Portia had insisted she didn’t need a bath, and the butler had given her a stack of thick towels to dry herself. After that, she’d gone to bed.
Then Sin had planted himself in the chair. For hours, he had not looked at her. But with daylight—a gray gloomy light—illuminating the room, he’d given in to temptation. Twice, he’d gotten up and pulled the sheets up to cover her. Then she’d wrestled around until they’d slid down.
With her nightgown soaked through, she’d taken it off in the dressing room, then pulled on her shift. But that had ridden up. Fortunately she held the pillow tight to her and it covered her nether curls and her pussy. But he could see the voluptuous curves of her ass and he didn’t have the courage to try tugging it down without waking her up.
He’d barely slept, his brain going mad.
Who could have kidnapped Portia?
Who had battered in Will’s face?
Who’d killed Sandhurst, who seemed like a daft, inoffensive lad?
It was like all those years ago, when Sin had been a boy. So much death . . . death wrapping around him. Then it had all culminated in that moment he’d been standing across from his own brother, aiming a dueling pistol—
His door rattled. Once. Then twice. The knob turned. Then footsteps moved away. The maid laying the fires? A murderer hoping to catch them asleep in bed?
Sin launched to his feet. He ran to the door, turned the key, and opened it. The hall was empty. But from the stair landing, he could hear voices. The appetizing scents of cooked food had begun to slip into the room. Breakfast was being served.
Groaning, he closed the door, locked it again, and went to the window.
The torrential rain had stopped, but gray clouds hugged the island and the sea tossed. No boats would be coming today. He couldn’t get Portia to the mainland. Their host would not be arriving....
Unless Genvere was already on the island.
It was time to wake Portia and take her downstairs. Tell everyone what had happened to Will. Start questioning the guests.
Sin looked longingly at the bed. If he hadn’t been such a damn idiot ten years ago, and if they weren’t on an island with a lunatic, he could be in bed with Portia right now.
Then pain hit him, pain and anger.
“No,” he muttered. “With the perverse things you did as a boy, you could never have had Portia. You’re damaged, just like she said, Sin. You’re not a hero, you’re a sinful bastard.”
Maybe the lunatic was getting to him. He was talking aloud to himself. At least Portia was asleep. She hadn’t heard.
11
Sin walked downstairs with Portia to join the other guests for breakfast, his jaw clenched with tension.
He should have never allowed this. He could have demanded that Portia stay in the bedroom. He wasn’t nineteen years old now, a new duke who had no idea how to be in command. Now, at twenty-nine, he knew how to give orders and have them obeyed. In the decade after he’d lost Portia, he’d learned how to make his cousin respect him, his servants snap to attention and respect him, and he’d learned how to make every gentleman of the ton envy and admire him.
The only man who didn’t envy him was himself.
In their bedroom, with her determined, brilliant gray eyes locked on his face, Portia had insisted she should speak to the other women. It was the best solution, the logical thing to do. To have a woman try to get information from the women.
He’d helped her back into her ivory gown, tightened the ties of her mask. All the while, he’d fought not to fall into the glittering beauty of her eyes. “Let me do this, Sinclair,” she declared. “I am comfortable on the streets of Whitechapel. I can take care of myself.”
“I could seduce information from the women.”
“I doubt they’d tell you they’d done something heinous, even in the throes of ecstasy.”
“Would they tell you?”
“I can be clever. And I can simply climb down from the balcony and go downstairs if I wish, even if you lock me in.”
“Damn it, all right.”
The reason he’d let her come downstairs was that she was right. Portia had the finest brain of anyone he knew.
But the more time she spent with the guests, the more she risked revealing her identity. Portia could end up ruined.
After what had happened to Will, and if Sandhurst had been poisoned, ruination was their smallest concern.
Now Sin watched her walk ahead of him into the dining room, his every instinct on edge. He found the other male guests loading their plates at the buffet. The women were already seated, nibbling from tiny plates of food.
Crayle, the marquis, whom Sin privately called the Marquis de Sade, sat down with a plate in which food had been placed with geometric precision. The Earl of Blute, the muscular, auburn-haired Sporting Corinthian, was piling his plate with gusto, creating towers of kippers and sausages. Rutledge was taking coffee from the urn and holding his head. The sign of a man suffering the aftereffects of drinking. Sax stood at the buffet of warming dishes, selecting sausages.