CHAPTER6
She’d told Wolf to return to where he belonged.
So naturally, he’d found his way to the chamber that was hers. It hadn’t been difficult. With the rest of the busy household abed, he had slipped through the halls with ease, familiar enough with the layout of town houses thanks to his various forays within them—as a guest both invited and uninvited. He had opened two doors to chambers which were clearly not in use. On the third, he had found hers.
A fire in the grate was his first indication.
The second was the scent—elegant and complex, like a bouquet of flowers, clean and bright and beautiful. Maudlin though the sentiment was, Wolf could not shake it from his mind. And the third was the obvious feminine presence. The pictures on the walls, a vase of fresh hothouse blooms on a table, a stack of well-read books by the bed, the extravagant counterpane and intricate paper-hangings with an assortment of vibrant birds and flowers.
Hands clasped behind his back, Wolf paced the room, waiting for her to return from the nursery. Portia had assumed he would see himself out by the same means he had entered and leave her secrets intact. But the sight of her bruised cheek, hidden adroitly by some manner of cosmetic, remained burned into his mind. He could not forget it any more than he could forget her. Someone had hurt her, and he damn well wanted to know who and why.
At last, the door to her chamber opened, and Portia stepped inside, the brace of candles still in hand, casting a warm glow over the space and chasing the shadows. She gasped when she saw him, the portal falling softly closed at her back.
“What are you doing in my chamber?” she demanded, her voice quiet yet loud enough to carry and bearing the lash of her disapproval.
He strode forward. “You said I was to escort myself to where I belonged.”
He stopped when he was near enough to touch her but restrained himself. His attempt to tease did not win a smile from her as he had hoped. She eyed him nervously, her countenance pale. It occurred to him that she had reapplied whatever paint she had used to hide the bruise, for it was currently not visible once again.
“To your gaming hell,” she countered crisply. “That is where I intended for you to go, or to wherever it is that you lay your head at night. Your mistress, perhaps?”
He did not think he misunderstood her last question. She wanted to know more about him. To be certain there was not another woman in his life. She was in luck. There were none. Had been none for some time. Not for a lack of trying from some morts. He just hadn’t been interested.
He shook his head slowly. “I haven’t a mistress, Portia.”
“Oh.” She nodded, lips compressed. “Yes. Good.”
“I would never have kissed you if I were otherwise entangled,” he felt compelled to tell her.
Why, he knew not. He expected it was because he was touched in the head. Certainly, he owed the Countess of Blakewell no explanation of how he lived his life or with whom he shared his bed.
Portia placed the brace of candles upon a nearby table. “You cannot be here.”
He made an expansive gesture, as if he were presenting something triumphantly. “I can indeed, my lady, for here I am.”
She caught her lower lip between her teeth, as if attempting to subdue a chuckle. “You are deliberately misunderstanding me, just as you did when I told you to leave.”
She needed him, and he was not going to bloody well abandon her. Not when he knew someone was ill using her. Not when she had an innocent lad beneath her roof.
Wolf passed a hand along his jaw. “You never told me to leave, Countess. If you had, I’d have gone. You told me to go where I belonged. I reckon I belong here as well as anywhere else.”
Aye, he belonged where she was. He felt it to his marrow. Two days he had known her. But the time did not matter. There was something incontestably deep and true between them. A bond which spoke to him. And he was a cove who very much did not wish for a woman in his life. Especially not one who was so far out of reach.
“You are in my bedchamber,” she said.
As if he needed her to tell him they were standing in her private space, a bed looming on the wall opposite, invitingly empty and beckoning. But that was not what he had come here for, even if he had spent the previous night haunted by thoughts of her naked in his arms. He had come here to help her, damn it.
“It seemed a plummy place for us to talk about that bruise on your cheek and who gave it to you,” he said, his gaze dipping to the spot where he knew violence secretly marred her skin.
How could anyone have raised his hand to any woman? Only a cowardly, vicious, heartless bastard would do so. And Wolf was going to do everything in his power to make certain the whoreson never raised a hand to hurt Portia again.
“I already told you nothing happened and it is none of your concern,” she said coolly. “Now, if you please, go. You cannot linger here. If anyone should discover your presence…”
Her words trailed off, but he did not mistake the tone of fear lacing them.
“You are a widow, and this is your household, is it not?” he probed. “Surely you would not be the only society lady to take a lover.”
Indeed, he knew she would not be. The peccadilloes of the quality were notorious. Many an unhappy wife had found contentedness in the arms of another, and vice versa. Floating hell, the gossip that swirled at the tables of The Sinner’s Palace, when men’s tongues had been loosened by liquor, were enough to shock even the most jaded of rakehells.
Her lips parted, as if she were searching for words but unable to find them. After a pause, she spoke. “You are not my lover.”
Yet, he wanted to add.