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.
“Silas, you’re holding me too tightly.”
He emerged from his fit of the sullens—confound it, no woman but Caro pierced his sangfroid—to find her watching him curiously. And with more of that dashed wariness.
Careful, Silas.
He made himself smile and loosened the hand clutching her waist the way a falling man clutched an overhang on a mountainside. “My apologies.”
He’d imagined that their friendship would offer him some advantage over other predatory males. Now he wondered if he’d made a basic mistake in his strategy. He’d become part of the furniture of her life when she was on the hunt for novelty and excitement.
His fear of competition was well founded. In this room a host of men, good and bad, watched the beautiful widow with avid eyes. He could hardly blame them. In unrelieved black, she’d been lovely. In a red gown with gold embroidery and a décolletage that skimmed the edges of propriety—and a few other things—she was breathtaking. With difficulty, Silas kept his attention on her face and not on the wealth of white skin displayed below her collarbones.
As he whirled her around the room, her smile became more natural. “No, I’m sorry. I spoke inappropriately. It’s partly your fault. You’ve become a mainstay of my life since I came to London. Like Helena or Fenella.”
Bugger him to hell and back. He only just hid a wince. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Which was true, if not the whole truth. He intended to be the man to introduce her to sensual delight. She’d only ever mentioned her married life in passing. But hints—and the few stultifyingly dull occasions when he’d met Freddie Beaumont, a good soul, but as thick-witted as a sheep—had led him to some interesting conclusions about her sexual experience. She was ripe with womanly promise, but every instinct screamed that all her bottled-up passion had never yet found outlet.
His declaration left her unmoved. “I intend to have some fun, Silas. I’m not looking for anything significant.”
He knew it was a mistake to ask. What point torturing himself? And worse, inviting another set-down. “Have you decided on a lucky candidate?”
For a second, he worried that he’d betrayed how important her answer was. But after a pause, she responded. “A few gentlemen have caught my interest.”
He sucked in a relieved breath. She hadn’t made her choice yet, so the affair remained in the realm of theory.
She lowered her voice. “Lord West is a most charming gentleman.”
Shock made Silas trip, he who had learned to dance at eight years old and hadn’t made a misstep since.
“West?” he choked out, forgetting all his plans for a subtle pursuit. Luckily his inamorata watched that popinjay West waltz with Helena a few feet away. Caro was too distracted to notice that her dance partner contemplated murder.
“We’ve met several times. He’s articulate and handsome and seems considerate.”
The unconcealed interest in her dark blue eyes threatened to make Silas lose his dinner. In an attempt to rein in his explosive reactions, he looked at Vernon Grange, Baron West, the man he’d previously considered his best friend. “Until he moves on to his next mistress. West has an appalling reputation with women.”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black,” she retorted.
He looked down into Caro’s piquant face under the elaborate coronet of dark brown curls set with glittering diamond pins. His darling was no fragile beauty like her friend Fenella Deerham. Her face was too angular and full of character to be fashionably pretty. But the sight of her transformed his day from the mundane to the extraordinary.
And she talked about wasting herself on that scoundrel West.
Silas told himself that a short affair with another man didn’t toll a death knell to his dreams. But everything male roared denial. Silas didn’t want Caro Beaumont in West’s bed. He wanted her in his bed. For always.