Too Wicked to Tame (The Derrings #2)(21)

“Then we will simply see that he does not hear of it until it is too late.” Portia smoothly cut in.

“Trust me. I know all about circumventing authority.” How else could she have avoided matrimony for these many years?

Mina’s eyes sparkled. “From the moment you appeared I knew things would change.”

“Indeed?” Portia asked, smiling wryly. Collapsing in a dead faint did not signify as the most auspicious of beginnings. “If my arrival strikes you as thrilling, then you are quite right. Your life is exceedingly dull. We must see what we can do to add some excitement.”

Mina released her knees and clapped her hands. “Oh, you brilliant creature. My prayers were answered the moment you arrived.”

Portia smiled grimly. What was the earl thinking, cloistering his sister from the world so that she went into histrionics over a simple tea? He was a tyrant. Clear and simple. No better than her father. Her mother had been unable to wear a gown if it did not meet her father’s approval.

Everything from clothes to the company she kept had fallen under his inflexible purview.

“Portia,” Mina dragged out her name, casting her a sly look from beneath her lashes. “Have you ever…kissed a gentleman?”

Portia blinked, taken aback and wondering at the random question.

As though sensing her bewilderment, Mina rushed to explain, her expression solemn and tense,

“I only ask because you mentioned excitement.”

Excitement? Kissing? Mina equated the two?

Portia pulled back, exasperated. It was the same everywhere. Country or Town—nothing differed. Women looked to men to supply life’s excitement. Eligible gentlemen never roused anything remotely close to excitement within her. Portia winced, realizing she could not make such a claim any longer. Not since her path crossed the earl. But then, he couldn’t be considered eligible, could he? Or even a gentleman for that matter.

Portia opened her mouth, ready to gently reprimand Mina on her unseemly questions, but then snapped her jaw shut. Mina had been denied quite enough in life. Chastised. Corrected. Bullied.

She deserved forthright conversation at the least.



“Yes,” Portia began, knowing she was about to dash Mina’s romantic notions. “Or to be more accurate, I was the recipient of a kiss.”

Mina leaned in, her face brightening. “Was he handsome?”

“His name was Roger Cleary. He was sixteen. The vicar’s son, and determined not to live up to his father’s lofty standards.” Portia laughed briefly, remembering that winter’s day after church in Nottinghamshire. “I was fifteen and didn’t see it coming.”

“What was it like?”

“It was,” she paused, searching for the appropriate words to describe being hauled behind the refectory and subjected to a thick-tongued kiss that tasted vaguely of sardines. “Messy.”

Mina’s face fell. “Oh. And there have been no others since?”

Portia shook her head, not bothering to explain that she saw to it that no man took such liberties again. When gentlemen looked at her, they did not see a woman they wanted to drag off to some darkened alcove and kiss. She had done her utmost to see they never did. The risk of finding herself shackled in matrimony presented too great a threat. Heath had been the only one to look at her with interest—the only man to make her toes curl and her body tingle and burn in the most shocking, intimate places.

“With the right man,” she hedged, “I’m sure kissing is a lovely experience.”

Mina pulled a face. “I’ll never meet the right man. Not buried out here. Heath and Constance will see to that.”

“Mina,” she began, uncertain if she should say what she felt compelled to, what the fire in her soul demanded. “This is your life. You have choices. No one can make you do anything you don’t want to. Not even your brother and sister.”

Mina angled her head and studied her curiously. “You truly believe that, don’t you?”

“I’m twenty-two and unwed.” Portia hesitated a moment before confiding, “That’s no coincidence, I assure you. My life plans don’t involve marriage.”

Mina shook her head. “I’m not as strong as you.”

Portia smiled. “You’ve mettle, Mina. Why don’t you tell your brother what it is you truly want?”

Mina snorted. “He knows—”

“You must keep telling him until he hears you. Practice if need be.” She waved a hand at Mina.

“Pretend I’m Heath. Go on.”



Mina exhaled, sat up straighter. “I want to go to parties,” she announced as if she were tossing down an ultimatum to Heath himself. “To meet people my age. To dance.” At Portia’s encouraging nod she continued, her voice gaining volume, color blooming in her apple cheeks,

“I want romance—and a husband.” She fisted her hands at her sides and jammed her eyes shut in deep anguish. “And for one moment I want to live my life free of a stupid curse, to pretend that my father wasn’t a madman, that my brother is not…that I am not.”

Portia cringed at the pain in the girl’s voice and asked solemnly, “Can you tell him all that?”

Shaking her head as if suddenly weary, Mina opened her eyes and looked searchingly at Portia.