Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter
THIRTY-SIX
“And here we are yet again.” Miss Prentice poured Portia a fortifying cup of tea as the dawn filtered through the window.
She had been back at the school all night after her awful fight with Leo and, to her utter disgust, spent most of it in tears.
“Trying to pick up the pieces after another one of my protégées has had their heart broken by a stupid man.”
“It has been a bit of a year for it.” Kitty, who had had her arm around Portia for most of the night, sighed.
“First Georgie came back in tears, then Lottie, and now you. But as things turned out all right for our friends, I am hopeful your duke will come up trumps too. You’ll see.
He’ll come hammering on the door soon begging your forgiveness and you’ll both live happily ever after. ”
“It’s over, Kitty.” How on earth could it not be after last night?
“Leo isn’t the man I thought he was, and I certainly cannot be the woman he wants me to be.
Our marriage was a huge mistake.” She had a feeling he realized that too because he hadn’t attempted to follow her upstairs last night to apologize after she had stormed off and he hadn’t come looking for her after she had fled Berkeley Square a scant half an hour after.
It didn’t matter that she had sneaked out the back gate without anybody knowing, at some point, somebody must have noticed that she was missing and still he hadn’t come.
To begin with, foolishly, she had so hoped that he would too.
But then, she’d had hours to think and to ruminate before she had come to the sad but inevitable conclusion that this was for the best. Expecting her never to write again was like expecting her not to breathe and so she was glad that he had shown his true colors to her before it was too late.
“I am going to catch the morning post back to Bath and get on with my life.”
“He might not allow you to do that,” said Miss Prentice. “You need to be prepared for that too. Whether you want to be or not, you are his wife still and the law is on his side.”
“If I have to change my name and go into hiding to escape him, I will. The only way I will ever abide by his dictatorial rules is if he imprisons me and chains me to the bedpost, and even if he does, I shan’t stop plotting a way out.
” She was speaking about Leo now as if he were a monster, which he wasn’t—usually—and that broke her heart some more.
Because either she had been a complete, irrational, lovesick fool or he hadn’t been at all what she had believed him to be from the outset, and neither option was palatable.
“He’s going to fix this, Portia, I promise.” The hopelessly romantic Kitty seemed determined to cling to that, irrespective of the evidence. “So try not to harden your heart against him too much now to give him a chance.”
“I disagree.” Always the pragmatic voice of reason, Miss P sighed.
“The sooner Portia hardens her heart, the sooner it will mend.” Cynical advice that Portia would have normally welcomed, except today it just felt like another blow.
“And it will mend, dear, I promise. Especially if you bury yourself in work.”
There was a light tap on the parlor door before one of the current students of Miss Prentice’s School for Young Ladies entered. “This just arrived, Miss P.” She held out a letter. “It is for the duchess.”
The duchess! What a laughable title to still possess when she had already lost her duke.
Portia took it and then just stared at it because she recognized Leo’s handwriting.
“It is from him, isn’t it?” Typically, Kitty was beside herself with joy. “Read it.”
Portia shook her head and slipped the missive under her legs where she didn’t have to see it. “Whatever it says, it changes nothing, so I shall read it on the post later.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake!” Before Portia could brace herself, Kitty pushed her sideways and grabbed it, then dashed to the other side of the room so that she could rip it open.
“Give that back!” Portia went to snatch it and her friend lunged for the fire poker and wielded it between them like a weapon.
“He saved you from a prison hulk bound for Botany Bay, so the least you can do is hear what he has to say.”
“She’s right, dear,” said Miss P. “Whatever it says, you have to hear it, even if it does change nothing.”
“Fine.” Portia folded her arms and hardened her heart. “But I can assure you that my mind is made up.”
Still wielding the poker, Kitty cracked the seal one-handed and shook the letter open. “My darling Portia … Well, that’s a promising and romantic start.”
“Just get it over with, Kitty—without any additional commentary.”
“My darling Portia.” Kitty could not resist sighing at that.
