Marvelous.
This evening just kept getting better and better
She was stamping on the pavement to force as much of the liquid out of her shoes as she could when a group of soldiers sauntered past. No doubt off to the Saracen’s Head in the center of town because that was where the off-duty militia men always headed when they were here.
In a flash, Portia had an epiphany.
If the duke believed that Lady Emilia lost all sense around a redcoat, then what better way for the sisters to punish him than to expressly seek the soldiers out?
Acting purely on instinct and in the absence of a better plan, Portia decided to dash to the Saracen’s Head. Something easier said than done with her sopping feet slipping inside her shoes. To irritate her further, when she arrived, the inn was teeming with soldiers. So many red-coated young officers that they spilled out of the tavern’s doors and took over a huge swath of the pavement.
Not caring that she was a woman alone, because she pitied whichever fool dared to attempt anything untoward in her current foul mood, she pushed her way past the dense group of revelers outside and headed into the bar. The scene inside was every bit the duke’s worst nightmare as groups of the militia, all in varying states of inebriation, sang bawdy songs, told bawdy tales, or cheered each other on as they played questionable drinking games.
As she scanned the crowd, a lieutenant swayed toward her. “Has anyone ever told you that you are the most beautiful creature in the world?”
“Has anyone ever told you that death is final?” She elbowed past him, but he followed her out the door.
“Do you believe in love at first sight? Because I swear that I havejust been shot through the heart by Cupid’s arrow.” Beer sloshed out of his tankard and onto her skirts as he clutched at his chest as if smitten.
Portia rolled her eyes at that tired old line and tried to march away, but he flung himself in front of her. “Marry me, fair maiden.” He dropped to one knee. Something that did not go well for him because he was so deep in his cups that he immediately lost his balance and tumbled forward, sending the rest of the beer in his glass all over the pale bodice of her dress.
“Oh for goodness—” As she flicked as much of the liquid off her front as she could, Portia left and caught a glimpse of a straw bonnet poking out from behind one of the buttresses of St. Michael’s church next door. It darted back in again straightaway, almost as if it had realized it had been seen.
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 dashingleft 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 hissisters had returned with quite the spring in their steps while their new chaperone looked like she had been dragged through a hedge backward.
