Too Wicked to Tame (The Derrings #2)(33)

“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?”