The Wicked Heir (Spare Heirs #3)(117)

Honeycutt stopped in the threshold to glare back at her over his sloped shoulder. “You cannot.”

“We will,” she insisted with an insolent lift of her eyebrows, “unless you intend to cause a scene by physically forcing two screaming females from your home.” She smiled with false sweetness. “I received the impression you prefer to keep these dealings more discreet.”

For a brief second, the man seemed at a loss on how to handle Portia’s insistence. Then he gave a short grunt. “Do not expect any hospitality,” he muttered.

And then he was gone.





Three


Portia stood there, apprehension coming back to the fore now that she and Angelique were alone again. The few minutes since Honeycutt had left the room passed like hours. She glanced back toward her great-aunt, whose eyes had grown heavy as her chin bobbed repeatedly toward her chest. The elderly lady would be asleep within minutes.

Portia made a swift decision. Picking up her skirts, she crossed the room in long strides, then paused at the door, peering into the hall. Everything was dark and silent.

Creeping forward, she strained her ears to hear any indication of where Honeycutt had gone. Had he left the house, gone to Nightshade already?

The floorboards just above her gave a telltale creak.

It was the height of impropriety to consider sneaking through a stranger’s home. Yet Portia did not think twice as she made her way toward the narrow stairs leading up to the second floor. There was far too much at stake to worry about proper manners. Going excruciatingly slowly, she incorporated into her movements all of the little tricks she had developed as a child.

Portia had been only twelve when her mother had fallen ill. Emma, at eighteen, had cared for their mother almost night and day. Except for the rare occasion when they were allowed into their mother’s bedroom for a few whispered words and a brief touch of her hand, she and Lily had been ordered to stay away.

Even then, Portia had hated taking orders. She had found a way to sneak in and out of her mother’s bedroom during those times Emma or the maids went to fetch something, or in the middle of the night as everyone else slept. She had claimed a corner behind the heavy fall of the drapes where she would sit for hours sometimes, listening to her mother’s shallow breath or Emma’s murmured words of comfort and assurance.

After their mother’s death, their father spiraled into grief at the loss of his wife. His behavior grew more and more erratic and suspicious. Since Emma refused to be forthcoming about the changes in their father, likely trying to protect her younger sisters, Portia took matters into her own hands.

She further developed her skills in moving about undetected as she spied on her father’s late-night activities. Somehow, discovering his growing obsession with gambling and drink—seeing it firsthand as he stayed up until dawn, insisting Emma help him practice his card-playing skills—made her feel less insecure than when her head was filled with visions of the unknown.

Stupid, really. As an adult, she understood why Emma had tried to shield her and Lily from much of what went on with their parents. Knowing about something could not stop it from happening.

Only action could do that. She had been unable to help her parents, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to sit back and do nothing while Lily was in danger.

Patience was not something Portia normally possessed, but she had learned to harness the elusive virtue over years of practice and could employ it when it mattered. Incorporating an intense awareness for every minute bit of influence her body had on her environment, she placed one foot in front of the other up the stairs. Keeping her back angled toward the wall, Portia shifted her gaze back and forth between the space in front of her and the darkness behind her, ever watchful for movement in the shadows to warn her someone was coming.

At the top of the stairs, Portia peered down a narrow hallway, dark but for the light from one room seeping through the crack of a door barely left open. Portia crept forward, undeterred. Angelique seemed to trust this Nightshade character and his associates, but Portia was not so easily convinced.

Nearing the lit room, Portia heard the low murmur of two distinct voices. But she could not make out what they said. The hallway was long and narrow and not at all conducive to hiding. There was not even a table to crouch behind.

A scowl crept across her brow. Of course, Honeycutt would be unaccommodating in this as well.

Creeping forward, she got as close as she could, stopping in a deep shadow just beyond the pale beam of light extending across the floor. Pressing her back flat against the wall, she eased her breath into a slow, deep, and silent rhythm as she had trained herself to do long ago.

Then she listened.

“This don’t sound like somethin’ Hale would do.” Portia recognized the guttural tone of the rude little butler’s voice coming from just inside the door. “He ain’t no kidnapper.”

“He never was before, but you and I know people can be pushed to do almost anything under the right circumstances.”

Portia tensed.

This last had been spoken by an unfamiliar voice. She had expected to hear Honeycutt, but this man spoke in a much lower tone, and his words revealed the barest hint of Cockney buried beneath the layers of finer intonation.

The butler murmured something in response, the words lost beneath the creak of a floorboard.

Breathing so slowly she could not even feel the air moving through her lungs, she waited. She had no idea what she would do if someone stepped into the hall and saw her skulking there. It was not in her nature to think so far ahead, preferring to rely on instinct and inspiration in such situations.