Too Wicked to Tame (13 page)

“She left you alone with Whitfield? Why?”

Portia swallowed uneasily. “I fear her feelings were hurt when the baron paid her little heed.”

“The bastard wouldn’t,” he ground out, his fingers diving through his longish hair, dark as a raven’s wing. “She has stared calf-eyed after him for years. Why will she not listen? Does she think I’m a monster to forbid her to fraternize with lack-wits like Whitfield? I know what they see when they look at her. The same thing they see when they look at me. Another Mad Moreton. Today is a small taste of what she would face if I allowed her to enter Society. I don’t want her hurt. Only the most desperate of fortune hunters would pay her court. All else would spurn her.”

“You love her,” Portia mumbled, unable to hide her absolute surprise.

He swung her a sharp glance, a crease forming between his dark brows. “Of course I love her.

She’s my sister.”

She averted her face, feigning interest in the tall hedge of blackthorn to her right. He sounded so offended. As if she had questioned his very honor. Not at all like someone capable of murder.

Regret filled her for allowing Whitfield to place such a doubt in her head.

She snagged a branch and plucked a twig from it, dismissing her guilt as she rubbed a thumb over a loosening bud. So Heath wasn’t a murderer. He wasn’t even a depraved and selfish brother. Of course I love her. She’s my sister.

“Portia?”

With a deep breath, she faced him again, trying to view him as the heartless brother she had thought him moments ago. Yet she no longer could. She attempted a smile but felt it falter and die on her lips. “Yes?”

He drilled her with his gaze, seeking answers, a truth that she was unwilling to reveal. “A brother’s love is so remarkable to you?”

She laughed, the sound strange and brittle to her own ears. “Indeed.”

“Your brother—”

“My brother,” she interrupted, “cares only for what I can bring him.” She gestured about her.

“Hence my presence here.”

The hard gleam in his eyes faded. “Perhaps your brother knew nothing of my family’s affliction.”

She lifted her shoulders in a careless shrug. “He wouldn’t have cared.” Portia paused to fill her lungs with steadying air. “And Grandmother had to know. She corresponds regularly with yours.

She knew and didn’t care. So, you see, my lord, I know nothing of a family’s love. At least,” she amended, “not the kind of love you share with yours.”

With a brisk nod, she flung the twig down and started down the path in swift, forceful strides, hating the thickness of her throat, the heaviness in her chest, the infernal burn at the backs of her eyes.

Heath fell into step alongside her. “What of your parents?”

Fighting back the lump in her throat, she rounded another hedge of blackthorn and stopped in the midst of a small courtyard, a burbling fountain at its center. “How the devil do you get out of this labyrinth?”

Smiling almost kindly, he pointed to another path that led from the courtyard. “That way.”

With a single nod, she started down the path. Heath’s solid tread followed, as did his prying questions. “Come, what of your parents, Portia?”

“My father died when I was fourteen,” she tossed over her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, the velvet glide of his voice sending a flutter through her heart.

“Don’t be. He never took any special note of me,” she replied, not daring to look at him, afraid that he should read more behind her casually uttered words.

“That must have hurt.”

“Not especially.” In truth, she felt spared. Her father spent most of his time subjugating her mother, examining her social calendar, approving her friends, her charities, everything to her wardrobe.

“And your mother?” he asked. “Did she neglect you as well?”

“No,” Portia answered quickly. “She was attentive.”

“Was. Is she gone too?”

“No.”

“Then—”

Portia stopped abruptly and spun around. “My mother left for the Continent exactly one week after my father’s funeral. Just long enough for her to make the travel arrangements.”

“Eight years ago? Has she not returned for a visit?”

Portia bristled at his pitying look, feeling every inch the abandoned daughter, cast aside and forgotten.

“She writes.” So what if the letters grew less frequent with every passing year. Her mother loved her. Portia did not begrudge her for pursuing her own life. She lifted her chin a notch and strode ahead. “She promised to come back for me. We’re going to travel the world together. I’m going to see the Parthenon,” she declared, wondering why her voice sounded defensive. As if he had somehow told her she could not.

“I see,” he murmured.

