Pleasuring the Lady (The Pleasure Wars) (28 page)

“Miles,” she whispered, reaching for him and cupping his face. “I’m not sorry I told you, even though I know it will destroy everything. But love is meant to be shared, and I would have regretted it more had I never confessed what is in my heart. I hope one day you will come to understand that, even though you’ll never return those feelings.”

He stared up at her, face crumpled with defeat and sadness.
 

“Goodnight,” she added.

She let him go and pulled the door shut herself. And it wasn’t until the carriage was safely on the road, heading toward home, did she let tears of disappointment fall.

Chapter Twenty-One

Ava was silent, her lips pinched and thin as she watched Portia pour tea. She had been silent for a very long time. Christian, however, was not.

“What do you mean your husband hasn’t been home for three days?” he asked, repeating the last words Portia had said a few tense moments before when she told a sanitized version of her final encounter with Miles.

Christian was angry, there was no mistaking that. Portia flinched at the reactions of her friends. Here they were, happy together after a long battle to become so, and they couldn’t understand what was happening in her life. But standing in their parlor, enduring their pitying stares, she could hardly explain her position either.

“I knew the risks of my confession of love when I made it,” she said with a sigh as she leaned back in her chair. “And I cannot regret being truthful.”

Ava blinked, her face filled with wonder. “You are forever filled with surprises, my friend.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t come here for pity. My mother has been anxious the past day and Potts thought I should go out and stop fussing over her.”

Ava shot a glance at Christian that was filled with unspoken communication. He nodded, then he leaned over to press a brief kiss on Portia’s cheek.
 

“You will never have my pity, my dear. Only my friendship. Now I shall go so you and Ava can discuss whatever it is women talk about when a man leaves the room.”

Portia smiled weakly. “Boxing and the state of shipping.”

He laughed as he kissed Ava and slipped from the room, leaving the two women alone.

The moment the door shut, Ava arched a brow. “Are you trying to tell me you aren’t heartbroken?”

Portia shivered as emotions she had been ignoring ricocheted through her. Her eyes stung with tears and her hands shook before she clenched them in her lap.
 

“Of course I am heartbroken. I told Miles I loved him and he put me in a carriage and disappeared into the night and God knows whose arms.” She shrugged. “I die a little every night when I wait for him and he doesn’t come home. If I hadn’t heard from some sympathetic servants that he was alive and well, only staying in another property he owns in London, I would fear he was dead.”

Ava shut her eyes. “I’m sorry. It was a silly question.”

Portia regained her composure with great difficulty. “I can only do my best to accept my current circumstances, can’t I? I knew what the risks were when I said what I did. In fact, I could have avoided that confession altogether.”

“And why didn’t you?” Ava asked softly.

Portia shook her head in frustration. “I’ve spent my entire life hiding, trying to please men who didn’t care about me. I said yes when I meant no, I kept quiet when I should have spoken. I hid against walls and prayed no one would look at me. All the support Miles has given me since our marriage showed me that I cannot do that anymore. I shouldn’t. And so I was brutally honest with him. Perhaps that is the best I can be with
anyone
in my life.”

Ava slipped over to the settee beside her and wrapped an arm around her. With a gasp of breath, Portia rested her head on her friend’s shoulder.
 

“Anyone who doesn’t love you is an idiot,” her friend whispered. “You are remarkable.”

Portia smiled through renewed tears. “Hopefully, I will someday feel that way. Right now I feel rather sad and empty despite my lack of regret.”

“You
will
feel happy again, I assure you,” Ava promised, though Portia couldn’t believe her. Life wasn’t fair sometimes, that was all there was to it.

The question was, could she learn to live with circumstances as they were now?

As Miles sat in the comfortable chair beside the fire at his club, he ached as if he’d been in a physical fight with a person twice his size. But as he stared at the half-empty drink in his hand, he couldn’t deny it wasn’t a physical pain that damaged him so deeply.

It was something far more intense and disturbing.
 

He wanted to go home. No, not just home. He
wanted
his wife. The wife who had told him she loved him with words that echoed in his mind on a constant loop, even in his restless dreams.
 

Only he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t face her and her feelings. He
couldn’t
because it would only bring them both pain.

“Who knew you were such a son of a bitch.”

Miles jolted as Christian, the Duke of Rothcastle, thrust himself into a chair across from him, set his cane aside, folded his arms and glared.

Miles sighed. So Portia’s protectors had finally come for him. Good, he deserved whatever poison they would hurl his way.

“Rothcastle,” he muttered as he poured himself another drink from the bottle he had pilfered from a servant at the club. “Would you like one?”

The duke shook his head. “I don’t want your hospitality or your liquor, Weatherfield.”

Miles leaned back and set his drink aside untouched. “Then have you come to challenge me to a duel?”

For a moment, Rothcastle seemed to consider the possibility.
 

“I would, but I doubt my wife would approve. She would tell me that killing you would bring Portia no pleasure, nor would it help her reputation. And unlike you, her
husband
, we actually care what happens to her.”

Miles flinched. How he wanted to lash out at Rothcastle for saying such a thing. But he deserved it.

“I do care for her,” he protested, rubbing a hand over his face. “What is happening between us is…it is very complicated, I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

Christian leaned back with a snort of utter disgust. “Complicated? Complicated.”

Now Miles was beginning to get angry. The mocking tone was beginning to grate.

“I don’t ask you to take my side,” he growled.

