“I didn’t love them. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. And, yes, I may as well admit it, little good it will do me—you’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to marry.”
No, no, no. She wouldn’t take responsibility for his happiness. She briefly shut her eyes to close out his burning sincerity. If she could close her ears to his declarations, she’d do that, too. “I don’t want you to love me,” she said desperately.
“Too bad.” He caught her shoulders again, more gently this time. “Caro, look me in the eye and tell me you feel nothing.”
She raised her chin and met his gaze with a false show of defiance, while her heart begged her to confess her love. Ruthlessly she reminded herself how smothered she’d felt with Freddie. Living with Silas would be worse. He knew her so well that he’d see how she strained against the restrictions of marriage. And when he saw that, she’d hurt him.
Silas’s eyes softened as he studied her. Briefly he was the kind, undemanding man who had brought light to the long, dark night of her mourning. “Caro?”
For one fraught instant, vows of love trembled on her lips and she let herself imagine what it would be like to live as Silas Nash’s beloved. Then very deliberately she put aside that picture and remembered her suffocating marriage, and before that life with her bully of a father. She’d dreamed of liberty for too long to relinquish it. Whatever the enticement.
“Silas, this has to end now.”
“Why?”
She forced herself to give the only answer that would keep him at a distance. “I intend to arrange a rendezvous with West after his picnic at Richmond tomorrow.”
Her announcement snuffed out the light in Silas’s eyes and he went white. She waited for him to push her away in disgust. She hadn’t answered his question, but he was so on edge, she prayed he wouldn’t notice.
Instead of letting her go, his hold firmed. “Then damn you, Caroline.” His voice was like gravel. “Damn you for throwing away what we could have created together.”
“You have every right to be angry,” she said, struggling to sound like her heart wasn’t breaking. “I hope one day you’ll understand.” She’d reached a point where she wasn’t even sure if she understood anymore.
“Then the least you can do is kiss me goodbye.”
Her wayward soul, the soul convinced that rejecting Silas was a huge mistake, welcomed his embrace. She made no attempt to contain her response to his savage kiss. It was the last time before she put away her love forever and seized the life she’d always dreamed of. Those dreams had kept her going for so long. They couldn’t be wrong.
“Caro…” he muttered, burying his hands in her tangle of hair and nibbling a tantalizing line down her neck.
Sensation rippled through her, turned her blood to syrup. He edged her backward until her hips hit the bench behind her. She was nearly back to where she’d been before. She looked dazedly over his shoulder—and met Helena’s interested dark gaze.
“Silas, stop,” she gasped, turning rigid as a board in his hold.
“There’s a reason they call them glasshouses, you know,” Helena said in a mocking tone.
“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.” Caroline 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.
Chapter Six
“Caro, 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.”