by Colleen Ladd
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Two days later, Portia still blushed to think of that conversation. It was not her fault Roger left her destitute, but she could not bear to remember how desperate she had been, how she’d begged Ashburne to let her stay. His pity crept under her skin and festered there.
For two days, Ashburne had been unrelenting in his search for the billet doux, his urgency stronger than ever before, as if he could not get rid of her fast enough. Once he’d proven his innocence and got back what was his, he would have two other houses he could cart her off to without marring his conscience. There was a time Portia would have liked nothing better than to return to Rosewood, but now she could hardly bear to think of leaving Ashburne Hall and its master.
They worked deep into the night, until Portia was nodding over her books and Ashburne set his aside to walk her to her room. She could certainly have found it on her own, no matter how tired she was, but some wanton spirit within her hoped for more of his kisses. But he was all that was proper, and the nearest she got was a quick brush of his chiseled lips, light as butterfly wings, and that only once. Her nights were restless, spent lying awake and scolding herself for wanting him when he’d made it clear he did not want her, or asleep and dreaming of him. Dreams that left her shaking with desire, her insides molten with the heat he had awoken in her. She was up early each morning, dressing and eating quickly so she could join him once more in the library, certain from the gray exhaustion creeping over his face that he’d not left at all.
He’d taken to smoking in the library when she was not there, the scent of his tobacco creeping out into the hall, and even when she was, a fine tremor overtaking his hands as he lit cheroot after cheroot. Portia said nothing about the impropriety of his blowing a cloud in her presence. She could feel his tension as clearly as her own. It grew through all the long hours in the dim near-silent cocoon of the library—drapes drawn, door locked, candleflames standing straight and steady in the unchanging dusk where words, if spoken at all, were murmured, the tone intimate even when the words were not.
And still they found nothing.
Tony continued supremely indifferent, even to the odor of tobacco that followed Portia about like the shadow of Ashburne’s embrace. Portia, to her shame, was grateful for his distraction, for his galloping off as soon as he was up, not to return for hours upon hours. Portia hoped he was not out trysting with Clary. She didn’t want to know about it if he was. She could only handle one problem at a time, and Ashburne was eating up all her energy.
When she found it, Portia didn’t at first realize what she held.
Tsking, she straightened the bent pages of the book, part of yet another set of Shakespeare, this one bound in a rich royal blue. Love’s Labors Lost. Between the bent pages lay a single sheet of paper, folded haphazardly in half against the crease of its original folding. Someone had treated both note and book with callous disregard. When she opened it, inured by dozens of misplaced hopes to the disappointment that inevitably awaited, her hands began to shake so hard she dropped the book.
Portia didn’t know what he read in her face, but Ashburne reached her side in a moment, kneeling by her chair to gently pry the note from her shaking fingers.
“My dearest Amelia,” Ashburne read in a hushed reverent tone. “This is it, Portia. This is it!” He kissed her, hot and hard and all too brief, leaving her shaken in every limb and disgusted with herself for wanting to draw out the feeling of his lips on hers. The scrap of paper that trembled between his fingers was what he’d searched for for the better part of a month. It was his proof, his freedom. Portia was a goose, wanting him to drop it—just for a moment—and put his arms around her, and kiss her as he had two nights ago.
She was a ninnyhammer, who’d clearly learned nothing from her loveless marriage with Roger, for she wanted this man. Difficult, uncomfortable, infuriating as Giles Ashburne was, she wanted him. She was so happy to have been the one who found the billet doux that she could barely contain herself. She needed desperately for him to see her as his equal, not some wretched woman who dangled at his purse strings, aided and housed and borne up out of no emotion softer than pity. He needn’t even marry her, if he didn’t want, so long as he was honest with her and didn’t pretend at constancy when he abandoned her for the pleasures of London. If he did, which Portia doubted—where Ashburne gave his heart, he stayed. Less than a sennight had passed since they first spoke, it was true, but Portia had begun her understanding of Giles Ashburne the moment she stepped foot in the Hall.
