Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter
THIRTY-FIVE
Leo had quite the spring in his step when they ventured downstairs several hours later.
The world brighter and his heart so full it was fit to burst. Better still, his head finally seemed like his own once more.
Thanks to the marvelous distraction of Portia, he hadn’t worried about a damn thing all week and, now that he had conquered those intrusive demons that had plagued him for weeks, he felt lighter too.
In fact, with all his worries gone, everything in his garden was rosy and he couldn’t have been happier about it.
He escorted his wife—the love of his life—to the drawing room where the rest of his womenfolk were sequestered and then went to leave. An intention that incurred the wrath of his mother.
“Where do you think you are going when dinner is in less than ten minutes?”
“I just have a few accounts to sign off.”
“Can’t they wait until tomorrow seeing as you have postponed our leaving.”
“Not really. Portia is insistent that I shout into the wind tomorrow afternoon and that futile chore is bound to overrun.”
“By that,” said his lovely, passionate wife with a roll of her eyes, “He means that he is attending an important debate in the House of Lords tomorrow to support Earl Gray’s latest reform bill, and he doesn’t know when it will end.”
The mere mention of the reforming Gray started Abigail off, so he left her and Portia discussing the many injustices that the government needed to fix and headed to his study.
Thanks to his ardent quest to woo his wife, he had barely visited his study all week, so he wasn’t surprised to see the neat pile of post waiting for him on his desk.
He did a quick flick through, separating out all the bills so that he could arrange to have them paid, and tossing all the Mayfair invitations on the fire seeing as they were imminently headed home to Bath ready to start their new life together proper as man and wife.
He almost put his regular weekly copy of Equitas to one side so that he could read it on the long journey home, but paused.
Wondering why the hell he had still neglected to yet mention to Portia that he had subscribed to her beloved seditious rag for years, as had his father before him?
It was hardly a state secret after all, and now that they were being completely honest with each other and no longer kept secrets, holding something so unimportant back seemed daft.
He snatched it up, curious to see if the new printing press he had bought them had improved the look of it, and cracked the seal to unfold it.
Then grinned because Mr. Walker’s superior machine had indeed made it look crisper and cleaner and somehow more professional, and he knew that would delight his lovely wife.
The headlines especially, really stood out. His gaze automatically went to the opinion piece first.
Does the government’s suppression of dissent really work? The headline asked in true Portia fashion and he experienced a sense of pride that Equitas had decided to continue writing that bold first column like an essay the way his clever wife used to.
But then he started to read it, and his blood ran cold as there was only one pen that wrote with such aplomb.
Two years ago, when a peaceful but large protest gathered in St. Peter’s Field in Lancashire asking for parliamentary reforms, the embarrassed government sent the army in to break it up.
It turned into a senseless bloodbath that has haunted all of us since.
Instead of learning from that tragic mistake and making some concessions, the government instead set about tightening all the laws suppressing anything that it sees as a threat to its power and imposed harsh penalties on anyone who dared challenge the status quo.
I am sure that they believed that was the best way forward at the time; however, as time marches on, instead of preventing another bloodbath, I would argue that all that they have succeeded in doing is making another Peterloo Massacre inevitable.
As his hair follicles twitched in preparation of standing on end at the mention of the Peterloo Massacre, Leo felt himself spiral into the all-consuming anger, fear, and blind panic that he had hoped and prayed he was done with.
He sucked in a calming breath and tried to be rational.
They were just words.
Truthful words.
Compelling words because she had such a way with them.
This was who she was. What she did.
Her essence. As much a part of her as her beautiful smile and bold personality. Her heart and soul. Everything he loved so much about his wonderful, unconventional duchess.
This behavior wasn’t rational. And it wasn’t him, dammit!
At least not the usual him. Just because she had written another article did not mean that she had snuck out of the house and crossed the city alone in the small hours, for goodness’ sake.
She hadn’t been attacked by a villain in the shadows any more than she had been at that tragic Peterloo protest, so he shouldn’t allow his imagination to run riot like this.
For a moment, the tight bands of fear around his chest eased at that logic.
Then all at once they constricted tighter as a vivid image appeared in his mind that was so real it merged into his reality.
Of Portia’s limp body being carried home.
Covered in blood caused by an overzealous soldier’s sharp sword.
Breathless.
Lifeless.
Her passionate heart stopped and his shattered into a million pieces.
