Too Wicked to Tame (The Derrings #2)(73)

Shaking her head, she turned and slipped from the room. Hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, she told herself that he was wrong.



Heath didn’t return to his box. He stormed from the theater and hailed a hack, calling out the name of his hotel as he bounded within the musty confines.

Perhaps he should listen to Portia and leave—let her marry her smelly dockworker. Although the image of her beneath the brawny fellow, taking him inside her body, invaded his head and soured his stomach.

How many times did she have to say no before he finally quit? He thumped his fist on the seat.

He had affairs to tend to—his sisters sitting at top of the list. Now that he knew there to be no threat of madness, he needed to see about getting them married. Mina would be delighted.

Constance…he was not so sure. Still, he had better things to do than traipsing after some female who spurned him at every chance.

But her body opened like a flower at his slightest touch. Closing his eyes, he dropped his head on the back of the seat. He could still feel her heat, the tightness of her snug around him. He had released himself inside her, gloried in it. It had been the greatest sense of liberation—a claiming of himself right along with her. The thought of a child growing in her womb even now filled him with inexpressible joy.

She wanted him as much as he wanted her. They both knew it. He would do what ever necessary to prove it.

Alone in her room, Portia undressed herself, her hands lingering over the places Heath had touched, kissed. Her mouth, her neck, her breasts. Her skin still tingled, still ached for him.

Before donning her nightgown, she sponged herself clean. Washing away the evidence of their lovemaking from between her legs, she tried not to notice how her sensitized skin reacted to her ministrations. Still, she wished it were Heath’s hands there.

Mortified at the wanton she had become, she flung the sponge back in the bowl and quickly covered her traitorous body with a nightgown. He’d be gone soon enough. Once she and Simon announced their engagement, Heath would see that they were well and truly finished.

She moved to extinguish the lamp but paused when she spotted the letter. Her mother’s letter.

A sigh welled up deep within her chest. Might as well read it. Releasing her sigh, she picked up the missive, bracing herself to hear all about her mother’s exploits abroad—places seen, people met, things done. Then the letter would end with the “wish” that Portia could be there to share in it all.

Unfolding the parchment, she skimmed her mother’s elegant, scrawling handwriting with a numb heart, feeling none of her former excitement and anticipation when reading such letters, so grateful for a glimpse into her mother’s life.



Her heart stopped beating altogether when she came to the end, to the words that suddenly took life and leapt off the page, instantly breaking from resembling all the previous letters she had received over the years.

Her fingers went limp and the letter fluttered to the floor, gentle as falling snow. She looked down, staring at the letter that lay there as innocuously as a forgotten handkerchief, a white smudge on the dark blue and green swirls in the threadbare carpet.

The words her mother had written struck her like a blow to the face, robbing her of breath, ripping at her heart.

I’ve married, my darling girl. He’s a wonderful man and we want you to join us in Athens.





Chapter 27


“Have you decided when we can announce our betrothal?”

Portia opened her mouth but no sound emerged.

Simon repeated himself.

Faced with the reality of becoming his wife, of allowing him the intimacies she had only shared with Heath—one word fell from her lips, “No.”

Portia frowned. How had that slipped from her lips? It had certainly not been her intention to reject his suit. She had hardly given Simon a thought until he had showed up for tea today. Her thoughts had been too wrapped up in Heath and the mother who had married—who finally remembered she had a daughter.

For years, Portia had lived in wait for such a letter, longing for the day her mother would want her, would turn her promise into a reality. Her mother had sent for her. At last. Just when Portia had ceased to hope. Except it didn’t matter. Portia no longer cared. She had been avoiding life, avoiding her duties and responsibilities for the sake of a dream. And now that the dream hovered within reach, she no longer wanted it. It was the dream of a girl, a little girl who had needed her mother. That girl no longer existed.

Portia needed something else now. Heath’s face emerged in her mind. Aggravating, considering the way he had humiliated her in Yorkshire, but nonetheless there. Always there. And she was beginning to suspect he always would be.

Simon shook his head, looking as confused as she felt. “I thought you were eager to wed.”

“I was—am.” Portia paused and pressed her fingers between her brows where her head was beginning to throb. Suddenly, a sense of knowing filled her. Dropping her hand, she looked him directly in the eyes. “I cannot marry you, Mr. Oliver. I apologize for giving the impression that I could.”

He stared at her a long moment, an odd little smile fixed to his face. Clearly, he had not heard her.

“I cannot marry you,” she repeated as gently as possible. “I thought I could, but I cannot.”

“No?” he queried, rising swiftly to his feet.