***
Silas pounded on the glossy black door to the tall white house in Half Moon Street. It was too late for polite calls—but then, this wasn’t a polite call. The burly night watchman halted on his rounds and raised his lantern. The cove must be shortsighted, because apparently he only saw a well-dressed representative of the upper classes, not a man with violence on his mind. He wished Silas a cheerful good evening and shuffled on his way.
Silas went back to banging on the door until Beddle, West’s butler, appeared. “My lord,” the man said in surprise, briefly forgetting his dignity.
Silas had known Beddle since his days as a junior footman on the Grange estate. He could forgive a little informality. “Is he in?” he barked.
Beddle looked taken aback. “It’s after midnight, sir.” Behind Beddle, lamps lit the elegant black and white entrance hall.
“If he’s out, I’ll wait.” After pacing his rooms until he felt likely to lose his mind, Silas had set out on this impetuous errand to confront West. Hopefully a man who planned a day outdoors might forsake the fleshpots and have an early night. Not to mention reserving his energy for after the picnic when he pleasured a new mistress. That thought stirred the savage beast barely restrained inside Silas.
“Please come in.” Biddle’s magisterial manner returned. “I’ll ascertain if his lordship is at home.”
“I’ll wait in the library,” he said, striding ahead. He knew this house as well as he knew his own. He and West had been friends since childhood. Silas marched into the dark room and flung the curtains open. Behind him, a footman lit the lamps and set the fire.
“Brandy, my lord?” the footman asked.
Silas didn’t turn from the window. “I’ll see to myself, thank you.”
“Very good, sir.” The servant left Silas to brood.
How easily he’d fallen under the spell of his sister’s lovely new friend. He wasn’t a stupid man—even now, with his brain turned to sludge. He’d soon recognized that Caroline Beaumont carried wounds from her marriage. But their immediate affinity had led him to believe that with careful wooing, she’d be his.
What an arrogant coxcomb he’d been. These long months of pursuit, and all he had to show were a scarred heart, some bitter arguments, a couple of kisses more torment than pleasure, and an empty bed.
Reflected in the window he saw a man haggard with love. To escape that disagreeable image, he started to prowl around the library. A stack of correspondence waited on the imposing mahogany desk. Idly, Silas cast his eye across the letters.
What the devil? His heart crashed to a stop.
Oh, Caro. You bloody well went and did it.
He almost found himself admiring her audacity. After the confession that West hadn’t kissed her, part of him had assumed that her threat this morning had been bravado.
Like hell it had been bravado.
A man’s correspondence was sacrosanct. In opening that letter on top of the pile, Silas defied every rule of good manners. If anyone discovered what he’d done, he’d be drummed out of society.
Bugger good manners. Bugger society. Quickly he grabbed the note and broke the seal. A few seconds to read the contents. Another second to slip it into his pocket.
His ruin was now official. Love had brought him crashing down like all this morning’s broken pots in his greenhouse. Caroline Beaumont had destroyed his principles. He deserved to be horsewhipped. Worse, he suffered not a moment’s remorse over his actions.
When West arrived a few minutes later, Silas was perusing one of the crowded bookshelves on the far side of the room.
“Stone, what in Hades are you doing here at this hour?” West strode into the room and shut the door after him. “Have you had a drink?”
“No.” Silas turned to glower at his host.
“Good Lord, man, you look like your dog just died. What is it?” West spoke lightly as he crossed the room to pour two brandies. Over shirt and loose trousers, he wore an extravagant green silk dressing gown patterned with entwined Chinese dragons.
Silas drew himself up to his full, impressive height, although this wasn’t how he’d pictured the scene. For a start, West hadn’t been dressed so casually. Nor had his manner conveyed such ease.
“I’ll do everything in my power to stop you having her,” he said stiffly.
West paused in passing Silas a glass and frowned. “Having who? Helena?”
“Helena?” Silas scowled at his oldest friend. “What the deuce does my sister have to do with this damned mess?”
“You’ll have to make yourself clearer, old chum.”
Dear God above, was the man so consumed by debauchery that he’d lost track of his paramours? Any guilt that Silas might have felt evaporated. Even if she could never be his, Caroline deserved better than this careless Lothario.
“I’m talking about Caro,” he bit out, each word barbed like an arrow.
“Caro?” West looked bewildered. “You mean Caroline Beaumont?”
Silas’s right hand clenched at his side. He’d dearly love to punch West’s smug face. How dare this bastard bandy words with him? “Of course I bloody well mean Caroline Beaumont. Who else do you intend to take as your mistress?”
“Nobody,” West said calmly, replacing the filled glass on the sideboard.
“Well, you shan’t have her.”
He continued to regard Silas as though a raving lunatic ranged about his library. “Very well, I shan’t have her.”
Silas rose on the balls of his feet, ready to thump West. Then he realized what the man had said. He felt like someone had ripped the floor away beneath his feet. He’d come ready for an epic battle, while West seemed unconcerned to the point of ignorance.
“Damn you, is that all you have to say?”
“What do you want me to say?” With a nonchalance that rekindled Silas’s itch to spill blood, he collected his brandy and wandered across to a leather chair near the fire.
“I want you to say…” Silas broke off. Actually West had said exactly what Silas had burst into this house to hear. He sucked in a deep breath and a glimmer of logic pierced his turbulent thoughts. “What in blazes is going on?”
West settled in the chair and regarded Silas with an amiable expression. “You tell me. There I was, reading the latest scandalous novel, preparing to retire to my couch in virtuous solitude, and my butler tells me Lord Stone is downstairs demanding my presence. I ask you again—why are you here?”
Silas narrowed his eyes. “You know.”
