Pursuing Lord Pascal (21 page)

“Oh, I plan on doing more than a little,” she
said on a laugh. “I’ve spent my life as someone’s dutiful daughter
or someone’s obedient wife. Now I seek amusement on my own
account—and nobody can say me nay.”

“Until you find another husband.”

All the color and music and movement around
her jangled into cacophony in her head. Her throat clogged with
horror. Another husband? She’d rather die.

“Caro?”

Silas’s voice brought her back, reminded her
that she need never enter the smothering hell of married life
again. Instead, here she was with handsome Silas Nash and she was
free to enjoy herself precisely how she wished.

She took in the tall, rangy build set off to
perfection in evening clothes, the thick honey-brown hair, his
intense, intelligent face with its Roman nose so like Helena’s. It
all made for a man of more than average appeal. His title was
singularly inappropriate—anyone less like a stone was impossible to
imagine. He was the most alive person she’d ever met.

She waved her fan slowly in front of her
face, chasing off all her dark memories. Tonight was hers, and she
didn’t intend to waste it on unhappy thoughts. “I don’t want
another husband.”

He frowned. “Of course you do.”

“Of course I don’t.” She tilted her chin and
took advantage of the small island of privacy surrounding them to
confide her wicked intentions. “I am, however, in the market for a
lover.”

As she’d expected, her pronouncement didn’t
shock Silas. His tolerant attitude was among the many things she
liked about him. He regarded her thoughtfully. “Is that an
invitation, Caro?”

She stared into his unwavering hazel eyes.
Around her, the crowded ballroom receded strangely until she and
Silas seemed alone together.

Caroline hadn’t blushed since before she’d
married Freddie. But something in Silas’s expression brought color
to her cheeks and a disconcerting stumble to her heart. Which was
absurd. Even without Helena’s warnings—and her friend had early
dampened any thought of setting her cap at Silas—she’d soon
recognized that he never took his conquests seriously. While for
all their shared jokes, she did take this friendship seriously.

When she’d mentally listed the men she’d
consider inviting to her bed, she hadn’t included Silas. She
couldn’t bear for him to dismiss her the way he dismissed all his
flirts beyond the immediate seduction.

And if he didn’t dismiss her, what then? She
didn’t want anything that required a commitment. As she’d told
Silas, she was never going to marry again. Tiptoeing around
Freddie’s feelings had been hard enough. Catering to a man who
loved her, a man she wanted to please, was signing up for another
life sentence.

Far better Silas remained her dear friend and
she sought physical pleasure elsewhere.

After a month in society, she’d seen enough
to know that a dashing widow would easily find a lover. Replacing a
true friend was an entirely different matter. Which meant she
stalwartly ignored the unprecedented catch in her breath when Silas
focused that green-gold stare on her. Even if he looked like he’d
need little encouragement to sweep her off and prove his reputation
as a devil with the ladies.

“I’m more than you can handle,” she said
lightly with a flutter of her fan. “You like them silly and
flighty. Neither word applies to me.”

His mouth firmed when she’d hoped to make him
smile. “That sounds like a challenge.”

Startled, she looked at him properly. Their
interactions were usually unshadowed, a blessing in a world that
had varied between black and gray as long as hers had. She’d
imagined, once she left her seclusion behind, that the easy
camaraderie would continue. Perhaps she’d been naive.

He looked disgruntled. It took her so long to
interpret the expression because she’d never seen it on his face
before. Sulking sat surprisingly well on Silas’s vivid features.
Which obscurely annoyed her more than it should.

No woman could miss how attractive Silas was,
but so far, she’d admired his spectacular looks as one might admire
a fine painting. A brooding Lord Stone became unacceptably
compelling. She forced a laugh and wished she sounded more natural.
She snapped her fan shut and tapped him on the arm. “You’re
teasing.”

Still he didn’t smile. “Am I?”

A horrible thought arose, scattering her
archness. “Good God, Silas, don’t say you disapprove of my plans? I
never imagined you’d be mealy mouthed about a few adventures, not
when you’ve been mad for the girls since you went to
Cambridge.”

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.

“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.