Portia Da Costa (7 page)

With a spirit-crushing little moue, Adela withdrew her hands, relinquishing him as quickly as she’d grabbed him in the first place. Wilson watched her rub her fingers together as if anxious to wipe off his spoor.

“There, all done,” she said briskly. “Everyone’s satisfied. Now I must go, if you don’t mind. It’ll soon be time to dress for dinner, and with just one maid among four of us, that takes quite a while.”

In the midst of stuffing himself back into his linen, and his handkerchief into his pocket, Wilson realized that she’d grabbed up her portfolio and was halfway to the door.

“Don’t go. Stay just a minute. I have so many questions....” He fumbled with his buttons even as he shadowed her across the room. It was only by physically leaning on the door itself that he stopped her from quitting the room without another word.

Adela tapped her foot, pursed her lips, visibly desperate to be rid of him. Where was the languorous sybarite who’d charmed him barely moments ago? She seemed cool, detached, irritated.

Irritation flooded Wilson, too. Was he so repugnant to her that she regretted
everything?
Dash it, she’d enjoyed herself at the time. Not even the most accomplished actress could have faked those moans and the way she’d wriggled and thrashed. And she’d been wet, by God, silky wet. That simply could
not
be fabricated. If she denied her pleasure, she was an out-and-out liar. He grabbed the door handle and immobilized it. He’d have an answer from her if it killed him, and the unyielding set of her mouth made him feel as stubborn and as mulish as she was.

“Why were you in here? What’s in the portfolio that you’re so protective of?” He fired the questions like bullets. To shock an answer from her. “Where did you learn to pleasure a man so exquisitely?”

Her glowing eyes widened, and she clasped the portfolio to her bosom. She was still calculating the probability of escaping the room, working out if she could get away with all her secrets intact. He could see her sharp mind ticking over, almost as cleverly as his. Was she weighing how much to reveal? Which of her secrets was the least critical and could be sacrificed?

Whatever were they, these things she hid?

Wilson almost gasped aloud when Adela snagged her lower lip with her strong white teeth. His cock—which he’d believed settled—kicked again, hard in his undergarment like a length of tropical wood, aching, aching, aching as if he’d never spent.

“Very well.” Her chin came up. She almost seemed to grow in stature before his eyes, a martial Amazon, girding for battle. And yet what came next was frank and unequivocal. “In respect of your first demand...I came looking for inspiration for my art. Regarding the second, this portfolio—” she tapped her forefinger against it “—is full of that art. My erotic drawings, brought for comparison with classical interpretations.” Her eyes met his, burning darkly, not exasperated as he’d first thought, but infinitely brazen. “And as to the third question? Well, I sell those drawings for a great deal of money, Wilson, and I use a portion of that money to purchase the services of gentlemen of pleasure.”

What?

Wilson’s mouth dropped open. He knew he looked a fool, but didn’t care. He’d heard words, but they hadn’t made sense.

“Now may I go? I’m rather fatigued and I plan to take a rest before dinner.” When Adela shoved on his arm, Wilson stepped aside like an automaton, numbed. His hand slipped from the doorknob and she grasped the thing immediately, gave it a swift turn and wrenched open the door. Before he could speak, she’d swept right by him, her black skirts rustling as she went.

He was still frowning when she disappeared around the corner of the landing, a dark flash, gone again.

Gentlemen of pleasure?

There was no mental box he could seem to fit that in.

Wilson Ruffington couldn’t frame a rational thought.

6

Why, oh Why, oh Why?

“Idiot! Nincompoop! Why, oh why, oh why?”

Adela hurtled into the bedroom she’d been assigned, flung herself and her portfolio on the bed and pummeled the mattress with her fists, gasping for breath. Her mind was a whirl and it was hard to breathe. Corsets weren’t suited to wearing under pursuit...or in times of high stress and anxiety.

What have I done? I must be deranged. Gone quite mad.

Wilson had been on her tail within moments. He wasn’t a man to be nonplussed for long. But in a stroke of blind luck, Adela had escaped him. She’d ducked into a water closet on the landing round the corner, and had been able to close and lock the door with barely a sound.

