Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter
TWENTY-FOUR
“Your grace!” All the color drained from Nolley’s face at the sight of Leo on his doorstep.
“Mr. Nolley.” He used the “Mr.” on purpose because the man wasn’t fit to carry the title constable.
He never had been, truth be told, but the events of the last few days had cemented the need to relieve the man of his post with all haste.
Not just because of all the egregious things he had done to Portia, although those factored the highest among Leo’s reasons for being here this morning, but because his heavy hands had no place being linked to the law. “Can I come in?”
Nolley looked decidedly shifty and uncomfortable as he shook his head, almost as if he knew this meeting wasn’t going to end well. “I’m pressed for time at the moment, your grace, and need to take some statements from witnesses to the protest before the ringleaders stand trial next week.”
“I have transferred responsibility for that to Constable Richardson.” A reasonable man with a strong civic conscience who had voluntarily served Bath well as an occasional watchman for many years and who, at the very least, seemed to have a good grasp on what was right and what was wrong.
Nolley’s eyes narrowed as he began to put two and two together. “Since when has Richardson been a constable?”
“Since I offered him your job an hour ago.” As there seemed little point in beating around the bush, Leo delivered his final blow for now. “I no longer have any faith in your abilities, Mr. Nolley, and refuse to employ a man who thinks using force on a woman is acceptable.”
Instantly Nolley’s temper exploded. “That liar’s got your knackers in a vise if she’s convinced you of that!
I didn’t punch her!” He dared to shake his fists, so a split second later he found himself pushed up against his porch; his short legs fighting for purchase on the ground because Leo had hoisted the little shit upward by his lapels so he could snarl directly in his obnoxious face.
“But you pushed her, didn’t you, Nolley?
You enjoyed inflicting bruises on a scared and manacled woman who couldn’t fight back, all to get back at me, didn’t you, you pathetic, bloody coward?
” He took great satisfaction at the way the man’s eyes bulged in fear in his reddened face.
“So now it’s my turn to repay that favor! ”
Nolley winced as if expecting a physical blow, but Leo wanted a more fitting revenge. A more lasting one. He let go of his former constable and wiped his hands as if he had handled something nasty, which he undeniably had. “You are dismissed, Mr. Nolley. Effective immediately.”
“Suits me!” Nolley bellowed at Leo’s retreating back. “I’ll go to work for Lord Corston instead, you pious, sanctimonious, lily-livered, pedantic liberal!” He spat that last word as if it were somehow an insult. “He’ll employ me as a constable.”
Over Leo’s dead body would that ever happen, but Leo didn’t bother turning around because he was all done with Nolley—for now at least.
Once Leo had all the evidence he needed against him, Nolley would get his full just deserts.
But for now, this would have to do. “I wish you well prising any wages out of him. It is only us lily-livered liberals who believe in paying their constables—or providing them with comfortable cottages to live in rent-free.” But he couldn’t resist twisting to deliver his last, killer line.
“Be sure to have your corrupt and sadistic arse out of this one precisely one week from today or I shall take great pleasure in tossing you out on it!”
Several hours later, Leo found himself staring at Portia’s little chest on his study floor.
He had requested it from the clerk of court on the off chance, convinced all the private papers that seemed to mean so much to her would have been destroyed by the vengeful Nolley just as everything else that she had written had been.
But the clerk had miraculously found the battered marquetry box among a mountain of other confiscated items pertaining to the protest that had just been left at the prison.
Obviously, Leo was going to return it to his wife.
That went without saying because not only was it the right thing to do, but it was the kind thing to do too.
She had lost her independence, her beloved Equitas, and what she had wistfully called her life’s work all in one fell swoop, and he wanted to at least give something back to her.
Something precious to her that might banish the stoic sadness that had taken permanent residence in her lovely eyes since he had married her.
But should he take a peek inside first? That was his quandary.
On the one hand, inspecting the contents was obviously a gross invasion of her privacy.
Especially when he knew that these were her personal, soul-searching essays to herself.
