Midnight Scandals (5 page)

Wind whipped away the sound of her name, but she stopped. Then, without turning to look, she darted off, skirts in her hands. Wasn’t that just like her, to be contrary and headstrong? He plunged down the hill and slid in the mud, though he managed to keep his feet. Once, she slipped, too, but as he had, she caught herself and kept going.

Water dripped from the brim of his hat onto his face and wherever the drops hit his cheeks his skin burned with cold. She slowed, and God knows she would have needed inhuman endurance to maintain her pace in these conditions.

He caught up at the stone fence that marked the border between the Grange and his property. From here, the side of Northword Hill rose up, turned a darker gray by the rain.

This time, he did not need to shout. “Portia.”

She stopped walking but did not face him. Her hands hung at her sides. Water ran down the back of her neck, making rivers of the tendrils of hair that had escaped her hairpins.

Northword took a step closer. Even if he’d been close enough to touch her, he wasn’t sure he’d dare. Never mind their difficulties, never mind the years and the chasm between them, he did not want to see her in distress. Not like this. “Portia.”

She whirled on him, eyes ablaze. Rain dripped down her face, and she shivered once. Gooseflesh pimpled her exposed skin. “What could you possibly want from me? There’s no need to humiliate me like this. Haven’t I done enough to push you away?”

“I didn’t come after you to humiliate you.”

“Well, you have. Lord Northword.” She walked away, keeping to the line of the fence, away from the Grange. The hem of her skirt was muddy for several inches, and the fabric was soaked halfway to her knees.

He followed and raised his voice to be heard over the rain and the distance she was putting between them. “Since when does my chasing after you to make sure you don’t catch your death of sleet and rain count as humiliation, I’d like to know?”

The skies opened. Unbelievable as it seemed, it was actually raining harder, and cold enough now that there were tiny pellets of ice. He thought she meant to pretend she hadn’t heard him, but then she made a rude gesture. And kept walking. This was the Portia he remembered. Passionate. Always passionate.

“Stop.” He took three long steps and caught her arm, pulling her around to face him. Her mouth was rimmed with white but there was a telltale tremor around her jaws. “We can’t stay in this downpour.”

“I don’t care.” Rain plastered her awful pink gown to her body.

“I don’t care much if you think I’ve humiliated you when I haven’t.”

She stared him down. He did not know this woman. She was not a girl. She’d lived ten years without him, and in ten years, people changed. They left behind fancies of love and passion. They married and went on to live dutiful lives.

“Thank you for telling me how I feel. Now that you are Lord Northword, of course you know all.” She pulled away. He didn’t let go of her arm, and a good thing, too, because she slipped, and it was only because he steadied her that she didn’t fall.

He brought her close and raised his voice to be heard. “It’s bloody hailing. We’re going to freeze if we stay out here much longer.”

“You needn’t have come after me.” Her chin tipped up in an expression so familiar to him he lost sight of those ten years.

“Yes, I did need.”

“You didn’t.” She tugged on her arm. “Let go.”

“You know me better than that.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“You don’t at all if you think I’d leave any lady outside in this weather, not one dressed as you are, and not when I know she’s upset and unable to think as clearly as she ought.”

Her eyes widened, and not in recognition of his good sense. She was magnificently furious. “Let me alone, Crispin Hope, you booby-headed jackass.”

He kept his grip on her arm. “Use your intellect, if you haven’t let it be worn to a blunt by listening to your sister-in-law prattle on about gowns and London and the proper forms of address. You know as well as I that you’ll freeze out here.” He pointed toward the dark gray stones of his childhood home. “Wordless is nearer than the Grange. Let’s go there and wait out the rain.” He brought her closer to him, and he forgot everything that had gone wrong between them, the wrongs they’d done each other. Whatever else had happened, he could not bear to see her unhappy. “You can tell me everything that’s made you so miserable. Will you do that much? Please?”

Something of what he was feeling must have transferred to her, for she wiped water out of her face and nodded. “How long have you got?”

“As long as we need. You know that.” He ached to touch her, to console her, but didn’t dare. She was too angry. And he was too much on edge. “Out of the rain, if you please.”

She nodded again.

“Thank you.” He didn’t give her time to change her mind or form an objection. He swung her into his arms and bodily lifted her over the fence. From the awkward way she reacted, he knew she hadn’t expected to find herself in his arms. Nor had he anticipated doing so until it was done.

When she was safely down and steady on her feet, he stepped over the fence himself. He shrugged out of his greatcoat and put it around her shoulders. One did such things for ladies. As an afterthought, he clapped his hat on her head, too.

“Come along then.” He managed a smile that at long last did not feel false. “Before we drown or are killed by hail.”

He marched them toward the house and around to the front. He remembered the days when he had run up those twenty front stairs, often with Magnus and Portia in tow. He could see the house as it had been then—the servants, now long moved on to other positions, the interior of the house. How strange to think of those rooms as empty and dark. Rooms where his wife had never been and where she had left no mark.

No great surprise, the front door was locked. The groundskeeper lived in West Aubry and had no need for access to the house. His steward visited but twice a year to see to any interior maintenance that might be required.

Rain beat down while they tried every other entrance and found each door locked and barred, every shutter closed. Short of breaking a window or kicking in a door they weren’t getting inside. In the abstract, he was pleased that Wordless was so well protected, but at the moment, he was inconvenienced at being denied entry to his own damn house. Both of them were shivering now, with no sign of the rain letting up and the cold getting sharper.

“The stables?” Portia said.

