***
“Damn it all to hell.”
Silas snatched up his latest spindly hybrid and consigned it to the incinerator heating his greenhouse. Although he didn’t live in the Nash townhouse with his mother and sisters, he’d built a laboratory in the back garden. Last year, everything he’d touched had turned to gold. He’d started to plan putting a new variety of cherry combining yield, hardiness and sweetness on the market within five years. But all his experiments in recent months had slammed into a wall. He might as well have gone rambling in the Lake District as waste his time poring over seeds and grafts and cuttings.
He’d worked in botany long enough to understand that a man went wrong more often than he went right. Patience was as necessary as soil and water and light.
But he also knew that the main reason behind his lack of progress was that his mind wasn’t on work. His mind was on a certain unattainable widow.
He’d used patience in pursuing her, too. And had ended up losing out to a more impetuous lover. Dear God, he hoped West was careful with Caroline, or he’d beat the poltroon to a pulp and turn him into compost.
“Bugger, bugger, bugger,” he muttered as he turned and knocked a stack of terracotta saucers to the tiled floor. He surveyed the shattered mess and told himself he couldn’t go on like this. Other men failed in love and survived. Surely he could learn from their example.
He’d spent the last month struggling to forget Caroline Beaumont. Precious little good it had done him. New faces, old friends, stimulating discussions, lectures, travel, research. Nothing had dislodged her from heart or mind.
He wasn’t sleeping. He wasn’t eating. Much more and he’d go mad indeed.
The worst of it was that none of his suffering brought him one inch closer to luring his beloved away from West. As a scientist, he admired efficiency above all. And his anguish over Caroline was the height of wastefulness. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t conquer it.
The best cure, he supposed, was to take a mistress. Or at least slake this turbulent, overpowering misery with a woman for a night. He’d reached the point of inquiring after the address of Edinburgh’s most fashionable courtesan. But when the time came, he’d turned away from that discreet door to walk the dark alleys of the Old Town until dawn. He felt sick enough with himself already. Another bout of meaningless copulation in a life of meaningless copulation wouldn’t cool his fever.
No, it was Caroline or nobody. God help him.
He sighed heavily and went in search of a dustpan and brush. He usually had an assistant working with him. But a few days ago he’d sent Mr. Jones on holiday, appalled to see how enthusiastically the earnest young man had grabbed the chance to escape his temperamental employer.
Yesterday Helena had tried to talk to him about his mercurial behavior. He’d snapped her head off, too. And Dobbs had taken to lurking in the dressing room to avoid his irascible master.
At this rate, not only would Silas have no Caroline to love him, he’d have nobody at all. Right now when even breathing seemed hardly worth the effort, that didn’t sound such a bad outcome.
He was on his knees sweeping up the jagged shards of orange pottery when he heard a soft footfall. Helena must have decided to venture into his cave to offer more advice. His sister wasn’t noted for her prudence. He wished to hell she minded her own business.
“Helena, for God’s sake…” he growled, but when he looked up, it wasn’t his sister hovering near a bench packed with beakers and buckets and the detritus of the botanical-minded gentleman. “Caroline.”
If he’d ever been optimistic enough to imagine that their time apart weakened his longing, one glimpse of her and he knew better. Even understanding she wasn’t for him, even understanding she’d given herself to another man, his breath caught with pleasure. The morning sun through the roof lit her like an angel in stained glass. Except she was no angel. She was beguilingly, intriguingly human.
At their last meeting, they’d quarreled. He’d known at the time that his apology had been inadequate. He’d acted like a boor. These days he always acted like a boor in her presence. When all he wanted was to cherish her and place his heart at her feet and beg her to love him.
A tongue-tied boor. Damned if he could come up with another word to follow that reverent murmur of her name.
He took too long to realize that she appeared equally dumbstruck. Awkwardly he stood, shoving the dustpan onto the untidy bench. He wasn’t dressed for social calls. People usually left him alone to get on with his experiments. That counted double recently when his temper was so unpredictable. His shirt was old and stained and the nature of his work meant dirt. He wiped his hands on his sides, but he was humiliatingly conscious of black fingernails and grime on his skin. He bet bloody West could come through a tornado without picking up a speck of dust.
“Good morning, Silas,” she eventually said, twining her hands in her dark green skirts. She glanced down. “You’ve…you’ve had an accident.”
“I’m bungling everything lately.”
Once she’d make some teasing response to that. Now she licked her lips nervously and avoided his eyes. He bit back a groan. That flicker of a pink tongue made his blood simmer. “What are you doing here, Caro?”
She raised a hand to fiddle with her rich brown hair, tortured into some elaborate style with plaits and green ribbons. His fingers—his dirty fingers—itched to pull that soft mass down around her shoulders. “I called to see Helena and she told me you were back.”
