Page 69 of The Music of Love

He’d said all this while looming over her, arms crossed over his broad, muscular chest, dressed in his riding clothes. Her eyes drifted from his impassive face over his elegant, snug-fitting clawhammer and lingered on the front of his buckskins. They been tanned black, to match his coat, and fit his taut, narrow hips and powerful thighs like a glove. Looking at him made her mouth water.

“Portia?”

“Hmm?” She wrenched her eyes away from his body and looked up.

“What did you promise me?”

She fluttered her lashes and touched a hand to her brow. “I don’t remember.”

“Do I need to summon Doctor Gates to remind you?”

Portia sat up. “You wouldn’t. You promised, Stacy.”

He uncrossed his arms and began to turn.

“No, stop. You are a bully,” she said when he turned back.

“Yes, but I am your bully, thanks to your promise. Now come, it won’t be so bad. I will go for a ride while you take your bath. When I return I will entertain you. But first I shall make sure you eat everything on your breakfast tray.” He stared down at her, the muffled tap, tap, tap of his boot against the thick rug telling her the threat was not an idle one.

And so it went. For three entire days.

It was on the second of those days that Stacy explained his aunt’s absence from the house and passed along Viscount Pendleton’s startling revelations.

Portia listened to tale with her mouth hanging open. “But this is utterly fantastical, Stacy! What must your father be like to have done such a monstrous thing to his own child?”

“According to Pendleton he is an implacable man who keeps his own counsel. Even now, at almost ninety, he has no regrets.”

“So why has he finally told your brother about you now?”

“Robert says he’s only thawed because you are with child. The earl didn’t want me, but I am my brother’s heir if he does not have children. That would make a male child of ours the next in line. Otherwise the title would go to some distant relative. Apparently the earl cannot countenance such a thing.” They sat in silence as they considered this new twist for their unborn child’s future.

Portia found that she couldn’t think about such a possibility right now. “Do you want to accept your brother’s invitation to visit?”

“Why should I put myself before such a man?”

“You have a brother and two sisters you’ve never met. As for your father?” She waved a dismissive hand. “What do you care about a bitter old man? But your brother came to see you the moment he found out the truth. You probably have an entire legion of other relatives. Oh!” she stopped abruptly. “Does this mean you are Lord Harrington?”

Stacy laughed. “I do not believe it works that way. Only my brother has a courtesy title, I am still a mere mister.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “Well, that is beside the point. The point is you have a family, Stacy.”

“I already have a family, Portia.” The tender expression on his face made her heart swell. It also made her want to weep.

Dear Lord, how could she do anything that might cause her to lose this man?

The answer to that was simple: she couldn’t. She realized, with a shiver of apprehension, that she would do whatever it took to keep Ivo away from Stacy, their unborn child, and her marriage.

“Darling? Are you cold?”

Portia looked up and smiled. “All three of your sisters have known about this?”

“It sounds as though they were powerless to say no to the earl. Frances was in her late twenties when she left with me, the other two a few years younger. I know it was too much to expect very young women to defy such a man but I can’t help being furious with Frances.”

Portia brought his hand to her lips. “You must forgive her, Stacy. She loves you so much and must be in agony that you’ve banished her.”

His face settled into unyielding lines. “The old man sounds like an authoritarian monster, intent on getting his own way no matter who gets hurt in the process.” His jaw clenched, making him look a bit authoritarian, himself. “I understand keeping the secret when I was a child but how could Frances continue to do so?”

Portia swallowed. For once she was grateful that she couldn’t see his eyes. His face was a cold, hard mask; he had inherited his father’s implacability, if nothing else. If he sent Frances away for her deception, what would he do to Portia when he found out?