Chapter One

Woodley Park, Leicestershire, February 1821

H elena strolled out of her childhood home into a perfect winter morning. The air was cold enough to make her lungs ache, but the sky was pure blue and the light so clear that everything looked new minted. She stopped in the empty stable yard and sucked in a deep breath. The worries and stresses of city life drained away.

She was a countrywoman at heart. Always had been.

Instead of living in London most of the year, she should spend more time on her estate, Cranham. Especially with Caro and Silas traveling, and Fenella planning her wedding to Anthony Townsend.

How she’d miss having her friends close by. She didn’t exaggerate when she credited the other members of the dashingly named Dashing Widows with saving her life in those dark days after Crewe’s death in a hunting accident. Not that she’d missed the philandering bastard, but nine turbulent years as his wife had left her bitter and withdrawn. Caro and Fen had reminded her she was more than just a foolish girl who had wed a rake and lived to regret it.

Now Caro and Fenella looked forward to their own happiness, which was wonderful. Except…

Except Helena felt left behind, still mired in the past. Sighing, she tapped her crop against her thigh. Enough self-pity. She’d had a bellyful of that, married to Crewe. With her friends embarking on new lives, she needed a fresh purpose, something to carry her through the inevitable loneliness.

And she had plenty to be grateful for. She was her own woman with resources to take any path she chose.

Luckily by the time her father drew up the wedding settlements, he didn’t trust the man his daughter had chosen. The late Lord Stone had made provision for Helena to have exclusive use of a substantial portion of her dowry. Within the first few years of marriage, Crewe had gone through his own fortune, as well as every penny he’d gained in wedding her. Without her father’s foresight, she’d have been destitute. Then last year, an inheritance from a bluestocking aunt had turned her from comfortable to wealthy.

There was time enough to decide which worlds to conquer. Today she had a lovely morning, a fine horse waiting, and familiar haunts to revisit.

With a light step, she headed for the stables. “Good morning, Becket,” she said as the head groom appeared, pushing a laden wheelbarrow.

“Miss Helena,” he said, forgetting that she was no longer the family’s coddled daughter, but the much grander Countess of Crewe. If only she could forget, too. “We’ve missed you about the old place.”

His lined face creased in a greeting that reminded Helena how happy she’d been growing up at Woodley Park. The estate had been Eden until the arrival of a snake, in the form of Gerald Wade, Lord Crewe.

Becket had put her on her first pony before she could walk. He must be over eighty, but Silas couldn’t convince him to accept a comfortable retirement. Becket vowed that while the Nash horses needed care, he’d stay on duty.

“Did Artemis settle overnight?”

“Aye. Like a champion. A right fine little mare she is.” His eyes sharpened. “Comes from Shelton Abbey, don’t she? Has the look of old Shah Persis.”

Helena’s sallow skin didn’t hold a blush, but unaccustomed heat burned in her cheeks. “I bought her from Lord West earlier this year.”

“The Granges don’t like to share their best horses. You was a lucky ‘un, then.”

“Yes, I was.” She hoped that West, when he returned, would reconsider selling the mare and change her lie into the truth. Lord West might annoy and trouble her, but Artemis was a joy.

Becket bobbed his head and trundled away out of earshot. When Helena entered the stables, Artemis stretched her neck over the loosebox door and whickered in welcome.

“Hello, lovely girl.” Helena extended half a wizened apple on her palm and smiled as Artemis’s velvety nose brushed her skin in equine greed. When she scratched behind the Arab’s ears, they pricked forward in encouragement. “Did you miss me?”

“Like the very devil.”

The baritone drawl made Helena jump and drop the other half of the apple. Artemis wasn’t pleased.

Nor was Helena.

She closed her eyes, inhaled a breath of hay-scented air, prayed for composure, and turned. A tall, dark man leaned one broad shoulder against a post in the central aisle. He watched her with unwavering concentration.

“Lord West,” she said coolly. “Still sneaking up on people, I see. You could give a cat lessons.”

Sardonic humor curled his mouth and made him dazzlingly attractive, damn him. Her silly heart had started to race the moment he spoke. Sheer surprise, she told herself staunchly.

“I’d rather give you lessons.”

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Better take the time to learn a little humility. I told you I wasn’t interested.”

“Even after I wrote you all those fascinating letters?”

“You’re most welcome to go back to writing. I’ll go back to ignoring you.”

“A little difficult when we’re under the same roof until the wedding.”

Oh, no. Although she knew Silas had asked West to be his groomsman, the coward inside her had hoped that her bugbear would stay in Russia. “You make it sound so scandalous, when you know it’s perfectly respectable.”

“A man can live in hope.” He straightened and sauntered closer with that long, smooth stride that she remembered so well. Except now she had a chance to see him in stronger light, a gasp of dismay escaped her. “West, you’re not well.”

His winged brows drew together in annoyance. “Like hell I’m not.”