Ashburne cursed viciously, his voice as flat and hard and furious as she’d ever heard it. He leapt to his feet and strode out of the library, the door banging behind him. Then another banging, the front door this time.
Oh heavens! Portia rushed after him. He wouldn’t dare call the murderer out, would he? Or even... could he mean to kill the man with his bare hands?
She caught up with him on the drive, which he was taking at a ground-eating clip, gulping great draughts of air as if half-suffocated in the Hall. Portia grabbed his arm and was dragged several stumbling steps before he ground to a halt. The muscles of his arm were so hard there was no give at all under her fingers.
“Come back inside, my lord,” Portia said, stumbling over the words in her urgency. “It’s broad daylight. Anyone might pass by. Come back inside.”
“Why?” he demanded in a voice like ground glass.
“Someone will see you.” Portia tugged on his arm, but he budged not an inch. “You’ll be seen! You’ll be seen and Ransley will come for you and— Giles, please!”
He looked at her with the distant expression of a sleepwalker. “It doesn’t matter.” He held out the billet doux. “It’s not signed.”
“Not—? Give it to me,” Portia pleaded, struggling with his white-knuckled grip. “Give it to me, do.”
Giles released it suddenly and swung back to stare at the Hall. Portia looked first at the bottom of the page, then the back. There was no closing, no name, yet it didn’t appear unfinished. She read quickly, mumbling aloud to herself in her haste. The writer begged his love to meet him on the picnic green an hour after dusk, ending with an expression of love and his sincere hope she’d meet him. But no name. Portia reread it, but her first impression remained unchanged: it was sweet and romantic and read more like a missive from a secret admirer than a satisfied lover.
“I must leave.” Ashburne said it so softly that Portia nearly didn’t hear him. “I must leave. There’s no justice to be had here.”
“Come inside, my lord.”
He turned a little toward her, and she could see the small quirk at the corner of his mouth that was sometimes a smile and sometimes not. “You called me ‘Giles’ earlier.”
“Giles, then. Come inside. It’s broad daylight. Someone may see you.”
Giles turned back to the Hall, and though she couldn’t see his face, she could feel the intensity of his stare. As if he were eating up this poor damaged remnant of the estate he loved, tucking it away somewhere inside to sustain him in the years to come.
“Giles? Someone may—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me! I’ve had to sew up your hide once already. I don’t fancy doing it again.”
That woke him up. He took her arm in a hard grip and hustled her back inside, for all the world as if he thought someone might shoot her. Portia didn’t protest the rough handling. He was no longer outside; that was all she cared about.
Giles didn’t turn loose of her until the door was closed and barred behind them. Then he released her, walking away without so much as a glance, taking the stairs two at a time. Portia straggled after, finding him in the secret room at the top of the second staircase. He’d left the door open, or she’d have wasted ages looking for the mechanism to open it. She closed it behind her in case Tony put in an unexpected appearance.
A valise sat open on the bed, and Giles was filling it with a terrible hopeless resolve. Everyth
ing he’d worked for this past month and all the months before that was stripped away, his hopes dashed. Portia looked at the note she still held and folded it carefully along its original crease. She saw it as a setback, not the end. But then, she’d thought it a very thin hope to begin with and perhaps, not putting the weight on it he had, she was better able to weather the disappointment now.
“It is unfortunate,” Portia said in a deliberately cool tone, “but not insurmountable.”
Giles didn’t look up from gathering his belongings. “I never took you for such an incurable optimist, madam.”
“The failure of one sally does not guarantee the failure of the battle, let alone the war.”
He didn’t look up from the bag in which he was creating a valet’s nightmare. “Nor did I realize you were such an expert on military matters. Or is it only useless platitudes you’ve got so conveniently at your fingertips?”
