The grim expression didn’t lighten. She’d never seen him so stern. “Apparently Helena’s been spreading tales about more than this evening’s entertainments.”
His unfavorable reaction left her flummoxed. Lord Stone’s beautiful manners were touted as society’s ideal. His careless wit and graceful demeanor were much praised. Yet he responded now with neither wit nor grace, when she’d expected him to applaud her daring.
Caroline became annoyed. With Silas Nash, of all people. “I was a good and faithful wife to Frederick Beaumont. And I nearly perished of boredom as a result. If I choose to take a lover or two now, it’s entirely my decision. If that doesn’t fit some hypocritical view you have of respectable women, that’s too bad. I won’t apologize.”
She waited for him to respond with equal heat, but after a fraught second while she braced for a scolding, he sucked in a breath and the temper faded from his expression. “Let’s not quarrel, Caro. Not tonight when you’re basking in your success.”
“Your censure oversteps the mark, my lord,” she said stiffly, telling herself to accept his olive branch. But worse than anger, she was hurt that someone she’d counted as an ally turned against her.
His lips quirked and abruptly he became the easygoing companion who had helped her weather all those humdrum tea parties. “‘My lord?’ Oh, the pain. I’ll never recover. You know how to strike a man down, Lady Beaumont.”
Despite her disquiet, she couldn’t suppress a faint smile. “I probably shouldn’t have told you my plans. I’ve become too used to confiding in you.” She studied him searchingly. “If I lost your regard, I’d be cast low indeed.”
He expelled his breath with a hint of impatience. “Don’t be a goose, Caro. You haven’t lost my regard. You never could.” He glanced around the packed room. “I’ll prove it by asking you to dance.”
The familiar benevolence settled on his features, but she hadn’t mistaken his anger in those brief moments of discord. She battled the uncomfortable suspicion that she didn’t know Silas Nash at all.
“I must check on the supper,” she said quickly, although it wasn’t true. She needed to gather her composure. Their discussion had come too close to argument and left her on edge. Fear beat in her blood, chilled her on this warm night. If Silas withdrew his friendship, she’d miss him like the devil.
“Given the interest our contretemps has aroused, a waltz would be the wiser choice.”
She started. Good heavens. What on earth was wrong with her? She’d forgotten where she was. She’d taken so much trouble to establish herself in society. Now in bickering with a rake, she risked all she’d gained. A quick reconnoiter indicated more than one pair of eyes focused on her. She caught Helena’s concerned dark gaze and sent her a reassuring smile.
“You’re right,” she said, still reluctant to step into Silas’s arms for the dance. Then she squared her shoulders and damned the world, and Lord Stone with it. She’d lived too long as a mouse. Now she meant to be a tiger.
“Shall we?”
The orchestra she’d brought from Paris played the introduction to the latest waltz. Ignoring the disquiet churning in her stomach, Caroline stuck a brilliant smile on her face and nodded. “We shall.”
*
And that, sir, was how not to court a lady.
What a blockhead he was. Silas had known from the moment he met beautiful and stubborn Caroline Beaumont that if he intended to win her, he needed to tread carefully.
For over a year, he, famous for his various but fleeting amours, had done just that. Until now, he’d never taken trouble over a woman. If the one who caught his fickle interest wouldn’t have him—and he was arrogant enough to note how rarely that happened—there was always another equally appealing candidate to occupy his brief attention.
Then his brilliant, troublesome, but beloved sister Helena had held a tea party on a cold March day. His wayward attention had landed on a lovely woman whose fiery spirit made a mockery of her widow’s weeds. He’d spent every day since then telling himself that love at first sight was a poet’s stupidity—and eating his heart out over Caro Beaumont. For a man of thirty-one, it was distinctly lowering to suffer romantic yearnings that rivaled any adolescent Romeo’s. Even more lowering to recognize that the object of his inconvenient passion hardly regarded him as a man at all.
Payment, he supposed, for all those casually discarded ladies.
He curled one arm around Caro’s slender waist and took her gloved hand in his, and his heart leaped with an excitement he hadn’t felt since he was a stripling. It was humiliating. It was disturbing. It was unacceptable.
And after this long enchantment, he acknowledged that it was inescapable.
/>
Since she’d cast off her mourning, he’d danced with her several times. Usually she was light and supple in his arms, responding to his body’s signals with a readiness that boded well for her bedding. Now tension stiffened the delicate muscles beneath his hand.
Blast. Impatience had brought him close to blowing his plans. Caro did a fine job of pretending enjoyment, but he saw beneath the sparkling surface to the old wariness. From the first, she’d been skittish. Like a highly strung thoroughbred mistreated early and as a result, disinclined to trust to any handler, even the kindest. How she’d loathe knowing that Silas had immediately recognized her fear—she was a proud creature, as befitted a thoroughbred, and worthy of a gentle wooing.
Damn it, he verged so close, yet he could still lose the prize. How far the rake had fallen that he’d counted gaining her trust as a victory. He’d built that trust step by step, through a hundred innocuous gatherings suitable for a new widow.
He never ventured into deeper waters with Caroline. Instead, he’d set out to make her laugh—some instinct told him laughter had been a rare visitor to her life. In return she’d gifted him with a friendship that, to his shame, counted as his most rewarding relationship with a female outside his family.
Tonight, like a fathead, he’d put all that dedicated hard work at risk.
But dear God, he’d wanted to smash his fist into the wall when, after a year without so much as a kiss, she spoke in such an offhand manner about taking a lover. A lover who was not Silas Nash, Viscount Stone.