Where the Heart Chooses Read online

  Where the Heart Chooses

  By Tinnean

  Published by JMS Books LLC at Smashwords

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2013 Tinnean

  ISBN 9781611529432

  For more titles by Tinnean at Smashwords visit

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  * * * *

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  * * * *

  Where the Heart Chooses

  By Tinnean

  Prologue

  That woman moaning could not be me. Sebrings didn’t moan, and neither did Manns, which I was by marriage, although I’d been a widow for more years than I liked to think. Neither moaning nor crying ever solved anything, ever made anything better. I strove to bite them back.

  “Hang on, ma’am. We’ll get you out!”

  There was a screeching, whining sound as the fire department’s Jaws of Life extricated me from the wreck that was my son’s car.

  The paramedics eased a backboard under me and raised me onto the stretcher. “We’re taking you to the emergency department of George Washington University Hospital, ma’am. Can you tell me your name?”

  “I’m…I’m Portia Mann. Gregor—” It was difficult for me to breathe.

  “Who?”

  “Gregor Novotny. My…” I drew a shallow breath and tried again. “My driver. How is he?”

  “He’s already on his way to the ED.” That told me nothing.

  “My…son…Quinton Mann.”

  “Jesus! There’s another injured party? He must have been ejected. Whitie, you’d better take a look—”

  “No, not here.” I would have been amused, but even that hurt too much. “He’ll worry…”

  “I’m sorry, I understand now. The authorities will notify him, Mrs. Mann. Now, we’re putting you in the ambulance. Small bump.”

  While one of the paramedics worked on me in the back of the ambulance, getting my vital signs, assessing my condition, the other drove with the lights flashing and the siren wailing.

  “You’re going to feel a pinch.” She started an IV.

  I had to concentrate to breathe around the pain, and I was unable to question her further. I began to slip in and out of consciousness.

  During one of those brief spans of consciousness, I felt the ambulance come to a smooth stop. The stretcher was maneuvered out the rear door and wheeled past doors that slid apart to allow entrance.

  The lights in the ED were bright even through my closed eyelids.

  “Bay three!” someone directed.

  I could feel the cool metal of scissors as they cut my gown from me. How had they managed that without cutting the lynx coat my husband had given me on our honeymoon?

  “Mrs. Mann, can you understand me?”

  I started to nod, but my head felt as if it were about to explode, so I contented myself with a whispered, “Yes.”

  “Good. We can’t give you anything for the pain, not until the doctors have examined you.”

  “Well, tell them not to…not to dawdle, would you?”

  There was muffled laughter. “Yes, ma’am.”

  As if from a great distance, I heard the words, “Possible fractured hip.”

  “Concussion.”

  “Internal bleeding.”

  “Possible pneumothorax.”

  I was too tired to pay much heed.

  A hand took mine and held it tightly. The grip was familiar. Nigel? No, of course not; how foolish of me. He had been gone for twenty-four long years. This was my son. I knew that without opening my eyes.

  “Don’t you dare die on me, Mother! Do you hear me?”

  Well, yes, Quinton. I imagine the entire emergency department can hear you.

  “Will she be all right, Doctor?”

  “She’ll be fine, Quinn.” Mark Vincent—my son’s lover—and I wanted to laugh. His tone guaranteed that if I were not fine, someone would pay dearly.

  “Does she have any allergies, Mr. Mann?”

  “No. Generally she’s healthy as a horse.”

  Really, Quinton. So crass!

  “Listen, Quinn. I’ve got some stuff to do. You’ll be here, right?”

  “I’ll be here. Mark.” My son’s voice was strained. “I’m not going to ask what you’re going to do.”

  “Good. You know I wouldn’t tell you anyway. Mrs. Mann?” Mark’s words were soft in my ear. “You heard Quinn. You’d better damn well be alive when I get back!”

  I was so pleased he was in my son’s life. I’d need to tell him that.

  “We have to get your mother to the operating room now, Mr. Mann.”

  “Yes. Of course.” His hand tightened around mine, and then released it. He must have bent close to me, because his breath was warm against my cheek. “I love you, Mother.”

  I love you too, my beloved son.

  “Mr. Mann? DCPD. I have some questions…”

  I would have liked to hear those questions, but the stretcher was being wheeled away.

  And I was just so tired…

  * * * *

  Chapter 1

  The house in which I grew up was an old Georgian manor in the panhandle of Maryland. It had managed to withstand the ravages of both the War of Independence and the War Between the States and had been kept up by each succeeding generation of Sebrings, who had too much pride in our home to allow it to fall into disrepair.

  It sat on one hundred and ten acres of the most beautiful farmland in the state, or perhaps we felt that way simply because Shadow Brook was our home.

