Too Wicked to Tame (The Derrings #2)(5)

She answered in an equally grudging voice, “Portia.”

No more than that. No need for him to know that a duke’s daughter sat on his lap. Soon they would part company, never to set eyes on each other again.

“Portia,” he replied slowly, drawing out her name as if he tasted it on his tongue. “Different.”

“My mother named me after Portia in Merchant of Venice…or Hamlet, depending what day you spoke with her…and her mood…and whether or not I happened to be in her favor at the time.”

She couldn’t keep the bitterness from creeping into her voice. Thoughts of her mother did that to her, even when she willed them not to. Frowning, she wondered why she had volunteered so much to him. An uncouth stranger.

“Not from these parts, are you, Portia?” he asked dryly.



Ignoring his bold usage of her name, she suppressed her impulse to ask after his name and turned her gaze to the rain-soaked terrain, both wild and beautiful.

“No,” she answered. Not that she would mind staying. Even awash in rain, this rugged land appealed to her. But this was no holiday. She had a potential husband to scare off—a task at which she particularly excelled. She need only open her mouth and expound at length upon what ever text she currently read. Be it an ancient treatise on Roman engineering, a dramatic work of Sophocles, or the latest commentary on female rights, no one chased away a prospective suitor better.

“London?” he asked, his voice knowing, derision lacing his gravelly tones.

“Obvious, is it?”

“You’re not like chits in these parts.”

If she had been inclined, she could have told him she wasn’t like London ladies either. Vowing never to be auctioned off in matrimony like a cow at market set her apart from the rest of the herd. Not such a difficult task, she had discovered. No one wanted an impoverished bluestocking—even one with an excellent pedigree.

“Indeed,” she replied stiffly, certain he did not mean to compliment her.

“Indeed,” he echoed, laughter lacing his voice. “Never met someone so haughty.”

“Haughty?” she cried. “That’s rich. Especially coming from an arrogant brute like you.”

“God, you are a shrew,” he chuckled against her ear, the sound oddly pleasant.

“Because I do not take insults kindly?”

“No, because nothing but vinegar flows from your lips.”

“Then I shall spare you further ridiculous conversation,” she retorted, hot indignation stinging her cheeks.

He chuckled again, the sound rich and throaty as he pulled her even closer. His hand shifted, sliding beneath her cloak to splay against her rib cage indecently. A circumstance she might have objected to could she break her self-imposed vow and speak. Instead, she endured his nearness in silence and denied that her heart raced at the feel of his big hand resting scant inches from her breast—denied that his touch sent waves of heat through her otherwise freezing body.

Iago trudged along at a sedate pace, stumbling occasionally in one of the many water-filled ruts in the road. Distant cracks of thunder shook the air. The din agitated Iago, eliciting distressed whinnies.



Behind her, his deep voice hummed gentle murmurings to the volatile stallion and did strange things to her insides.

“Something tells me you’re unaccustomed to holding your tongue.”

She jumped, taken aback at the sound of that velvet voice addressing her and not the horse.

“I don’t mind. Talk,” he murmured and his hand moved again, closer to her breast, his thumb almost grazing the underside. “I enjoy listening to your voice. So proper. Clipped but soft.

Almost breathless, like your corset’s laced too tight.”

Portia sputtered. Heat scalded her face all the way to the roots of her hair. He dared make mention of her undergarments? Her outrage mounted as he added, “You know, I could loosen it for you.”

“You—you beast!” she cried, struggling out of the shelter of his cloak.

Iago stepped into another rut and they plunged off balance. Portia shrieked and slid off his lap, nearly plummeting to the ground below. A firm arm wrapped around her middle. She dug her fingers into a taut, straining forearm.

“Stop your caterwauling,” his harsh command rang out. “You’re frightening the bloody horse!”

Biting her lip against another scream, her fingers clawed their way up his forearm to his biceps, desperate to keep from falling. Suddenly the horse reared.

And she was falling. With him. Her fingers didn’t release their death grip on his arm as they tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs.





Chapter 3


For a long moment, Portia didn’t move a muscle—couldn’t. Partly due to the large man sprawled atop her, and partly due to the shock of finding herself submerged in mud. Again. At this point, she wondered if she would ever be clean and dry again. Muck coated every last inch of her.

Turning her head, she watched the horse flee down the road, reins whipping wildly in the wind.

“Where’s he going?”

“Home.”

“Home,” she echoed, looking up at him.

His face hovered above hers, the chill of his ice-gray eyes the only color in his mud-covered face. If possible, those eyes made her even colder.