Her eyes flashed, the Portia of old appearing briefly. Tipping her nose in the air, she humphed, but consented to sit.
They did, too, one on either side of her, lounging on the grassy bank.
The minutes ticked by and they sat in relaxed silence, looking out through the trees, letting the peace enfold them. Drinking it in, like a potion to give them strength through what they knew was yet to come.
The westering sun was slanting through the trees when Simon at last stirred. The other two looked at him.
He read the lack of enthusiasm in their faces, also their resolve. Grimaced. “We’d better rehearse our last act.”
The curtain went up in the drawing room before dinner. Portia arrived late, after everyone else. She swept in, magnificent in her deep green silk gown; pausing on the threshold, head high, she scanned the company.
Her gaze stopped on Simon; the look she bent on him was cold, chilly, with an underlying fury. Something close to dismissive contempt. Then she shifted her gaze to Charlie—all her ice melted as she smiled.
Ignoring Simon and all the others, she crossed to Charlie’s side.
He returned her smile, but his gaze flicked to Simon. Whether it was the way he shifted as she joined him, offering his arm—which she was clearly intending to take—but stepping a little aside, as if to step away from the company, to withdraw to a more seemly privacy, whether it was the slight awkwardness he managed to infuse into his actions, his recep
tion conveyed the impression he was suddenly having second thoughts as to his role in her transparent scheme.
Her scheme to strike at Simon—whether to make him jealous, or to punish him for some transgression or omission, no one could guess.
Whatever the cause, everyone by now recognized her intention.
She laughed, cajoled, held Charlie captive, mesmerized him with her eyes. Flirted to the top of her bent. Simon and Charlie had spent an hour lecturing her, teaching her how; bowing to their expertise, she followed their instructions to the letter.
It felt so wrong, yet . . . they had both been earnest in insisting she carry the charade through.
As she gaily chattered, freely dispensing her smiles on Desmond, who wandered up, and Ambrose, who joined them later, she nevertheless kept her sights set firmly on Charlie, her hand on his sleeve.
Simon stood across the room with Lucy, Drusilla, and James, yet his eyes rarely left them. His gaze could only be described as black.
He had a temper, something everyone instinctively recognized on meeting him; he didn’t have to show it for all to know. Now he was deliberately giving it rein, it was like a living force, growing, swelling, ballooning as he watched them.
Winifred came up. “Tell me, Miss Ashford, will you be returning to your brother’s house tomorrow?”
It was undoubtedly the most pointed comment on her unseemly behavior Winifred could bring herself to make. Portia inwardly apologized as she let her smile brighten. “Actually . . .”—she cast a glance at Charlie, fractionally raised one brow, then looked back at Winifred—“I might go up to London for a few days. Look in on the town house for my brother, tend to a few matters. Of course,” she went on, her transparent expectations giving her words the lie, “there’s so little real entertainment to be found in town in July, I daresay I’ll be quite moped.”
She glanced again at Charlie. “You’ll be heading back to town, won’t you?”
Her implication was blatant. Winifred was so shocked she gasped, then looked thoroughly unhappy. Desmond raised a brow, subtly disapproving. Ambrose looked coldly bored.
“Ma’am—dinner is served.”
Portia had never in her life been so thankful to hear those words. Quite what the others would have said if the moment had lengthened, how Charlie might have replied, what riposte she might have been forced to make . . . thank heaven for butlers.
Desmond offered Winifred his arm; she glanced at it, then met his eyes, then, as if making a decision, laid her hand on his sleeve and let him steer her to the dining room. Portia followed on Charlie’s arm. He pinched her fingers when, her gaze fixing on Winifred and Desmond—her mind praying the murderer would not prove to be he—she failed to play her part.
She turned her lapse to advantage; as they passed into the dining room, she slanted him a playfully knowing glance. “You’re altogether too demanding.”
The smile that went with the words clearly invited him to demand as much as he wished; taking their seats about the dinner table, many of the company noticed.
The Hammond sisters had regained something of their youthful exuberance; with the prospect of escape nearing, and the incident with the urn reduced to mere accident, they were sufficiently restored to laugh and chatter gaily with Oswald and Swanston—thoroughly innocent play that cast Portia’s endeavor in an even stronger, more contrasting light.
She was grateful to Lady Glossup, who had clearly attempted to separate the warring parties, thereby reducing the opportunity for further conflict. Portia was seated close to one end of the table, Simon in the middle on the opposite side, and Charlie at the far end, on the same side as she so they couldn’t even exchange glances.
With perfect equanimity, ignoring Simon’s unrelievedly dark looks, she set herself to entertain her neighbors, Mr. Archer and Mr. Buckstead, the two of the company least aware of the drama being enacted under their noses.
When the ladies rose, she joined them, her expression easy and content. But as she drew level with Simon on the other side of the table, on his feet as were all the gentlemen as the ladies filed out, she deliberately, coldly, challengingly, met his gaze. Held it. Equally deliberately, as she came to Charlie, she raised a hand and ran her fingers along the back of his shoulders, briefly ruffling the hair at his nape, before smiling into Simon’s furious eyes. Letting her hand fall, she turned and, head high, glided out of the dining room.