She yawned and ran one hand down her pleasantly sore body. In spite of her best intentions she’d been unable to curb her insatiable appetite for him last night. No doubt it was too late to hide her true nature from Stacy. Not that he seemed to mind. In fact, for all that he looked like a man carved from ice, he was just as insatiable.
Thoughts of Ivo came unbidden. He’d believed he was the ultimate lover, just like every other Roman man she’d ever met, but in truth he’d been selfish and quick.
His lack of skill in the bedroom might have been bearable if Portia had not already had Benedict as a lover. The Englishman had taught her women could enjoy bed sport every bit as much as men, and certainly more frequently. He’d shown her how to please herself as well as him. Portia now realized he’d been exceptional for a boy his age.
Not as exceptional as Stacy, but then, her husband was no boy.
Portia wondered how he’d learned his lovemaking skills and her chest tightened with jealousy. It was better for both of them if she did not dwell on such matters. No doubt he’d kept mistresses or had lovers, just like other men of his class. Well, wherever he’d learned his skills he was as generous and considerate in the bedchamber as he was everywhere else.
The door opened and Daisy entered with a breakfast tray. Portia realized she wore only a sheet tangled around her hips and scrambled to cover herself.
Daisy didn’t seem to notice. “Good morning, ma’am.” She set down the tray and went to fetch Portia’s robe, holding it out for her.
“Has everyone else already breakfasted?” Portia asked, tightening the sash about her waist.
“Mr. Harrington insisted you be allowed to sleep and he ordered this breakfast for you.”
Portia looked down at the tray, which was laden with more food than she could eat in a month.
“I gather we’re anticipating a great many people?” She munched a piece of toast while Daisy laid out her favorite day dress, a gold and yellow gown that had always reminded Portia of a daffodil.
“Oh yes, everyone will come, ma’am. Everyone is mad to see you, Mr. Harrington, and Whitethorn.”
“Mr. Harrington has never had a party before?”
“Not as long as I’ve been here. He hasn’t done much socializing since—” Daisy broke off and colored.
“Since what, Daisy?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Come now, you are my source of information in Bude. Since what?” It was shameless to pump one’s servant for gossip but Portia could not resist the urge. Besides, who else would tell her anything?
“Well, since he was courting Miss Reynard—she that married Sir Stephen.”
Portia suppressed the spurt of jealousy she felt at the thought of Stacy’s former fiancée. “They live somewhere between Bude and Stratton, I collect?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you think Lady Watley and Sir Stephen will come?”
“My mum always says Lady Watley is the nosiest woman in all of Cornwall.”
Portia laughed at her usually sunny maid’s sour look. “Then they’ll not be able to resist a visit to Whitethorn.”
“No, nor a look at Mr. Harrington’s bride. Everyone in the county knows who you are.”
Portia shivered at that news; she would be glad to leave the famous Stefani name behind her. She’d be even happier if people forgot that Ivo had ever existed.
Portia and Stacy were chatting with the Lawsons when a fine carriage rolled down the long drive. “Ah, Sir Stephen and Lady Watley,” the vicar said, confirming Portia’s suspicions. “We’ll move along and let you greet your guests.”
Portia watched with interest as her husband greeted the woman he’d once considered marrying. Penelope Watley was everything Portia was not: dainty, blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful. The green-eyed monster that always lurked close by growled menacingly as Stacy bowed over the other woman’s hand. He was as coolly friendly with the pretty blonde and her rather oafish-looking husband as he was with everyone else.
Sir Stephen tore his eyes away from her husband long enough to give Portia a look that made her skin crawl.
“Congratulations, Mrs. Harrington.” He leered, eying her from head to toe. “Aren’t you looking blooming this morning?”
His wife tittered and Portia just stared. This was the man Lady Watley preferred to Stacy?
They chatted for a few stilted moments before another set of guests arrived and the baronet and his wife moved along.
A short time later, when they were alone, Portia looked up at her extraordinarily beautiful husband and smiled. “I understand Lady Watley was once my rival?”
“There is nobody to rival you, Mrs. Harrington.” The words were low and intimate but his black lenses glinted and he looked implacable, remote, and cruel; nothing like the hot, tender lover she’d enjoyed several times last night. She realized that side of him—the passionate side—was only for her.
Heat pooled in her stomach and between her thighs and she shook her head, maddened by her desire for him. “It is just as well you are wearing those glasses today, Mr. Harrington.”
His lips curved into a slight smile and he was just about to say something when Frances approached. “Will you come and help with the selection of the croquet teams?”
He kissed Portia’s cheek. “Duty calls, my dear.”
Duty called for Portia, as well, and she greeted at least fifty people over the next half-hour. She was beginning to droop when a small break occurred in the procession of guests, so she slipped around the side of the house, to where tall box hedges offered some privacy from the milling crowds. She’d just slumped onto a stone bench and closed her eyes when voices approached.
“She’s not quite what I expected,” a female voice said.
A low masculine chuckle answered. “She’s certainly nothing to you, Penny. And Harrington? My God! The man is a freak of nature. I’ve seen him before, of course, but never so close up. He looks like a statue come to life.”