“I think we can both agree that what happened last night was an epic disaster and I know that saying sorry again—whether in person or via letter—doesn’t even come close to fixing the damage that I have foolishly done.
Therefore, as I know how much stock you put in them especially when it involves a conundrum, I thought it best to write you an essay instead. Please read it. Leo.”
“That’s it?” It was hardly the groveling, on-bended-knee apology that Portia had secretly hoped for.
Kitty frowned as she turned the page. “No. It appears that he has indeed written an essay.” She held the page up for Portia to see.
Should the Duchess of Debden give the idiotic Duke of Debden a second chance?
Portia snatched it from Kitty’s hand and began to read.
I think that there can be no doubt that I behaved like the worst sort of idiot last night, and while there is no excuse for my dreadful behavior, I have done a great deal of soul-searching since my extraordinary wife left me.
And, perhaps foolishly, I still hope that she can find it in her heart to come back to me.
Sadly, I do not have her wonderful way with words, but here are my reasons why I think that she should.
It goes without saying that I love her but I will say it again anyway.
From the first moment I met Portia, and despite all her glowering disapproval that day, she called to my soul.
She felt like the missing piece of a puzzle.
My other half. The thing that I hadn’t realized I needed but had to have once I did.
That is why I kept her by my side when she first wanted to leave me and why I insisted that she marry me when it looked like the law was going to take her away.
I could pretend to both of us that it was the only way to keep her safe, and perhaps it was at the time, or that I felt beholden to her for pushing her into accepting that first conviction, but neither of those things were my true motivation for making Portia Kendall my wife.
Nor, in case anyone was wondering, did I marry her before I knew what she had done.
I knew she wrote sedition when we took those vows and I didn’t care.
In truth, I don’t care now.
I love the way my clever wife writes. I love the way her brilliant mind works.
I love the questions that she poses. I love the way she constructs an argument, backs it with irrefutable evidence, and comes to a reasoned conclusion.
I especially love her pithy turn of phrase, which I like to think I am a bit of an expert on now that I have read every single published essay that she has ever written.
My wife is a woman of strong convictions who never shies away from them.
I have no right to ask her to compromise them in any way like I did last night.
Which I suppose brings me to last night and why I so spectacularly overreacted.
Something my pride would rather not do as I want the woman I love to think that I am her strong and steadfast knight in shining armor, not a hero with feet of clay.
But as dignity is overrated, especially where love is concerned, I need to confess how I instead became more of a duke in distress than the man she deserves.
But to do that, I need to first go back a month or so to a time before we’d met.
To the day when my sister’s fiancé carried her bleeding body back into my house after she had been injured at a protest. A day that turned out to be profound for all the wrong reasons because it affected me in a way that has plagued me ever since.
I do not know why, but for some reason my mind decided to combine what happened to Abigail that day with what had happened to her when she fell out of that tree and nearly died all those years ago—not a giant leap to make, I suppose, as there were some similarities.
However, on top of that, my mind decided to throw in a million possible catastrophes too.
What-ifs that literally made my hair stand on end because every single one of them seemed to end with my sister dead, and I do not think my luscious locks have fully stood down since.
It’s difficult to describe the blind and irrational panic that one random incident caused or how real those imagined scenarios felt to me and, because I had no other clue how to banish it, I dragged my entire family to Bath against their will to keep them safe.
My clever wife witnessed me do that again last week after Percy’s letter arrived, when thankfully she was able to yank me out of the spiral of panic that had sucked me in, and used her irrefutable logic to put me back on an even keel.
But the irrational panic returned again last night when I read her latest column in Equitas.
I saw the word Peterloo and the whirlpool sucked me straight back down again.
Only this time, instead of Abigail’s limp and lifeless body, all I could picture was my wife’s.
Slain by an overzealous soldier because she dared to stand up for what was right.
Or murdered by some monster as she walked alone across the city to get to her beloved newspaper.
