The Seduction of Lord Stone (10 page)

“Hell and damnation,” Silas growled and wrenched away to face his sister. With quick protectiveness, his arm curled around Caroline.

Shame prevented Caroline from appreciating the gesture. “Let me go,” she muttered, wriggling free.

Her unsteady hands rose to her bodice. Against all odds, it remained in place. Without meeting anyone’s eyes, she frantically checked the chaotic greenhouse for her pelisse and reticule before remembering that she’d left them inside. She hadn’t come here to see Silas—she hadn’t known he’d returned from Leicestershire—but to see Helena. Helena who surveyed the two of them with arched eyebrows and an expression that combined amusement and curiosity and surprise.

“I must go.” Carole pushed past Helena and headed doggedly for the door. She cursed the shards of pottery impeding her progress, mute witness to the madness that had possessed her. She wanted to leave this greenhouse more than she wanted the hope of heaven.

Behind her, she heard Helena say to Silas, “Just what have you got to say for yourself, my dear brother?”

Caroline knew she had no right to delay outside to hear his reply, but she did. She may as well have kept going. She learned nothing new.

“Mind your own bloody business and leave me the hell alone, Helena,” he growled. Through the glass—it was mortifying quite how visible he was—Caroline watched him turn his back on his sister. He braced his arms on the workbench and dropped his head to stare at the rough boards. His stance reeked of defeat and desolation.

She’d done this to him and she hated herself for it. On a cracked sob, Caroline turned and raced across the lawns to the house.

“C
aro, for pity’s sake, wait.” Helena rushed to catch up with her as she barged through the French doors into the empty morning room.

“I have to go.” The words clogged in Caroline’s throat. Along with acrid tears and a lunatic yearning to run back to Silas and beg him to forgive her.

Helena caught her arm, halting her headlong flight. “You can’t go out on the street like that.”

“Lend me your carriage, then.” How she wished she’d driven this morning, instead of walked from her house accompanied by a footman. How she wished she’d never come here at all. She struggled not to remember Silas declaring his love. Every time she did, her chest tightened to paralysis and she felt like the real world rushed away from her down a long dark tunnel.

She battled to rein in her panic. Silas’s kisses had thrilled her. His love terrified the life out of her.

“I don’t think you want the servants to see you.” Helena dragged her across to the mirror over the fireplace.

“Oh, dear God,” Caroline whispered, appalled at what she saw. “I look like I’ve been romping in a hedgerow with the Household Cavalry.”

Her hair flowed around her, somehow more wanton for what remained of the morning’s neat coiffure. A fraying plait. A couple of pins sliding from the tangled mass. Her dress, thank heaven, was still fastened. But that was all she had to thank heaven for. The pretty green muslin was crushed and stained. Silas’s teeth had left a red mark on her neck. Dirt streaked one cheek. After those fierce kisses, her lips were swollen and glistening.

“A muddy hedgerow,” Helena said drily. “I’ll get Rose to fix you up.”

“What’s the point?” Her voice was bleak. “My reputation will be in shreds anyway. If your servants saw me flat on my back, they won’t keep the story to themselves. Why on earth didn’t you stop us sooner?”

Helena frowned. “I thought you knew quite how public the greenhouse is.”

Caroline looked away from the devastated gaze she met in the mirror and slumped onto a dark blue sofa. She could hardly believe only minutes ago, she’d been kissing Silas. Now she didn’t know where to turn. “I must have been mad. All London will call me a strumpet.”

Helena sat next to her and took her trembling hand. “It’s not as bad as that.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Most of the staff have worked for us for years and they adore Silas. And hopefully they’re too busy to check on what his lordship’s up to in the garden.”

“You’re clutching at straws.”

“Yes.” She squeezed Caroline’s hand to apologize for her bluntness. “But no point borrowing trouble. Let’s get you back to your fashionable self, then we’ll decide what to do.”

From where she sat, Caroline had a painfully clear view of the fatal glasshouse. The kisses she and Silas had shared would have been as visible as if they stood on a stage. Bile rose in her throat at the performance they’d put on. “I can’t stay. I can’t face Silas.”