Thirty seconds later, there’d been a wild thumping on the panel.

“Della! Are you in there? Come out this instant. I want to talk to you.”

Torn between silence and telling him to go and take a running jump into Lord Rayworth’s lily pond, she’d had a sudden inspired flash. Adopting a strangled, amateur dramatics voice, she’d called out in the quavering tones of an elderly dowager, “Kindly go away and stop hammering on this door, young man! Such impertinence!”

Ten long seconds had ticked by in silence, but eventually his footsteps had retreated. A few minutes later, still half expecting him to pounce on her, Adela had inched open the door, and on finding the coast clear, run pell-mell for her room.

You’ve done it again, Wilson Ruffington! Addled my wits... No sooner do I set eyes on you than I turn into an imbecile and a wanton, and let slip the very last secret that
anyone
should be privy to, least of all you.

Still breathing hard, Adela sprang up and stomped back to the door to turn the key. If he didn’t already know which room she’d been given, it wouldn’t take Wilson long to find out, and she needed time alone...to assess the degree of damage she’d done.

If only Sofia or Beatrice were here! Adela could have opened her heart to either one, as both were women of emotional wisdom and experience, and she was confident they’d have words of advice for her. But neither of her two dearest friends moved in this particular set, and this new Wilson dilemma wasn’t something she could discuss with anyone else. Neither her mother nor Sybil must ever know her darkest secrets, and though Marguerite was sensible and intelligent, she was simply too young to share matters of sex with.

Oh, it was all such a mess of complication. This situation had been difficult to begin with—Ruffingtons set at odds with each other by her grandfather, the damned Old Curmudgeon who had no time for women.

But now she’d made it insupportable with her own foolish actions.

A bag of nervous energy, Adela marched across to the window and looked out, although she hung back behind the curtains in case Wilson had taken it into his head to go outside. If he glanced up and saw her, he’d know which room was hers.

There was no sign of an eccentric figure with wild dark hair and a ridiculous dressing gown, but the gardens, the lush green lawns and the topiary were all very easy on the eye. The house itself was a bit of a sprawl, but outside all of nature was kept in order, groomed and harmonious. Some of the house party were out there on the lawn below her window, lounging in white painted garden chairs, consuming lemonade and engaging in small talk. Some sheltered beneath gaily striped umbrellas; others basked in the sun’s rays. All appeared very innocent, relaxed in ambience, yet observing polite decorum.

But who’s tupping whom in secret? Surely I’m not the only one who’s been getting up to mischief.

Knowing something of house parties, Adela suspected there were any number of liaisons taking place beneath the conventional, convivial surface. But all looked normal and respectable out there, just as she’d planned to be before her encounter with Wilson. The only risks she took were confined to the discreet, luxurious confines of Sofia’s pleasure house.

Until now. One look at Wilson and Adela had turned into a lunatic. Ten minutes in his company and one shouting match later, she’d been putty in his hands. And the one delicious orgasm he’d bestowed on her hadn’t been nearly enough. Her body craved more. The very four-poster bed behind her seemed to cry out for his presence, and from the corner of her eye she seemed to see him lounging there against the pillows and the linens.

Damn you, you obnoxious beast, you’ve primed me like a pump and now I won’t be satisfied without a torrent!

Struggling, Adela focused on the view from the window. Her sister Sybil was fluttering around with a croquet mallet and being coy, flapping her eyelashes at her adoring swain, Lord Framley. At least that little exercise was going as planned, and Mama was clearly thrilled. The besotted lad’s aristocratic family was rolling in money, and so far nobody had raised any objection to him paying court to a virtually penniless young woman with no apparent prospects. If Sybil bagged him, it would alleviate a lot of worries.

Turning from Sybil, Adela frowned. There was another handsome male creating a source of disquiet. But in this case one she personally did not find attractive.

