d to force his attentions on her.
“It tells me I make you nervous.”
“You’re making me nervous now. Please go away.”
His lips twitched. “You know I mean no harm.”
“It depends on your definition of harm. If I shriek for help, Silas and Anthony will hear me.”
“They’re happily engaged in their own affairs. Pun intended.”
“They’d still come to my rescue.”
That prompted a quizzical look. “You don’t need rescuing.”
He stood, and her large, luxurious bedroom turned into a trap. Any confidence that she could bring this unexpected encounter to a speedy end dissolved like sugar in hot water.
“I’ll scream.”
“You wouldn’t be so gauche.”
She backed away until she hit the door. “I’m extremely gauche when it comes to ejecting undesirable intruders from my bedroom.”
Except he wasn’t undesirable, blast him. Damn all the love in the air. It sparked reckless ideas in a girl’s head when she found herself alone with an attractive man after midnight.
West sighed and brushed his hand through his thick black hair, making it tumble forward over his high forehead. “Hel, for pity’s sake, give me ten minutes, and if you still feel like a vile monster has cornered you, I’ll go.”
Despite herself, she laughed shortly. “You’re not a vile monster, and you know it.”
He’d been a beautiful boy and her first love. He’d grown into a striking man, the perfect picture of the dark, dashing aristocrat with his chiseled features and athletic body. Her husband had been another such classic English gentleman, but mature judgment found signs of character in West’s face that Crewe had lacked.
When Crewe died at twenty-nine, debauchery had turned him into a wreck. He’d been fat and shaky and sick. Despite his recent illness, Vernon Grange at thirty was in the prime of life. He might be pale and too thin. But his eyes were clear, his jaw was firm, and his mouth expressed humor and intelligence, not petulant self-indulgence.
His mouth…
“Helena?”
She blinked and realized that she’d drifted off. A bad idea when she shared a cage with a tiger. West mightn’t be as bad as Crewe—the fact that he was alive to pester her testified to that—but he was still dangerous. “I’m sorry. I’m tired.”
“Please sit down and listen to me.” He gestured toward the bed.
Helena cast him a narrow-eyed look and moved toward the chair on the other side of the window. “As long as there’s no marriage nonsense.” She blew out her candle and set it on the windowsill between them. “And I’ll hold you to the ten minutes.”
“You don’t give an inch, do you?” He angled his chair so he could watch her. Which wasn’t what she wanted. He’d watched her all night, and she had the shredded nerves to prove it.
“Why should I?”
“Because you’re missing out on so much.”
Her sigh was longsuffering. “I can live very happily without marrying again. I can’t see why you’d think to ask me. We don’t get along.”
“We used to.”
“Maybe I should have married you at sixteen,” she retorted.
To her disgust, he treated her sarcastic rejoinder as a serious suggestion. “We were too young. I needed to see the world to discover how special you are.”
His compliment angered rather than pleased. She made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t talk such rubbish. That might work on your usual witless inamoratas, but I know you too well.”