A despicable, despotic duke had no right being so well put together when he had too many advantages already than was fair or equitable.
“Right then.” By his flat tone he had heard her clipped one and wasn’t impressed with it. “Let’s get this over with.” He strode to the big double doors of the drawing room and muttered something under his breath before he flung them open. She couldn’t be sure, because he definitely hadn’t meant it for her ears, but it sounded a great deal like “Abandon all hope all ye who enter here.”
Portia followed him in and bobbed a deferential curtsy to the two young ladies who were sitting on opposite sides of a tea table, regarding her with the same unimpressed interest as the snooty white Persian cat was now doing from its new perch on the sofa. “Abigail, Emilia.” Hegestured to each in turn. “Allow me to introduce you to Miss Kendall, your new chaperone.” Both ladies stood as politeness dictated, but neither made any effort to disguise their resentment as he turned back to her. “Miss Kendall, these are my sisters Lady Abigail and Lady Emilia.”
Her presence was acknowledged by twin nods before Lady Abigail spoke. Pointedly to her brother rather than at Portia. “I’ll confess, Leo, Miss Kendall is not at all what I expected our new jailer to be like.”
“Miss Kendall is your chaperone, not your jailer.” The duke’s jaw clenched, and a nerve ticked in his cheek. “And you are being impolite.”
“My humblest of apologies, Miss Kendall.” Lady Abigail bobbed an insincere curtsy. “It is not fair of me to take out my many frustrations with my unreasonable brother on you. I hope that you can forgive any offense I might have caused.”
“No offense was taken, my lady, I can assure you.” Before the duke could say anything further that would put Portia firmly in the firing line, she decided to deflect. She had come here to earn what she needed to work forEquitas, not complicate her life further by becoming embroiled in a silly family war of the overbearing duke’s making. So for an easier life, she smiled and glanced around the room for something more pleasant to talk about.
The first thing she noticed was the full-length portrait of the duke above the mantel. His painted blue eyes twinkling. His annoying dimples flashing and a different pair of loyal dogs guarding either side of his feet.
At least his dogs liked him, she supposed. From the twin hostile expressions on his sisters’ faces, not even his own family did. Hardly a surprise when he was such an overbearing tyrant.
That said, he was almost as disarming in oils as he was in real life, but at least that portrait showed him more for who he actually was, so she would take comfort in that. It took a special sort of self-indulgent,arrogant vanity to hang yourself over your own fireplace! So obviously, Portia would not pander further to his inflated ego by mentioning it as she wrenched her eyes away.
“Which one of you is the artist?” Thank goodness there was an easel set up by the window with a half-finished watercolor resting upon it.
“I am.” Lady Emilia offered her the ghost of a smile. “Although I think calling myself an artist is overestimating my abilities.”
“Nonsense.” Doubtless overstepping her boundaries, but acting on impulse, Portia wandered toward the picture and bent to closer inspect the details. “You have captured the vista outside this window very well.” Which was true. It wasn’t as compelling as the portrait of the duke, but it was still a decent piece of work. “I have always envied those with the talent to paint as it is one which I do not possess. Your brushes in these clumsy fingers”—she wiggled them—“would, at best, result in a childish daub. Did this take you long?”
“No more than an hour, although I’ll confess that I lost interest in it before it was properly finished. I prefer painting my landscapes from life.” Lady Emilia shot her brother a peeved glare. “But alas, that is difficult to do when we are confined for hours every day in here.”
“Then we must take your easel and paints out as soon as the weather improves so that you can study some wildflowers in detail.” The best way to get these young women to cease seeing her as their jailer was to let them know that she wasn’t going to keep them inside like their brother. “There is a pretty stretch of riverbank less than twenty minutes west of here that is a carpet of buttercups and oxeye daisies at this time of year.” She did not wait for agreement, or for the duke to lay down yet another set of constrictive rules for such an outing, and instead turned to Lady Abigail, who was still regarding her with suspicion. “Do you paint, Lady Abigail?”
