Chapter Eighteen
Chapter
EIGHTEEN
As Corston read out the charges, Leo hoped fervently that she would do as he had asked but still wasn’t sure that she would.
They had argued like cat and dog right up until the last moment when the clerk of court had come to fetch her.
She had been adamant, but he hoped that she understood how limited her options currently were.
If this was wrong, he had given her his word that he would make it right.
In truth, even if she was as guilty as sin as the evidence suggested she was, he would single-handedly charge against a rampaging army if it kept her out of harm’s way.
That’s what a man did for the woman he suspected he was already more than half in love with—even if she had an adamant and nonsensical reason why she wouldn’t allow herself to attempt to love him back.
A sudden epiphany he would have to digest properly and deal with once this crisis was over.
“How do you plead, Miss Kendall?” Lord Corston was as frustrated with her silence as Leo was.
Portia squared her shoulders and stuck out her chin and Leo’s gut clenched in fear. Her expression was defiant as she flicked her gaze his way and he willed her to see sense.
Please, Portia! Trust me!
She looked away and stared at the floor, releasing an audible sigh as she seemed to deflate in the makeshift dock. “Guilty.” Her voice was small and defeated and he hated it. Hated seeing this fearsome, formidable woman who always radiated such fire reduced to a browbeaten shell of self-loathing.
He wanted to go to her. Wrap her tight in his arms and tell her that it was all going to be all right, but he knew that wouldn’t go down well with the court, who already suspected that she meant more to him than an employee should.
Instead, he had to settle for being supremely grateful that she was safe and everything else could wait until tomorrow.
They left her manacled as the clerk took down all her particulars, treating her like a common criminal, and that galled. But he sat on his hands and waited quietly, counting every excruciating second until they deigned to release her into his care.
“Place of birth?” asked the clerk.
“Newton St. Loe.”
Corston’s ears pricked up. “My neck of the woods, eh? I knew a Kendall way back—a Terence Kendall. He was a gardener, or maybe a groom, on my estate for a while, I believe. Is he any relation?”
There was no imagining the venom in Portia’s tone as she replied. “He was my father and he was your gamekeeper for fifteen years.” Why the blazes hadn’t she told him that? And what else didn’t he know about her?
“Whatever he was, he was a good man. One who knew his place.” Corston could not have been more patronizing. “You would do well to follow his example, Miss Kendall, and learn yours.”
Her lovely eyes narrowed at that dismissive chastisement and for a moment, Leo was sure she was about to tear Corston off a strip, but she didn’t. She clenched her jaw instead and only spoke again when spoken to, and only to answer questions for the record.
At Nolley’s insistence, the fine was a hefty one, but Leo paid it without comment, then waited while the constable finally produced the keys to unlock the humiliating shackles.
“She’s all yours again, your grace.” The innuendo in the vile little man’s tone chafed, but not as much as the way Nolley shoved Portia toward him. “And you are welcome to her.”
It took all Leo had just to nod as he maneuvered her to the door. He would deal with the constable in due course. Right now, his only priority was getting Portia home.
He helped her into the waiting carriage where she sat stiffly opposite, staring out of the window rather than look at him.
“I know that you are angry, Portia.”
Two molten brown eyes skewered him. “Angry doesn’t even begin to describe how I am feeling, your grace.
” He was back to being “your grace” again and that didn’t bode well.
She jabbed the air between them. “How would you feel if you had just been beaten into submission by your employer after being made a scapegoat by a liar? Oh … but that would never happen to you, would it? Because you are of noble birth so none of those unfair laws ever apply to you, and nobody gets to tell you to do as you are told or to know your place!”
She was right of course. “If we can find proof that the constable lied, you have my word that I will appeal this conviction and get it struck from your record.”
She scoffed in disbelief. “And how long will that take?” She folded her arms. They were bare because at some point she must have been separated from her coat.
Finger-sized bruises marred her upper arms, and her wrists were ringed with red where the manacles had been attached too tight.
Nolley would pay for both of those things as soon as Leo got his hands on him.
“One year? Two? Never—because I am not important? I pleaded guilty, after all, and apparently of my own free will.” Her expression now was one of complete disgust and it was him that she was disgusted with.
“Because as you so rightly pointed out, I was done for anyway. I never stood a chance.”
“But at least you are safe now.”
“For how long?”
“I am going to look after you, Portia, I promise.” He moved to sit beside her and wrapped a comforting arm around her, leaning his forehead against hers, needing the contact.
“We can put all this behind us and…” Rather than blurt out how he felt about her when his emotions were all over the place, he placed a soft kiss on her lips.
