Too Wicked to Tame (The Derrings #2)(25)

Logically, she knew she couldn’t hide here forever. Her family waited in the wings, a countless line of suitors on hand for when she returned without a groom. Yet for now, for a little while, she was safe. At peace with her books and a small taste of freedom the likes of which her mother enjoyed.

True, it wasn’t her dream of standing before the Parthenon, the Greek sun a warm caress on her face, but it was a small slice of freedom—hers to enjoy for as long as she could abide Constance’s dark glares, as long as she could abide one boorish earl.

An image of Heath flashed through her mind. Hawklike features and a storm-cloud gaze. Her skin hummed restlessly like the string of a violin, plucked, awakened, and buzzing with energy.

Well, perhaps not total peace, she amended.

She’d not seen him in two days, not since he’d treated her so abysmally at dinner. She is not welcome here. Heat burned her cheeks, singed her pride. The arrogant brute. He actually thought she wanted to marry him? The insufferable gall.

Two days and no sight of him. Two days of snapping to attention every time she heard the tread of footsteps. Almost as if she hoped to catch a glimpse of him.

Lady Moreton complained to no end, expounding at length on the irresponsibility of heirs to their families.

“He’s at the dower house,” Constance had gleefully volunteered over dinner when Lady Moreton paused amid her diatribe to sip turtle soup from her spoon. “With Della.”

“Constance,” Lady Moreton had hissed, her spoon clattering to her bowl, “that’s quite enough.”

Portia had glanced back and forth between the two ladies. “Who is Della?”

“The house keeper at the dower house,” Lady Moreton answered, her eyes not meeting Portia’s as she reached for her glass.

“Yes,” Constance had murmured, eyes glinting with amusement. “The house keeper.”

Portia had grasped her meaning perfectly.



Heath was staying at the dower house with a woman named Della.

His mistress.

Exhaling, she hugged herself against the chill, wondering why her sigh sounded so aggrieved.

Surely she didn’t care that the man kept a mistress. It certainly came as no surprise. A wicked man like him, who went about kissing serving girls in public, would have a score of mistresses.

She would not give him another thought.

“What are you doing out here?”

Portia jumped at the sound of the gravelly voice behind her. A shudder ripped through her, and she pulled her shawl tighter. Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around.

“I thought you would have given up by now,” he added.

Even loathing his words, his voice rolled through her like warm sherry.

“You expected me to be gone?” Portia asked, pleased at the steadiness of her voice. “Is that why you’ve stayed away? You thought I’d leave?”

“It occurred to me that a sense of pride might have come over you.”

At that, Portia sent him a blistering stare over her shoulder. One that would set him firmly in place.

Yet the sight of him—standing in the threshold of the open balcony doors, the light from the drawing room limning his large physique—snatched the breath from her throat. Attired again in unremitting black, he looked as he did that first night. And like that night, the plainness of his garments heightened his appeal, made him both attractive and dangerous. Irresistible. Not like the gentlemen back home. The ones she found wholly resistible.

“A sense of pride?” she echoed, thinking she had a good deal of pride. Perhaps too much.

If not for her pride, she would have permitted Bertram to bully her into marriage long ago, would have listened to Grandmother’s lectures on responsibility and duty and placed the Derring name above that of her own happiness and freedom. If not for her pride, she would have written a score of letters to her mother begging her to return home and fetch the daughter she had abandoned.

And perhaps without pride she would have tossed discretion to the wind and accepted the sinful invitation that one wicked man had recently issued to her in the taproom of a nearby inn.

“Yes,” he replied from unsmiling lips, studying her from beneath heavy lids. “To remain where you are clearly unwanted.”



“Back to that again, are we?” Portia snapped. “I told you, I have no designs on you. Merely wish for—”

“Escape,” he broke in, advancing toward her, his heavy steps thudding onto the stone balcony. “I remember.” The wind whipped his too long hair across the planes of his face. “And what does the daughter of a duke need to escape from?” he asked, the sneer in his voice unmistakable.

Being the daughter of a duke, her mind silently cried. A prize to be auctioned off with no thought to the soul sealed within the Derring packaging. To say nothing of the expectations, the unveiled pressure, the countless rules that governed her life, the tedium, the loneliness.

“Teas? Soirees? Rides in the park?” he scoffed.

Yes. And more. Much more. Yet one look at his cold face told her he wouldn’t see any of it as a trial. He couldn’t. Men never did. They merely expected ladies to do as they were told, to take plea sure in empty pursuits. That was all Bertram expected of her. All her father had expected of her mother. No doubt the Earl of Moreton was cut from the same cloth.

Shaking her head, she looked out at the moor again, at the silent night that asked nothing of her.