Too Wicked to Tame (The Derrings #2)(74)

“You must see we don’t suit.”



He looked down at her, his face flushed an unbecoming shade of red. “Your sister-in-law assured me you were agreeable to this match.”

Nodding, she dropped her gaze to her hands. “You mustn’t blame her. I thought—”

“You thought you could,” he finished in a snarl. With surprising swiftness, he leaned down and circled her neck with his hand, exerting the slightest pressure as he said, “I’ll not be made a fool, my lady. No one makes a fool of Oliver Simon.”

That said, he released her neck and stormed from the room, flinging the door wide open. It crashed against the wall, the sound reverberating on the air for several moments. She sat there for a long moment, her hand at her throat, willing herself to cease shaking.

“Portia?” Astrid said, hurrying into room, her face pinched tight with concern. “What happened?”

“I—I--” Portia glanced back at the door, wondering if she might somehow call him back, yet knew she could not. Not when to do so pinched at her heart and made her feel as though she were betraying not only Heath but herself.

“Portia?” Astrid pressed.

“I refused to marry him,” she blurted.

Astrid gave her head a small shake as if she had misunderstood. Pressing her hand against her temple, she cocked her head to the side.

“Astrid?” Portia asked, trying to catch a glimpse of her sister-in-law’s eyes. Only she continued to look away, as if the sight of Portia disgusted her.

Portia leaned forward, her voice urgent. “Astrid, I will marry. I promised you and Grandmother that I would. Only not Oliver Simon.” The image of Oliver’s face, mottled red with anger, his beefy hand on her throat like a steel collar seized her and she suppressed a shudder. Right or wrong, she could not marry him. “Give me a little more time. I’ll find someone else.”

At this, Astrid laughed. A grating sound that sent a chill down Portia’s spine. “Who else would marry you? You’ve nothing to recommend you save a family name that, thanks to your brother, is now in question.”

“Astrid—”

“Have you not heard the whispers?” Astrid demanded, swinging her dark gaze back on Portia, the venom reflected there lethal as hemlock.

Portia shook her head, then stopped. She had noticed a few stares. Yet she had chalked that up to her new wardrobe, and the fact that Oliver Simon, not the most cultured gentleman, escorted her about Town. It had not crossed her mind that everyone whispered behind their gloves about the pathetic Derring women, abandoned, rejected, scrabbling for a way to survive penniless among the echelons of Society.

“Everyone knows Bertram fled in order to escape trial. We’re the talk of Town. The destitute Derrings.” Astrid’s dark eyes shimmered suspiciously.

“I will find someone else,” Portia insisted, already thinking of Heath and weighing how degrading it would be to seek him out, to ask him if he still wished to marry her—despite all her protests. Would she look the complete fool?

“All I need is a little time,” Portia vowed.

Time to find Heath. To swallow what little pride she had left and tell him she would marry him.

For duty’s sake and not love.

Portia stared blindly into the dark, straight and rigid as a slat of wood, fingers laced tightly over her stomach. Two days and no sight of Heath. No sight of him since the theater when he had obliterated her will and reduced her to a shallow creature that lived and breathed for him and passion alone.

She had set Nettie to the task of finding him, of checking all the hotels and inquiring among servants. Nothing. Had he done what she had asked and gone back to Yorkshire?

She lowered her hand and brushed the swell of her stomach, the linen of her nightgown soft against her palm. She thought of them in that moon-washed room again, the wicked way they had made love and something told her it would always be that way with Heath. Mad or sane, there would always be a part of him too wicked to tame. And she didn’t want him any other way.

Her balcony doors stood open and the curtains shifted, fluttering with a whisper in the wind.

Astrid hadn’t spoken a word to her, and although Grandmother could now sit up in bed and take down some food, she still needed a physician’s care. Portia didn’t have time to play at courtship.

Where was Heath? He couldn’t have changed his mind. Couldn’t have given up. Could he?

Sighing, she rolled onto her side, thinking of Heath, of her desperate need to find him, to marry him.

Marry Heath. A warmth suffused her at the very idea, at the nights they would have, the leisurely attention they could devote to each other’s bodies. Frowning, she quickly tried to suppress the warmth with a cold douse of reality. He was still the man who had hurt her, who had crushed her in Yorkshire. Nothing would change that. There would be no love between them. She would not grant him such power over her, would not permit herself to fall in love with him.



But you loved him in Yorkshire. And you haven’t stopped.

“No,” she vowed aloud, her fist thumping the mattress beside her. “I don’t—I won’t!”

“Won’t you now?”

She lurched up in bed with a gasp, her eyes searching the gloom for the source of that velvet voice. Her heart hammered in wild relief. He had come. That he had been so bold as to climb the trellis outside her window shocked her not in the least. This was Heath, after all.