“Yes, but what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to you.” The blue eyes she raised were dull with unhappiness. She returned to twisting her skirts.
He squashed his automatic yen to comfort her. To hell with her. What right had she to be unhappy when she lay in Vernon bloody Grange’s arms?
Standing so close without touching her became too tempting. Silas bent again to brushing up broken pottery. He hoped she didn’t notice his unsteady hands. But if he kept looking at her, he’d grab her and kiss her and God knew what else. Any chance of keeping a civilized gloss on their dealings would vanish.
The silence hung heavy with things unspoken. He wondered if he should sign up for the Horticultural Society’s camellia collecting expedition to China. With any luck, some despotic mandarin would take a dislike to his waistcoat and chop off his head. He couldn’t bear to stay in England and see Caro happy with another man.
Except now he disposed of the shards and wiped his hands on a towel and took the time to study Caro, he realized that her turmoil went deeper than this passing moment. In fact, she didn’t look in much better state than he did.
This wasn’t the glowing creature who had knocked society for six earlier in the season. Knowing he shouldn’t, but unable to stop himself, he caught one of those restless hands. “Stop tearing at your frock. You’ll make a hole in it.”
Her hand jerked, but she didn’t pull away. She spoke in a rush. “I’m sorry for the things I said after the Oldhams’ ball. I was horrible to you.” She misunderstood his frown and plunged on. “Perhaps you don’t remember. It’s more than a month ago, after all.”
Hearing she’d given herself to West? He’d carry that scar until his dying day. “I remember,” he said in a low voice.
“You were kind when I was ill.”
“Don’t be a goose, Caro. As if I’d leave you in the lurch.”
She glanced at him quickly, too quickly for him to interpret her expression. “I know. And instead of being properly grateful, I said some stupid, mean, untrue things.”
Suddenly he was extremely interested. “What sort of things?”
Her hand tightened on his. How lowering for this notorious rake that the touch of her hand was more powerful than the most daring caress from any other woman.
“I lied to you.”
Her voice was so muffled, he leaned in to hear. Her scent drifted toward him. Familiar. Exotic. Alluring. Lemon soap. Warmth. A hint of sexu
al musk that had every hair on his body standing up. “Did you?”
“Yes. West and I aren’t lovers. He hasn’t even kissed me.”
Anger had Silas flinging away until he couldn’t see her. The bitter memory of his despair this last month strangled any relief he might have felt. Anyway, what was there to be relieved about? Her plan to take West to her bed hadn’t changed. This confession gave Silas a short reprieve, nothing more.
“Why in Hades are you telling me this?” he grated out, curling his hands hard over the edge of the bench. Otherwise he was likely to grab those slender shoulders and give her a good shake until she started thinking straight.
“You were so angry with me. I knew you didn’t approve.” Her voice developed an edge. “Although what I do with West is none of your business.”
“The devil it’s not.”
“I shouldn’t have come,” she muttered. “I’d hoped we could be friends again. I hate the way that lately everything we say feels like a bullet fired from a gun.”
“I’ll wager talking to West is easier.” He cursed the words the minute they emerged, and he turned to apologize—again. But her devastated expression choked him to silence.
“Why do you say such things? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.”
“And of course, you always know better,” he snapped.
She squared her shoulders and regarded him like something slimy eating his seedlings. “I don’t know what’s got into you lately, Silas. I came here with nothing but good will, and now I want to clout you with a flowerpot.”
He sucked in a breath, but it wasn’t enough to stop him saying the last thing he wanted. “Perhaps it’s too late for us to find common ground.”
When her eyes darkened with renewed hurt, guilt stabbed him. “I’m truly sorry if you feel like that. Perhaps I should go.” She veered toward the door with a clumsiness he’d never seen in her before, not even when she’d been near collapse at the Oldhams’ ball. “I’m sorry I bothered you, Lord Stone.”
Bothered him? She drove him absolutely insane. “I suppose you’re going to continue with this absurd pursuit of West. You know, if he wanted you, he’d do the running.”
“Perhaps he’s a kinder man than you and he’s giving me time to make up my mind,” she said in a muffled voice.
“Like hell he is.” He lunged after her and seized her arm in an implacable grip, all his honorable intentions about letting her choose her own way dissolving to ash. “In the meantime, while West dawdles, you’re going without kisses. That just isn’t good enough. A woman like you needs kisses. Lots of them.”
She trembled in his hold. “Silas, let me go.”
His grip firmed. “No true friend would want to see you deprived.”
“What—”
He caught a fleeting glimpse of eyes shooting sapphire fire before the barely leashed beast inside him overpowered the last shreds of restraint. On a surge of furious triumph, he swept Caro up against his body and his lips crashed down onto hers.