Winning Lord West Read Online Free PDF

perfection would discern her abject terror. Nobody but
the man who had been first to kiss her, and knew her better than
anyone else on earth.
    He and Helena had always understood each
other. Their long estrangement hadn’t changed that.
    But that didn’t mean he underestimated the
obstacles ahead. Crewe, that selfish bastard, had hurt and
humiliated her. West had loved the young Helena’s generous heart,
but that generosity had left her dangerously vulnerable to a rake’s
lures. Now like a half-broken horse, she shied from another
rider.
    “They make a right bonny pair, don’t they?
Sunlight and shadow,” a rumbling voice murmured behind him.
    West had been so busy staring at Helena, he’d
missed Townsend’s approach, which was a joke when the fellow was
the size of a house.
    “Heaven and hell,” he said, before he had a
chance to censor himself. He’d only met Townsend in the last day or
so, and the big, dark man remained something of a mystery.
    Townsend gave a grunt of laughter. “If you’re
calling my Fenella hell, I’ll have to shoot you.”
    West regarded him curiously. Until now, his
principal impression of Fenella’s unlikely intended was a
monumental form and a slight roughness of manner. Now he saw the
intelligence gleaming in those deep-set eyes. He recalled that this
man had built a huge fortune from nothing.
    “You know damn well that’s not what I
mean.”
    “Aye, I do. Which is a good thing. I reckon
yon Silas won’t appreciate a duel on the eve of his wedding.”
    “Probably not.”
    Silas and Caro shared a couch, staring at
each other as though they couldn’t believe their luck. After their
rocky courtship, West couldn’t blame them for their starry
eyes.
    Their closeness threw his difficulties with
Helena into stark contrast. He didn’t begrudge his friends’
happiness, but he was painfully envious. When he looked at Silas
and Caro, he wanted what they had.
    And he wanted it with Helena.
    “The lass is making every effort to pretend
you don’t exist.”
    “Yes,” West said shortly. If a stranger
noticed Helena’s hostility, that meant old friends like Caro and
Silas would, too. Unless they were so wrapped up in each other that
the rest of the world could go hang.
    “Which I’d take as an encouraging sign.”
    West’s eyebrows rose. “What the devil?”
    Townsend released another soft huff of
amusement. “She’s powerfully interested if she has to try so hard
to ignore you.”
    “She’s been furious with me for years,” West
found himself saying with unexpected honesty. He wasn’t a man given
to confidences, but something about Anthony Townsend cut through
social niceties. It must. In the five years since her husband’s
death at Waterloo, Fenella had never looked at another man. Yet
within mere weeks, Townsend had persuaded her to marry him. The
couple planned a quiet ceremony in London before Silas and Caro
left for China.
    “Aye, I see you’re not in her good
books.”
    “I introduced her to Lord Crewe,” West said
gloomily. “A mistake I sometimes fear I’ll pay for until Judgment
Day.”
    “He was a bad ‘un, all right. I had the
dubious pleasure of making his acquaintance before he broke his
neck on that drunken gallop and did the world a favor.”
    West wasn’t quick enough to hide his surprise
at the elevated circles Townsend moved in, and the man shrugged
without resentment. “The sprigs of the nobility will stomach my
unrefined manners when they want to take advantage of my
money.”
    “Silas always spoke highly of you,” West
said. “And the rumor is after you saved the government’s bacon last
year, there’s a peerage on the cards.”
    Townsend’s gaze settled on the two women
across the room. Lovely,
blond-haired Fenella glanced up as if sensing his attention, and
the smile she sent him was unmistakably sensual. With a
shock that he had no right to feel, West realized that pure,
delicate, proper Fenella Deerham was utterly in thrall to