“Only if someone cuts off my arms and legs.” West rose and returned to the sideboard. He refilled his brandy, then lifted the other glass and extended it toward Silas. “Take down your fighting colors, Stone. Your lady is a prize, but she’s not for me.”
Without accepting the brandy, Silas surveyed West as the truth finally bashed him over the head. He’d been a blasted fool. What the hell was wrong with him? If Caro and West had shared any true attraction, they would have acted on it before this. Still, after all this time, he couldn’t quite relinquish his suspicions. “You and Caro have been dancing around each other for months.”
“Dancing with, not around. She’s society’s new darling. Naturally I made a show of chasing her. You know the game.”
He did indeed. If he hadn’t been crazed by unrequited love, he’d have noted that West was too circumspect with Caro to be on the hunt.
With a growling exhalation, he let go of months of anger. “Oh, confound you, West,” he said, aggression seeping away. He took the glass of brandy. “It’s antics like this that get you into strife. If you could just say one word and mean it, there would be a deal less trouble in the world.”
“And where would be the fun in that?”
Silas swallowed a mouthful of liquor, aware that he’d acted like an ass and grateful that West wasn’t making an issue of it. The idea that he could appreciate anything West did was shocking enough to kick his brain back into action, after months of blundering around on blind instinct.
“Sit down and stop looming.” West gestured to the matching leather chair as he ambled back to where he’d been sitting.
“I suppose I ought to apologize for bursting in on you.” Silas took the chair and drained his glass.
West shrugged. “We all do silly things when we’re in love.”
Silas didn’t bother arguing. It would only confirm West’s opinion about the state of his emotions. “How would you know?”
A faint smile hovered around West’s lips. “You’d be surprised, old chap.” Then before Silas could question that unexpected response, he went on. “Damned fine woman, Caro Beaumont. I commend your taste.”
“She’s damned elusive,” Silas said on a sigh, tilting his head back on the chair and studying his friend from under lowered lids. “I’m devilish glad I don’t need to kill you.”
West gave a grunt of laughter. “Not as glad as I am.” His deep voice turned thoughtful. “You know, if I was to wager on the man who’s caught the delectable Lady Beaumont’s interest, I’d pick you.”
Silas’s lips tightened. After today’s kisses, and with West out of the race, so would he. “She’s running scared.”
Caro had looked absolutely petrified when he’d told her he loved her. One would think he’d threatened to cut her throat instead of adore her forever. If only he could convince her that love meant a richer version of freedom, not its end.
“If I’d been married to Freddie Beaumont, I’d run scared, too. Man was a witless nonentity and it would have taken a cannon to shift him from that muddy hollow they call the family estate. Good farming country, excellent hunting, but a suffocating backwater for a lively creature like Caro.”
Curiosity roused Silas from his torpor. Now that he wasn’t angry with West anymore, he realized how tired he was. It had been a difficult week. Hell, it had been a difficult three months. “You knew him well?”
“We were at Harrow together. Dull as a wet week even then. Sort of blockhead who turns middle-aged before he hits twenty. Whoever put that match together was more of a blockhead than Freddie. Can’t imagine the girl went after him. Freddie was never a cove to set feminine hearts aflutter.”
“Her father.”
“There you have it, then,” West said with satisfaction.
Puzzled, Silas studied him. “There I have what exactly?”
West’s sigh was tolerant. “Girl’s only known blockheads when it comes to the men in her life. It’s up to you to convince her not every chap is a nincompoop.”
Silas turned to stare into the fire. Actually he had a horrible feeling that over the last few months, he’d been a bigger nincompoop than even the late Freddie Beaumont. “Easier said than done.”
“I have every faith in you.” West stood and clapped him on the shoulder. “Even if you did force your way in here, talking absolute balderdash.”
Chapter Seven
The morning of Lord West’s picnic, Caroline crawled out of bed after a sleepless night. She felt old and tired and empty. Whenever she’d closed her eyes, she’d relived those torrid moments in Silas’s arms. Staring wakeful into the darkness, she’d revisited the agony of hearing him say he loved her.
Impossible to say which was worse.
Now she jammed her turbulent misery deep down inside her, sealed tight into a corner of her soul that she never intended to visit again. She had to be ruthless and determined, or admit that the life she longed for was forever out of reach.
The first step to erase her yen for Silas Nash was consummating her affair with West, even if she felt more like a martyr facing the stake than a woman rushing into the arms of a much-desired lover. Once West shared her bed, this ridiculous second guessing must surely stop. From the first, she’d recognized Vernon Grange as what she wanted. The only thing that had changed since was her troublesome love for Silas. A love she intended to ignore until it wilted away from neglect.