Rothcastle laughed. “Oh, and I don’t. In fact, I have no sympathy for you whatsoever. You call your situation complicated? Ava and I had a family war between us and a dead sister I was bent on avenging no matter the cost.” The duke’s gaze became distant and pained. “I hurt that woman to the bone and she still loved me even though she lost her brother by doing so.
That
is complicated, my friend.”
 

Miles was stunned into silence. Rothcastle never spoke of what had separated him and Ava, though everyone knew it. Now seeing both his pain and his love for his wife, Miles was ashamed.

Christian shook his head. “The only thing that stands between you and Portia are barriers you create for yourself because you’re too cowardly to knock them down.”

Miles stared at his drink again. “I’d be no good for her to love,” he muttered.

Christian shrugged. “That may well be true. But you don’t get to decide that for her. To do so would make you no better than her brother or her father or a dozen others who have stuffed her into a corner her entire life and stripped her of her right to control her own destiny.”

“And what if I do worse?” he asked. “What if I am incapable of giving her what she needs or asks for?”

“Then you become capable,” Christian said with a shrug, as if that were the easiest thing in the world to overcome. “I have seen you two together. Perhaps it was only a few times, but even in that limited capacity, I could tell you want to give her joy, happiness, strength. You seem to recognize what no one else could: her value. Is that not love?”

Silence was Miles’ only reply, mostly because he couldn’t think of another. Rothcastle was so frank and matter-of-fact that his words began to sink below the surface.

“Or perhaps I’m an idiot after all,” the duke added with a shrug. “Perhaps you will be like every other rake in the kingdom and whine and moan about what you can and cannot do and can and cannot feel and you will lose a chance to be truly happy. It would be a loss for you both, but Ava and I will be there to pick up the pieces…once you settle Portia
very
handsomely, that is.”

“I would do no less if I wasn’t going to be there.” Miles glared at the other man, but Christian seemed unfazed by any of it. “She wouldn’t have to depend upon the kindness of friends or strangers. I would never allow her to fear her position again.”

“How noble.” The duke’s tone was so dry it would have withered leaves. “But you continue to avoid the only answer that matters in this ‘complicated’ situation.”

“And what is that?” Miles snarled, glaring at Christian.

The duke didn’t seem to give a damn. “Do you love her or not?”
 

Miles’ jaw set at the direct question the other man wasn’t going to allow him to avoid. His mind spun with images of Portia, from her strength at every ball to her masked appearance at the Donville Masquerade, from her nervousness at their wedding to her surrender their wedding night. He recalled her sweetness, her kindness, her empathy and her courage. Even when she admitted she loved him, it had been with the full expectation that he would turn away from her.

And she did it anyway so that she could live her life with honesty and integrity.

He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping to block out emotions swelling within him. But it didn’t help. There had been a dam he built long ago and cracks were forming, the flood was coming.

“You said you hurt Ava,” he choked out. “She lost her brother to love you.”

Christian flinched and nodded. “Yes.”

“Don’t you fear she will regret loving you? That one day you won’t be worth the sacrifice?”

The other man’s jaw set and he straightened his shoulders. “I do my best, every day, every moment I am with her, to be certain that I
am
worth anything she has lost. I respect her choice too much to do anything less. And as much as I wish I could strike you for the pain you have put my friend through, I think you may be capable of the very same thing.
If
you love her.”

Miles slowly pushed to his feet and Christian looked at him in surprise. “And where are you going?”

“To talk to my wife,” he responded as he smoothed his jacket. “I really don’t think you should be the first person to hear what I need to say, do you?”

Christian chuckled. “Only if it’s the right thing. Good luck, Weatherfield.”

Miles nodded as he hurried from the club. He was going to need luck, now more than ever.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Portia took a deep breath to prepare herself as she stood on her stoop and forced a light smile to her face. The servants were likely gossiping like mad belowstairs; she refused to let her behavior give them even more fodder. It was the best she could do for what was left of her dignity.
 

When she was ready, she swept through the front door into the foyer and found Armstrong hustling to greet her.

“Good afternoon, my lady,” he said, reaching out to take her wrap, gloves and hat. “I hope your visit found Her Grace well.”

“It did indeed, thank you,” she responded and the warmth of her smile became more real.
 

How she had ever feared Armstrong, she didn’t know. The man was nothing but kind and accommodating as she learned her role as mistress of this house.

A role she hoped Miles wouldn’t force her out of anytime soon.

She pushed the thought away and focused instead on the household items that needed addressing.

“Have you talked to Mirabelle about the butter situation?” she asked.

Armstrong cast a quick glance up the stairs, but then nodded. “Yes, my lady. It was a mistake in the ordering and it has been corrected with many apologies.”

“Oh great God, please don’t tell me she cried,” Portia said with a frown. When Armstrong shifted, she threw up her hands. “Well, send her to me after tea and I will reassure her myself. Accidents happen.”

“Yes, my lady.”

She moved into the parlor with him trailing after her. “My mother and Potts, how are they?”

Armstrong looked toward the stairs again, and she frowned. He was so distracted, certainly she hoped it had nothing to do with her mother’s behavior of late. While she was better, a short spell of safety and content didn’t erase decades of serious concerns.

“Armstrong?” she said, her voice sharper than perhaps she would have wished. “Nothing is wrong with my mother, is there?”

He shook his head, his attention snapped back to her, at least for the moment.
 

“No, miss. She and Miss Potts took a turn around the garden today that seemed to calm her considerably. She is resting now and Potts has gone to pick up a few things they ordered at the milliner last week.”