Page 66 of Modern Romance January 2025 1-4

She turned and started walking, leaving Lex to follow. He caught up in three strides as she spoke again. ‘My father had done his best to make my mother miserable. He would have succeeded if she hadn’t been strong enough to stand up to him. I had no intention of letting him try to run my life so I left.’

‘He wouldn’t have liked that.’ Lex frowned, imagining the older man’s fury. ‘He must have made your life hell. Presumably he tried to get you to go back?’

‘He would have had to find me first.’

‘You ran away?’

She shot him a sideways stare from under bunched eyebrows. ‘Of course I ran away. That was always the plan.’

‘To elope with me, notalone!’

She’d been barely seventeen and despite their affair, Portia had been in many ways an innocent. She’d been protected from a lot of life’s harsh realities. Lex’s gut crawled at the idea of her naïve and vulnerable, out on her own.

It wasn’t as if she had a lot of friends or relatives she could go to. Most if not all wouldn’t stand up to pressure from her father.

‘Well, you weren’t there, so I had no choice but to go alone. Anyway, I survived. I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that. I didn’t sell myself on the street.’

Lex swallowed hard, tasting fear. He knew how difficult it could be, fending for yourself without a support network. He’d done it himself but he’d been two years older, more experienced and not a pretty young woman.

His skin crawled, thinking about the dangers she’d faced.

He wished her father wasn’t dead. Lex would have enjoyed making him pay for his actions.

‘How did you support yourself? You didn’t have much money.’ Her father had controlled her finances.

‘I worked as a stablehand for a friend of a friend. Several hundred miles away. I did that for a long time, as well as juggling casual jobs. The pay was never good with my lack of formal qualifications but I got by. The last few years I’ve worked in London. I didn’t bother trying to hide my identity by then.’

Lex could only guess at the effort it had taken to build a CV that took her from mucking out stables to working with the elite of Mayfair.

The stable work made sense. Portia had escaped to the stables and woodland whenever she could. It was her safe place. Where she’d gone after her mother died, stressed not just from grief but, he’d always suspected, from dealing with her bombastic father.

‘If my father had wanted to find me he could have but he’d washed his hands of me.’

The man had rarely had time for his daughter, except to show her off to his fancy guests.Thenhe’d been proud of her looks, her equestrian skill and her engaging personality that was such an asset when he had visitors.

‘Tell me about the painting, Portia.’

She swung her head around and this time he read emotion stamped on her features, her mouth tightening. Would she tell him it was none of his business?

Instead she shrugged as if humouring him. ‘It was all he left me. That’s why I sold it. There’s an art history course I want to do and the money will give me the freedom to study.’

He was curious and wanted to know her plans. But she was only telling him so much under sufferance.

Despite physical intimacy, over the weekend Portia had only talked about her life in general terms. Movies she’d seen, books she read or the latest world news. Or art, they’d talked about art a lot.

They’d set boundaries around their personal lives. That made sense because this interlude was fleeting, designed to leave them free to move on with their lives.

Yet Lex had begun to chafe at those boundaries.

He hauled his attention back to the conversation. ‘Surely, even if the estate is entailed, your father had personal possessions he could bequeath?’

‘It’s questionable how much he still owned. Money flowed through his hands like water.’

‘What about your mother’s money?’ She’d been wealthy. ‘And her jewellery?’

Portia’s mouth tightened, as if impatient at his persistent questions. ‘I suppose he inherited her money when she died. As for the jewels, last time I saw any, Raine was wearing them.’

Lex opened his mouth then shut it, refusing to release a stream of useless invective against her father. But it was difficult to hold in his fury.

---