The Seduction of Lord Stone (4 page)

“Silas, I’ve been thinking about our conversation last night.”

So, devil take her, had he. “You’ve reconsidered taking a lover?”

A faint frown appeared between her brows. “No, of course not.”

“Oh,” he said glumly.

“This isn’t a whim. I’ve thought long and hard about my plans.” It was her turn to sound glum. “The world leaves widows a lot of time to think. I’ve had more than a year to mull over my intentions.”

He’d spent a year mulling over his intentions, too. He’d been planning a journey down the aisle. She’d been planning a progress from one lucky sod’s bed to the next. The most galling element was that she seemed ready to consider any fool in London as a potential lover. Except for one Silas Nash.

It was enough to drive a fellow stark, staring mad.

“I don’t believe you’ve thought of the consequences,” he said, wishing he could come up with something scary enough to deter her.

Her blue eyes remained steady. “I suppose you mean pregnancy.”

He brightened. Yes, that would fit the bill perfectly. It said something for his distraction that he hadn’t immediately mentioned the possibility. “It’s a risk.” He paused. “Especially after vigorous and prolonged sexual activity.”

He’d shoot the scoundrel who invited her to partake of such activity. If anyone was going to talk her into bed, it was him. Then he’d give her vigorous and prolonged until she was dizzy with pleasure. He’d panted after Caro for an eon. He had a lot of energy to burn off.

He’d hoped his plain speaking might discourage her. Of course it didn’t. Instead that damnably guileless gaze fastened on his face. “I want a lover worthy of the name. A bit of heat is well overdue.”

Good God, her frankness compounded his torment. He shifted on his spindly seat to relieve his discomfort and thanked heaven that the poor light hid his swift physical reaction. A bit of heat? At this rate, the Theatre Royal would go up in flames before Almaviva won the caterwauling Rosina.

“What will you do if you find yourself with child?” How ironic that he, the great debaucher, counseled prudence. Somewhere the angels were laughing their heads off at him.

“I was married for ten years without conceiving.” Fleeting sadness dulled her eyes. “The most obvious conclusion is that I’m barren.”

Her prosaic tone didn’t deceive him. He forgot his schemes and wounded pride, and only remembered that he hated to see her unhappy. He took the slender gloved hand resting on the box’s edge. “I’m sorry, Caro.”

For a moment, her hand lay in his and he hoped she might at last confide in him about her marriage. Only after she brought her fears into the light could he vanquish them. But to his regret, she swiftly resumed her social mask and withdrew. The warmth of her touch lingered. For a year, his love had survived on these small crumbs. He felt like he slowly starved to death.

She attempted a smile. “I’ve been listing candidates.”

He straightened in his chair, the need to assuage her heartache battling with his primitive masculine compulsion to see off all competitors. “Oh?”

She nodded with every appearance of confidence, but the hands she twined together betrayed uncertainty. Was that a sign that she wasn’t as set on this path as she sounded? He stifled the urge to tell her to give up this tomfoolery and marry him. Last night’s quarrel had been a sharp reminder that he could still lose this game.

When he didn’t question her sanity the way he had at her ball, she sucked in a relieved breath. “Perhaps you can tell me about them.”

With difficulty he kept his expression neutral. “Delighted to help,” he said, lying through his teeth.

After a hesitation as if she sensed something amiss but couldn’t place it, she said, “Mr. Harslett has been very attentive and he has pretty manners.”

“Old Johnny Harslett?” Silas asked, playing for time.

“Yes, there he is. The tall gentleman with red hair.”

“I know who he is.” Silas shot a poisonous glare at the oblivious clodpoll standing in the pit below them.

“Then what do I need to know?”

Hell. Silas had never heard a word against Harslett, something of a miracle in the vicious world they inhabited. Time for a bit of creativity. He lowered his voice to a confidential murmur. “Completely under his mother’s thumb. Doesn’t have a thought to call his own.”

“I’m not expecting him to invite me to tea with his family.”

Silas lowered his voice further. “Yes, but his mother insists on…choosing his mistresses. And interviewing them after every…encounter.”

She gaped with shock before distaste crossed her features. “Ugh. Very well. I take your point. He’s not suitable.” She pointed to another section of the crowded ground floor. “What about him?”

“Lord Pascal?”