“I swear on my life that I won’t let anyone or anything hurt you ever again. ”
Rather than be relieved by that heartfelt reassurance, she pushed him away as she shook her head, her voice catching while she proudly held back her tears.
“Can you not see that every single bit of that was wrong? From the overreaction to the protest to the arbitrary arrests by the authorities, to your blue-blooded sister’s release without charge to the constable’s bloody lies to charge me for her offenses.
And the court’s readiness to do favors for a duke irrespective of the truth—just because he has the privilege of being a duke.
And their keenness to find me guilty until proven innocent just because I had the audacity to be lowborn.
” She turned toward the window again as if she couldn’t stand the sight of him.
“But thank goodness that I know my place, kept my mouth shut, and did as I was told by one of my betters, your grace. For heaven forbid that I dare to expect the basic courtesy of either the benefit of the doubt or a fair trial in a country that is so unjust, unequal, and institutionally unfair to people—like me—who do not matter that it is rotten to its very core!”
Unsurprisingly, Portia barely slept despite her physical and emotional exhaustion.
She was too infuriated, too hurt, and too disgusted by her shocking treatment from the authorities and her disappointment at Leo’s awful solution that she could do nothing other than rage at the unfairness of it all.
She gave up trying before dawn and headed to the newspaper.
She didn’t care that it wasn’t her day off or that she was supposed to be working her notice for the duke.
Now that she had a criminal record thanks entirely to him and his stupid sister, she no longer felt obligated to fulfill her contract no matter how hurt and conflicted her feelings for the wretch were.
Frankly, the sooner she left his house, the better.
However much her heart would ache for him, she was all done playing with fire and now that the constable had it in for her, only an idiot would remain working for the magistrate that paid that crook’s wages.
She also needed to vent some of her frustration at yesterday’s travesty, and the only way that she could make any sense of it all was to write it all down.
Thankfully, the newspaper office was as silent as the quay outside, so she locked herself inside, pulled out a piece of paper, and dipped her pen in some ink.
BATH—THE CITY OF CROOKED COURTS AND CORRUPT CONSTABLES!
By K Pendle
Ironically, Lady Abigail’s placard gave Portia the perfect headline for a piece that she knew was going to be too incendiary to ever print, but that she needed to write regardless. One which didn’t need a question that required debating, because there was nothing to debate.
The usually calm city of Bath was marred by unspeakable violence last night when the heavy-handed and heavily armed militia were sent in to quash a protest. While that protest was undoubtedly ill-informed, it certainly did not warrant the force or the state-sanctioned malevolence that was unleashed upon it.
Bloodthirsty soldiers cut through the crowd indiscriminately, using fists, bayonets, and rifle butts to wound everyone in their path.
Once down, the abused were beaten into submission before they were dragged to the goal where, sadly, the real crimes of last night were committed.
In the name of the law and with the abominable statutes of suppression not on their side, the accused were paraded one by one before a mockery of a court and were charged with whatever fabricated offenses vomited out of Constable William Gabriel Nolley’s lying mouth.
The lucky ones—and by lucky, I mean those with blue blood coursing through their veins and connections powerful enough to warrant special dispensation for the heinous crime of having an opinion—were released without charge irrespective of the evidence against them.
Those not lucky enough to be related to the persuasively dimpled Duke of Debden—or born into any rotten branch of our despicable and dishonorable ruling class for that matter—had the book thrown at them.
And it was thrown indiscriminately by a bunch of privileged and entitled blue-blooded idiots who have the effrontery to call themselves justices of the peace.
However, I can assure you that not one of those morally moribund men metered out any justice last night.
Hang ’em or flog ’em is the Bath magistrates’ motto.
Oppression is their sole purpose.
So rather than scrutinize the evidence and search for the truth they pretend to stand for, they gleefully listened to the constable’s lies and then casually ruined the lives of all those poor lowborn individuals stood before them with a callous swipe of their sanctimonious pens.
Everyone charged had to be punished whether guilty or not. As it serves the nefarious purpose of the few who rule us to use whatever unscrupulous means they have to repress or force to confess the disposable many rather than making any attempt to fight for any actual justice for them!
“Portia?” William’s voice made her jump.
“Why are you here so early?” But before she could answer, he frowned.
“And did you make doubly sure that you weren’t followed?
Only there was apparently a great deal of trouble in town last night and the constable would love nothing more than to be able to arrest one of us for it. ”
“Of course I wasn’t followed but—” Before she could finish her sentence, the floodgates opened and she burst into tears, and the whole sorry tale of the dreadful night before spilled out.