She cut him a glance.

He continued to look at her in that irksome way—as if she were a deluded child who believed in fairies and magic.

Eager to shift the subject from her and rid the pitying look from his face, she said, “I understand you’re trying to do what’s best for Mina, but I don’t think you realize how determined she is to have what she considers a normal life.”

He grasped her arm and turned her to face him. She could see the house now, looming above the overgrown hedge at Heath’s back.

“Normal?” He lifted one dark brow as if he had never heard the word before.

“Yes. Beaus, courtship, marriage, children.”

Heath stared, his gaze scouring her face, before muttering, “Normal is not our lot in life. Mina must accept that.”

He nodded as if that put the matter to rest.

“Because you say so?”

“I know what’s best for my sister.”

“She’ll be miserable,” she warned, ignoring the muscle ticking dangerously in his jaw. “Do you want that on your head?”

“Life isn’t fair,” he snapped a mere moment before he captured her by the back of the neck.

She released a small squeak as he hauled her closer, thinking he meant to kiss her. His mouth descended, then stopped a disappointing hairsbreadth above her lips.

“We rarely get what we want,” he whispered, drawing his words out in agonizing slowness, his breath a warm puff against her trembling lips. “Or haven’t you learned that yet?”

Without another word, he released her and disappeared around the hedge. She fell back against the hedge, a boneless, sagging mass. Her fingers pressed to her lips as she willed the flutterings in her belly to cease.

We rarely get what we want. Portia wondered if she wasn’t a little bit determined to prove him wrong.

Heath ascended the top of the stairs and advanced down the hallway, stopping short at the sight of his grandmother leaning weakly against the corridor’s wall.

“Grandmother?” he asked, hurrying to her side. “Are you unwell?”

She glanced up, smiling wanly. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I might fetch a book from the library to take my mind off the pain.”

“Pain?” Heath demanded, grasping her by the arm and leading her back to her bedroom. “What hurts? Shall I send for the physician?”

“No, no.” She fluttered a hand through the air. “Merely spent too much time on my knees in the garden today. Afraid these bones aren’t as spry as they used to be.”

Heath studied his grandmother closely, noting the tiny lines around her mouth and eyes. She looked tired—old—he realized with a start. The thought caused him some concern. As much as she aggravated him, he could not imagine not having her around. He’d experienced his fair share of death. William. His mother. His father. And none of it simple. No peaceful departures, any of them. Grandmother had been his one constant.

Gently grasping her elbow, he guided her to her bed. “Off your feet,” he ordered.

With a mumble of agreement, she slipped beneath the counterpane. “I so had my heart set on a little reading. It usually puts me to sleep. Would you mind fetching a book for me?”

“Of course not,” he replied, the feeble tremor in her voice striking worry to his heart. “Anything in particular?”

“Hmmm.” She rubbed her forehead wearily, her eyes half closed. “A novel would be lovely.”

She dropped her fingers. “I would not mind rereading Ms. Austen’s Persuasion.”

“Certainly. I’ll be right back.”

Giving her hand a pat, he made his way back down the stairs to the library. The double doors stood parted and he pushed one open with the flat of his palm.

Like a moth drawn to flame, his gaze flew to Portia, reclining on a chaise, one calf propped on a bent knee. Her bare foot bounced idly, her pink toes as slight as the rest of her. His chest tightened at the sight.

He stared at her a long moment, eyeing the exposed length of calf, the subtle arch of her foot, his gut twisting. Logic urged him to turn and leave, to simply tell his grandmother he could not locate the book. He released a silent sigh. She would likely send him back for another one.

Resigned, he cleared his throat.

She shot into a sitting position, wide eyes falling on him as she anxiously tucked her legs beneath her nightgown.

“Availing yourself of the library again, I see.”

She nodded jerkily, her gaze wary as she hugged the book to her chest.

“I’m fetching a book for my grandmother,” he offered, as if he needed to explain his presence.

He walked to the side of the library where Constance kept the novels. After several moments of staring at book spines, he heard her approach. How could he not? He was attuned to every movement she made, her every whisper of sound. He even imagined he heard the soft fall of her bare feet on the carpet, the pounding of her heart behind him.

