The Seduction of Lord Stone (7 page)

His contemptuous tone made her bristle. “Who’s to say the consummation hasn’t already taken place?” she asked with poisonous sweetness.

His breath hissed out before a lacerating silence crashed down. Caroline’s stomach knotted in horror. What the devil was wrong with her? Frantically she wished the lying words unsaid, but pride stopped her from backtracking.

After what felt like an hour, Silas spoke. She braced for another lecture on her recklessness, but he sounded tired and flat in a way she’d never heard him before. “I hope you’ll both be very happy.”

“We are,” she said defiantly, even as she told herself it was time to shut up. In fact, she should have kept her mouth closed the entire trip.

“Then I’m bloody delighted for you,” he said savagely.

The coach stopped outside her house. Caroline had never imagined she’d be so desperate to escape Silas. In earlier, happier days, the time they spent together had always seemed too short, they had so much to say. She’d lost him, and she didn’t know why. The skin across her temples was tight and throbbing with a headache. She longed for the privacy to cry her eyes out in a way she hadn’t since she was a silly girl.

“Good night, Silas,” she said in a thick voice, her hand fumbling for the catch on the door. She didn’t want to spend a moment longer in this carriage than she had to.

“Caro, wait,” he said softly, catching her arm just as she found the trick of the fastening.

“I’m tired,” she said, hating the whine in her voice. No wonder Silas preferred Fenella.

“I know you are. I’ve acted like an utter swine. I have no business criticizing your choices. I’m sorry.”

Strangely his concession didn’t lift her spirits. She was the one who had acted badly, not Silas. “You—”

John, her footman, opened the door and saved her from having to respond to Silas’s unnecessary apology. She felt horrible—lumpen and ungracious and stupid and mean. She hadn’t felt so useless since she’d forsaken Lincolnshire in search of a reinvented self.

“I’ll walk you to your door.”

“There’s no need,” she mumbled.

“You’re not well.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” she said, wondering if they’d carve that lying little phrase on her tombstone.

“Nevertheless.”

He wouldn’t abandon her until he’d seen her safe, despite the household full of servants awaiting her bidding. Silas was such a white knight. Caroline should have long ago realized that he’d choose a fragile damsel like Fenella, not a great, argumentative, gallumping creature like Caroline Beaumont.

She was too tired and disheartened to insist further. Once he’d escorted her inside, she could send him home. Silently, she left the coach and let him take her arm to help her up the steps. His touch was poignantly tender. He clearly hadn’t forgotten her strange turn at the Oldhams’. She wondered what he’d say if she confessed that the sight of him dancing with Fenella had literally made her sick.

“Shall I stay until you’re settled?” he asked softly in the doorway after she’d told the footman to wait inside. “I’m not convinced I shouldn’t fetch a doctor.”

Not long ago, he’d been angry. She didn’t sense any anger now. Instead he seemed…sad. That wasn’t an adjective she’d ever thought to apply to him. She recalled with stinging regret how his essentially joyous heart had helped her come to terms with her new life.

A joyous heart he’d obviously decided to give to Fenella.

She bit her lip, using the sting to control her tears. “No,” she forced out, then belatedly remembered her manners. “Thank you for bringing me home.”

He studied her, the light from inside her house casting fascinating shadows over his face. Then he caught her hand and bowed over it. “You mightn’t believe me, but I’ve only ever wished you well.”

“I believe it,” she said on a thread of sound. “You’re making this sound like goodbye.”

Keeping hold of her hand, he watched her from under those expressive brows. “You’ve learned to fly, Caro. It’s inevitable that while you take to the skies, you leave some of us behind on the ground.”

She guessed he meant that as a compliment, but it didn’t sound like it. It still sounded like farewell, and she could hardly endure the pain of it. “Silas—”

“Good night, Caro. I hope West knows what a damned lucky devil he is.”

For the first time, he took the courtly gesture a step further and pressed his lips to her gloved knuckles. Heat jolted her while unfamiliar yearning jammed her voice in her chest along with her cramping heart.

Abruptly he released her and ran down the steps to his carriage. As the vehicle rumbled across the cobblestones and out of view, she stood on her doorstep, staring after him until she shivered with the cold.

