Winning Lord West (Dashing Widows 3)

Leaning in, she kissed his hot forehead. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

She flung a dressing gown over her shoulders, grabbed a candle, and dashed out of the room. Once, she’d been glad that her rooms were in a separate wing. Then she’d been worried about keeping her affair with West a secret.

Now she’d declare her disgrace from the rooftops if it brought him one scrap of relief. She cursed every yard of corridor stretching between her and help.

By the time she reached Silas’s door, she was breathless. She pounded on it. “Blast you, Silas, wake up!”

Her brother took an eon to appear. “Helena? What the devil’s got into you?”

“West is sick. I think he’s going to die. Come quickly.” Behind her brother, she saw Caro sitting up in bed and clutching the sheets to her bare breasts.

“Is it the fever again?” Caro asked.

“Yes. I’ll go downstairs and send a servant for the doctor.”

“No, you go with Silas. I’ll organize Dr. Lawson.”

“He looked fine at dinner,” Silas said, coming out into the corridor and tying his dressing gown more securely.

“Well, he’s not fine now.” She grabbed her brother’s hand and rushed back the way she’d come. “Hurry.”

A mountainous man in a crimson dressing gown emerged from the shadows. “What’s all this hubbub?”

“West’s sick,” Silas said to Anthony.

Fen appeared, too. “I thought he was quiet tonight. Has someone sent for a doctor?”

“Caro’s rousing the servants,” Silas said. “She’ll have a groom off to the village in minutes.”

They trooped toward Helena’s room, but as they came to the wide landing above the main staircase, something tall and white stumbled out of the darkness.

“Silas?” the apparition rasped, weaving on the spot.

“West!” Helena cried out, darting forward and flinging her arm around his waist. Violent tremors shook his lean form. How he’d made it this far, she had no idea. “You should be in bed.”

“Sleep…walking,” he managed to say loudly enough for the others to hear, then despite all her efforts, his legs folded.

Anthony could move like lightning, it turned out. Before West hit the floor, the big man caught him.

“He’s out cold.” With characteristic competence, he hitched West up by the armpits.

“I’d be out cold, too, wandering the corridors on a February night in nothing but a sheet,” Silas said, lifting West’s bare feet.

Helena stepped away in favor of the men. In her anguish, she hadn’t noticed that West was wrapped in a sheet, she guessed from her bed. He’d come to her in his evening clothes, but the intricacies of fashionable dress were clearly beyond him.

As was his ability to listen to a lecture. How on earth could he put his health at risk over something as trivial as her reputation?

“We’ll take him to his room,” Silas said. “Hel’s is too far away.”

Caro called from below. “A groom’s gone for Dr. Lawson. He should be here soon.”

Silas and Anthony hauled the unconscious West away. Helena set off after them, but Fen caught her arm. “Come and wait with Caro and me.”

“I don’t want to leave him.”

Fen’s eyes were soft with compassion as she untangled Helena’s fingers from the candlestick. “I know you don’t, but it’s better he’s with Silas and Anthony when the doctor arrives.”

Fen was right. West had gone to heroic efforts to preserve Helena’s good name. The least she could do was ensure his work wasn’t in vain. Mute with dread, she let her friend lead her downstairs.