“Neither. It’s hope I’ve got and you seem to have—”
“This was my hope,” he growled, plucking the billet doux from her hands. “This was it, everything. The only way I could prove my innocence.” He crumpled it in his fist and threw it against the wall. “Now I’ve got nothing.”
“Nonsense.” Portia planted herself on the bed, pushing his valise behind her, and glared up at him. Quite a long way up. Heavens, he was tall! “You’ve got me, and my help, and a man who lurks about the grounds at night and shoots at people.”
“Thank you for reminding me, madam,” Giles said, without even sarcasm, which would have at least made sense of the words. He reached over her for the valise, set it on the table, and pulled out a small leather bag that clinked when he handled it. “It’s not much, but it will keep you at least a month. If you give me the name of your solicitor, I’ll send more once I’m away.”
Portia glared and refused the money, much too angry to feel humiliated at his charity. Giles growled and tossed the clinking bag into her lap. She adjusted her skirts, knocking it to the floor.
“Damnation, woman!” Giles knelt to pick up the bag. Portia put her hands behind her back. “Take the money! It’s the only thing I’m able to do for you, damn you, and you will take it.”
He had both arms around her now, trying to wrest her hands free. Portia looked at his flushed face, so close to hers, his eyes blazing with desperation, and felt her heart near to bursting. She pressed her lips to his. He jerked away, startled, then slanted his mouth hard over hers, pulling her tight against him. Her legs parted and he pushed through a froth of skirts to press himself against her, enveloping her in his heat. His chest was hard against her breasts, the thunderous beat of his heart driving hers. Giles locked one arm around her waist and tangled his fingers in her hair, sending the plaits cascading down her back. His tongue pushed between her lips and she opened her mouth with a gasp.
Portia wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed herself wantonly against him, half swooning in the grip of his ravenous kisses. It was not only her heart that ached now, and only the heat and hardness of his body could soothe the need that rose inside her. When he loosened her bodice and slipped it down to expose her breasts, she kissed him all the harder, whimpering when his lips left hers. Burning, they touched her breast and she arched, crying out his name.
Giles froze, his brow pressed hard against her collarbone, hot breath panting over her tender skin. She buried her hands in his thick hair and tugged, not caring if he returned his attentions to her mouth or her breast, so long as he did not stop. He lifted his head finally. “Careful, my lady,” he rasped. “I could lay you back on the bed and make you mine.”
Heat flashed over Portia’s skin. “I would welcome you, my lord,” she said boldly.
She did not have a name for the sound he made then; she only knew she wanted to hear it again. Then his lips closed over her nipple and she could think of nothing but the pleasure he gave her. The world lurched and twisted around her, the only solid point his body, the wet tug of his mouth pulling the fine, hot thread of desire tight in her belly and between her thighs. The camp bed was hard against her back and he was heavy atop her, his mouth ruthless upon her breast, the tug and pull making her spread her legs, making her rock against him. He lay half on her, and it was his hard chest she pressed herself restlessly against, so broad there seemed not room enough for him between her thighs.
Portia couldn’t think. All of her, her very skin, felt hungry for Giles, yet she couldn’t seem to get to his skin, her fingers tangling blindly in his hair, his shirt. Thank heavens he was at least not wearing a waistcoat; having his shirt and parts of her gown between them was bad enough. She slid her hands under his coat and tugged on his shirt until it pulled loose from his trousers. He groaned against her, muscles flexing as her palms found smooth, hot skin.
She whimpered. “Giles, please.” She tried to pull him more fully onto her, seeking his weight, but he lifted away instead, shifting up to kiss her throat, leaving her cold and bereft. “Please.”
His hand brushed against her thigh, and then his fingers found her through the slit in her drawers. “Giles!” She quaked against him as he gave her more pleasure with his mouth and fingers, the two of them more dressed than not, than Roger had with his entire and naked body. “Please,” she babbled, holding tight to his shoulders, aware of nothing in the world but him, “please,” though she didn’t know what it was she begged for.