“What are you looking for?” she asked, her voice soft, uncertain. And why wouldn’t she be?

Their last encounter in this room had been less than cordial.

Of course, he had been convinced that her motive for remaining at Moreton Hall was in trapping him. Now he was not so certain. He didn’t know what went on in that head of hers. If she wasn’t a husband-hunting gold digger, then what kept her here?

He glanced at the library doors, barely parted, and felt a stab of alarm. Getting caught in a compromising situation with her would be foolish. Nothing good could come of that. Comprising situation or not, he would not wed her. Too many reasons prohibited that. The curse only one of them.

He looked over his shoulder, eyeing her slim, elegant form, far too tempting in her prim nightgown. Her unbound hair gleamed black as a seal’s pelt in the lamplight and his palms tingled, itching to take their fill, to experience for himself the strands he knew to be soft as lambskin.

Disgusted and angry at harboring such thoughts, he shook his head and directed his anger on the nearest and most appropriate source—her.

“You shouldn’t be here. Not with me.” He gestured to her person. “And not dressed so.”

Her chin lifted and her eyes shot blue fire. “I was here first.”

“This is my house,” he snapped. “I’ve been here long before you.”

Her bottom lip quivered ever so slightly. “I’m a guest.”

“Not mine.”

“Back to this again, are we?” she huffed, tossing her hair over one shoulder. Shaking her head as though wearied of him, she went on to say, “I’m here by your grandmother’s invitation. I suggest you accept my presence and learn to be civil.”

He studied her coolly. The insufferable lift of her dark brow aggravated him endlessly. Then she smiled. Twin dimples dented her creamy cheeks—a burst of sunshine lighting the room. He felt that smile like a blow to the gut. Oh, she was dangerous. No doubt she knew the power of that smile. Constance’s words echoed in his head: She’s here for one reason and that’s to make a match. Of course. He mustn’t let her fool him otherwise.

She gestured to the books behind him. “Now,” she began in a very governesslike tone, “do you want my help finding the book? I’ve become well acquainted with your library.”

“If it will get me out of here faster, then by all means.” He stepped back, gesturing for her to search among the shelves.

With a slight tsking sound, she stepped forward, asking starchily, “The title, if you please?”

“Persuasion, by Austen.”

Angling her head, she examined the shelves in front of her. Tapping her lips, she murmured, “I don’t think I’ve seen that one.”

“You hardly looked. The book is here. Grandmother has read it before.”

She slid him an annoyed glance. “As I said, I’ve grown acquainted with your library, and I would have noticed. Look, here’s Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. Persuasion is not here. Your grandmother must have been mistaken.”

An uneasy feeling began to settle deep in his chest. “You say you’ve been spending most of your time here?”

“Yes.”

The uneasiness spread from his chest to his stomach. “At my grandmother’s encouragement, no doubt.”

Her brows knitted together. “Of course. She saw me venturing in here shortly before you arrived this evening. I confess some embarrassment at being caught in my nightclothes, but she put me at ease and insisted that I stay.”

With a groan, he ran his hands roughly through his hair.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Cunning old bird,” he muttered, glancing at the door, wondering if she lurked beyond with a parson in tow. “I should have known.”

“You’re not implying—”

“That my grandmother deliberately sent me down here to fetch a book she knew wasn’t here?

Yes.”

Portia gaped.

“She deliberately sent me on a goose chase because she knew you would be here.”

“Deliberately,” she echoed, color flooding her pale face. “Oh, you don’t mean…” her voice faltered.

He nodded grimly. “She is set on the notion of you and me.”

“B-but I told her that we wouldn’t suit—”

“No matter. She went through the trouble of getting you here. She’s not about to give up.” Heath grimaced, imagining such machinations were not about to end. “Of course you could leave. That would put an end to her schemes where you and I are concerned.”

She looked about the room, her gaze sweeping the books in clear longing. “Come now,” she chided. “I don’t need to flee back to Town simply because we may find ourselves alone every now and then. It’s not as if either of us harbors a tendre for the other. Who cares if we’re thrown together on occasion?”