C
aroline lay in her beautiful mahogany bed—a bed she’d never shared with Freddie, he hadn’t brought her to London—and stared dry-eyed into the thick darkness. She felt restless and jumpy and achy.

She’d craved for the relief of tears, but by the time she sent her maid away, her misery had calcified into a hard, painful monolith inside her. So she remained awake, revisiting the night’s events and loathing herself. And thinking over her time in London and before that, the barren years of Freddie’s illness. Back further to the unhappy young wife—bored, unfulfilled, smothered by an isolation that crushed every drop of life out of her.

It wasn’t a very impressive history.

She wasn’t a very impressive person.

But until now, at least she’d prided herself on her sharp wits. When it turned out she was the greatest fool in London. In England. In the world.

With a groan, she turned over to bury her hot face in the cool linen of her pillow. Tonight had battered her with the devastating truth that she’d struggled so hard against acknowledging. Three simple words tortured her. Not the three that had haunted her since she’d looked across a crowded ballroom.
Silas. And Fenella.

That was bad enough. But worse by far were the three now tormenting her.

I love Silas.

Of course she did. She’d loved him for months. Perhaps from the moment he’d smiled at her across his sister’s drawing room and said something teasing to Helena about her ability with calculus contrasting with her ineptitude with tea. Caroline had laughed—he’d made her laugh so often since. She loved his generous spirit. She loved his perceptive, acute mind. She loved his curiosity and his humor.

She loved his quirky, expressive face, and his hazel eyes bright with private amusement. She loved his tall, loose-limbed body with its broad shoulders and narrow hips and strong swordsman’s thighs. She loved his competent, powerful hands and his firm, smiling mouth.

She wanted Silas Nash in her bed. She wanted him to press her deep into the mattress as he thrust inside her.

Panting, she rolled onto her back and slid her hand down her belly to her mound. It didn’t help. Her touch couldn’t answer this desire. Only Silas could do that.

At last the tears broke, trickling down her temples to the pillow. Everything was such a blasted mess. Her love for Silas didn’t change the path she followed. After a lifetime of pandering to other people, she refused to surrender her newly acquired freedom.

Not even for love’s sake.

Just thinking about her life with Freddie slung crushing chains of fear around her chest. She gasped for air, staring up at the ceiling and telling herself she was free.

Surely there was no need to be so frightened. As long as she didn’t yield to this unacceptable love, she’d remain free. She’d sworn on Freddie’s early grave that she’d never marry again. Her marriage had been a ten year prison sentence, and while she was sorry Freddie was dead, her strongest and utterly shameful reaction at his passing had been overwhelming relief. Both that Freddie’s sufferings were over and that she was no longer obliged to serve him.

Even if Silas wanted her, she couldn’t marry him. Not if she meant to be true to herself as she’d never had the chance to be true to herself before. Between her father and Freddie, her every moment had been under another’s control. Like a fox in a poacher’s trap, her soul had strained against that subjugation. These last months, she’d tasted the ambrosia of ordering her own life. The prospect of yielding that independence to a man, no matter how benevolent, made those chains around her chest tighten to the point of agony. Love was just another cage.

That meant if she wanted Silas, she must join the endless parade of his paramours. How long would she hold his attention? A week? A month? Even a year, unprecedented for him, would leave her devastated once it was over. What freedom was there in that?

The stark fact remained. She needed a lover, not someone she loved.

Anyway, if she was right, Silas wasn’t remotely interested in Caroline Beaumont. He was in thrall to sweet, charming, delicate Fenella. Even someone as jaded about marriage as Caroline could see how well they suited each other.

She winnowed her memories from the Oldhams’ ball for some indication that she was wrong about Silas and Fenella. Perhaps she’d overreacted, although it was hard to argue with Silas and Fen’s compatibility. But say he didn’t marry Fenella, he’d marry someone. Someone capable of giving him the wholehearted devotion that Caroline couldn’t risk because it meant accepting fresh captivity.

Silas wasn’t for her, no matter how her stupid heart keened after him.

