She scowled to hide her alarm. For someone on the verge of collapse, he sounded remarkably self-assured. “No man, perhaps. But this woman will never be your mistress.”
“I told you I don’t want you to be my mistress.” That burning gaze didn’t waver. “I want you to be my wife.”
Before she could respond to that astounding statement, his eyes fluttered shut, and he slid to the ground as if he didn’t have a bone in his body.
Chapter Two
West cursed this damned inconvenient fever as he sat beside the fire in Silas’s unpretentious drawing room. It was two days since he’d crumpled into a humiliating heap after announcing his intentions to the woman he’d decided to marry. This was his first full evening downstairs.
For nearly a day after blacking out, he hadn’t returned to full awareness. When he did, he’d found himself lying in the bedroom he always used at Woodley Park, going back to his earliest boyhood. He’d grown up with the Nash children, and now he hoped to bring that relationship closer, one of family instead of friendship.
At least his dead faint had saved him from hearing Hel’s answer. He wasn’t optimistic enough to imagine she appreciated his offer. Had ever man set himself to win such a reluctant bride?
The sight of his lady where she sat across the room talking to Fenella Deerham would deter a weaker man. He must have Helena to thank for getting him off the stable floor, but she hadn’t come near him since. Caroline and Fenella had called to see him. Even Fenella’s hulking lover Anthony Townsend—what a dashed disparate couple that was—had stumped his way up to West’s bedroom to wish him a brusque northern-accented recovery.
But Helena’s absence had been eloquent. As was the way she kept well out of his way tonight, and avoided addressing him directly.
She did her best to make her rejection clear. Unfortunately for her, he knew her well enough to read beneath the discouraging manner.
Nobody who saw the striking black-haired woman in an emerald gown that set off her olive skin and flashing dark eyes to perfection would discern her abject terror. Nobody but the man who had been first to kiss her, and knew her better than anyone else on earth.
He and Helena had always understood each other. Their long estrangement hadn’t changed that.
But that didn’t mean he underestimated the obstacles ahead. Crewe, that selfish bastard, had hurt and humiliated her. West had loved the young Helena’s generous heart, but that generosity had left her dangerously vulnerable to a rake’s lures. Now like a half-broken horse, she shied from another rider.
“They make a right bonny pair, don’t they? Sunlight and shadow,” a rumbling voice murmured behind him.
West had been so busy staring at Helena, he’d missed Townsend’s approach, which was a joke when the fellow was the size of a house.
“Heaven and hell,” he said, before he had a chance to censor himself. He’d only met Townsend in the last day or so, and the big, dark man remained something of a mystery.
Townsend gave a grunt of laughter. “If you’re calling my Fenella hell, I’ll have to shoot you.”
West regarded him curiously. Until now, his principal impression of Fenella’s unlikely intended was a monumental form and a slight roughness of manner. Now he saw the intelligence gleaming in those deep-set eyes. He recalled that this man had built a huge fortune from nothing.
“You know damn well that’s not what I mean.”
“Aye, I do. Which is a good thing. I reckon yon Silas won’t appreciate a duel on the eve of his wedding.”
“Probably not.”
Silas and Caro shared a couch, staring at each other as though they couldn’t believe their luck. After their rocky courtship, West couldn’t blame them for their starry eyes.
Their closeness threw his difficulties with Helena into stark contrast. He didn’t begrudge his friends’ happiness, but he was painfully envious. When he looked at Silas and Caro, he wanted what they had.
And he wanted it with Helena.
“The lass is making every effort to pretend you don’t exist.”
“Yes,” West said shortly. If a stranger noticed Helena’s hostility, that meant old friends like Caro and Silas would, too. Unless they were so wrapped up in each other that the rest of the world could go hang.
“Which I’d take as an encouraging sign.”
West’s eyebrows rose. “What the devil?”
Townsend released another soft huff of amusement. “She’s powerfully interested if she has to try so hard to ignore you.”
“She’s been furious with me for years,” West found himself saying with unexpected honesty. He wasn’t a man given to confidences, but something about Anthony Townsend cut through social niceties. It must. In the five years since her husband’s death at Waterloo, Fenella had never looked at another man. Yet within mere weeks, Townsend had persuaded her to marry him. The couple planned a quiet ceremony in London before Silas and Caro left for China.