Chapter 5
Heron House
The garden
A slightly secluded hedge row…with roses
E veryone adored the garden parties at Heron House.
Over the last decade, the elaborate flower gardens, especially the rose gardens, had been the most popular recent additions to the beautiful estate along the Thames.
Rows and rows of roses and artistically landscaped flowers and hedgerows had been added by Portia’s aunt, Duchess Mercy, and her grandmother, the dowager duchess. A few of her other aunts and cousins had contributed too.
It was a unique situation the way the ladies came together at Heron House. In most families, there was a singular matriarch, the one with the most distinguished title, who ran everything.
But not with the Briarwoods. Though Aunt Mercy had precedence as the current duchess, possibly because she was American, she’d wished to have more views and opinions in the running of the family’s and dukedom’s estates than just her own.
Some of the aunts and cousins cared more about gardening than others.
There was never any argument or fighting about the estates, houses, and various charities. Oh, there was bickering and banter! But they thrived off the stuff! Always making each other laugh in the end.
That was one of the things Portia loved most about her family. The way they laughed. But in the end, somehow, they all just let each other be and pursue the passions they loved. It made it possible for them to all come together with love.
After having spoken almost nonstop for two hours, Portia sneaked off to one of the winding hedges and surrounded herself with a glorious collection of roses.
She leaned in, took in a breath, and found herself entirely fortified again. Though she dearly loved company, she knew how vital it was to pull herself back together so that she could do it all again with pleasure.
She cupped a bright yellow rose, the same shade as her gown, and marveled at how each petal perfectly unfurled from the bud.
If she ever found herself doubting the beauty of the world, all she had to do was look at the magnificence of something as simple as a rose.
“That rose is exceptionally lucky to have your undivided attention.”
That sound, that deep, growling, gorgeous sound, sent a shiver of delight through her that was even more delicious than the scent of the rose that had just filled her senses.
She closed her eyes for a moment, anticipating this conversation and so glad that he had finally found her. “There you are at last,” she said.
“At last?” he echoed.
“I have felt you watching me, Your Grace,” she pointed out, stroking the rose petals, careful to avoid the thorns before she let it go and turned to him. “I’ve felt and seen you for some time. I saw you on the periphery speaking with my cousin while I was chatting away and…waited for you to join me. Whatever took you so long?”
She waggled her brows. “Or am I so frightening?”
“Not you,” he admitted, his dark hair as rich as obsidian under the much-beloved sun. “The crowd about you is what gave me pause. None of them would disperse.”
“And that stopped you?” she teased playfully, even as she drank in the sight of his powerful, tall body. He seemed so different here, alone with her, than he had while keeping on the fringes of the party. There he’d seemed so distant. Here? She could feel his power, his strength. As if he was that lion she’d thought of, eager to show off for a potential mate.
“I thought you were made of sterner stuff than that, Your Grace,” she goaded.
“Why in God’s name would you think I have the stuff to deal that horde of mundanity?”
“They’re not mundane, Your Grace,” she said with a gentle shrug. “They are all interesting people in their own right.”
He snorted.
She studied him, surprised. “Do you dislike people so very much?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Ah,” she breathed, a thought hitting her. “You find it hard to be yourself with others?”
A muscle tightened in his jaw. She had the right of it, she felt fairly certain, and she thought again of her cousin insinuating that the duke was boring.
“I don’t need to be myself with others. That’s not a requirement of a duke,” he stated.
She blinked. What a terrible thing, to think it wasn’t a requirement to be himself. For if he wasn’t being himself, who exactly was he being?
She had a niggling suspicion, but she wasn’t ready to voice it. But wasn’t everyone essentially a product of their parents? Even dukes.
He wasn’t boring. That was certain, but she wasn’t quite certain what exactly he was either. When he was in her company, he was alive, vital, interesting.
“You have come and found me alone,” she said quickly, shifting her slippered feet on the gravel. “You shouldn’t have done that, you know?”
“You’re not entirely alone,” he said. “Just a hedge over, there are hundreds of people all milling about.”
She groaned. “Yes, but some people might think you got me into the hedgerows for nefarious purposes.”
He laughed. “I don’t think so. We can still hear everyone, and you are the one who went off by yourself.”
She nodded. “Just for a moment’s peace, but alas, it is not to be.”
