear you to dismiss me as yet another girl Lord Stone has made silly.”
The warmth in his eyes had her heart turning pirouettes. “Do I make you silly?”
“You know you do,” she said with stark honesty. Heaven help her. She rapidly reached a point where retreating wasn’t an option.
His smile was sweet and reminded her of his care for a lonely widow new to London. “Well, that’s a relief. You’ve sent me silly for months.”
Oh, dear, her resolution now clung only by its fingertips. “I have a question.”
“Ask me anything.”
“Does Mr. Harslett really seek his mother’s approval for his mistresses?”
The abrupt change of topic disoriented him, then left him shamefaced. He shook his head. “No.”
“I’ve had trouble even looking at him since you told me that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And Harry Hall washes?”
“As far as I’m aware. It’s not like I’ve questioned the fellow’s valet.” He shuffled his feet and she tried not to find his embarrassment charming. Tried and failed. He frowned at her. “Hell, Caroline, I said you drove me mad. There’s proof of it. I’ve acted like a louse, maligning good men whose only fault is that you expressed an interest in them. I should be flogged.”
“Perhaps that’s a little extreme.” She’d been flattered to learn of the st
olen letter. Hearing that he’d lied about his friends to keep her from their clutches shouldn’t leave her equally flattered. But it did.
Something in her tone must have encouraged him because he glanced up with a pleading light in his eyes. “My only excuse is that I love you to distraction.”
Oh, he was a temptation. And despite all her flutterings and evasions, she had a strong suspicion she was about to succumb at last. “That’s no excuse.”
“Perhaps not. But I promise to make it up to you in that bed. After yesterday, aren’t you curious about what it would be like between us?”
So curious she’d stayed awake all night, restless and hungry for more of his touch, even while she’d steeled herself to go to West. “You make it hard to say no.”
“I hope so.”
She tried not to smile. “If you kissed me, your victory would be assured.”
She thought he’d seize her then, but she’d underestimated him. To her astonishment, he raised his hand as if to ward off an attack. “I know you too well, Caro. You’ll never forgive yourself or me if you don’t consent with heart and mind united.”
“My body wants you. Isn’t that enough?” she asked softly, shifting away from the wall until she stood in front of him.
He closed his eyes. “By God, woman, you set yourself to torment me. Is that yes?”
Troubled, she studied him. He’d won, but she conceded very much against her better judgment. All the barriers to an affair with Silas remained—except that when he stood here like this, loving her and desperate, those barriers didn’t seem nearly as impassable. “It’s a request for you to make the decision.”
“That’s like asking the mouse to take charge of the key to the cheese cupboard.”
She made a frustrated sound. “God give me strength. You’re so annoying. After behaving like a complete scoundrel, now you discover your honor. You’re not proving a convenient lover, Silas.”
Regretfully he stared back. “I have to agree.” He studied her as if he read every fear lurking in her heart. “But I want you to be sure.”
Genuine confusion flooded her. “How can I be sure?”
He reached toward her face, but stopped before making contact. “Tell me what you’re afraid of.”
She abandoned pride. “I’m afraid if we do this, you won’t be my friend anymore.”
“I’ll always be on your side, whatever happens.”
“Even if I take another lover?”
Something dark and primitive moved in his hazel eyes, but his voice remained steady. “I can’t lie and say I’ll like that. I vow I’ll make you so happy that you’ll never think of leaving. But my love isn’t a prison. You’re free to choose what you do.”
Deep within Caroline, a delicate seedling of hope unfurled toward the sun. Could she do this? Was Silas the one man in a million who could want a woman without caging her?
“What else are you afraid of?” he asked softly.
“That you’ll want more of me than I’m willing to give.”
He shrugged, the gesture so characteristic that her heart somersaulted with love. “I swear on everything I hold holy that I respect your sovereign soul. I’ll take what you give and I won’t badger you for more. Nor will I throw jealous tantrums, although after my recent behavior, you might find that hard to believe.”
She regarded him doubtfully. “So no jealousy?”
His smile was crooked. “I can’t promise that, but if the circumstances arise, I’ll deal with it. I’m merely human. Let’s make a pact. If I behave like a grumpy, possessive brute, you have the right to terminate our arrangement without a word of apology. I’ll put that in writing if necessary.”
“I trust your word.” Despite all his devious antics to bring her to this pass, she did.
“Good. What else?”
This was the most difficult issue. “I’m afraid that I’ll want more of you than you’re willing to give me.”
His smile was gentle and at last he completed the caress, cupping her jaw with a tenderness that melted her bones. “Trust me. Trust yourself. We’ll come through.”
Uncertainly she met his eyes, more gold than green in the candlelight. She wanted to trust him. Oh, how she wanted to. But her freedom was too dearly won to surrender easily.
“One night,” she whispered, even as she leaned into his hand.
She waited for an argument, but after a pause, he nodded briefly. “One night.”
“Just one,” she said, surprised he accepted the limits she placed on their affair.
“One night,” he repeated in seeming agreement. He looked as if he made an eternal vow. Before she could question the emphasis he placed on the first word, he went on. “Let me show you what joy a lover can bring you.”
Accepting his offer was utterly terrifying, like crossing a gaping chasm. She spanned it with one step and went eagerly into Silas’s arms.
She might call herself a dashing widow, but when she linked her hands around his neck, she felt as flustered and excited as an untried girl. “Kiss me, Silas.”