“He’s very handsome.”

Devil take the fellow, he was. Amy, Silas’s youngest sister, had been moon-eyed over him when she was twelve. These days, at sixteen, she was more interested in efficient farming methods, thank heaven. Silas racked his brains for some reason to veto Pascal as Caro’s lover.

“He chews with his mouth open.” When that didn’t elicit an immediate rejection, he pursued his fiction. “And he cracks his knuckles incessantly. He’d drive you completely dotty within five minutes.”

“What about Harry Hall?” She pointed to the slender man talking to Pascal.

“Doesn’t wash.”

She turned to frown at Silas in puzzlement. “I’ve danced with him. He smelled perfectly fine.”

“Well, when I say he doesn’t wash, he does have a scrub-down once a month. You must have timed your dance just right.”

“Oh, dear,” she said with unconcealed disappointment. “Eligible lovers seem thinner on the ground than I’d anticipated. I’m so glad you’re helping me to discount the bad choices.”

If he had his way, he’d have her discounting every rake, roué, mother’s boy and decent chap in London. Except for that fine example of British manhood Silas Nash.

She brightened as her eyes settled on a tall, fair-haired man in the opposite box. “There’s Lord Garson. You can’t tell me he’s unsuitable. I know you’re great friends.”

A friendship likely to end in bloodshed if Caro went to the swine’s bed. Silas struggled to come up with something to dissuade her from pursuing a fellow he both liked and respected. His honor dangled by a thread, but he couldn’t bring himself to accuse a good man of cheating at cards or swindling old ladies.

Garson caught his eye and signaled a greeting. Then he raised his quizzing glass to inspect Caroline with unconcealed interest. A shamefully primeval itch to poke the delicate implement into Garson’s eye gripped Silas.

“He…snores,” he said in a strangled voice.

“Is that all? We won’t do much sleeping.”

Buggeration, now he was imagining her
not sleeping
with Garson. The pictures swarming through his mind made him long to smash his fist into his friend’s wholly inoffensive face. “Caro, you shock me.”

She looked unimpressed. “No, I don’t. Anyway, how do you know?”

“Know what?”

“That he snores.”

Silas hadn’t lied so much since he was a lad caught raiding Sydenham Place’s larder at midnight. “A few years ago I had the misfortune of sharing a room with him at a dashed poky hunting box in the Cairngorms. Didn’t get a wink of sleep. Every breath sounded like a battery of artillery.”

“I agree that’s a disqualification in a husband, but it’s not really a problem in a lover.”

The devil, what else could he say against his dear, much admired friend? “And he picks his teeth. It’s worse than Pascal’s knuckle cracking.”

Caro cast him a doubtful glance. “Are you sure? People do nothing but sing his praises, and nobody’s mentioned any unfortunate personal habits.”

Silas shrugged and strove to look reliable. “I’m only telling you what I know. You were the one who asked me to snitch on my friends. You ought to be grateful that I’m breaking the gentlemen’s code for your sake.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” A ruminative expression entered her eyes. “From what you’ve said, West sounds the best of the lot.”

Bloody hell. All that lying and Silas was no further advanced than he’d been last night. “He’s not right for you.”

“I don’t see why not. Unless you’re going to accuse him of snoring or picking his teeth or crunching his knuckles. I know he washes and his mother is a charming lady. She came to one of Helena’s teas.” Before he could gather his arguments, she sent him a brilliant smile. “Thank you, Silas. You’ve been most helpful.”

Helpful? Someone should hit him with a hammer before he was so helpful again. As if to underline the stinking morass Silas waded into, West glanced up from the stalls and smiled at Caroline, damn his sneaky, covetous, lecherous, thieving eyes.

And Silas’s beloved smiled back with a cordiality that made him want to snarl like an angry mastiff.

A soft tap on Silas’s bedroom door interrupted disturbed dreams where he chased endlessly after Caro and she chased endlessly after some faceless man. Round and round, and nobody laying a hand on their quarry. Feeling exhausted with all that running, he cracked open one eye. The room was dark. He groaned and rolled over to bury his face in the pillow. Whoever the hell it was would go away.

Except there was another knock and the faint squeak of an opening door, before a tentative voice asked, “My lord?”

“If you don’t get out in the next five seconds, Dobbs, you’ll be seeking alternative employment,” Silas mumbled without raising his head.