  Sometimes, when I knew Nigel would be away for extended periods, I would take our son to visit.

  Quinton enjoyed the time we spent there. We rode together, and he climbed the trees in the orchard and swam in the small pond where my brothers had taught me to swim and where I, in turn, taught my son.

  He loved the house, with its vast maze of rooms, but most especially the room that was entered through a door hidden under the staircase on the second floor. Within that room had once been kept the family’s treasures, the Bible with its record of births, marriages, and deaths, the original land grant from Lord Baltimore for services rendered, letters from at least eight presidents, a copy of the Declaration of Independence carefully framed to protect it. Now they were in a climate-controlled vault, and what remained in the room were the silver punch bowl and eight goblets that had been crafted by Paul Revere, as had the lead soldiers earlier generations of Sebring boys had played with.

  There was also a miniature portrait of the blond, blue-eyed man who had founded our family.

  Barnabas Sebr
ing sailed to the Americas in 1634, when Charles I granted Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, the region that was to become Maryland, and he was my son’s great-to-the-eighth degree grandfather.

  Barnabas’s great-great grandson ran General Washington’s spy ring in the central portion of the United States. According to family legend, if Nathan Hale had worked under Horatio Sebring, he never would have told a stranger of his mission and wouldn’t have needed to speak his famous last words.

  From that time until the present, Sebrings had served their country, covertly for the most part. Because I was a woman did not mean I was excluded.

  I was named for my godmother. She and my mother had been girlhood friends in Baltimore, and that friendship had continued even after Portia Fitzgibbons married into the British nobility and became Lady Portia.

  She was Mother’s matron of honor when Mother married Anthony Sebring in 1920, and when I was born in 1935, she was my godmother.

  So when Father asked a favor of her, she was more than willing to accommodate him.

  I learned of his plans for me when I came home from Wellesley for the spring break my senior year.

  Mother had been running me ragged, and now I came quietly down the stairs from the second floor of Shadow Brook. I was dressed in jodhpurs, and I wanted to take my mare out. However, if I ran across Mother, I knew she would find something else she felt I simply had to do.

  There was the sound of a throat being cleared, and I jumped and then breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Portia.”

  “Good afternoon, Father.”

  “I see you’re dressed for riding.”

  “Yes. Penelope needs some exercise, and so do I after all the time away at college.”

  “If you can spare me a moment, would you come into my study, please?”

  “Certainly.” It was phrased as a polite suggestion, but I knew an order when I heard one.

  “Close the door.”

  “Father, what’s this about?”

  “Lady Portia has graciously offered to sponsor your debut in London.”

  “Next year—”

  “This year. As you’re aware, the queen has abolished the tradition of presenting girls. Every parent is going to have their daughter curtsy before her, even if they’re underage. It will be a madhouse. That’s why you’ll be presented this June.”

  “But—”

  “Lady Portia has seen to all the arrangements, and your mother has been in touch with Dior. He has your measurements, and he’s agreed to have your wardrobe ready for a fitting as soon as you can get to Paris.”

  “My graduation?” I was to graduate from Wellesley with honors in History.

  “Is in May. As soon as the ceremony is over, you’ll fly out from Friendship International. Now, your mother tells me you have some reservations to being presented at Court.”

  “I’m a little old for that, don’t you think, Father?” I’d turned twenty-one the previous November. “And I had hoped to get started on my master’s. There are also the advanced courses in Russian I wanted to take…”

  He waved aside my objections. “You could pass for eighteen, and you won’t need that degree. As for Russian, you already speak it like a Bolshevik. I would much rather you delay your plans a few months, possibly a year.”

  He wasn’t a capricious man, nor one who felt a woman’s place was in the home, barefoot and pregnant. I waited to hear his reasons.

  “You’ll meet people who are in the government. A connection with them will prove most beneficial to the family. The Country.” And yes, that was with a capital C—he revered the land of his birth more than God.

  Father had served in the OSS during the War. Now he worked primarily for the State Department.

  My three brothers also worked for the government. Anthony, the oldest, had finished a stint in the military and joined the National Security Agency, while Bryan, who had been the baby until I was born, and Jefferson, who was the middle brother, had both chosen the CIA.

  “I imagine this will give me a certain cachet with that community?”

  “Yes. And keep in mind it will make the utmost sense for your parents to give you a Season as a…mmm…graduation present.”

  “Very well, Father.”

  His smile was a mere stretching of his lips as he offered me a glass of aged scotch. “Welcome to the family business, Portia.”

  I touched my glass to his and took a sip.

  * * * *

  Lady Portia introduced me to the people I needed to know, keeping up the façade that I was simply in London to make my belated come-out. I wrote letter after letter to Mother, describing the whirlwind of gaiety that comprised my days and nights. I knew she would pass the letters on to Father, who would pass them on to someone adept enough at cryptography to discover the hidden meaning of page after page of gushing, girlish prose.