“You look dreadful.” It wasn’t altogether true. He’d lost a lot of weight in the months since they’d last met, and he was worryingly pale. But extreme thinness emphasized the purity of his bone structure, and in his striking face, the dark green eyes glittered with familiar wickedness.

“Why, thank you.”

She reached to take his arm before she remembered that they were no longer friends, hadn’t been friends in close to a dozen years. “You shouldn’t be prowling around, trying to prove your rakish credentials. You should be in bed.”

He was still smiling, but now she saw the effort it took. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“Stop it, you fool,” she snapped, shoving hesitation aside and grabbing his arm. She tugged him toward a narrow bench against the wall.

“Ah, such a fond greeting, my love.” Despite his sarcasm, he couldn’t hide his relief as he sat and rested his head against the wall behind him.

He was a ghastly color, and he was breathing unsteadily. Helena couldn’t vanquish a feeling of unreality. West was a force of nature. He always had been. Surely no mere physical weakness could sap that titanic energy. “I’ll fetch a doctor.”

As he closed his eyes, his long mouth turned down. “Don’t you dare. I’ve seen more than enough damned quacks in the last few months.”

“When did you get back from Russia?”

“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.”

“Adorable.”

She gave a snort of sour amusement. “I can’t have been too adorable. You forgot me easily enough.”

“I never forgot you.”

She shot him a disbelieving glance. “Fever must affect your memory. You toddled off to Oxford after that summer, and decided I was of no interest whatsoever.”

“Good God, Helena,” he protested. “Don’t tell me you’re holding that against me. I was a stripling of eighteen who suddenly had the whole world before him.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You know why I can’t forgive you.”

“Well, it’s time you did.” He regarded her with exasperation. “It’s not my fault you made such a fool of yourself over Crewe.”

“You brought him into our lives.”

“Damn it, half a dozen fellows stayed with me at Shelton Abbey that summer. You’re the one who settled her fancy on the only ne’er-do-well. Every one of the other five turned out to be pillars of society. I know hating me helped you weather the miseries of your marriage, but Crewe has been dead for two years. It’s time you placed blame where it belongs. With a blackguard’s wiles and an unworldly girl’s romantic longings.”

She leaped up and stared at West in hurt rage. Right now, if he fainted in front of her, she’d let him lie where he fell.

“You’ve grown spiteful in Russia.” She turned away in a swirl of vermillion skirts. “I’ll send a servant to help you back to your bed.”

He surged to his feet and caught her arm before she marched out. “Wait, Hel. I don’t want to fight.”

She struggled to ignore how white he’d gone. “Yet you set yourself to anger me.”

“Just tell me I’m not too late.”

“You were too late eleven years ago. I won’t be your mistress.”

He released her and slumped back on the bench in a quaking heap. “It’s worse than that, my cranky Lady Crewe.”

“Nothing could be worse than that.” She hardly heard what he said. “Let me take you back to the house. You should be in bed.”

“You’re still offering to join me?” But his question lacked the usual spark.

“It wouldn’t do me much good, by the look of you. You don’t need excitement. You need a dose of laudanum, and a warm brick wrapped in flannel.”

He leaned back and shut his eyes. “Don’t fuss, Hel.”

Her gaze narrowed. She might care about his wellbeing—purely as one human to another—but she hadn’t forgotten she was annoyed. “As far as I’m concerned, sir, you can curl up in the straw and shrivel away to nothing. But I doubt if Silas wants his best friend giving his last gasp a week before his wedding. It would cast a pall over the celebrations.”

West’s lips twitched. “So sharp tongued.”

“Now aren’t you glad that I refused you?”

“Your nagging doesn’t scare me.”

“It should. No man wants a harridan for a mistress.”

He opened his eyes. The green was glassy, and his shivering was worse. Dear heaven, this malady was nasty. “I don’t want a harridan for a mistress.”

She frowned. He must be delirious. “So what’s all that nonsense about missing me?”

He sighed. “Oh, all that is as true as I live.”

“Stop teasing, West. It’s not funny.”

“I’m deadly serious. More serious than I’ve ever been.” His voice was deep and slow, and terrifyingly sincere. “Our timing has always been out of joint, Hel. We were too young when we played at sweethearts. By the time I realized that I was a blockhead to let you go, you’d married Crewe. I waited through your year of mourning to make my move, then damned Liverpool sent me two thousand miles away. But now I’m brooking no more delay. You’re here, and I’m here, and no man will say me nay.”

She scowled to hide her alarm. For someone on the verge of collapse, he sounded remarkably self-assured. “No man, perhaps. But this woman will never be your mistress.”

“I told you I don’t want you to be my mistress.” That burning gaze didn’t waver. “I want you to be my wife.”

Before she could respond to that astounding statement, his eyes fluttered shut, and he slid to the ground as if he didn’t have a bone in his body.