Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Twenty minutes later, he was sitting opposite her in it as they sped through town.
His jaw tight. His lips flattened and his brows still resolutely furrowed deeper than a freshly plowed potato field, making her realize just how much she missed his dimples too.
She hadn’t seen either of them since the morning she had handed in her notice, and his uncharacteristic silence was deafening.
“If Nolley has been as thorough at the warehouse as he was with my things, I doubt there will be much left to see.” Portia spoke her thoughts aloud to break the awkward tension he seemed so determined to maintain.
“What, precisely, did he take of yours?” His question was abrupt and his expression stony, letting her know in no uncertain terms that he resented the interruption.
“Only my words.” Which were everything. “Every single essay I have written since I was sixteen.” She tried to shrug as if it didn’t matter, but it did. “Every decent one at least.”
“If it’s evidence of sedition, then it is probably best gone.”
“I do not just write sedition, Leo—not that I see the necessary need to argue for reform as sedition. There was a great deal of personal correspondence to myself among all those stolen papers too.”
One golden brow broke rank and arched, spoiling the impenetrable mask of disappointed disinterest he had chosen to wear in her presence. “You write letters to yourself?”
“I write essays to myself, actually. Whenever I have a conundrum or a crisis or even if I am upset or out of sorts, I ask myself a question and debate it thoroughly on paper. It helps me organize my thoughts and find the right path forward. The sort that are so intensely personal and cringeworthy that I’d probably rather die than let anyone ever read.
But now Nolley has.” And that made her feel queasy.
“He’s stolen my little chest filled with eight years’ of mortifying soul-searching and youthful overdramatics as well as the bigger one containing all my life’s work.
It is all gone. Every single thing that I have ever written.
” Which felt like a piece of her was missing.
“He even took my pens, for pity’s sake. Because clearly, if they are mine, they are poison pens that have no right existing.
Although I do appreciate the irony of my particular old, overused nib being seen as such a powerful weapon when I have always believed that the pen is mightier than the sword. ”
He almost smiled. “You do have a way with words, madam, I will give you credit for that.”
Purely to vex him, she smiled back, despite feeling utterly broken inside. “It’s Portia, Leo, and not “madam.” Unless you want to go back to being called your grace, your grace.”
His blue eyes narrowed slightly, but only with feigned irritation.
“Just take the compliment without the lecture, woman, as I can assure you they will be thin on the ground in the future.” Then his gaze hardened as the carriage turned onto the quay.
“I see we have arrived at the scene of the crime.”
Despite his determination to remain angry at her, he still helped her solicitously out of the carriage, even if he did treat her hand like a snake that he was quick to let go of. Then he quietly followed her down the overgrown path to the back of the warehouse.
The first thing Portia noticed was the state of the door; the old wood splintered as if somebody had gone at it with an axe. She could hear movement inside and so as not to alarm anyone, announced her arrival as she pushed what was left of the door open. “Hello.”
“Portia!” It was William’s voice. “Thank goodness you are safe!” He came to greet her, then stopped dead when he saw Leo.
“And I see that you have brought your new husband along. It is a pleasure to meet Portia’s rescuer, you grace.
I am William Stowe, Sir William for my sins although we don’t bother with all that here.
” He held out his hand and, to her surprise, her new husband took it and shook it.
“I didn’t exactly give her a choice not to bring me, sir.”
“Is this official business then, your grace?”
Leo shook his head and left it at that, so an awkward silence descended until Portia filled it. “How bad is it?”
William ushered them both in. “Come see for yourself, dear girl, but I’ll warn you it’s not a pretty sight.”
And it wasn’t.
If the offices of Equitas had looked shambolic before the constable had arrived, it looked like a rampaging Viking army had pillaged it after.
Thousands of sheets of the large blank paper they printed the newspaper on covered every inch of the floor, as the wrapped bundles they were usually stacked in had been torn open.
Every single tiny typesetting block was scattered like seed.
All their research books had been yanked from the shelves, ripped to pieces, and trampled all over.
Every desk was smashed. Every chair shattered and poor Bessie the printing press was reduced to a pile of mangled parts on the floor.
To add insult to injury, Nolley’s men had poured all their printing ink over everything to ensure nothing could be reused.
Jim, who had been rifling through Bessie’s twisted metal for bits that could be salvaged, paused to give her a smile.
“I’m glad you’re safe, Portia. I thought you were done for.”
“So did I.” She still might be, but that wasn’t a conversation for now. Any more than asking how he had managed to evade capture was when a magistrate was standing not six feet away, albeit one of the good ones. “I’m glad you’re safe too, Jim.” She gestured to Bessie’s remains. “Can she be fixed?”
“I’ll do my best.” But even with his skill as a mechanic, they both knew that the ancient heart of Equitas would likely never beat again. “But be prepared for the worst.”
Leo’s eyes were everywhere. The only indication of any emotion was his intensely furrowed brows, but if they were from disgust at this wanton destruction or for the newspaper or for her involvement in it, she could not decipher.
“The constable kept us here to watch while they did this,” said William. “He went for Bessie with the sledgehammer himself, but had to hand it over to his men because she put up quite the fight.”
“We should have offered him a bribe.” That came from a disgusted Jim, who was staring levelly at Leo, not caring if he was friend or foe. “Word is he’s partial to one.”
“Only if your face fits,” added William. “We could have offered him a king’s ransom and he still would have done this to us.”
“Ay, and pocketed the money regardless.” Jim folded his beefy arms. “He’s an upstanding fellow, our constable.”
If their plan was to bait Leo, he took it all in with silent indifference.
Portia gestured to the mess. “If this is what they left, what did they take?”