Far better to enjoy a short, civilized liaison with a sophisticated man who offered pleasure without emotional involvement. West couldn’t hurt her because she could never love him. He was perfect.

Even if right now, the thought of handsome Lord West’s hands on her body made her stomach heave.

But first she had to make things right with Silas. She owed him an apology for acting like a harpy. Then she owed him her friendship. The excruciating truth was that unless she retreated to the country, she was doomed to see him again and again. He was her best friend’s brother. He courted—oh, wicked agony—another close friend.

But tonight, tonight with her love so fresh and so sharp, she’d give herself over to the luxury of imagining Silas Nash in her bed. She’d forget about the shackles of possession and commitment and obedience, and think only of the pleasure her rebellious soul denied her.

Tonight she’d pretend, then she’d put all such dangerous illusions away forever.

With a tremulous sigh, she tugged up the hem of her nightgown and raised her knees. Her hand slipped between her legs, seeking the slick, secret flesh.

Tracking Silas down proved more difficult than Caroline had expected. The day after the Oldhams’ ball, he left for Edinburgh to lecture on his experiments. From there, he went to Paris for meetings at the Sorbonne. When he returned, he retreated to his estates in Leicestershire. Fenella didn’t look particularly cast down by his absence, but Caroline wasn’t hypocrite enough to encourage confidences about her friend’s well-traveled beau.

The season capered toward its end. Caroline made a gallant effort to garner the same enjoyment from the endless round of social events as she had at the beginning. But without Silas, the excitement had gone.

She kept up the pretense that she pursued Lord West, but she doubted even he was convinced of her interest. In all these weeks, they hadn’t moved beyond some harmless flirtation and a few dances. She told herself the best cure for pining after Silas was another man’s attention. But she couldn’t make herself take that last step toward seducing West. And so far, he’d done nothing to deepen their intimacy.

She was surprised that Silas had spoken so slightingly of the man. He was good company and the admiration in his eyes staved off self-pity.

Yes, she liked Lord West but he would never set her heart cartwheeling. Only one man did that. And she’d give away penny of her impressive fortune to change that unwelcome fact.

“Damn it all to hell.”

Silas snatched up his latest spindly hybrid and consigned it to the incinerator heating his greenhouse. Although he didn’t live in the Nash townhouse with his mother and sisters, he’d built a laboratory in the back garden. Last year, everything he’d touched had turned to gold. He’d started to plan putting a new variety of cherry combining yield, hardiness and sweetness on the market within five years. But all his experiments in recent months had slammed into a wall. He might as well have gone rambling in the Lake District as waste his time poring over seeds and grafts and cuttings.

He’d worked in botany long enough to understand that a man went wrong more often than he went right. Patience was as necessary as soil and water and light.

But he also knew that the main reason behind his lack of progress was that his mind wasn’t on work. His mind was on a certain unattainable widow.

He’d used patience in pursuing her, too. And had ended up losing out to a more impetuous lover. Dear God, he hoped West was careful with Caroline, or he’d beat the poltroon to a pulp and turn him into compost.

“Bugger, bugger, bugger,” he muttered as he turned and knocked a stack of terracotta saucers to the tiled floor. He surveyed the shattered mess and told himself he couldn’t go on like this. Other men failed in love and survived. Surely he could learn from their example.

He’d spent the last month struggling to forget Caroline Beaumont. Precious little good it had done him. New faces, old friends, stimulating discussions, lectures, travel, research. Nothing had dislodged her from heart or mind.

He wasn’t sleeping. He wasn’t eating. Much more and he’d go mad indeed.

The worst of it was that none of his suffering brought him one inch closer to luring his beloved away from West. As a scientist, he admired efficiency above all. And his anguish over Caroline was the height of wastefulness. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t conquer it.

The best cure, he supposed, was to take a mistress. Or at least slake this turbulent, overpowering misery with a woman for a night. He’d reached the point of inquiring after the address of Edinburgh’s most fashionable courtesan. But when the time came, he’d turned away from that discreet door to walk the dark alleys of the Old Town until dawn. He felt sick enough with himself already. Another bout of meaningless copulation in a life of meaningless copulation wouldn’t cool his fever.