“Two days ago.”
“You traveled like this? You’re raving mad.”
This time sweetness tinged his smile. “Had to.”
“I know you’re Silas’s best friend.” From her earliest breath, West had been woven into her life. He’d been her first dance partner. He was the first boy she’d kissed. And when he’d introduced a handsome young man to her family as a capital fellow, nobody had bothered to check further into Lord Crewe’s background. “But he won’t thank you for killing yourself to be at his wedding.”
“Not here for Silas.” West’s answer emerged in fits and starts. “Here for…you.”
With every word he spoke, she became more concerned. He sounded like these short, staccato sentences were all he could manage. With a pang, she recalled how he’d provoked her at the picnic last spring. This was a different man.
Except apparently he was just as stubborn. And just as set on seducing her.
“I’ll still be here in a couple of weeks,” she snapped, then cursed herself for offering any shred of encouragement.
Another faint smile. His color was a little better, but he looked horridly ill. Fear coagulated in a cold lump in her stomach. Not of his powers of persuasion this time, but that she might lose him. For nearly half her life, she’d been angry with West, but that didn’t mean she was ready to accept a world without him.
“Will you?” he asked.
“Of course I will. Where the devil else would I go? Mars?”
“Paris. New York. Timbuctoo.” He snatched a shallow breath. “Lord Pascal’s bed.”
She should have expected this. West’s fuming displeasure had been apparent in those unwelcome, irritating, marvelous letters that she’d insisted she wouldn’t read.
During this last year, London’s handsomest man had occasionally escorted her in public. The admission that Pascal meant nothing to her hovered on her lips, but wisdom kept her silent. “It’s none of your business whose bed I sleep in.”
What little color West had regained leached from his skin. He looked like an effigy on a medieval tomb. When he raised his hand, she automatically took it.
“Good God, West, you’re burning up.”
“You have no idea.” He pulled her down beside him. “Tell me I’m not too late.”
“Too late for what?” Whatever was wrong with him, it was serious.
“Don’t play coy, Helena. It’s never been your style.” His words came more easily. “Are you and Pascal in love?”
She gave a dismissive snort. “I don’t believe in love.”
At last West opened his eyes. That green gaze blazed with fever, and determination. His illness hadn’t totally banished the domineering earl. “You did once.”
“When I imagined myself in love with Crewe?” she asked in an acid tone.
Her parents had been unable to prevent her headlong rush to disaster. They’d told her she was too young, and that Crewe was a wastrel and a rake, but his sins added to his dark glamour.
She’d recognized her mistake on their wedding trip to Devon when she’d caught him rogering the inn’s chambermaid. From there, things had only gone downhill.
“Once you imagined yourself in love with me.”
“It’s clear I was utterly brainless when I was young.”
“Cruel goddess,” he said without force, then his voice turned thoughtful. “Not brainless, but ardent, and eager to launch into life.”
“Brainless.”
“Incautious. Headstrong. Passionate.” His grip on her hand tightened, and like an idiot, she didn’t pull free. If he’d been his usual king of the universe self, she’d find no difficulty sending him away with a flea in his ear. But his illness made him cursed vulnerable, and she hated to kick a man when he was down.
“Brainless.”