Pleasuring the Lady (The Pleasure Wars) (26 page)

“If I had the time, of course I would join you.”

Her mother didn’t sense the shift in his mood, but Portia could hardly breathe as she watched her husband stare at his plate, eyes blank. What in the world had happened in such short hours to make him pull away?

What had she done…not done…what had she said or not said?

Or was he just regretting sharing his past with her because he didn’t care about her enough to be so emotionally intimate?

As the servants arrived to clear the final supper plates, Miles pushed to his feet. “I have a bit of business to attend to, so I won’t be joining you ladies for dessert and sherry. But I would like to speak to you a moment, Portia.”

Thomasina smiled at the couple, continuingly oblivious to the tensions coursing through the room. “Of course. I will meet you in the parlor, my dear.”

As her mother slipped from the room, Portia slowly rose to her feet and faced Miles. She tried to make her jaw strong, tried to keep her emotions off her face, though she feared she failed miserably. Her anxiety was just too high to hide it, especially from Miles.

“Have I done something to displease you?” she managed to croak out, determined to put the subject on the table before he did.

He started, then shook his head. “No. Not at all. Why would you think so?”

She swallowed, for his words were reassuring though his expression was not.
 

“Because you refuse to meet my stare,” she whispered. “Because you have avoided me since you slipped from our bed in the dawn hours.”

He jerked his gaze up and she was almost pleased to see surprise on his face rather than whatever torment was making him so pinched.
 

“A few days ago, you would not have been so bold,” he said.

She shrugged. “Much has happened in that short time and
you
are changing the subject.”

He shook his head. “I would like to address why I wished to speak to you in private,” he said, waving off her question with one hand she now wished to swat.
 

“Very well,” she said through clenched teeth.
 

“Tonight after ten you and I will be going somewhere.”

Portia drew back. “Going somewhere,” she repeated blankly. “What does that mean?”

He lifted his brows and held her stare. “What do you think?”

“One of your sexual adventures?” she asked. As worried as she was about the state of their union, her body fluttered at the thought of some kind of passionate, wicked interlude at his mercy.
 

He nodded, the motion very slow. “Something like that. I will ensure that Bridget knows how you should be dressed. Meet me in the foyer in two hours.”

Her lips parted. “Can
you
not simply tell me what to expect and how to dress or behave?”

He seemed to consider that a moment, then backed away. “Ten o’clock in the foyer, Portia. I will expect you.”

Without another word, he turned on his heel and left her standing in the middle of the dining room, staring after him, speechless, her stomach in a knot somewhere in the vicinity of her pounding heart.

She drew a few deep breaths and then exited the room to join her mother in the parlor. She forced a smile on her face as she opened the door and found her mother perusing a small selection of desserts that had been placed on the sidebar for them.

“Half a year in this house and I shall gain two stone!”

Portia looked at her mother’s slight frame and laughed. “I would like that. And you should enjoy yourself in every way, Mama. You deserve it.”

She poured herself tea rather than sherry and took a place beside the fire. As she sipped the steaming liquid, she kept thinking about Miles. His expression, every turn of phrase, his eyes that would not look at her…

“And you may lose a stone that you cannot afford,” her mother said as she sat across from her daughter and frowned. “You are not having dessert and you hardly touched your meal. One cannot exist on one’s husband alone.”

Portia jolted at the directness and awareness of her mother’s statement. She stared, but Thomasina was innocently spearing a bite of sumptuous cake with a fork.

“M-Mama!” Portia finally stammered.

“You needn’t be so shocked. I wasn’t always a batty old woman,” her mother said with a sigh that belied the teasing of her tone. “I understand what it is like when one is first married to a handsome man. Luckily, it seems Miles is not so fickle as your father turned out to be.”

Portia bit her lip. Right now she wasn’t as certain as her mother.

“Miles is kind, he is generous, but we are not a love match,” she said instead. “I would not be so foolish as to think our current circumstances will not change in a heartbeat.”

Or that they already hadn’t.

She shrugged. “All I can do is try to keep the man happy as long as I can and hope he remains true to his promises after that.”

Her mother set her plate aside and clenched her hands in her lap. “Of course a wife’s duty is to think about the happiness of her husband,” she said slowly. “But, my dear, I encourage you not to do so at the cost of your own.”

Portia shook her head in disbelief. Was this the woman who had been so cut off from reality and the world for the past few years that Portia sometimes wasn’t certain she was aware of any of it? Was
this
her mother?

“Being here is good for you,” she finally responded, her hands shaking in her lap. “I wouldn’t endanger that for any price.”

Now her mother’s expression became worried. “Please don’t make your decisions based on protecting me, Portia. I wouldn’t want to see you follow my path, for it cannot lead to happy places.”

She swallowed. “What do you mean?”

“I crushed everything I was while I tried to make happy a man who could not have cared for me no matter what I did.”

Portia bit her lip. That did sound eerily similar to her own circumstances.
 

“But as you say, Miles is not my father,” she argued. “So how do I honor what he desires without sacrificing myself in an attempt to force him to see me, to want me, to love me if he cannot or will not do so?”

Her mother shifted. “Give him what he desires if it makes you happy. But don’t be afraid to say no if he takes you too far, if you feel he has forgotten to think of you and your needs.” Thomasina reached to take her hand. “I didn’t stand up to your father enough. I wish I had and I don’t want you to say the same thing to your daughter in twenty years.”

