“Please do not say any more, your grace, I beg of you.”
“I think, after what we just shared, you should call me Leo.” Perhaps then she would stop thinking of all the duke nonsense as a barrier? “Just Leo.”
He took another step forward and she took a decisive step back. Not in disgust, which would have been bad enough when he had just bared his heart, but in fear. But fear of what?
Him?
Them?
“For both of our sakes, let us pretend that this”—she flapped her hand in the vicinity of their mouths—“did not happen either and never, ever speak of it again, your grace.”
“What if I can’t?” Now that he had let those feelings out, he didn’t want to put them back in. “What if I want you too much to pretend that I don’t anymore? What if we were meant to be, Portia? What if—”
She shook her head. “Trust me, your grace. Nothing good ever comes of playing with fire and I truly don’t want you to get burned.”
Then, before he could get to the bottom of that cryptic comment, she picked up her skirts and dashed after the dogs back into the house.
Almost as if her life depended on it.
Chapter
FOURTEEN
While Portia’s body still hummed with need almost an hour later, her head was spinning like a top. She still couldn’t quite believe what had just happened, or how significant and perfect it had felt. Or where it would have gone if they had not been interrupted again.
But she did, however, know that kissing the duke had been a massive mistake.
For so many reasons she didn’t quite know what to do about it all—other than never see him ever again. A prospect that filled her with such sadness it caused a physical ache in her chest in the vicinity of her heart that she didn’t know what to do about either. The ache had begun the moment he had confessed that she called to his soul. Likely because he called to hers too. So much, she couldn’t stand it.
How on earth could she have been so stupid to develop feelings for a duke?
And not just a duke, but a magistrate to boot? One who had clearly also, unbelievably, developed some feelings for her too.
Or at least for the woman he thought that she was.
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!
For the umpteenth time, she picked up her pen to try to make sense of all her conflicting feelings on paper, but instead paced toher bedchamber window because, for the first time in her life, she was unable to write a single word. Then she stared out, wishing she could just blame the moonlight for what had happened. At some point in the last week the duke had crawled under her skin and mined all her defenses and…
That heady moonlight suddenly cast a human-shaped shadow on the lawn. One that was moving at speed toward the end of the garden.
It was Lady Abigail, and by the dark cloak that she wore and the furtive glances behind her back toward the house, it was obvious that the duke’s sister was up to no good.
Portia didn’t pause to think; for Leo’s sake, she just went after her.
The rest of the house was as silent as the grave, which was odd when nothing usually got past the dogs. It was only when she reached the kitchen and saw both hounds munching on a juicy bone that she realized why they were so quiet. They were so engrossed, they barely looked her way as she hurried out of the back door.
There was no sign of the duke’s sister at the end of the garden, but the gate that had been very much locked when Portia had arrived back from the newspaper was now wide open. There was no sign of her in the quiet mews either, so Portia turned right, assuming that Lady Abigail would head toward town, but some sixth sense made her glance left. That was when she saw two shadowy figures in the darkness hurrying hand in hand toward the desolate parkland.
The closer Portia got, the more apparent it was that Lady Abigail was having a tryst with a man, because once the pair of them started embracing, they didn’t seem to want to stop. She empathized. If the duke’s mother hadn’t interrupted their passionate embrace earlier, she would have offered him everything because she had been so caught up in it all—so caught up in him. She had wanted him that much.
Still did, truth be told.
“Lady Abigail…” Just as Portia and the duke had done, the pair jumped guiltily apart at the sound of her voice and blinked at her in the darkness. The only problem was that the man looked worryingly familiar.
“Percy?” She stalked closer to double-check. “Percy! What the…?”
“Portia!” He looked as surprised to see her as she was him. “What are you doing here?”
