Smiling, Portia kissed his whisker-studded cheek, relishing the abrasion on her lips. “The duke is a kind man, and he is hopelessly in love with Hattie. Most marriages are not founded on such a depth of emotion.”
It was true. The Duke of Montrose was in love with his duchess, and it was plain for all to see. He worshipped Hattie, which was nothing less than Hattie deserved. And in return, Hattie loved her husband quite desperately.
“Your marriage was not founded on a depth of emotion, as you say?” Wolf asked, raising his head to study her once more.
And she could not shake the feeling that shrewd gaze of his saw far too much.
“It was not,” she agreed simply. “Lord Blakewell was not a cruel man, but ours was… Well, suffice it to say that it was not a love match.”
Far from it.
“He did not mistreat you?”
Wolf’s question took her by surprise. Stunned her, for it brought along with it an astonishing realization.
Wolf Sutton cared about her. He cared about her past. It was almost too much to fathom.
“He was…kind,” she said, lacking for a better descriptor. “He was thirty years my senior, and he possessed some notions I did not agree with, but he cared for me in a time when I very much needed it, and I shall forever be thankful for his generosity.”
Speaking about Blakewell—her past—with Wolf, a man who could never be her future, felt odd. But she also wanted to tell him. Speaking about her marriage with the earl, even as she withheld a great portion of the true story, was remarkably freeing. It was as if a weight she had not known was there had been suddenly lifted from her chest.
She could breathe again.
“Trust me, love, his marrying you didn’t have a bleeding thing to do with generosity,” Wolf said wryly. “He was lucky to have had you as his wife.”
Wolf’s steadfast loyalty to her was equally heartening. He was a good man, and she knew it the way she knew the sun would rise again on the morrow. Instinctively. It simply just was.
“Thank you,” she said.
“There’s nothing between us that requires your thanks, Countess,” he said gruffly, dropping a kiss to her temple and then releasing her.
As he stepped away, the withdrawal so sudden she almost cried out at the loss of his comforting strength, Portia took a step in retreat, reaching for the back of a nearby settee to steady herself. They stared at each other in silence for a few moments, a wealth of feeling passing between them, though no words were spoken.
There was so much she wanted to say.
Everything.
So many explanations on her tongue: her past, her mistakes, the way Blakewell had made a ruined girl into a countess, and how he had taken her under his protection, lending her his family’s formidable reputation, claiming her son as his own… But then she had to remind herself that Wolf was very much still a stranger to her. A man she had only known for the span of less than a fortnight.
And she had made mistakes before.
Terrible ones.
She was still paying the price and living with the consequences of those mistakes, eight years later.
“There’s something I must tell you, Portia,” Wolf said, interrupting the war raging within her.
Her heart stumbled. “What is it?”
“It’s Tierney.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “If he is indeed the brother you’ve been seeking, I have to warn you…whatever he’s caught himself up in, it ain’t a pretty spider’s web.”
Avery.
God, yes. How selfish was she, thinking only of herself, her own wants, desires, needs? She could not forget the reason she had met Wolf Sutton to begin with. Her sole reason for venturing to The Sinner’s Palace had not been to fall in love with a handsome East End gaming hell owner, but to find her brother.
The thought sent her already stuttering heart plummeting to her slippers.
Fall in love?
Could it be? Had she?
Nay, there was no way she had fallen in love with Wolf Sutton. She scarcely knew him. He was… She was…
She was in love with Wolf Sutton.
In.
Love.
“Countess?” Wolf asked, his voice and his gaze equally concerned as they reached her. “Is something wrong?”
Everything. Everything was wrong. She was wrong. This was hopeless. She was hopeless. And utterly witless. She could not have fallen in love with a man who was the most unsuitable gentleman she knew, the sort of man Granville would never accept, the sort of man who would be more at home in the rookeries than the salon of a duchess that gleamed with gilt…
And yet, she had.
“Portia?”
She blinked. “I…no, forgive me. Nothing is wrong. I was merely upset by your suggestion that my brother could be involved in something that sounds as if it may be dangerous. Is it dangerous? And what do you suspect him to be engaged in? Surely not anything too nefarious, I hope.”
Part of what she had just said was a blatant lie, but she was not willing to tell Wolf the truth. Not about to confess her mad, inconvenient, wholly astonishing feelings to him. Not going to reveal that her distraction had been owed to the abrupt realization that the emotions skittering through her were far more intense than desire. And that they all belonged to him.
That her heart was his.
“We don’t know what Tierney is about, not for certain. He has been acting as a moneylender for the last few years.” Wolf paused, shaking his head, his countenance grim. “But whatever he’s doing, it ain’t mere moneylending now. It’s far more, and he’s brought my brother into it, which is where it won’t end well for him. We aim to bring our brother back to the family fold where he belongs.”
If Avery was now calling himself Archer, and if what Wolf was telling Portia was to be believed, that meant that Avery was involved in something she could not even fully comprehend. Something so bad that Wolf was avoiding its utterance.
“Have you any notion of just what it may be that Archer Tierney is involved in?” she asked, needing to know and yet despising the possibility that she might discover the brother she loved was no longer a man she could care for.
Wolf shook his head. “Can’t say just yet. We won’t know until we have a talk with him, and the bastard is slipperier than water at the moment.”
She nodded, understanding. But despite the inherent risks, despite the possibility of discovering Avery had become a man who she would no longer wish to know, she needed to find out whether or not he and Archer Tierney were the same, and no matter what he had done. “When you do speak with him, you will send me word?”
“Aye. Of course I will, Countess.” His countenance was grim. “You’d best prepare yourself accordingly.”