Portia squeezed her mother’s hand gently. “Thank you, Mama, for your advice and candor.”

Her mother shrugged. “I cannot always give it, I know, but I love you, my darling. I hope you know that.”

Tears swelled in Portia’s eyes and she dropped to her knees to hug her mother tightly. “I know, Mama. And I love you so very much in return.”

They clung to each other for a moment and then Portia pulled back, swiping at tears.
 

“If ever a moment called for cake, I don’t know when else it would be,” she laughed as she spun to take a slice of the delicious confection.
 

Her mother joined in the laughter and for the next hour they spoke of far less troubling subjects, but deep in her mind, Portia couldn’t help but revisit her mother’s advice.
 

Saying no to Miles would never be easy, but she realized she might have to do it to save her heart and even her sanity.

Miles shot a glance at his wife as their carriage slowed to a stop in front of a tidy London home. Once again there was nothing shocking about the place. Nothing that would imply what happened behind its doors.

But already Portia looked nervous and had been worrying her hands in her lap for the past twenty minutes. He sighed. Their relationship had shifted after secrets shared and tenderness exchanged. Not for the better, perhaps, since awkwardness was now between them, as well as emotions better left unsaid and unfelt.

“Is every middle-class home in the city a haven for sin?” Portia asked with a nervous laugh that broke a small portion of the tension.

He shook his head as the footman opened the door for them. “Only the ones I take you to, but doesn’t it make traveling through London more interesting as you wonder what happens behind each door?”

She pondered that for a moment before she nodded with a blush. “It does a bit. I never would have imagined.”

“And it only gets better,” he promised as he waved the servant away to step down himself.
 

He turned back to assist her and caught his breath. Above him, looking down, her hand outstretched, she was beautiful in an ethereal way. Her hair was like pale spun gold, her dark eyes wide and unreadable against porcelain skin.
 

But more than that, he saw her heart, her loyalty, her strength in the face of adversity. It was all there, written on her face for anyone to see who wasn’t too fool to overlook it.

He wanted to own her, truly own her, body, soul, heart. He wanted, in that moment, to make her happy in every way for the rest of her days.
 

The shock of that realization made him rock back on his heels and stare until she tilted her head.

“Miles?” she said. “Are you well? You are very pale.”

He shook away the treacherous, dangerous, foolish thoughts and instead helped her down. “Fine. Come.”

He knew he sounded short, but he couldn’t risk anything different as he turned on his heel and moved toward the house, with her trailing behind him. It was abominably rude and he couldn’t stop it. Not without saying too much, not without her seeing everything because she was clever.

The door opened and the servant there nodded and motioned toward the staircase leading up and up. He reached back and took her hand at last, squeezing gently as he led her up to the second floor, then down a hallway to a chamber.

They stood at the closed door and he turned to face her. She was pale, shaking even though she was trying to hold herself steady.

He cupped her slender shoulders with his palms and stared into her eyes, even as he silently ordered himself not to get lost there, not to change his mind about the prudence of what they were about to do.

“I don’t hear the…the moans like I did at the club,” Portia whispered.

He nodded. “That is because there aren’t many others here. This isn’t a club, it is a private residence used for very special rendezvous.”

Swallowing hard, she murmured, “Special.”

He squeezed gently. “I will be here with you,” he reassured her.
 

She hesitated, but then she nodded, giving him her trust. His chest swelled at that and he released her to open the door behind him so that she wouldn’t see how much her faith meant to him.

He stepped aside to allow her into the chamber. She took one step into the large room, looking around in nervous anticipation, but then she stopped, frozen in place. She turned back to him with a shake of her head.

“Miles?”

He looked into the room, seeing it through her still-innocent eyes. Candles flickered all around, a fire burned merrily across from a large bed where two shirtless men stood waiting.

He took her hand. “Don’t be afraid.”

She tugged gently against his grip. “What is happening?”

“You have this idiotic idea that no one could desire you, that you were invisible before our circumstances forced me to see you for the desirable woman you are.” He swallowed because the next sentence was suddenly impossible to say. “Tonight, these men will prove to you how wrong you are.”

Chapter Twenty

Portia could scarcely breathe as she stared at Miles. She was going mad, that was the only explanation for what she had just heard.

“You want me,” she panted, “to go to bed with those two men?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “Not fully.”

She blinked, frustration meeting confusion and shock. “What does that mean?”

“I would not want you to completely submit yourself, not until—” Miles cut himself off with an uncomfortable shift of his weight. “But they will pleasure you without…without penetration.”

Portia’s mind spun and her heart sank deep, deep into her stomach. Not until? Not until what, he was finished with her? Not until she had borne him a few unquestionably legitimate heirs? Not until he didn’t give a damn anymore?

“And what will you be doing while this is going on?” she asked, clenching her teeth and trying not to allow tears to fall. “
Fully
penetrating some whore in another chamber?”

He shook his head and his eyes were wide with surprise. “No, Portia, of course not. I will be watching you be pleasured. And when you cannot take it anymore, they will leave and I will enjoy the fruits of their labor.”

Portia leaned against the wall beside the door and tried to catch her breath. None of this made sense, but she had to focus. Think.

She looked at the two men who were apparently here to seduce her in front of her husband. She couldn’t deny they were very handsome. One was dark blond, thickly muscled like something out of Viking lore. The other was a taller, dark-haired man, lean from work.