He frowned ever so slightly. “Would you like me to go? Is that what you are trying to say?”
“If you think I wish you to go, you’ve misread me,” she replied. “I enjoy you, Your Grace.”
He took a step closer, his footsteps crunching on the gravel. “You do?” he said softly. “Not just my dukedom?”
“I know very little about your dukedom,” she sallied. “I’m sure it’s marvelous. You have multiple houses, no doubt, lovely fine coaches and all of that, but I’ve grown up with all those things, and I don’t find them particularly necessary. You know, in New York, we have a rather nice house, but it’s nothing like the places here. It’s quite simple, and the truth is sometimes I think people are happier with less.”
“Do you?” he drawled. “How very philosophical.”
“I like to think that I am,” she said.
“And do you, like so many of the great philosophers, fancy going off into nature and being on your own?”
“Oh, not a bit of it,” she exclaimed. “While I do need a few moments to collect myself, a hermit I shall never be. I adore the cacophony of people, their chatter, and all the things they have to say.”
He gaped. A rather endearing look upon such a stoic face. “You actually like the ton, don’t you?”
She nodded easily. “Oh, yes. I have been desperately waiting for my chance at a Season for years. I watched my mother go out so many nights with my grandmother, my uncles, my aunts. Oh, how thrilling they all seemed, like goddesses and gods going off to the heavens to parade about and revel in the newest ideas and fashions.”
He scowled. “I’m not sure if that’s what I’d say was actually happening at those events.”
She took a step towards him, rather compelled by this strange man who did things to her she could not quite describe.
“What would you call it then, Your Grace?”
“Well, it is a group of people maneuvering for power,” he said.
“Oh, it is so much more than that, don’t you think?” she encouraged. “Or are you so very ill-minded about humanity?”
“I’ve seen a great deal to make me ill-minded.”
“And that is why you stay away from people?” she ventured. “Because they’re all so ill?”
“No, that is not it,” he whispered.
“What else could it be? As a duke, you were born to be separate, like a prince. And you find all of us mere mortals to be less than adequate?”
He tilted his head to the side slightly. “You’re closer, but that’s still not it.”
She laughed.
He did think he was above everyone else, but not in the way that some might think, she was sure of it, because he wasn’t unbearable or cruel or disdainful. Above. Not better.
And he was above in every sense. At least above most of society. Above in power, above in wealth, above in status.
There was something else too. She longed to know what it was.
“Why did you come find me?” she asked.
“If I’m quite honest, you’re the only person I’ve enjoyed being with in some time. Is that so very bad?” he asked.
“Not a bit of it. I’m pleased.”
He blinked, then swallowed, which caused the muscles of his throat just at his cravat to do the most delicious things. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?” she asked.
“Spend all that time with all those people and not grow annoyed with them or feel uncomfortable.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed. “I don’t know. I think I’m simply accustomed to it. My parents encouraged me to talk a good deal from the time I was small, so I’ve been conversing with anyone who’d come my way since I was a child. I was quite curious about them. Everyone has a remarkable story.”
“Do they?” he asked softly.
“Oh, yes.” She leaned in towards him, clasping her hands behind her back, bouncing on her toes. “Would you like to tell me yours?”
His gaze traveled down to her bosom and then back to her eyes. He rather liked it, her bosom, she’d noticed. It was not the first time he’d glanced in a southerly direction.
And an ember of heat bloomed just between her thighs at his admiration.
“My story?” he mused before he looked away swiftly. “There’s not a great deal to tell. Noble man, wealthy child, raised to rule.”
“And that is all?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.
“Yes,” he said.
She tutted. “How very sad. You are living up to my cousin’s proclamation about you.”
“And that was?”
“Boring,” she said, daring to wink at him. How glad she was that she had been raised by Briarwoods. For, yes, she dared to wink at a duke. Her aunts were all excellent winkers!
He rolled his eyes. “Oh God, that again. I just don’t spend a great deal of my time in idle prattle. Is that so very terrible?”
“No, of course it’s not,” she said. “But if you did engage in some idle prattle, I’m sure you would find people to not be so difficult.”
He bit his lower lip. “You’re not difficult,” he said.
“You don’t think so? Most people enjoy me but still find me to be…shall I say, unique?”
His gaze crackled then, not with admiration but something stronger. “You’re charming, you’re warm, and you’re engaging.”