He nodded and took her hand while they dashed along the gravel drive that led to the stable block only to find the grooms’ quarters locked up as tight as the house. They took refuge in the long stone archway of the stables, eight stalls on each side. The block emptied onto a courtyard with the carriage house at the far side. That was locked tight, too, he discovered.

Back in the archway between the two rows of stalls, they stood side-by-side, dripping water onto the paving stones. He stamped his feet and made a largely futile attempt to brush water off his coat and out of his hair. “At least we’re out of the wet.”

“Yes.” She stared at the rain beating down on the courtyard and cascading from the gutters.

“Tell me why you’re so unhappy?”

“I shan’t. Not more than you’ve guessed.” She shook her head. He’d give anything to have her look at him. “You’ll only think less of me than you do already.”

“She rubs my nerves raw, too, sometimes.”

“Oh,” she breathed. “Awful man.”

“True.” In the silence he stamped his feet some more and managed to dislodge some of the mud that clung to his boots. “It can’t come down like this for much longer.”

“Yes, it can.”

He’d lived here long enough to know it could rain like this until tomorrow. “Listen to us.” He rolled his eyes even though she wasn’t looking at him. “Talking about the weather like two old ladies.”

She shrugged, but halfway through the motion, she shivered. Without thinking, he put his arms around her. She didn’t come close.

“Take pity on me,” he said. “I’m cold.”

After a moment of resistance, she leaned toward him. He eased closer and tightened his arms around her. “Better. Much better.” He rubbed his hands up and down her back. She rested her head against his chest, and he slipped his hands underneath his greatcoat and rested them in the small of her back. He wanted to tell her he’d forgiven her, that he’d never forgotten a moment of their time as lovers, but that seemed…unwise.

After a moment or two of standing like this, she lifted her head and stared at the waterfall sluicing off the roof. The courtyard’s central gutters overflowed. The noise was near deafening. “I don’t think it’s going to stop.”

Like her, he stared at the water. “We can wait a while yet.”

“Hob will worry,” she said. “Magnus, too. They’ll wonder where we’ve got to.”

He continued to stroke her back. “Five minutes. Then we’ll go even if it’s no better.”

With a sigh, she settled against him, tucking her hands between them. Five minutes later, the rain hadn’t let up.

He forgot all about the cold and the damp as he brushed away a tendril of dark red hair that had stuck to her cheek. She pushed away, and he did the strangest, most contradictory, selfishly male thing imaginable. He brought her close instead of setting her back. She lifted her chin and gave him a quizzical look. The world dropped away. This was Portia. His Portia, and whatever had happened between them, no matter how they’d changed, nothing had changed at all.

He lowered his head to hers.

Chapter Five

F
OR THE SPACE OF
half a heartbeat, he told himself he wasn’t going kiss her. It would be stupid and wrong of him, and it would destroy the safety of the friendship they’d carved out for themselves during their years of letter writing.

His chest was so tight with tension, he could scarcely breathe. He was seventeen again, and his brain was overset with lust and desire and emotions too big to name. His cock was hard with the joy of holding this woman in his arms and at the prospect of being inside her. At long, long last.

Northword didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Nor did she. In no way was that fact lost on him.

Her mouth brushed his. Barely there. For an instant, he didn’t react. He couldn’t. Surely, she had not meant that invitation. She was going to marry someone else, wasn’t she? Except she didn’t step away, and he didn’t want her to. She relaxed against him and she made a sound that was not quite a moan yet was soft and edged with need.

Almost no contact between them, yet his blood pounded in his ears. Their first time had been like this. Needful. Soul shattering. He burned in the moment, in her, in the heat of having his arms around her again. Familiar. Blazingly alive. She felt good in his embrace. Right. For the first time in years, he was whole.

She rested a hand on his upper arm, light at first, then fingers gripping. It was sweet, the way she leaned against him, sweet in his arms, and he wanted her so badly he hurt. Jesus, she felt good, and he’d been too long without sexual satisfaction because he was imagining doing a good deal more than her practically chaste kiss.

That condition could not and did not last, a kiss that did not reflect the tension zinging between them. In the initial days of their relations, they’d kissed for hours, what seemed like hours, before he’d brought himself to touch a hand to more than her cheek. It wouldn’t be the same now. Couldn’t be. The soul-stealing pleasure of his first time was just that. First. And therefore memorable. He knew about women, now, thank you very much.

Even during that year between, he’d known how the world worked. So had Portia. They knew what it meant for her to be Portia and him to be the future Northword. He’d been to bed with her, they’d been lovers, and in his thoughts, he was already imagining sexual relations with her.

There was nothing innocent about his desire. Nothing at all. There never had been, not since that long ago day he’d realized his feelings for Portia were more than friendship. Not since the day he realized she felt the same.

She kissed him again, her lips parted this time, and he took what she offered. Somewhere in the back of his head he had the thought that she hadn’t opened her mouth in order to invite more from him, but to draw breath. At the exact same time this was flitting through his thoughts, his mouth was open, too, and he was kissing her without restraint. Not in the least politely. Her mouth softened underneath his, matching, accepting him, answering him.

He knew a great deal more about kissing than he had ten years ago, but he was trembling just as he had then. They fit together, the two of them. He was taller since the last time she’d been in his arms, but she was still a good height for him, and she still made his heart too big for his chest.

The next thing he knew, the last of his restraint melted away, and he had her pressed against the stone wall of the archway, her head between his hands, his tongue in her mouth. Desperate for her. Desperately aroused. She kissed him back, her fingers gripping his upper arms in order to bring him closer. Familiar heat spiraled through him.