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and dark. Rooms where his wife had never been and where she had left no mark.
    No great surprise, the front door was locked. The groundskeeper lived in West Aubry and had no need for access to the house. His steward visited but twice a year to see to any interior maintenance that might be required.
    Rain beat down while they tried every other entrance and found each door locked and barred, every shutter closed. Short of breaking a window or kicking in a door they weren’t getting inside. In the abstract, he was pleased that Wordless was so well protected, but at the moment, he was inconvenienced at being denied entry to his own damn house. Both of them were shivering now, with no sign of the rain letting up and the cold getting sharper.
    “The stables?” Portia said.
    He nodded and took her hand while they dashed along the gravel drive that led to the stable block only to find the grooms’ quarters locked up as tight as the house. They took refuge in the long stone archway of the stables, eight stalls on each side. The block emptied onto a courtyard with the carriage house at the far side. That was locked tight, too, he discovered.
    Back in the archway between the two rows of stalls, they stood side-by-side, dripping water onto the paving stones. He stamped his feet and made a largely futile attempt to brush water off his coat and out of his hair. “At least we’re out of the wet.”
    “Yes.” She stared at the rain beating down on the courtyard and cascading from the gutters.
    “Tell me why you’re so unhappy?”
    “I shan’t. Not more than you’ve guessed.” She shook her head. He’d give anything to have her look at him. “You’ll only think less of me than you do already.”
    “She rubs my nerves raw, too, sometimes.”
    “Oh,” she breathed. “Awful man.”
    “True.” In the silence he stamped his feet some more and managed to dislodge some of the mud that clung to his boots. “It can’t come down like this for much longer.”
    “Yes, it can.”
    He’d lived here long enough to know it could rain like this until tomorrow. “Listen to us.” He rolled his eyes even though she wasn’t looking at him. “Talking about the weather like two old ladies.”
    She shrugged, but halfway through the motion, she shivered. Without thinking, he put his arms around her. She didn’t come close.
    “Take pity on me,” he said. “I’m cold.”
    After a moment of resistance, she leaned toward him. He eased closer and tightened his arms around her. “Better. Much better.” He rubbed his hands up and down her back. She rested her head against his chest, and he slipped his hands underneath his greatcoat and rested them in the small of her back. He wanted to tell her he’d forgiven her, that he’d never forgotten a moment of their time as lovers, but that seemed…unwise.
    After a moment or two of standing like this, she lifted her head and stared at the waterfall sluicing off the roof. The courtyard’s central gutters overflowed. The noise was near deafening. “I don’t think it’s going to stop.”
    Like her, he stared at the water. “We can wait a while yet.”
    “Hob will worry,” she said. “Magnus, too. They’ll wonder where we’ve got to.”
    He continued to stroke her back. “Five minutes. Then we’ll go even if it’s no better.”
    With a sigh, she settled against him, tucking her hands between them. Five minutes later, the rain hadn’t let up.
    He forgot all about the cold and the damp as he brushed away a tendril of dark red hair that had stuck to her cheek. She pushed away, and he did the strangest, most contradictory, selfishly male thing imaginable. He brought her close instead of setting her back. She lifted her chin and gave him a quizzical look. The world dropped away. This was Portia. His Portia, and whatever had happened between them, no matter how they’d changed, nothing had changed at all.
    He lowered his head to hers.

Chapter Five

    F OR THE SPACE OF half a heartbeat,