“Goodness me,” she said. “What a list of compliments. I bet my cousins don’t think you have that in you.”
A muscle tightened in his jaw and his gaze went to her lips as he took another step forward. “I think I should like to spend even more time in your company.”
“Alas,” she said. “I will have to go back very soon. It is in many ways a party for me, you know. I’ve been introduced, and I must seek out a husband.”
“Am I not someone who could be considered a suitor?”
“I don’t know,” she said, pursing her lips. “Are you? You seemed to insinuate it the other day, but you have not paid call.”
“No,” he agreed carefully. “Because that’s not how men like me go about pursuing ladies.”
“How do gentlemen like you pursue ladies?” she asked, batting her lashes at him elaborately, enjoying their exchange immensely.
“Well,” he said, “there is the fact that I’m a duke.”
“I know that. And you’re proving my cousin correct again,” she said. “Don’t be boring.”
“I’m not boring,” he growled.
“Prove it to me then.”
“You wish me to prove that I’m not boring?”
“Indeed. Otherwise, I’ll just think that the curricle ride was a one-off and my cousins were correct, that the only time you are interesting is out-of-doors in a vehicle racing through the park.”
He closed the distance between them, his eyes darkening with passion. “Then I shall show you,” he declared so boldly that he seemed to surprise himself as he swept her into his arms.
He kissed her then, pulling her upward so that her slippered toes barely skimmed the gravel of the path.
With his height and intensity as he arched her back, she grabbed hold of him.
For one moment, she felt entirely off-balance as if the world was tilting. But it wasn’t tilting to disaster. It was tilting to perfection.
Her fingers splayed over his hard sinews, warm beneath his perfectly tailored morning coat.
The feel of his long, hard body pressed against hers was decadent, lush, surprising. For someone who was supposedly so distant, he didn’t feel distant at all at that moment in her arms.
The power of his kiss, the way he took such utter control, stunned her, and she longed to yield to him. Was this passion? Was this true connection?
All her life, she’d witnessed the passionate marriages in her family.
But she’d never experienced anything like this, and the storms that crossed the Atlantic when they sailed from New York to England came to mind. This was powerful. This was magnificent. This could be dangerous.
She did not know what to think or even how to think as his sensual mouth coaxed her own with a passion so unbridled she felt enveloped in it. She was not like her aunts and uncles. She did not believe in fate when it came to matrimony. No, the world was full of too many people for that, but his embrace felt as if it could never be replicated by anyone else.
It was his intensity. As if he’d kept all his passion at bay and reserved it for her and her alone.
The realization echoed through her, lacing with an aching desire that coiled in her belly, spread through her breasts, and left a longing between her thighs that was so powerful she feared she might lose her wits. Permanently.
And then she stepped back.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She couldn’t breathe. She could barely stand.
He blinked, clearly as shocked as she was. “Was that too interesting?”
Portia cleared her throat. “Not at all, Your Grace. It was most edifying.”
His lips curved then in a wolfish smile, as if he was pleased that he had made her feel thus.
She cleared her throat. “I think I should like you to do that again and again if I was quite honest. It was quite eye-opening, but… I could not forgive myself if you and I were pushed into a position of being wed. That would be terrible for the both of us, don’t you think?”
“Would it?” he rumbled, his gaze still hot with desire. Desire for her.
And if he was not a man of honor, she rather thought he might have dragged her off into the hedgerows to show her just how interesting he could be.
The thought left her breathless.
“Yes,” she managed. “I have no wish to go about the rest of my Season being the girl who the duke kissed behind the hedge and then had to marry.”
“If I choose to kiss a young lady in the hedgerows, I know the chance I’m taking.”
“Point to you and how very honorable you are.” Had he just made it clear he’d marry her if they were caught? Yes. He had. But she did not wish to marry that way. Not to anyone. Not even to a man who made her very tempted to abandon her brain. “But now I must get back. They will be expecting me, and I refuse to start a scandal.”
“From what I understand, your family loves scandals.”
“Perhaps,” she allowed. “But I wish to do things a little bit differently this time. I wish to get my husband and have no gossip about it at all.”
The duke’s eyes narrowed. “They’re going to gossip about you, Miss Portia,” he growled softly. “Because if I choose to make you mine, you’ll be a duchess. And people always gossip about duchesses.”