“I suspect he’ll brood in there for a while yet.”

Caro’s stomach soured with self-hatred as she studied that tall form. She hardly heard Helena leave the room. Instead she watched him standing hunched over the place where only minutes ago, she’d been spread out for his delectation.

Then the scoundrel had had the nerve to tell her that he loved her. She wished to heaven he hadn’t. That familiar breathless feeling overwhelmed her. She made herself inhale to clear her head. And again. Already the tentacles of that precious, unwanted love reached out to throttle her dreams.

The only true liberty a well-bred woman could have was as a widow of independent fortune. After unwilling subservience to a martinet of a father, then an uncongenial if not unkind husband, she was now in that enviable position.

So what did she do? She went and fell in love. Could she be any more of an idiot?

Today’s astonishing events opened her eyes to so much. Her ability to hurt Silas. His love. The reason behind his sudden cantankerousness—however jealous she’d been of Fenella, he’d been equally jealous of West.

The invincible power of desire.

She caught her breath and closed her eyes as her body heated to the memory of those ferocious kisses. Today’s encounter had held little tenderness, but dear God, they’d shared passion. A passion that threatened to set the whole world on fire.

Tears pricked her eyes. So sad that after ten years of marriage, she only just discovered desire. Now she had, could she accept its counterfeit with Lord West?

She liked West. She had little doubt that he’d prove an accomplished lover. But how she’d thrilled to Silas’s shaking, desperate need. To Silas, she’d been water to a man dying of thirst. To West, she was a bonbon to sweeten a moment. Consumed, enjoyed, then forgotten.

She reminded herself that brief enjoyment was what she required, not a love that demanded commitment and promises and duty. After those dismal years nursing Freddie, she’d decided that if she ever got the chance, she’d dance through the rest of her life like a butterfly, alighting to taste a flower’s nectar, but never lingering beyond the moment.

Well, so far she was a complete failure as a creature of air and space and freedom. That went to show what a calamity love was.

She’d survived Freddie on willpower alone. Surely she could summon that will to claim the future she wanted. The first step was to move past this hankering for the man she wouldn’t let herself have. At her ball, she’d felt like she had the whole world in the palm of her hand. She could feel like that again. She
would
feel like that again. But only if she took decisive action to seize her destiny.

Enough of this shillyshallying. Her new life started now.

She clenched her hands into fists and shored up her shaky resolution. With one final look at Silas, she silently said farewell to the love they might have shared if she’d been a different woman with a different past.

When Helena returned with a tea tray and Rose, her maid, Caroline already plotted the steps to Lord West’s seduction.

Silas pounded on the glossy black door to the tall white house in Half Moon Street. It was too late for polite calls—but then, this wasn’t a polite call. The burly night watchman halted on his rounds and raised his lantern. The cove must be shortsighted, because apparently he only saw a well-dressed representative of the upper classes, not a man with violence on his mind. He wished Silas a cheerful good evening and shuffled on his way.

Silas went back to banging on the door until Beddle, West’s butler, appeared. “My lord,” the man said in surprise, briefly forgetting his dignity.

Silas had known Beddle since his days as a junior footman on the Grange estate. He could forgive a little informality. “Is he in?” he barked.

Beddle looked taken aback. “It’s after midnight, sir.” Behind Beddle, lamps lit the elegant black and white entrance hall.

“If he’s out, I’ll wait.” After pacing his rooms until he felt likely to lose his mind, Silas had set out on this impetuous errand to confront West. Hopefully a man who planned a day outdoors might forsake the fleshpots and have an early night. Not to mention reserving his energy for after the picnic when he pleasured a new mistress. That thought stirred the savage beast barely restrained inside Silas.

“Please come in.” Biddle’s magisterial manner returned. “I’ll ascertain if his lordship is at home.”

“I’ll wait in the library,” he said, striding ahead. He knew this house as well as he knew his own. He and West had been friends since childhood. Silas marched into the dark room and flung the curtains open. Behind him, a footman lit the lamps and set the fire.

“Brandy, my lord?” the footman asked.

Silas didn’t turn from the window. “I’ll see to myself, thank you.”