One that instantly sucked him into a vortex of panic that was so strong it squeezed all the air from his lungs.
He didn’t remember going back to the drawing room and barely registered the stunned faces of his family inside when he pushed the door open with such force the walls shook.
“How dare you!” He thrust the newspaper at his wife. “I didn’t save you from a convict ship bound for Botany Bay so that you could continue to endanger your life writing bloody sedition!”
She swallowed as she glanced down at the offending article but didn’t deny being its author. “Sir William was shorthanded and asked me to do it.”
“And I expressly asked you if you were writing it again when I spotted those ink stains and you denied it! You lied to my face yet again. After all we’ve been through.
After all I have done for you. And you have the nerve to pull me up for keeping a secret—but at least I didn’t lie as well!
” That betrayal hurt almost as much as the prospect of her violent death did.
“You claimed you were only writing letters to your friends.”
“I’m sorry.” She did a reasonable job of looking sorry too, but he didn’t believe it. “I shouldn’t have lied to you about it.”
“You shouldn’t have bloody done it!” He began to pace, aware that he had been sucked down too deep in the spiral to see reason, but too far gone to stop spewing venom.
“You should have just stuck to writing essays about my blasted dimples or whether or not bloody Kitty was right and you’d foolishly fallen in love with me! ”
“Leo…” She caught his hand. “I…” Then she dropped it like a hot coal.
“How did you know that I wrote those exact words? Unless…” Her eyes widened.
“You read my private papers, didn’t you?
” She began to back away from him as horror replaced contrition.
“You spied on my most personal and private thoughts and barefacedly lied to me about it?”
“So I lied!” He hated the petulant and overbearing way that he sounded but couldn’t seem to stop himself. The panic was too overwhelming. The fear it had created was too strong. “You do it enough!”
“How could you?” She was gazing at him with such wounded horror that he couldn’t stand it. “When you knew—you knew—that I would rather die than allow anyone to read them?” Then a wounded cry escaped and she covered it with her hand. “And then you used them to control me? How dare you?
He should have fallen to his knees then and begged for forgiveness.
Explained to her that he wasn’t being rational.
That he had lost himself, somehow, and loathed it.
Confessed that he had only read the first paragraph of both of those essays and would never, ever, betray her in the way that she now seemed to think that he had.
Instead, it was the irrational monster who answered. “You are my wife, Portia, so of course I dared.” He walked toward her with his arms waving and hating himself every step of the way. “And I reserve the right, as your husband, to insist that you start behaving like one!”
“By doing what you say and not writing sedition?” Horror turned to outrage as she held up her ring finger.
“Do you honestly think that this will stop me?” She ripped his ring off and jabbed it in the air between them.
“I wave placards and write sedition, Leo!” Defiant, she met him head on.
“That is what I do. That is who I am. If I cannot then—” She tossed the ring at him.
“I refuse to remain your wife for another second! Whether we get an annulment or not!” If he was panicked before, those words sucked him into a new and wildly spiraling cyclone of hell.
“Over my dead body!”
“Don’t tempt me, Leo!” Before he could speak, before he could apologize, she hammered in the death knell. “Good luck controlling a wife who has already left you!”
And with that, she stormed out. Leaving him fighting to breathe as the panic actually threatened to suffocate him this time.
Leo had to bend double just to be able to suck in some air.
“Well,” said Abigail, “You made a monumental hash of that, big brother, didn’t you?”
The worst thing was that he knew he had.
“And he accuses me of having no common sense when my head is turned.” That came from Emilia who had bent to his level and was studying him as if he were something peculiar under a microscope.
“When I have never, even in my silliest moments, done anything as monumentally stupid as that.” She stroked his hair.
“Do you need me to fetch the smelling salts, Leo? Only you look as though you are having a touch of the vapors.”
He supposed he did, braced as he was with his hands against his knees, sucking in huge gulps of air while the room was spinning around him and his life spun out of control.
“Oh god. What have I done?” He had to fix this!
He hoisted himself upright and lunged to follow Portia but his mother blocked the door.
“Sit down and calm down, Leo, or I swear to god I’ll murder you myself!
” She pointed at a chair. “Before I let you go anywhere and cause even more damage, you need to first work out what the hell is currently going on in that thick head of yours, because whatever it is”—she gestured to the state of him—“this isn’t right! ”
As much as he hated to admit it, he knew his mother was correct.