Then, even though I knew I was handling it wrong, all I could think of was keeping her safe and the only way, in my blind panic, that I thought I could do that was to rant and rave and lay down the law.
Was that irrational?
Yes.
Was it fair?
Absolutely not.
As to me spying on you, my dearest, darling Portia, by reading your most personal thoughts …
While I am ashamed to admit that I am guilty as charged, you should also know that all I have read are the opening paragraphs of two of those private essays.
One when I peeked inside your trunk to check that your papers were still inside it.
The other because it was out in the open on your nightstand and I am only human and was a man hopelessly in love with a woman who I was convinced would never love me back.
So when I saw that question which you had posed yourself, in desperation I had to know if you had decided if your friend Kitty was correct and you did feel more for me than an overwhelming attraction to my distracting dimples.
Did I use what little I read to control you? Of course I didn’t. But in the spirit of there being no more secrets between us ever again, I will admit to perhaps flashing my dimples at you a bit more.
Portia—love of my life—I know how much your writing means to you, and I have no right to attempt to make you stop.
In truth, I’d much rather you didn’t because your words are brilliant and so pertinent and gloriously pithy in their accuracy that the world needs to hear them.
Hell, you can even wave a placard covered in them on the floor of the House of Lords if you want to, so long as you are not in any danger.
So how about I meet you halfway? You carry on waving your placards and writing sedition with my full support and in return, you agree to the following non-negotiable caveats for the sake of my oversensitive hair follicles:
You never keep what you are doing from me again. I might not like it, I might rant and rave, and I might also have an irrational conniption like I did last night, but I will calm down. I always do. Especially when I have you to lecture me back to reason.
You never walk all the way home unaccompanied after dark again. We have a carriage, and I have legs, and both are always at your disposal.
And finally, you put your name loud and proud at the top of every seditious article that you write.
In case you need reminding of it, my love, it is Portia Sloane.
Aside from that fact that I am infinitely proud of my clever wife and want her to have the recognition that she deserves, the authorities can arrest Portia Kendall—but they wouldn’t dare lay a finger on the Duchess of Debden.
In conclusion, if any of the above goes some way to convincing you that I am not an utter dead loss that you are best shot of, I would be delighted to make a groveling apology to you in person after I have finished shouting into the wind this afternoon, where I will beg on bended knee that you consider taking me back.
Obviously, if you remain unconvinced, I will get you that annulment because I selfishly want all of you, Portia, and do not want to settle for anything less than your heart, body, and soul.
I will also, irrespective of your ultimate decision, continue on my quest to get your first conviction quashed.
Not only because it is the right thing to do, and because I want Nolley to pay dearly for what he did to you, but because I promised you that I would do so and I have taken every single vow I have ever said to you seriously.
And did I already mention that I love you?
Leo xx
Portia slumped back onto the sofa as Kitty and Miss P read the essay, so off-kilter she didn’t know what to think or which way was up.
Being an eternal optimist, Kitty of course took all of Leo’s words at face value. “That is the most heart-wrenching and beautiful essay ever written, so obviously, you have to go back to him!”
“But what if they are just words, Kitty? Words mean nothing without deeds to back them up and Leo is clever enough to know precisely what to say to get under my skin.” And to mine straight through to her silly heart that willed her to be more like Kitty and just accept his pretty words at face value.
“He also often says one thing and then entirely behaves to the contrary like he did last night. I need to be sure that he means them—really means them—before I even consider going back.”
“Then put your knight in shining armor to the test like the damsels did of old. Give him a challenge to test his mettle. A proper trial by ordeal.”
“And how exactly do I do that?” Portia stared down at the letter again, at all of Leo’s pretty words for any clue what to do, and suddenly had an epiphany. “There is one thing we could try … but I’d need your help with it.”
“Whatever it is, let’s do it now!” The hopelessly romantic Kitty was, of course, up like a shot.
“You might regret agreeing when you find out what I have in mind.” Portia smiled sheepishly as her friend began to frown. “Because I’ll give you fair warning that it is very definitely illegal.”