The elder sister shook her head and likely would have left it at that if her brother hadn’t stepped in to save them all from an awkward silence.
“Abigail likes to read.” A lifeline!
“So do I!” Portia smiled at her. “What book are you currently enjoying?”
“I think enjoying would be overstating it.” The duke chuckled and his sister simply glowered at him. “My sister prefers lengthy intellectual and philosophical tomes and never seems to read fictional escapism for pleasure.”
Lady Abigail bristled at that. “As I prefer to broaden my mind, I am currently enjoying a biography of John Locke.” She announced that with the arrogance of one who assumed that nobody else read anything of substance. Portia pitied her that arrogance. It was so typical of someone from the aristocracy to underestimate the educational level of someone who did not come from their ranks.
“Ah yes. The father of modern liberalism.” The young woman’s eyes widened in surprise. “He is indeed an interesting character, although not quite as progressive in the modern liberal sense nowadays as he was considered back in Tudor times.” Then as an olive branch and because she could not resist quietly putting the young woman in her place: “I have a copy of hisTwo Treatises of Governmentif you would like to borrow it once you have finished your biography. The Old English language is a tad cumbersome and the spelling bizarre, but it is easier to read than Latin and fascinating to hear his opinions straight from the horse’s mouth. Even if some of those opinions have not traveled well.”
Lady Abigail was all astonishment but did her best to politely cover it. “I would indeed, Miss Kendall.”
“Excellent.” Then, because she had no intentions of staying longer and creating any more opportunities for the overbearing duke to cause friction now she had made some inroads in disarming these two ladies, Portia took the lead again. “Then I shall let you get back to your tea in peace. Do let me know if you need me at all later. I shall only be down the hall.”
“The only place that we would like to go later is to Lady Southgate’s reading salon.” That came from the bookworm Lady Abigail.“But alas, our unreasonable brother has decreed that we must all stay in tonight after dinner as he claims to have better things to do than accompany us. So we must suffer an evening of tedium incarcerated here as a result.”
The duke’s mouth flattened at that barb. “One evening at home while I catch up on all the important work which I have been forced to neglect to cater to your selfish whims is hardly the end of the world, Abigail.”
Portia acknowledged both comments with a suitably nondescript, almost-sympathetic nod and then wisely left the three battling siblings to it. They all knew that it was not her place to offer to attend the reading salon with them in his stead because that would be impossible. Servants weren’t welcome in aristocratic parlors under any circumstances. Never mind that her working hours here ended at six and she had absolutely no intentions of ever outstaying that. The moment you gave the aristocracy an inch, they always took a mile. Besides, she also had a mountain of her own work to do atEquitasand that was far more important than whatever nonsense three spoiled aristocrats got up to in the evenings.
Chapter
SIX
Her charges had remained in the drawing room all afternoon thanks to the rain that had poured constantly. They were now safely ensconced in their bedchambers to rest before they changed for dinner. Why the pair of them needed to lie down when they hadn’t moved a muscle all afternoon was beyond Portia, but such were the quirks of the idle aristocracy. With all the invitations sorted and ready for the Duke of Dimples’s approval and with nothing else to do, she tidied up her marvelous new office before she headed up to her own room to change at six on the dot. Eager, now that her working day here was done, to get to the newspaper ready to get stuck into something she was excited to do rather than something she was forced to do to pay the bills.
The first edition ofEquitasthat she would have a direct hand in would go to print on Sunday. It was usually a weekly publication, but thanks to her predecessor’s reckless run-in with the law that had forced the paper to move offices, they had to skip the last few editions. Rather than be angry at that, William had been circumspect. The gap allowed them to pause, reflect, regroup, and put a fresh spin on things. “Change, like circumstances,” he had said over one of their copious cups of tea, “should always be embraced because it always provides new opportunities.”