West shook his dark head. “Not an inkling, my dear man. And if all you intend to do is play riddles, I must send you on your way. I’m hosting that outing to Richmond tomorrow and I want my wits about me.”
Silas straightened and stared West down. “Act innocent as much as you like. I intend to fight you for Caro.”
West frowned again and took a leisurely sip of his brandy. That insouciant air had annoyed Silas for months. Right now, it made him want to crown his lordship with the gilt celestial globe set on the table at his elbow.
“I’m always ready to play fisticuffs with you, Stone, even if we haven’t sparred since our teens. From memory, the honors then were fairly equal.”
West was one of the few men who could best Silas in a physical contest—at least until Silas had decided brawling ill befitted a man of science. “Then stand up, you bastard,” Silas said belligerently.
West didn’t budge. “By all means, old man. But please put me out of this agony of suspense—why have you chosen me as your punching bag, out of all the men in London?”
Silas paused in the act of raising his fists. “Caro has decided to take you as her lover.”
At last, genuine emotion flashed in West’s eyes. “Good Lord above, really? I had no idea.”
His friend—former friend—sounded sincerely surprised. And much as Silas wanted to think West an unregenerate liar, thirty years of acquaintance told him the man was caught unawares. “You’ve fl
irted with her all season.”
West shrugged and drank some more brandy. “She’s a lovely creature. And entertaining besides. Of course I’ve flirted with her. I never sensed any genuine interest.”
Silas scowled. “She wants you in her bed.”
West looked more cheerful. “Well, that’s remarkably interesting.”
“If you lay a finger on her, I’ll tear you limb from limb.”
“You’ll need an army. I’ve kept up with my sporting pursuits. You, my boy, have wasted your youth and vigor digging neat little holes in teeny weeny flowerpots.”
“I could beat you with one hand tied behind my back,” Silas scoffed, while his dull, obsessed masculine brain battled to come to terms with the astounding fact that West was no rival at all.
“Only if someone cuts off my arms and legs.” West rose and returned to the sideboard. He refilled his brandy, then lifted the other glass and extended it toward Silas. “Take down your fighting colors, Stone. Your lady is a prize, but she’s not for me.”
Without accepting the brandy, Silas surveyed West as the truth finally bashed him over the head. He’d been a blasted fool. What the hell was wrong with him? If Caro and West had shared any true attraction, they would have acted on it before this. Still, after all this time, he couldn’t quite relinquish his suspicions. “You and Caro have been dancing around each other for months.”
“Dancing with, not around. She’s society’s new darling. Naturally I made a show of chasing her. You know the game.”
He did indeed. If he hadn’t been crazed by unrequited love, he’d have noted that West was too circumspect with Caro to be on the hunt.
With a growling exhalation, he let go of months of anger. “Oh, confound you, West,” he said, aggression seeping away. He took the glass of brandy. “It’s antics like this that get you into strife. If you could just say one word and mean it, there would be a deal less trouble in the world.”
“And where would be the fun in that?”
Silas swallowed a mouthful of liquor, aware that he’d acted like an ass and grateful that West wasn’t making an issue of it. The idea that he could appreciate anything West did was shocking enough to kick his brain back into action, after months of blundering around on blind instinct.
“Sit down and stop looming.” West gestured to the matching leather chair as he ambled back to where he’d been sitting.
“I suppose I ought to apologize for bursting in on you.” Silas took the chair and drained his glass.
West shrugged. “We all do silly things when we’re in love.”
Silas didn’t bother arguing. It would only confirm West’s opinion about the state of his emotions. “How would you know?”
A faint smile hovered around West’s lips. “You’d be surprised, old chap.” Then before Silas could question that unexpected response, he went on. “Damned fine woman, Caro Beaumont. I commend your taste.”
“She’s damned elusive,” Silas said on a sigh, tilting his head back on the chair and studying his friend from under lowered lids. “I’m devilish glad I don’t need to kill you.”
West gave a grunt of laughter. “Not as glad as I am.” His deep voice turned thoughtful. “You know, if I was to wager on the man who’s caught the delectable Lady Beaumont’s interest, I’d pick you.”
Silas’s lips tightened. After today’s kisses, and with West out of the race, so would he. “She’s running scared.”
Caro had looked absolutely petrified when he’d told her he loved her. One would think he’d threatened to cut her throat instead of adore her forever. If only he could convince her that love meant a richer version of freedom, not its end.
“If I’d been married to Freddie Beaumont, I’d run scared, too. Man was a witless nonentity and it would have taken a cannon to shift him from that muddy hollow they call the family estate. Good farming country, excellent hunting, but a suffocating backwater for a lively creature like Caro.”
Curiosity roused Silas from his torpor. Now that he wasn’t angry with West anymore, he realized how tired he was. It had been a difficult week. Hell, it had been a difficult three months. “You knew him well?”
“We were at Harrow together. Dull as a wet week even then. Sort of blockhead who turns middle-aged before he hits twenty. Whoever put that match together was more of a blockhead than Freddie. Can’t imagine the girl went after him. Freddie was never a cove to set feminine hearts aflutter.”
“Her father.”
“There you have it, then,” West said with satisfaction.
Puzzled, Silas studied him. “There I have what exactly?”
West’s sigh was tolerant. “Girl’s only known blockheads when it comes to the men in her life. It’s up to you to convince her not every chap is a nincompoop.”
Silas turned to stare into the fire. Actually he had a horrible feeling that over the last few months, he’d been a bigger nincompoop than even the late Freddie Beaumont. “Easier said than done.”
“I have every faith in you.” West stood and clapped him on the shoulder. “Even if you did force your way in here, talking absolute balderdash.”