Her mother was flirting. Batting her eyelashes at Blair Devine, the young solicitor who she’d met at a small poetry soiree hosted by her old friend Lady Gresham. Adela wasn’t quite sure how interested her mother was in poetry, but Mama had apparently struck up a conversation with Devine, who Lady Gresham declared was “indispensable” for the discreet handling of small legal matters, and now the fellow seemed to have attached himself to the Ruffingtons. Adela didn’t begrudge her mother the pleasure of amusing male company, or a second chance of happiness for herself; after all, one of Papa’s last wishes was that his widow not be lonely forever. It was just her choice of male companion Adela found dubious, and she’d been a little disquieted when Mama had engineered an invitation for her favorite to this house party—Blair Devine was just a smidgen too sleek, too attentive. He set Adela’s teeth on edge, especially when he looked at
her
in a vaguely speculative fashion, too, as if debating whether to pursue her instead of her parent, and was trying to work out whether he could bring himself to court a rather plain spinster. Mama might be the older woman, but she’d been almost a child bride, a mother at seventeen, and she looked wonderful in black, mature yet vivacious.

What was the fellow up to? Dancing attendance on Mama. Offering her more lemonade, even as Adela watched, and inducing almost as much eyelash batting as Sybil was currently indulging in. There was something not quite pukka about Devine’s smooth, handsome style, even though he’d fit right in to the house party, and seemed to be on friendly terms already with a number of the other guests. His modus operandi wasn’t obvious, or particularly flashy, but it, and the man himself still bothered her. She’d tried to be polite to him, nevertheless, for Mama’s sake, as had her sisters. Sybil probably liked him, anyway, because she was amendable to all comers, especially good-looking young men, but Adela had sensed that Marguerite, their youngest, shared her own misgivings. The baby of the family was wise beyond her years, but luckily for her, a little too young for a potential match with Blair Devine.

Well, if you plan to direct your attentions to me eventually, sir, you can think again. I’d rather marry that accursed monster Wilson than you!

And back to Wilson again. Ever thus. Their cousin, both relative and nemesis. Mama swung wildly between poles where he was concerned. One day she heaped complaints upon him for being the unwitting recipient of their grandfather’s riches and title, in the absence of a closer male relative. The next, she hinted and wheedled and schemed, still deluding herself, despite Adela’s vociferous protests, that a marriage between her eldest daughter and the future Lord Millingford was both desirable and a strong possibility.

It will never occur, Mama. You would have done better to fling Sybil at him, or even Marguerite at a pinch. Not me.

But Sybil was interested only in dresses and hair ribbons and her handsome but rather dim Viscount Framley. She and Wilson were like two different species, who spoke different languages. Marguerite’s astute intellect was something that Wilson would probably admire, but she was still only thirteen years old.

Feeling as if her brain was whirling, Adela turned from the window again and began pulling what pins were left from her sorely disarranged coiffure. Her mother would most certainly have a “turn” if she discovered that Wilson had compromised her daughter, but she’d recover like lightning and be delirious with happiness if it meant there might be a marriage.

But I’ve been compromised these seven years, Mama. Much good it has done us.

Unable to settle, even though she was suddenly exhausted, Adela paced the room, touching familiar items brought from home as talismans: her hairbrush, a bottle of smelling salts, the little glass jar containing her favorite cold cream.

Curse the man, when he gave something, even the slightest hint, she always wanted more. Her body was racked with odd, unsettled sensations. Familiar ones. One she’d experienced within the hour. Ones she’d experienced, just as keenly, seven years ago.

Get out of my head, Wilson!

Impossible, though. He’d never left. Not really. The image she saw now was of the younger man, the provocative friend with whom she’d tramped through the willow wood at Ruffington Hall and taken that fateful dip in the river.

In those brief, halcyon days, Wilson had been simply a remote relative on a summer visit, one who just happened to be there at the same time as her family. He’d not been the heir to the family title then, not even close. With Papa still alive, and Mama young and healthy and eager for more offspring of their fond and uxorious union, a long-awaited brother for their three daughters had still been a strong possibility. And even with none forthcoming, another cousin, Henry, was next in line to be Lord Millingford.

But Adela had been fascinated, even enraptured by her blindingly brilliant cousin Wilson, by his beauty and his peculiarity both. On a hot day, they’d crept away from formal tea on the lawn, and the rather sedate and yawn-inducing tennis match being played by several of the guests.

And then her life as she’d known it had changed forever....