“Very good, sir.” The servant left Silas to brood.

How easily he’d fallen under the spell of his sister’s lovely new friend. He wasn’t a stupid man—even now, with his brain turned to sludge. He’d soon recognized that Caroline Beaumont carried wounds from her marriage. But their immediate affinity had led him to believe that with careful wooing, she’d be his.

What an arrogant coxcomb he’d been. These long months of pursuit, and all he had to show were a scarred heart, some bitter arguments, a couple of kisses more torment than pleasure, and an empty bed.

Reflected in the window he saw a man haggard with love. To escape that disagreeable image, he started to prowl around the library. A stack of correspondence waited on the imposing mahogany desk. Idly, Silas cast his eye across the letters.

What the devil?
His heart crashed to a stop.

Oh, Caro.
You bloody well went and did it.

He almost found himself admiring her audacity. After the confession that West hadn’t kissed her, part of him had assumed that her threat this morning had been bravado.

Like hell it had been bravado.

A man’s correspondence was sacrosanct. In opening that letter on top of the pile, Silas defied every rule of good manners. If anyone discovered what he’d done, he’d be drummed out of society.

Bugger good manners. Bugger society. Quickly he grabbed the note and broke the seal. A few seconds to read the contents. Another second to slip it into his pocket.

His ruin was now official. Love had brought him crashing down like all this morning’s broken pots in his greenhouse. Caroline Beaumont had destroyed his principles. He deserved to be horsewhipped. Worse, he suffered not a moment’s remorse over his actions.

When West arrived a few minutes later, Silas was perusing one of the crowded bookshelves on the far side of the room.

“Stone, what in Hades are you doing here at this hour?” West strode into the room and shut the door after him. “Have you had a drink?”

“No.” Silas turned to glower at his host.

“Good Lord, man, you look like your dog just died. What is it?” West spoke lightly as he crossed the room to pour two brandies. Over shirt and loose trousers, he wore an extravagant green silk dressing gown patterned with entwined Chinese dragons.

Silas drew himself up to his full, impressive height, although this wasn’t how he’d pictured the scene. For a start, West hadn’t been dressed so casually. Nor had his manner conveyed such ease.

“I’ll do everything in my power to stop you having her,” he said stiffly.

West paused in passing Silas a glass and frowned. “Having who? Helena?”

“Helena?” Silas scowled at his oldest friend. “What the deuce does my sister have to do with this damned mess?”

“You’ll have to make yourself clearer, old chum.”

Dear God above, was the man so consumed by debauchery that he’d lost track of his paramours? Any guilt that Silas might have felt evaporated. Even if she could never be his, Caroline deserved better than this careless Lothario.

“I’m talking about Caro,” he bit out, each word barbed like an arrow.

“Caro?” West looked bewildered. “You mean Caroline Beaumont?”

Silas’s right hand clenched at his side. He’d dearly love to punch West’s smug face. How dare this bastard bandy words with him? “Of course I bloody well mean Caroline Beaumont. Who else do you intend to take as your mistress?”

“Nobody,” West said calmly, replacing the filled glass on the sideboard.

“Well, you shan’t have her.”

He continued to regard Silas as though a raving lunatic ranged about his library. “Very well, I shan’t have her.”

Silas rose on the balls of his feet, ready to thump West. Then he realized what the man had said. He felt like someone had ripped the floor away beneath his feet. He’d come ready for an epic battle, while West seemed unconcerned to the point of ignorance.

“Damn you, is that all you have to say?”

“What do you want me to say?” With a nonchalance that rekindled Silas’s itch to spill blood, he collected his brandy and wandered across to a leather chair near the fire.

“I want you to say…” Silas broke off. Actually West had said exactly what Silas had burst into this house to hear. He sucked in a deep breath and a glimmer of logic pierced his turbulent thoughts. “What in blazes is going on?”

West settled in the chair and regarded Silas with an amiable expression. “You tell me. There I was, reading the latest scandalous novel, preparing to retire to my couch in virtuous solitude, and my butler tells me Lord Stone is downstairs demanding my presence. I ask you again—why are you here?”

Silas narrowed his eyes. “You know.”