Good Lord doubled. West really was paying attention. Perhaps he meant this tomfoolery about making her his mistress. “I’m not—”
“Please.”
She sighed, the fight leaving her. He’d always been a stubborn sod. She wouldn’t get rid of him—or manage to fin
ish a sentence—until she rode the mare. “If you promise to stop acting like a lunatic.”
This time his laugh was free and untroubled. “I promise to behave for the next half hour.”
Heads turned in their direction. Helena stiffened with renewed wariness. She didn’t want their names connected. After all, gossip was the fuel that powered the season.
She let him toss her into the saddle. Helena couldn’t control a shiver when his hands closed around her waist. Blast him. And blast Silas and Caro, and their flagrant session yesterday.
Artemis shifted, sensing her rider’s disquiet, but settled when Helena took the reins. A groom brought up the stamping brute of a bay familiar from the ride in Hyde Park. That early morning when West had been indiscreet enough to mention Helena’s adolescent passion to Silas and Caro.
Until that day, Helena hadn’t realized he remembered that turbulent summer. Given that West had been notorious for his wenching ever since, she’d imagined he’d long ago forgotten those innocent embraces.
Because for all their heat and fervor, they had been innocent. A year later, she’d gone to Crewe’s bed a virgin. Not that the cur she’d married had deserved the honor.
Before West mounted, she urged Artemis to a gallop. The mare responded gallantly, and the restrictions and exasperations of London life vanished in a second.
Damn West, he was right. This was what she was born for: speed, the wind in her face, freedom. Freedom most of all. She gave a joyful laugh as Artemis settled into a steady run that promised to take them to China and beyond. Helena was so elated to be on the back of a spirited horse that she didn’t even mind when West thundered up behind her.
Over the lush green grass they rushed, and Helena tasted genuine happiness. She only drew rein when Artemis at last began to tire.
Turning to West, she couldn’t contain her exhilaration. “That was marvelous. Thank you.”
He stared at her as if he’d never seen her before. For once, no devil of laughter lurked in his green eyes. “This is how I always think of you. Strong and exuberant. The way you were as an impetuous girl. This is how you should stay, rather than wrapped up in stifling convention, pretending you’re like everyone else.”
Abruptly her euphoria drained away. She hadn’t heard him sound so sincere since those ecstatic weeks at Woodley Park, when she’d imagined herself in love with him. He didn’t sound like the shallow man she’d judged him to be. He sounded like someone who took the trouble to know her.
The fermenting fear in her stomach built to terror.
Long ago she’d placed Vernon Grange in a box marked “hazardous.” And that was where she wanted him to stay. “I had no idea you thought of me at all, let alone always,” she said repressively.
Something that might have been regret shadowed his features, before he resumed his lazy manner. He hadn’t been a languid boy. He’d been vivid with passion and enthusiasm. But then so had she. Her verve hadn’t survived her marriage.
“What do you think of Artemis?”
Helena wanted to dismiss West’s choice of horse, if only to avoid admitting that in arranging that glorious gallop, he knew her better than she knew herself. But she couldn’t lie about such a superb creature.
“She’s a dream.” Then went on when satisfaction sparked in his eyes. “Can I buy her from you?”
“She’s not for sale,” he said curtly. The bay snorted and shifted, as if West tightened his grip on the reins.
“That’s a pity.” Helena leaned down to pat Artemis’s satiny neck. “I love her already.”
“She’s not for sale because she’s already yours.”
“West,” Helena began in a warning tone.
He raised a hand in a conciliatory gesture. “But I’ll keep her for the moment.”
“You’ll keep her because I haven’t accepted her,” Helena retorted, stifling a pang. If only the price of taking Artemis wasn’t so high.
“No, I’ll keep her because you haven’t accepted me,” he said. Then added with an edge, “Yet.”
Before Helena could muster the words to put him in his place, he wheeled his great monster of a horse around and galloped back toward his guests.