  I became friendly with the men and women who dwelt in society, as well as those who had, or would one day have, sensitive positions in the government.

  I expected to see these people in the normal course of my day, and I did. However, there was another newcomer to the scene, whom I seemed to keep missing.

  Folana Fournaise.

  Town was abuzz when Sir Joseph Bowne, senior official of a rather obscure section of the Foreign Office, had suddenly appeared with the young woman on his arm, introducing her as his ward. That had raised eyebrows, but no one said anything. Too many middle-aged men had a tendency to acquire young wards.

  Oddly enough, each time a photographer tried to snap their picture, her face always seemed to be obscured.

  What was even stranger was the way she apparently brought every conversation around to me. It became the most amusing topic of conversation of the Season, although I didn’t think so.

  “Portia, my dear! You just missed Miss Fournaise! Pity, she seems so interested in meeting you. Always regrets your absence. We really must arrange something!”

  Or I would pick up The Sun and read, “Miss F.F. attended Lady C.’s do with her guardian, Sir J.B. Everyone was breathless to see the long-anticipated meeting between her and Miss P. S., but alas, it was not to be.” And I’d realize she’d put in an appearance after I had left.

  It made no sense. The odds that we should keep missing each other were too great.

  In addition to that, I began to feel myself being watched. While sightseeing, while paying calls, while making the contacts my father desired. I was too much a daughter of my family not to be aware of covert surveillance, but I could never pinpoint the source.

  I mentioned this, as well as the elusive Miss Fournaise, in one of my carefully coded letters home.

  Bryan was the one who responded. Anyone reading it would think it simply dealt with family news: how serious Anthony seemed to be about the young lady he was seeing, how Bryan himself was still waiting to meet his “one,” the charities Mother sponsored, Father’s extended visits to Boston, Manhattan, San Francisco.

  Whoever had opened the letter and read it—oh, yes, it had been opened, although only someone who knew what to look for would be able to tell. It had been resealed very cleverly, but not cleverly enough to fool a Sebring—must have been bored to tears.

  What it actually said was, We couldn’t learn much about F.F.’s early years; they seem to be shrouded in mystery. J’s gone undercover and will look into it more closely. What we do know is that when she isn’t doing occasional “jobs” for Sir J., she runs The Complex, an organization that flirts extensively with the illegal. It might be interesting to find out why Sir J. is having her pose as his ward. The fact that you haven’t run into her yet may mean nothing. “The world is a small place, but London is a very large one.” You always did enjoy Coleridge’s Rime, little sister.

  He had paraphrased the line from Now, Voyager, Mother’s favorite movie, which might or might not mean anything. However…

  I read the final line again. Bryan knew that of all Coleridge’s works, I disliked The Rime of th
e Ancient Mariner the most:

  “Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.”

  It always gave me the shivers, and I worried my lip. What was going on that I would need to beware what walked behind me?

  * * * *

  The first time I actually saw the leggy brunette, the group of young people I was with was just leaving the Victoria and Albert Museum, and she was entering it with her male companion, a craggy-faced, blue-eyed blond. They made an interesting contrast. Her blue-black hair was severely restrained in a French pleat that swung down to the middle of her back, and her eyes were shielded by the wide-framed sunglasses that were currently the rage. Her breasts…I flushed. It had been some time since I’d been distracted by thoughts of sex, and I was surprised to find myself considering her very female curves. I wanted to test their weight in my palm, and my panties dampened at the thought of taking a taut nipple between my lips.

  I dreamed of her that night, and I awoke with my own nipples tight with need, an ache between my thighs, and the sheets sweaty and tangled around my legs.

  The second time, a couple of days later, they were leaving Madame Tussaud’s while we were about to climb the stairs.

  The third time, early the following week, she was strolling through Hyde Park while I trotted past her, accompanied by Jack, my godmother’s son. He was just leaning toward me to say something, when I was distracted by the sight of her. She met my raised eyebrow with a raised eyebrow of her own, and then lowered her sunglasses, gazed at me over the rims, and smiled. My breath stopped in my throat.

  The big blond touched her arm, and they vanished into the crowd.

  Our paths continued to cross, my dreams became increasingly more erotic, and I wondered if I should engineer a way to meet her.

  And then I received a wide, thin envelope from Jefferson. Within was a black and white photograph, taken with a telephoto lens. The subject was gazing pensively into the distance, unaware, but even the grainy quality of the picture couldn’t diminish the beauty in her face. On the back, my middle brother had written, From what I could learn, they see you as a new player, and they want to determine if you’ll prove to be a threat. Keep them guessing, little sister!