“Count yourself fortunate his eyes are covered, Stephen.”
Portia’s blood roared at their words and she stood, preparing to march around the hedge and give them both a nasty set-down. But the next words arrested her.
“I still can’t believe you saw him coming out of a brothel only last week,” Lady Watley said, her voice oozing with smugness.
Portia’s body froze.
“As bold as you please in broad daylight,” Sir Stephen confirmed. “Kitty Charring’s place over in Plymouth.”
“I don’t want to know how you learned of such a place, Stephen,” his wife chided, her voice growing faint as they moved away.
“Oh, Penny, you don’t need to worry about—”
Portia didn’t hear the rest of what he said but she’d already heard more than enough. Stacy had visited a bordello in Plymouth? She’d wondered why it took him almost four days to secure a marriage license.
She swallowed hard several times and it felt like crushed glass in her throat.
Yet another man who took lovers—even before they were married? How could this be happening to her all over again? How?
Portia avoided being alone with her husband for the remainder of the afternoon. She didn’t want to be near him until she managed, somehow, to get her ferocious temper under control. She hoped she hid her feelings, but later, when they played croquet, she couldn’t help the vicious triumph that surged through her when she hit his ball so hard it rolled almost into the woods.
Jeremy Lawson sidled up to her and whispered in her ear. “Marital discord already, my dear Portia?”
Portia had laughed, drawing a puzzled look from her husband before he went to look for his ball.
By the time the last of the guests were persuaded to leave it was past dark and Portia was exhausted. And more furious than ever.
They’d just waved off a final straggler and shut the door when Stacy turned to her. “You must be exhausted, my dear. Why don’t you go up to bed and I’ll have Cook send up
a tray. You really should get some rest tonight.” He brushed his lips against her cheek and it was all she could do not to shove him away.
Portia smiled tightly. “Yes, I believe you are right—I am tired. Good night, Mr. Harrington.” She left him without waiting for a response, storming up the stairs to her chambers and flinging open the door to her room so hard it rattled her teeth and made Daisy jump.
“I will undress myself.”
Daisy took one look at Portia’s thunderous face and fled.
Portia did not undress. Instead, she commenced to pace her chamber, winding herself up as though she were a watch. By the time she heard the door to Stacy’s room close three hours later she was nearly blind with rage. When she could no longer hear movement on the other side of the connecting door she flung it open without bothering to knock.
He was lying in bed, the covers pulled up to his waist, his chest naked, a book in his hands, and clear reading spectacles perched on his perfect nose. He looked from the door, which had bounced off the wall, to Portia.
“You will let me rest?” Portia asked in a nasty voice.
His eyebrows shot up and he set aside his book and removed his glasses.
“Good evening, Portia.”
“Don’t you dare ‘Portia’ me!” Fury roared in her skull like the crashing surf of the ocean, drowning that tiny part of her brain that advised her to get control of her emotions.
“I collect you are angry about something?”
“How bloody perceptive!”
His handsome features turned rigid. “Please don’t raise your voice at me.”
“Did you go into a brothel in Plymouth when you went to get the marriage license?”
He flinched back, as if she’d struck him. “I beg your pardon?” He spoke slowly and clearly, his words covered in frost.
Portia recklessly ignored both his freezing tone and look. “Perhaps you need me to speak more plainly? When did you last lay with a prostitute?” She enunciated the words in an insulting parody of his.
His eyes narrowed to dangerous red slits. “I would ask you not to use that tone with me, ma’am.”
“And I would ask you to answer my question, sir.”
“I have no intention of doing any such thing.”
A vicious wave of anger rolled over her. Portia recognized the feeling although it had been some time since she’d felt it—her last argument with Ivo. Pure fury seized her in its punishing grip; she needed something to throw, break, hurt.
Her eyes flickered over his body and moved to the rest of the room. The chamber was almost completely white: white silk hangings on the walls, a white counterpane, ivory carpets over dark wood floors. The bed was a huge mahogany four-poster that looked as though it had come from some gothic castle. And her husband looked like an angry, haughty god bent on disciplining an unruly human as he lay there with his arms crossed over his chest. Portia’s eyes landed on the cabinet beside her, where a wooden statue sat. Her hand moved toward it.
He was out of the bed like a flash of lightning, his hand on her arm as her fingers closed around the wooden projectile.
“No.” His voice was ice over iron. “You will not.” He squeezed her wrist hard enough that she released the statue. Her right hand moved toward his face, palm open, and again he anticipated her, catching that wrist, as well. He looked down at her with violet eyes blazing, a muscle jumping in his clenched jaw. “What have I done to make you believe I am capable of such behavior? You do me a grave injustice.”
Portia heard the truth in his words—saw it in his eyes—but jealousy gripped her in its brutal talons and squeezed until all she could think of was him with some phantom woman—two beautiful people writhing in each other’s arms. A feral noise tore from her throat and she launched herself at his mouth. He met her with a violence that equaled hers. It wasn’t kissing, it certainly wasn’t making love. It was battle: it was the unrestrained impulse to dominate, subdue, and consume.
