Too Wicked to Tame (The Derrings #2)(77)

“Yes. She and I grew acquainted in Yorkshire.”

“Acquainted,” she murmured, rolling the word around her tongue as if it were some strange sound. In a single, fluid movement she rose to her feet and strolled to a cabinet in the corner.

Her back to him, she asked bluntly, “What are your intentions concerning Portia?” She opened the lacquered door and removed a tray arrayed with a decanter and glasses. “Sherry?”

“No.” He gave a swift nod, still mulling over her question. He supposed it fair. With Bertram gone and the dowager ill, Lady Astrid did have some right to know the depth of his interest in her sister-in-law.

“I intend to marry her.”

At his declaration, she downed her glass in one swallow. Reaching for the decanter again, she asked, “Are you sure you won’t join me for a drink, my lord?”

“Quite.” Uneasiness tightened his gut. His statement did not elicit the reaction he expected.



“Does Portia know of your intentions?”

“I believe she will accept my suit.” He damned well wasn’t leaving until she did. After last night, she couldn’t seriously consider refusing him. At least that’s what he told himself, what his heart desperately whispered to his head.

The duchess downed her second glass with one swallow. She turned bright eyes, burning with emotion, on him. With a heavy sigh, she muttered, “Then you best go after her.”

He rose slowly, his pulse quickening. “Go after her? Where has she gone?”

“Scotland. She left early this morning.”

“Scotland?” he echoed.

“Yes.” She grimaced. “Where else could she marry on such short notice?”

Portia woke to a throbbing headache. It pounded at the insides of her temples with fierce little hammers. She cracked open one eye, then the next. Hissing at the harsh invasion of light, she clenched them shut again.

A slight rustling sounded near her head. “Nettie, would you draw the drapes?” she asked, her tongue dry as sand in her mouth.

Before Nettie could respond, her world tilted and careened.

“Nettie,” she choked, a hand flying to her mouth as she fought down her heaving stomach.

“Chamber pot—quick!”

With more strength than Portia thought Nettie capable, she was pulled upright and forced into a sitting position. Much too quickly for her rebelling stomach.

“Ah,” she groaned against her fingers, a vile taste rising in her throat.

“Open your bloody eyes and stick your head out the window you daft female!”

Her eyes flew open at the sound of the coarse command.

Simon Oliver stared back at her, looking both anxious and wary. She lunged for the window.

Sticking her head out the flimsy drapes, she heaved the contents of her stomach, mindless of the rain soaking her as she watched the wet earth roll by beneath them.

Confidant that she would not be sick again, she fell back against the squabs, demanding weakly,

“What have you done?”



She pressed a hand to the base of her throat as if she could still the wild thud of her pulse beating there. His eyes, feral and gleaming, fixed on that hand, watched it as a fox watched its dinner.

“You thought you were finished with me, didn’t you?” He leaned forward in his seat. “I warned you—”

“Mr. Oliver,” she croaked, her tongue thick in her mouth. Pausing, she swallowed and tried to force words out of her dry mouth. “I insist you turn this carriage around at once. My family must be besides themselves with worry—”

“Your family,” he cut in, the crack of his voice loud as the falling rain around them, “is in full support of our marriage. Who do you think helped me make off with you in the middle of the night?”

Portia sucked in air and jammed her eyes shut against the sudden spots filling her vision. “No.

They wouldn’t do that. Not Grandmother. Not Astrid.” They would not have betrayed her, would not have resorted to such methods.

She must have spoken aloud, for Oliver suddenly sat on the seat beside her, his voice a serpent’s slither in her ear, his chest a barrel pressing at her side. “I know nothing of any plans your grandmother may have had. Lady Astrid, however, came up with this. She said once we were wed, you would see reason.”

Astrid. Portia knew her sister-in-law was angry, desperate even. She had felt it in her cold stare.

Yet if she had just trusted Portia, given her a little time, she would have seen that she intended to honor her promise.

Heath. A dull ache began to throb beneath her breastbone. An image of him filled her mind, her soul. When precisely had he become everything to her? When exactly had he turned into her every dream, her every hope for the future?

Oh, Astrid, how could you?

“No,” she breathed, jamming her eyes shut, unwilling to open them and face the man at her side.

Face the ugly truth that spilled from his lips and washed over her in wave after horrible wave.

“No,” she repeated, as if the single word had the power to remove her from this awful reality.

Fingers hard as iron grasped her chin. “Yes.”

Her stomach heaved anew. Swallowing, she opened her eyes to glare at her abductor, to stare him down as if every inch of her weren’t trembling at the prospect of becoming his wife, at never again seeing Heath or feeling his arms surround her. Wrenching her chin free, she dragged herself to the edge of the seat until her shoulder dug into the carriage wall.