Chapter Six #2
That had to mean that those petty, spoiled girls had been following her while she hunted for them! Sending her on a wild-goose chase for their own selfish amusement!
She started toward them, ready to give the childish pair of time-wasters a piece of her mind, when the lovestruck soldier, who was still near prostrate on the pavement, caught Portia’s hand and tried to kiss it, momentarily distracting her.
She yanked it away and sidestepped his next lunge, then spied those infuriating straw bonnets running across the road into Green Street.
Portia gave chase. As the duke had promised, they were fast—even Lady Abigail despite her slight limp.
Faster than she was in her slippery stockings and boots.
They shot up Milsom Street, then darted left onto George Street, where she briefly lost them again, before she spied them heading up Gay Street back toward the Circus.
Portia’s lungs were burning by the time she reached there but, once again, Lady Abigail and Lady Emilia had disappeared.
It was less than a five-minute walk now back to the house, three if they ran, but somehow, she knew those girls would not do the decent thing and go home unless she forced their hand.
Therefore, instead of dashing left around the Circus, Portia went right and was rewarded by the sight of those bonnets about to flee into Bennett Street.
Where, no doubt, they planned to find another route back down the hill to the town to continue this stupid game of cat and mouse in perpetuity.
As Portia would now rather die than let them beat her, she found the strength from nowhere for one last push. Hoisting up her wet skirts, she pumped her legs so fast that it was a wonder she did not take off, yelling at anyone who dared get in her way.
She was feet away from the runaways when she screeched at them like a banshee to stop.
Her scream was so primal that it shocked the sisters into doing just that, and they gaped at her like two hooked trout from the opposite pavement.
“Get here now!” Incensed and with her finger wagging, Portia marched forward and then instantly stepped back when a carriage whizzed past.
So close that she felt rocked by the draft it created.
So close that she was immediately showered with a tidal wave of mud and muck as its wheels churned through all the standing rainwater caught in the curb.
Barkington, the most diligent but smallest guard dog in the world, leaped from his sleeping position beneath Leo’s desk and gave his customary three woofs to alert that somebody had just entered the house. Then both he and Snifferson bounded off to investigate, so Leo followed.
He sincerely hoped that it was Miss Kendall, who had been missing all evening after, if his housekeeper was to be believed, a collision with a puddle that had left her in the highest of dudgeons as she had frog-marched his sisters back into the house.
He was keen to check that she was all right after her first day with them.
He had worried all day that just one afternoon alone with his scheming sisters might have been enough to send her running for the hills.
He was keener still to know that Miss Kendall was home safe.
While he appreciated that her evenings were her own to do with as she pleased and that she probably spent them with her ailing mother, it was late.
He did not like the idea of any woman out alone at eleven at night.
The streets of Bath might be marginally safer than the streets of London, but it still was a long way from being a crime-free paradise, as he knew only too well.
Now that she lived under his roof, he felt as responsible for her safety as he did for his sisters and would never forgive himself if something happened to a young woman alone on his watch.
Thankfully, Miss Kendall was in her office. She had her back to him and was unpacking papers from a satchel that she was stuffing into the drawers of her desk. So oblivious of his presence that he felt obligated to cough to alert her to it rather than frighten the life out of her.
“A-hem.”
She jumped out of her skin anyway and spun around with wide eyes. “Y-your grace.” She briskly tossed her satchel onto the chair behind her desk and bobbed a respectful curtsy that really did not suit her. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be up this late. I apologize if I disturbed you.”
“You didn’t.” He waved in the vague direction of his study. “I was working. My apologies for startling you though—I should have made more noise as I approached.”
“You are surprisingly stealthy for a big man.” And she did not look happy about it, or perhaps she was just generally unhappy about his presence on the planet.
She was such a prickly minx, it was difficult to tell.
But he was determined to hold out an olive branch in an attempt to improve diplomatic relations between them now that they were technically on the same side.
Just the two of them versus Abigail and Emilia and the vast enormity of their outrage. “I wondered how your first day went?”
His sisters had claimed, over yet another stilted and resentful dinner, that it had been uneventful, but he did not believe that for a second.
Especially after his housekeeper had told him that his sisters had returned with quite the spring in their steps while their new chaperone looked like she had been dragged through a hedge backward.
She didn’t now, of course. She looked … lovely.
Her attire this evening more like that of any young lady about town than the uniform of a sensible chaperone.
The pale pink walking ensemble suited her so much better than the sensible gray or brown serge outfits that he had only thus far seen her in and, for some reason, she had several ink stains on her elegant fingers.
His question instantly made her expression wary. “Do you have any cause to believe it did not go well?”
“Not at all.” Bloody hell but she was crotchety! “I just wanted to check that it had been as uneventful as my exasperating sisters have claimed.”
She forced the wariness away, but he could tell it was an effort. “It was indeed uneventful.”
“Aside from you coming home soaked, I assume.” And just like that her guard came up again.
“That was all my fault, your grace. I was so busy watching out for your sisters that I forgot to look where I was going and got splashed by a carriage as a result.”
“Ah,” he said, not sure quite what to say to that. “So long as it was an accident.”
“It was.”
“Splendid.” Leo’s toes began to curl awkwardly inside his boots and he found himself rocking on his heels like an admiral inspecting the fleet. “Splendid.”
Oblivious of the peculiar atmosphere, which Leo was convinced he could actually cut with a knife if he had one to hand, Snifferson decided to sniff.
First Miss Kendall’s shoes, then her skirts, and then finally, not caring that he was being impertinent, the cumbersome mastiff wandered to her chair to thoroughly smell her satchel.
She snatched it up so fast that Leo felt compelled to apologize.
“Snifferson is called Snifferson because he has always been nosy. There is no reason to what he finds interesting but as you are new here, you are a new smell to him.” That sounded wrong.
“Not that I am suggesting that you smell in the literal sense, Miss Kendall. In fact, your perfume is rather lovely. What is not to like about the scent of orange blossoms in full bloom?” And now he was just vomiting words.
Nervous words because something about her always seemed to unsettle him.
“My labored point is that dogs tend to explore and understand the world via their noses. Snifferson especially because I suspect his eyesight is shocking and he doesn’t possess any respect for boundaries. ”
To prove that, his ill-mannered dog pushed his impertinent black nose into Miss Kendall’s right thigh and sniffed all the way down it to her knee.
But rather than take offense at it, she smiled at the dog.
Not one of her forced smiles of sufferance that she only ever bestowed upon Leo, but a real one that fair took his breath away.
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Snifferson.” She tickled the mastiff’s floppy ears and, like the shameless tart that he was, Snifferson rolled onto his back and lapped up all the attention she gave to his exposed belly.