On the other, he was desperate to learn as much about the woman who now bore his name as possible in the hope that it would guide him in what to do about her next.
Because currently, he had no bloody idea, and avoiding her like the plague, which had been his strategy for the last few days, wasn’t a long-term solution.
He had barely slept a wink. Every single time he closed his eyes, he was either swamped with hurt at all her lies, filled with fury at himself for falling for them, or consumed with guilt at his part in her downfall.
All that was mixed with an enormous dollop of lust, thanks to the wholly unwelcome but indelible memory of how blasted good she had looked in her birthday suit!
Not that his waking hours were any less painful when the minx now utterly consumed him.
If he wasn’t mulling over her, he was frantically trying to find any diversion that might stop him mulling, so far with minimal success.
Not even his dogged quest to find the evidence to get her first conviction quashed, as he had solemnly promised her, diverted his attention that far from Portia, because ultimately it was her he was doing all that digging for.
Her he was seeking justice and retribution for.
Like a man possessed. Or obsessed. Or just pathetic.
Or likely all three.
Frankly, for the sake of his sanity, something tangible had to shift his dilemma one way or another, or he was going to go bloody stark staring mad.
Because he needed a valid reason to either forgive her or forget her.
To want her or want her gone. To love her or loathe her.
Where his tumultuous feelings for Portia were concerned, there really couldn’t be an in-between.
Which all rather suggested that just a quick, cursory glance into this battered and well-loved box was the answer. And was invading her privacy a little a crime when she had told him such a pack of lies that he didn’t know which, if any, of her words he could actually trust?
Because Barkington and Snifferson were currently staring at him with the same intensity as he was staring at her box, he deferred to them. “What do I do, boys?” He tapped the offending wood with his toe. “Should I open it or not?”
Snifferson sniffed it, then resumed staring at Leo, perplexed, but when Barkington barked that felt like a permission. Before remorse set in as it inevitably would, he lifted the chest onto his desk, winced at the enormous rush of guilt that flooded him, but still flipped the lid.
He only gave the contents a cursory glance, simply to ascertain that they were indeed hers and that they were still in there. That wasn’t a violation of her privacy, was it? It was diligence.
Surely?
He leaned over, ensuring his hands were firmly clamped behind his back in case looking became touching, when touching crossed the line.
Inside was, unsurprisingly, stuffed with papers all written in Portia’s bold and flamboyant hand. Essays that smelled unsettlingly of her perfume; each folded into a neat rectangle so none of her precious arguments became separated but making them impossible to surreptitiously read.
Apart from one that he noticed had been stuffed down the side. The only one that wasn’t folded closed.
He twisted his head to attempt to read it and that was when he saw the underlined question at the top: Is it just the dimples or is it more?
Bloody hell! She’d written an essay about him!
Leo knew that without a shadow of a doubt as he was now a bit of an expert on her distinctive writing style after he had spent hours and hours since their nuptials poring through every back issue of that damned newspaper that he could get his hands on.
Whether she was the incognito K Pendle the editor or the P Kendall who had been a bold and brazen regular contributor over the last few years, she still wrote with a clever combination of pith and wit.
Always starting with a question and then answering it with Portia-esque aplomb.
Her arguments well researched, reasoned, and flawlessly convincing—just as they were when she vocalized them.
But what conclusions had his clever wife come to about him?
Rightly or wrongly—most definitely wrongly—he had to know and snatched the essay up.
Two weeks ago, if you would have asked me if there could possibly be anything redeeming about a duke, even a particularly handsome one, I would have emphatically said no.
For dukes, as a breed, are an entitled and privileged lot who are so out of touch with those beneath them that it would be practically impossible for someone with such strong reforming ideals as mine to even find anything to like, let alone admire.
That, of course, was before I collided with the Duke of Dimples.
A charming, liberal-minded man with such an easy manner, twinkling blue eyes, and the most disarming smile that I have ever seen.
But is it just his dimples that have turned my usually sensible head, or is there more to him that calls to me than his obvious attractiveness?