Something inside her began to unravel as he plunged his tongue into her, over and over. Portia couldn’t resist him and didn’t want to. She released his neck and slid down his body to her knees. He was long, hot, and erect and she took him into her mouth, subjugating him the only way she knew how.
He groaned. “Good God, Portia.” His hands came to rest on her head, his fingers threading into her hair.
She closed her eyes and worked him so relentlessly he’d never be able to remember he’d ever had any other woman. She would enslave him the way he’d so effortlessly enslaved her.
Her mind became a blank, empty of anything except the driving need to possess and control him—to make him hers.
It could have been a minute or an hour when his body began to shake and shudder. She redoubled her efforts, taking him deep into her throat, driving him over the ledge of self-control.
“Portia,” he hissed, trying to pull out of her mouth.
Portia slapped away his hand; she wanted every part of him—she needed all of him. When he drove himself deep, she dug her fingers into his hips and pulled him even deeper, until she could take no more. Every muscle in his body went taut and he made a sound of pure animal need, his shaft thickening and jerking as he emptied himself deep inside her.
Portia gloried in her ability to undo him; working him until he had nothing left to give. Only then did she pull back and release him, doubling over and gasping for breath, her lungs on fire. It took several moments before she could look up at him.
He stared down at her with a dazed expression, his lips parted and his chest rising and falling as if he’d been running. He shook his head and then took her arms and lifted her to her feet.
“Portia.”
She turned, refusing to look at him.
She hated him.
She loved him.
Stacy felt as though his head had been emptied of all rational thought as he lifted her to her feet: Holy. Bloody. Hell. She wasn’t on fire—she was fire.
She would not look at him and a hot wave of shame rolled through him. He’d just spent in her mouth, thrusting into her so deeply he’d felt the back of her throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if that would somehow erase his savage behavior; once again he’d used her harder than he’d ever used any prostitute.
He had to apologize; he needed to assure her this wouldn’t happen again.
He tried to pull back but she clung to him. “I’m sorry, Portia.”
She merely clung harder.
“Portia, look at me.” He could hear the exhaustion in his voice. It had been a long week.
“No.”
He gave a tired chuckle at the petulant sound and took her chin, forcing it up. “I’m sorry—I should have never done—” Christ, what did one call his behavior of a few moments earlier?
“I wanted it.”
He blinked at the unexpected words and then met her mulish look—a look that dared him to say he’d not enjoyed himself. Well, perhaps he would address the matter of his brutish behavior some other time. He held her gaze. “As much as I enjoyed the second part of this passionate interlude I still don’t understand—why are you so angry with me?”
She clenched her jaws tight enough that he could see the sinews and muscles beneath the skin.
Stacy sighed. “I don’t know what you heard today but I did not lie with any prostitutes when I went to Plymouth. I have not been with another woman since meeting you. Surely you cannot be angry about what I did before I met you?”
Her black eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Portia?” he prodded when she didn’t say anything, “are you angry about things I did before we met?”
“No.” She sounded like she was, anyhow.
Stacy wanted to strangle her. Instead, he took her in his arms and kissed her tangle of wild black hair, inhaling the already familiar scent of her. Lavender on fire. “You are enough woman for me,” he murmured and then laughed. “More than enough; I don’t want anyone else.”
He felt her squirm an
d released her.
She looked up at him with eyes that were wounded and ashamed. “I’m a jealous woman.”
Stacy barely caught his snort of amazement in time.
“I warned you before you married me,” she said. “When I think about you with another woman I want to throw something. Or hurt somebody. You, I suppose.” She gave him a miserable half-smile and shoved him in the chest with her strong pianist’s hands.
“I have no plans to be with any woman other than you. I believe in fidelity. I suppose I should have told you that, but I assumed you knew that.” He stared at her, unsure of where this passion came from or what he could say or do to soothe her. “Turn around,” he finally said, his fingers going to the torturous row of buttons on her gown. “Why did Daisy not undress you?”
“I was too angry.”
“Mmm.” He decided to leave the subject alone until he had her naked in bed, where the only thing she could hurl at him was her body.
He released her from her stays and stockings and tucked her beneath the covers before extinguishing the candles and joining her. She snuggled against him, her body deliciously soft and warm.
“Why didn’t you want me tonight, Stacy?” she demanded through a yawn.
“I always want you, Portia. In fact, it is rather distracting how often I think of bedding you.” Not to mention embarrassing. “But you are carrying my child and you looked exhausted. I wanted you, but I was trying to be a considerate husband rather than a rutting beast.”
“I want a rutting beast.”
“Right now?”
“No. Right now I want to sleep. But I shall want you later. Later tonight,” she clarified, her words again distorted by a huge yawn.
He grinned into the darkness. “Very well, I shall be happy to oblige. Just remember it was you who asked for a rutting beast.”
“Mm.”
Stacy listened to her regular breathing, only able to relax after she’d fallen asleep.
Bloody hell. He’d never met anyone like her. Part of him was thrilled she felt so attached to him and so possessive. But part of him was uneasy. He’d been accustomed to a well-ordered, quiet life. He hadn’t even known he had such depths of passion inside him until meeting her. He’d always enjoyed sex, but it had never consumed him. Portia consumed him.
The Music of Love Page 15