“You promised!” She swatted him.
That only made stopping all the harder.
“You—!” She biffed him again.
He caught her hands, held them down, locked in his. “No—stop.” He dragged in a breath, his gaze on her face. The real worry and confusion in her eyes—clear now she’d lost her temper—hauled him back to sobriety with a thump. She couldn’t believe . . . ?
He captured her gaze, held it. “There is no possibility in this world that you could ever be like Kitty. That you would ever convert to something like her.” She didn’t look convinced. “Believe me—none. No prospect at all.”
Narrow-eyed, from behind the black screen of her lashes, she studied his face. “How do you know?”
Because he knew her.
“You are not Kitty.” He heard the words, dragged in a breath and invested the next phrases with absolute conviction. “You could never—would never—behave like her.”
She held his gaze, her expression still unsure.
He suddenly realized just what they were talking about—all they were talking about. His lungs contracted, his throat tightened as he realized she—they—stood teetering on a precipice.
He’d known, expected, would have been shocked if she hadn’t had reservations, if she hadn’t thought long and hard before giving herself to him.
Knowing her so well, her curiosity, her willful need to know, he’d been confident of her ultimate decision. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined Kitty would throw up a hurdle, let alone a hurdle like this.
He searched Portia’s eyes as she searched his. Hers were so dark, the color of midnight, only strong emotions were easy to define. Now, they were simply less sharp, clouded by uncertainty—an uncertainty that was self-directed, not, as he’d anticipated, directed at him.
She blinked; he sensed her retreating. Instinctively reacted.
“Trust me.” He gripped her hands tighter, captured her gaze anew, then he altered his grip and lifted her hands, first one, then the other, to his lips. “Just trust me.”
Her eyes had widened. After a moment, she asked, “How can you be so sure?”
“Because it . . .” Lost in her eyes, aware he had to speak the absolute truth, he couldn’t for the life of him think of words to describe all that they meant by that, the reality of what they were discussing. “This—all that’s between us, all that could be—not even that would ever be strong enough to change you. To make you into a different person.”
She frowned, but in thought, not rejection. He let her draw her hands from his; she turned and faced the fields, looking, perhaps, but not seeing.
After a moment, she swung around and walked on toward the lookout. He stirred, and followed on her heels. They reached the lookout and went inside. She stared out at the Solent. Two feet away, he shoved his hands in his pockets and waited.
He didn’t dare touch her, didn’t dare press her in any way.
She glanced at his face, then slowly ran her gaze down his frame, as if she could sense the tension investing every muscle. Returning her gaze to his eyes, she raised a brow. “I thought . . . expected you to be more persuasive.”
Jaw locked, he shook his head. “The decision’s yours. You have to make it.”
She was going to ask why—he saw it in her eyes—but then she hesitated, looked away.
A minute later, she turned from the view. He followed her out, ducking under the wooden archway; they headed back to the Hall.
They walked in silence, their usual easy, oddly connected silence. They were aware of each other, yet were content pursuing their own thoughts, knowing the other would not take umbrage, wouldn’t expect attention.
His thoughts were all of her, of them. Of what was between them, that suddenly broadening, deepening connection. It was developing in ways he hadn’t expected, yet now he saw them, far from reining back—something his rakish self was certain he should do—other instincts, deeper instincts, insisted he should press on, grab, seize, lay claim. That he should be pleased with the strength he sensed, with the emotional depth, with the strands that were being woven from elements unrelated to the physical, linking them in ways he doubted either had foreseen.
He’d recognized from the first that getting her to trust him enough to accept him as her husband would be a difficult task. Doing so against the backdrop of the disintegration of Henry and Kitty’s marriage was creating unexpected scenarios, forcing him to consider things, to evaluate aspects, feelings, expectations he otherwise would have taken for granted.
Like the fact he trusted Portia completely, unequivocally—and why. Why the thought of her turning into another Kitty was so ludicrous, why he’d laughed.
She couldn’t become another Kitty, and still be Portia.
Her strength of character—that backbone of steel he’d long known in his sisters and recognized long ago, even more intensely, in her—simply wouldn’t permit it. In that, he knew her perhaps better than she knew herself.