“Yes, I do.” He loomed closer. “Who are you in love with, Caro?”
“West,” she said, tilting her chin in defiance.
He laughed softly and shook his head. “No, that bird won’t fly, my darling. You said too much in that touching little recitation.”
Mortifyingly true. She narrowed her eyes on the tall man prowling toward her. “I don’t see what business it is of yours. You’re a mere acquaintance.”
He shook his head again, those perceptive eyes fixed on her in a way that made her skin prickle with dread. And anticipation. “Fie, Lady Beaumont. Only a hardened flirt would kiss a mere acquaintance the way you kissed me yesterday.”
Her cheeks heated. Of all the men in the world, Silas Nash alone put her to the blush. Argument enough, should she need another, to avoid him. “A gentleman wouldn’t mention that unfortunate incident.”
“It wasn’t unfortunate.” He bared straight white teeth in a wolfish smile.
She’d called him piratical yesterday. She’d had no idea. Her silly heart was beating so fast, she felt dizzy. “Good God, Silas, you were close to having me in your greenhouse, with every kiss on show to the world and his wife. The whole thing couldn’t be much more unfortunate.”
“And of course you’re in love with another man.”
“Of…of course,” she said, cursing the betraying stammer.
“Yet still you mean to give yourself to West. What’s the matter with your beloved?”
Right now she could compile a long list of what was the matter with her beloved. Starting with his arrogance and his determination to plumb all her secrets. “He’s…he’s unavailable.”
Silas’s eyes held a wicked light and the flashing smile didn’t fade. “So you require a stopgap?”
Seriously apprehensive now, Caroline retreated further. “That’s hardly flattering—to Lord West or to me.”
He followed her. “Yet true.”
“Perhaps. As I said to you when I launched this bedamned enterprise, I’m looking for some adventure, not a lifelong attachment.”
He stopped and spread his arms wide, the stance opening his shirt over his powerful chest. “In that case, and in West’s absence, I offer myself.”
He looked utterly delicious. Every drop of moisture in her mouth evaporated, and she fisted her hands to stop them from reaching toward that impressively muscled expanse of skin.
She sucked in a breath and stepped to the side. He followed. She returned to her original spot. So did he. It was like a courtly dance, a reminder of how she’d spent most of the day trying to skip out of his grasp. And hadn’t that turned out a complete waste of effort? Here she was at his mercy, with nobody to blame but herself. After all, he’d given her the chance to leave and she hadn’t taken it.
“You won’t do, Silas,” she said, hoping she sounded more convincing to him than she did in her own ears.
She waited for pique, but he continued to fix that unsettling concentration upon her. “Why not? I promise to show you pleasure. Good God, the heat between us could spark a second fire of London. Yesterday, we were mad for each other.”
“Mad anyway,” she muttered, bumping hard against the wall behind her.
He sighed. “Caro, I’m here. You’re here. We want each other.” He paused as if waiting for another denial, but what was the point? They both knew the woman in his arms yesterday had been incandescent with desire. “You want excitement. I’m happy to supply it. Let’s go to bed.”
Floundering for arguments to win a point she was close to forgetting, she made a helpless gesture. “This could destroy our friendship.”
His expression softened and briefly he didn’t look like a hungry wolf, but like her dear friend. “There is no woman I esteem as highly as you.”
She struggled to remember why sleeping with Silas was a bad idea. “Then don’t you think…relations between us will ruin that trust?”
“I think relations…” He gave the word the same shaky emphasis she had. “..between us will be richer and sweeter because of that trust.”
She turned her head and gazed longingly at the door. Only a few feet away, yet it might as well be a hundred miles. “You have no respect for the women you bed.”
Comprehension widened his hazel eyes. “Is that the problem?”
“One of them,” she admitted in an unsteady voice. “You never take your amours seriously.”