Then, just as she began to feel the very beginning of some glorious cataclysm of sensation, he withdrew from her body. He fell heavily on top of her, his breathing harsh and ragged, his skin slick against her own dampness, and Portia was left with a curious and aching sense of a void that should have been filled, but was instead gaping and empty.

Rufus slowly rose onto one elbow. He looked down at her as she lay sprawled on the coverlet, her eyes questioning, the hurt of her emptiness as easy to read as a child’s picture book.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice was quiet and flat.

“It didn’t matter. It wasn’t relevant,” Portia said, her voice low as she struggled with a disappointment that seemed to penetrate to the very heart of her being. She wanted to weep with the anticlimax, with the familiar and this time overwhelming sense that she would always disappoint in the same degree that she would always be disappointed.

“Are you angry?” The question was thin, bloodless.

“If I were, you wouldn’t need to ask the question,” he replied aridly.

“It didn’t matter,” she repeated, wretchedly aware that her voice was thick with tears.

“Believe me, Portia, it mattered.” Rufus fell onto his back, one hand resting on her belly as if it had been forgotten there. “I do not make a habit of deflowering virgins. And if I did, I would…” He sighed. “How was I to know?”

“You weren’t.” It was only natural that in the face of her blatant invitation he would have assumed that she was experienced in the sexual world. He knew how she’d lived. He knew her parentage.

She swallowed the lump of tears in her throat and surreptitiously turned her head aside to wipe her eyes on a corner of the coverlet.

Rufus sat up again. “Had I known,” he said deliberately, “I would have done things a little differently.”

“How?” Portia was suddenly intrigued despite her wretchedness. “I thought there was only one way.”

“There is,” he said, leaning over her and drawing a finger down between the small, pale mounds of her breasts. “But there are various refinements.”

“Oh.” She was aware of a quickening of her blood as his eyes held hers. She couldn’t read his expression, didn’t know what he was talking about, but a little thrill of anticipation nibbled at the edges of her unfulfillment.

“Tell me what you felt.” He laid the palm of his hand over one breast, covering it completely.

Portia frowned, trying to find the words, to be utterly honest, even while her breast beneath his palm began to tingle and she could feel her nipple hardening. “That… that something should have happened that didn’t.”

He laughed softly. “I thought as much. Poor gosling.” He lowered his head to her other breast, his lips trailing over its softness. He was overpoweringly aware as he had been once before of the incredible softness of her skin. It was like the most delicate tissue, impossibly white in the candlelight. His tongue flicked at the crest of her breast and she trembled.

He raised his head and saw the wonderment in her eyes. The wildness of the dance had gone, the frenzy that had brought them both to this place, and now he read only eagerness and the slow mounting of desire. He moved his hand down.

The hand on her bare belly, pressing as it stroked, made her gasp. She turned her head on the pillow, bewildered by the rush of sensation, the storming tumult of the blood in her veins. His hand flattened between her closed thighs, and her legs parted for him even as she drew breath on a little sob of anticipation. Her body cried out for the intimate knowing invasion of his fingers, and this time the tears in her eyes were of a confused pleasure.

He took her mouth again with his, even as the relentless trespass brought her ever closer to the pulsing joyous moment of annihilation that she had sensed before. The skin of her belly rippled, the muscles beneath growing rigid; her thighs tightened around his hand, her buttocks clenched hard with the impossible desire to postpone what she knew was coming and the hopeless need to lose herself in the inexorable joy.

And then when she could hold on no longer, he withdrew his hand. Her body screamed for completion. She cried out with the pain of loss, and then he slipped a hand beneath her bottom, holding the compact muscled roundness easily on one palm as he guided himself within the aching portal of her body. The moist, tender flesh closed around him, and he touched the corner of her mouth with his tongue, murmured a word of reassurance that she hardly needed.

He kissed her eyelids, the tip of her nose, one hand still supporting her bottom while his other caressed her breast. Her buttock muscles hardened in his hand and her nipple crested against his palm. Her skin was damp and hot, her lips parted on soft female sounds of joyous anticipation. He eased deeper within, listening to her body with his own. And when her eyes and her body told him she was ready, he increased his pace, driving deep to her core. Her hands gripped the corded muscles of his upper arms as he held himself above her, and with a cry she yielded herself to the maelstrom.

Rufus held her tight as the storm ravaged her, tossing her high before tumbling her down and down into the still waters of annihilation. He was in no hurry for his own climax this time and waited until her heavy eyelids swept up, showing him the green gaze, drowned in wonderment. She reached up and touched his mouth, then smiled. And he was astonished at how beautiful she looked in this moment of complete abandonment.

Leisurely he began to move again and her body stirred around him, little flutters like a sparrow’s wing. She touched his mouth again, then moved her hand down to his belly, surprising him with the knowingness of her caress. His stomach muscles jumped beneath her touch, and with a soft moan of pleasure he withdrew from her body the instant before he too was lost to joy.

She clasped his head to her breast and held him. His body slumped heavily into the mattress and slowly his breathing steadied and they lay quietly, while the noise from below continued unabated, the crashes and yells sounding more abandoned than ever.

After a while Rufus opened his eyes and hitched himself onto an elbow. He traced the curve of Portia’s high cheekbones and smiled lazily. “Better?”

“Wonderful,” she said with a wicked little chuckle.

Rufus swung off the bed with a laugh and went to the table to fetch the flagon. He took a gulp and held it to Portia’s lips. She drank thirstily, then fell back again against the pillows.

“I wonder if I’ve just broken the pact,” she said with another smug chuckle.

“What pact?” Rufus found the throaty little sound as delightful as it was infectious.

“Olivia and Phoebe and I had a pact,” she said with mock solemnity. “We even mingled our blood as we swore an oath never to be ordinary. I know that included not getting married, but I’m not sure whether it also included not losing one’s virginity.”

Rufus raised an eyebrow, a frown ridging his brow. “Who’s Phoebe?”

“Diana’s little sister. The three of us met up at Cato’s wedding to Diana.” Portia’s smile now had a touch of acid to it as she remembered what had brought the three of them together. “We were all feeling out of place… unwanted. And for a few minutes one sunny afternoon, we connected. Three social disasters playing a childish game of fantasy.”

In the last hours, Rufus had forgotten all about Cato Granville. He’d forgotten why this girl had come into his life and the question of what he was to do with her.

“What is it?” she asked quickly, seeing the darkness come into his eyes, the sudden set of his jaw.

He shook his head in brisk dismissal. “We’ve a long journey tomorrow. Let’s try to sleep, if we can manage to drown out the racket.”

A shadow had fallen across them, and Portia’s exuberance died, leaving a cold empty space in the pit of her stomach. She guessed that her careless remarks had reminded Rufus that she was a Granville. And now she too remembered it.