Free How to Woo a Widow by Manda Collins Page B

her voice. It tickled in the back of his mind for a moment, disrupting the panic holding reign there. She was a tiny thing; he could see that well enough. Barely above five feet he should think, though from his sitting position it was difficult to say. Then realizing he was still seated in the presence of a lady, he stood.
    “Oh, do not get up,” she continued, moving closer, waving him back to his seat as she lowered herself to the bench beside him. Her gown, he noted, was several years out of fashion, though it fit her lush curves quite nicely. Her dark tresses had been gathered up in the back, in a lovely cascade of curls. He could not see her eyes, but he knew instinctively that they were smiling. “I have always thought it a silly custom for gentlemen to be forced to their feet whenever a lady drew near. It can hardly be good for them to spring up and down like a grasshopper all day long.”
    Surprised by her forwardness, Tony tried not to notice the warmth of her arm against his, the place where their thighs touched. “Perhaps, ma’am, you would prefer that gentlemen lounged about like wastrels and refused to acknowledge your presence at all.” He sounded priggish, even to his own mind, though he made no effort to take back the words.
    Instead of being affronted, however, the lady merely laughed. It was a deep, sensual sound. One that Anthony felt tickle down his spine even as he concentrated on suppressing his reaction.
    “You always were a stickler, were you not, Tony?”
    He stared at her in amazement, trying to make out her features in the darkness. “Do I know you, madam?”
    She chuckled again. “I suppose I have grown a bit since last we met. Though really, Tony, it is too tiresome of you to mention it. Especially since I outnumber you in years a bit. It is never the thing to force a lady to admit her true age.”
    Good lord, he thought. It cannot be!
    “Portia?”
    “Indeed.”
    Her voice took him back thirteen years, to that long ago summer when he’d first met her. He’d spent the summer as a guest of her younger brother, James, at the Bascombe’s country estate, where Anthony had developed a schoolboy crush that had been as exhilarating as it was hopeless.
    “How does Captain Daventry?” he asked, though he didn’t really care to hear the answer. Her husband had hardly been his favorite person.
    Especially back then.
    Knowing the blame for both James’ death and Portia’s grief rested on his shoulders had been more than Tony could bear. He had thought perhaps he could do something to ease the Bascombe family’s suffering, to atone for his part in the tragedy. But his own injury in the crash had kept him in London and had left the door open for Daventry. Shortly after learning of Portia’s betrothal to the dashing officer, Tony had bought his own commission and left for the Peninsula.
    “He died last year,” Portia said quietly, then quickly pressed on. “He was shot through the heart by a Portuguese farmer who found him in bed with his lady wife. William was never one to think too carefully about the consequences of his actions, so I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later.” Her tone was matter of fact, as if she were speaking of what color ladies favored for hat trimmings this season.
    Tony uttered a choice imprecation.
    “Quite,” she agreed. “Though technically he was quite legitimate. He had his father’s nose to an inch.”
    Tony felt his lips twitch. Portia had ever been one to make light of a dark situation.
    It must have been awful for her, he thought. He’d disliked Daventry even before the man bedazzled Portia.
    To the ladies, the decorated officer was everything charming. In the company of men, however, William Daventry let his mask slip. Anthony had tried to warn Portia but to no avail. That day beside the lake, when he was still recovering from his injuries from the accident, she had called him a boy and it had wounded his heart just as much as the