Free The Seduction of Lord Stone by Anna Campbell

And Dobbs had taken to lurking in the dressing room to avoid his irascible master.
    At this rate, not only would Silas have no Caroline to love him, he’d have nobody at all. Right now when even breathing seemed hardly worth the effort, that didn’t sound such a bad outcome.
    He was on his knees sweeping up the jagged shards of orange pottery when he heard a soft footfall. Helena must have decided to venture into his cave to offer more advice. His sister wasn’t noted for her prudence. He wished to hell she minded her own business.
    “Helena, for God’s sake…” he growled, but when he looked up, it wasn’t his sister hovering near a bench packed with beakers and buckets and the detritus of the botanical-minded gentleman. “Caroline.”
    If he’d ever been optimistic enough to imagine that their time apart weakened his longing, one glimpse of her and he knew better. Even understanding she wasn’t for him, even understanding she’d given herself to another man, his breath caught with pleasure. The morning sun through the roof lit her like an angel in stained glass. Except she was no angel. She was beguilingly, intriguingly human.
    At their last meeting, they’d quarreled. He’d known at the time that his apology had been inadequate. He’d acted like a boor. These days he always acted like a boor in her presence. When all he wanted was to cherish her and place his heart at her feet and beg her to love him.
    A tongue-tied boor. Damned if he could come up with another word to follow that reverent murmur of her name.
    He took too long to realize that she appeared equally dumbstruck. Awkwardly he stood, shoving the dustpan onto the untidy bench. He wasn’t dressed for social calls. People usually left him alone to get on with his experiments. That counted double recently when his temper was so unpredictable. His shirt was old and stained and the nature of his work meant dirt. He wiped his hands on his sides, but he was humiliatingly conscious of black fingernails and grime on his skin. He bet bloody West could come through a tornado without picking up a speck of dust.
    “Good morning, Silas,” she eventually said, twining her hands in her dark green skirts. She glanced down. “You’ve…you’ve had an accident.”
    “I’m bungling everything lately.”
    Once she’d make some teasing response to that. Now she licked her lips nervously and avoided his eyes. He bit back a groan. That flicker of a pink tongue made his blood simmer. “What are you doing here, Caro?”
    She raised a hand to fiddle with her rich brown hair, tortured into some elaborate style with plaits and green ribbons. His fingers—his dirty fingers—itched to pull that soft mass down around her shoulders. “I called to see Helena and she told me you were back.”
    “Yes, but what are you doing
here
?”
    “I wanted to talk to you.” The blue eyes she raised were dull with unhappiness. She returned to twisting her skirts.
    He squashed his automatic yen to comfort her. To hell with her. What right had she to be unhappy when she lay in Vernon bloody Grange’s arms?
    Standing so close without touching her became too tempting. Silas bent again to brushing up broken pottery. He hoped she didn’t notice his unsteady hands. But if he kept looking at her, he’d grab her and kiss her and God knew what else. Any chance of keeping a civilized gloss on their dealings would vanish.
    The silence hung heavy with things unspoken. He wondered if he should sign up for the Horticultural Society’s camellia collecting expedition to China. With any luck, some despotic mandarin would take a dislike to his waistcoat and chop off his head. He couldn’t bear to stay in England and see Caro happy with another man.
    Except now he disposed of the shards and wiped his hands on a towel and took the time to study Caro, he realized that her turmoil went deeper than this passing moment. In fact, she didn’t look in much better state than he did.
    This wasn’t the