“Portia.” He lay fully over her now, one hand braced against the bed to keep some of his weight off her, though she wished he wouldn’t and tried in vain to pull him down upon her. His free hand brushed the hair from her face. “We shouldn’t. You shouldn’t let—“
She lifted her mouth to his and surged wantonly against him where he lay between her parted thighs. She could feel him bare and hot against her. He surrendered with a groan, his mouth falling ravenously onto hers as his weight descended. And then he was inside her, and the world dissolved into fire.
It was shimmering still around the edges when she came back to herself and found he no longer moved inside her. He lay with his face pressed hard against her belly, and when she sought blindly for his hands in the froth of her skirts, she found them fisted tightly in the blankets. He shuddered when she called his name, and finally crawled back up to lay half over her, keeping their clothing resolutely between them.
“Giles?”
He kissed her, not as if he were no longer famished, but as if he’d determined to step away from the table with the feast unfinished. Then he tucked her resolutely against him, stroking her side as if to gentle what lay between them. “Forgive me,” he murmured. “I had no right.”
The languor was slow to leave her limbs, but righteous indignation began to push it out at his words. She tried to pull back to look into his eyes, but he would not let her go. “I did, and I gave myself you.” Why did you not want me, she wanted to ask, but he was still shaking against her and she did not understand.
His embrace tightened. “I had no right to risk getting you with child.”
She ought to be afraid at the thought of what they had nearly done. Would have done, had he been less in control of himself. If there was anything that could make her situation worse, it was bringing a child into it. Her reputation would be utterly ruined. But that all touched her with light wings, nothing to the specter of losing him. “I would lie in your arms a hundred times if it meant you wouldn’t leave.”
He groaned and buried his face against her throat with a shudder she could feel through every inch of his body. “Don’t, Portia,” he said against her skin. “Don’t tempt me. Not when I must go.”
“Don’t. Don’t go.”
He drew back then, and kept his eyes lowered as he carefully and gently set her clothing and then his to rights. “There’s no hope for me here.” He reached for her as if he could not resist and stroked a finger down her cheek. “To stay is to court terrible danger. Not only for me, but for you.”
“Me? No one is—”
“Don�
��t come over the fool with me,” Giles growled, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and sitting up. “You can’t have forgotten that someone tried to shoot you. You mentioned it yourself not half an hour ago. Why, if not to remind me of the danger?”
His tone was like a dash of cold water, rousing her from the dream of keeping him with her. Had it really been only a half-hour? It seemed she’d spent hours in his arms, or seconds. Certainly not long enough. She inched towards him, willing to forget the conversation and his unfounded scolding if only he would take her in his arms again, but Giles stood before she could touch him. She watched him step away from the bed, his back set against her, and felt cold without his heat. “Yes, I mentioned him,” Portia snapped. “But not to remind you that there was peril in the woods. Nor to winkle money from you.” She gave the bag of coins that had somehow remained on the bed despite their activities a push that tumbled it to the floor. “You cannot have mistaken his purpose in firing on us; you warned me off yourself the first chance you got.”
Giles sighed and picked up the money, dropping it on the table. “I warned you off because you’d obviously stuck your nose into the business of someone who would not hesitate to harm you.”
Her body ached with the pleasure he had given her, her heart with his withdrawal. The anger helped her to marshal her thoughts and argue when she wanted only to draw him back into her arms. “Someone who is either the murderer or knows who is. Catch him and you’ll have justice for yourself and Lady Amelia.”
“Do you think I haven’t thought of that? What good would it do? I could prove only that he shot at you, and likely not even that. Common sense says it must have something to do with Amelia’s murder, but there’s no way to prove it.” He put a few more things in his valise, almost absently, and Portia breathed a little easier to see he was no longer in an unholy tear to leave. “Besides, he’s got all the home wood to hide in.”
“He can only see the house from part of it. If someone were to draw him in—”