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” his valet said calmly.

“Five, four, three—”

“Your sister is downstairs and requests your presence.”

That was surprising enough for Silas to roll over and stare blearily through the gloom at the cadaverous-looking fellow holding a candle. “It’s the middle of the night.”

Dobbs’s expression didn’t change. It never did. “Not quite, sir. Close on six o’clock.”

“What the devil is my sister doing here?” He felt thickheaded. It wasn’t altogether lack of sleep. Last night when the prospect of Caro tumbling into West’s arms had become unendurable, he’d sought refuge in the brandy bottle. The pincers behind his eyes reminded him why he so rarely indulged.

“Lady Crewe is dressed for riding.”

Which saved him having to ask which sister. He had three, although Helena was his favorite. Or she had been before she started barging in on a chap when any sensible person would still be in bed.

Dobbs placed the candle on a chest of drawers and crossed to open the curtains. The pale morning light made Silas wince.

“Shall I help you dress before you go downstairs, my lord?” Dobbs lifted Silas’s velvet dressing gown from the chair where he’d flung it last night.

Silas forced himself to sit up. Each movement felt like pushing a boulder up a steep hill. “No, the dressing gown will suffice. There might be an emergency.”

“Lady Crewe didn’t appear agitated.”

That didn’t mean much. Helena could keep her head up through a hurricane. God knew, she’d needed all her pride and courage when she’d lived with Crewe.

Silas grunted acknowledgment as he let Dobbs slide the heavy crimson robe over his bare shoulders. “I’m awake now, Dobbs. You can go back to bed.”

“Thank you, sir, but in case Lady Crewe’s tidings require further action, I might wait. In the meantime, I’ll make some coffee.”

“Bless you.” Silas strode toward the door. “I mightn’t sack you today after all.”

Dobbs didn’t smile. “Most appreciated, sir.”

Silas rushed downstairs and slammed into the drawing room. The family had an extravagant townhouse in Berkeley Square, but he preferred to rent rooms here in Albemarle Street where he could preserve a little privacy. Although if his sisters planned to stage more midnight invasions, privacy might be a thing of the past.

“Helena, what the hell are you doing here?”

“And good morning to you, too, brother.” She stood near the unlit hearth, tall, striking, stylish in her close-fitting black habit. Apart from the commanding Nash nose they shared, nobody would ever pick them for brother and sister.

Silas dredged up a smile and sauntered across to kiss her on the cheek. “Is there some emergency?”

She sank gracefully onto the sofa beside the mantel. “You might think there is.”

He frowned. His mother and sisters occasionally involved him in small dramas, but he couldn’t recall anything worthy of a predawn visit. “Is all well with Mamma?”

“As far as I know.” Helena set her riding crop on her lap and stared hard at him. “I’ve come to invite you to ride in Hyde Park.”

“What drivel is this?”

Grim humor twisted his sister’s lips. “Perhaps it is drivel, but I’m joining Caro in an hour.”

“I don’t—” he began, increasingly irritated, but Helena interrupted him.

“With Lord West.”

“Hell’s bells,” he muttered, hands fisting at his sides as he prepared to thump his absent rival. When he raised his eyes, he read knowledge in Helena’s expression. “You know.”

She shrugged. “That you’re head over heels in love with Caro? Of course I do.”

He hated to think that he’d been so transparent—and that she might find his lack of success amusing. Helena’s sense of humor tended toward the black. “How?”

“Because I know you, dear Silas. I’ve never seen you so careful with a woman. It’s rather touching.”

His lips tightened. “You mock me.”

She shook her dark head, topped with a high-crowned beaver hat tied with a fluttering violet scarf. “Not at all. I’ve always known you had a capacity for deep feeling—you show it to the family, but not to the rest of the world. Nice to see you’re not nearly as self-sufficient as people paint you. I guessed something serious was on the cards when no lady’s name has been linked to yours in more than a year. I fear you’ve become that mythical beast, a reformed rake.”

He winced. “How dull.”

Her laugh held the familiar wry note. “No. You’re growing up at last.”

What in Satan’s name did one say to that? Fortunately Dobbs arrived with the promised coffee and saved him from replying. Silas snatched a cup and emptied it in a gulp, his brain at last starting to function.