“Not at this time of night it isn’t, Miss Kendall, and I am not comfortable with you doing it again this late alone.” The dangers did not bear thinking about but he was already thinking them. “Next time you visit her I shall send my—”
She held up both hands. “I did not walk back, your grace.” Noticing her raised hands she dropped them and stared at her suddenly busy fingers. “A neighbor always drops me back into town, so you do not need to worry.”
“That is a relief.” And it was. Not that his twitching scalp and clammy palms had realized that yet. “That road is a well-known haunt for footpads in the dark—especially during the season.” Just the thought of her colliding with anyone like that after sunset was the stuff of Leo’s nightmares, but he breathed through it to keep himself reasonable. “A pair were brought before me only today.”
Her brows furrowed again. “Why would footpads be brought before you?”
“Because, for my sins, I am one of the local magistrates.”
Her lovely eyes widened to the size of saucers. “I had no clue that you were a magistrate.”
“As the only local duke, I was press-ganged into it. It is a thankless task, but my father instilled in me an annoying sense of responsibility, and somebody has to uphold the law.”
“And who better than a duke to navigate the fine line between what is right and what is wrong?” She said that with a half smile but such cold eyes that it sounded almost like a chastisement. “After all, if our present legal system was good enough for the Norman conquerors, it is surely still good enough for us today.”
“Well I wouldn’t…” He did not get to finish that sentence because Miss Kendall had grabbed her satchel and was bobbing another curtsy.
“Good night, your grace.”
She barely gave him the time to bid her a good one back before she disappeared out of the door.
Chapter
SEVEN
Portia had worked for the duke for almost a week before she had her first day off. She had insisted on every Sunday when she had taken the job because that would always coincide withEquitasgoing to print. To say that she was looking forward to a whole day of not supervising his spoiled sisters was the understatement of the century. They had proved to be every bit as rebellious and reckless as he had promised. Every day so far without fail, they had found some way to punish her for being their supposed “jailer.” Whether that be trying to slip away unnoticed, which they hadn’t managed to do for more than a couple of tense minutes since that fateful first day, thank goodness, or treating her as an invisible inconvenience to whom they refused to talk, they made it plain that it was them against her.
Portia was thoroughly exhausted by their constant petty shenanigans so was very much looking forward to this entire day away from them. For very different reasons, she was also looking forward to a whole day away fromhim.
She made sure that she and the dratted Duke of Dimples rarely collided. When they did, it was only to hand over the most recent invitations and to give him the brief and heavily censored synopsis of the day that he insisted upon. She hadn’t liked him to begin with, but nowthat she knew that he was a magistrate, she felt even more unsettled around him. Hardly surprising when he was the law and she was, according to all the current unfair legislation, technically breaking it by willfully printing what he and his fellow peers would see as sedition. Although she rather liked the irony that he had, inadvertently, given her the perfect seditious topic for her first opinion piece forEquitas. An article that she double-checked was safely in her satchel before she left the house.
She walked all the way down to the river, stopping and checking regularly that she wasn’t being watched by any prying eyes. When she was certain the coast was absolutely clear, she slipped into the warehouse, which was a hive of activity.
While the rest of Bath made their way to whichever of the city’s churches they chose to worship at before they enjoyed their day of rest, today was their busiest day here at the newspaper. As soon as her editorial was typeset, she, Sir William, and their skeleton crew of volunteers would begin the labor-intensive and time-consuming task of printing the two thousand copies ofEquitasthat would leave via the River Avon tonight. By midnight, almost every single-paged broadsheet not destined to remain here in the West Country would be wrapped and loaded on a barge bound for London. If their precious cargo made it all the way along various rivers, canals, and locks to the capital, then it became somebody else’s problem to distribute it. However, it was their problem until then, so Portia expected to be here for the long haul today.
“There you are!” William spied her first. He was already covered in grime and ink because their ancient printing press was temperamental. “Were you followed?”
“Of course not.” She tossed her bonnet to the side and stripped off her lightweight summer spencer and hung it on a hook. She had worn an old dress on purpose, but still intended to put a capacious apron over it. The last thing she needed was anyone asking questions if they spotted her when she arrived back at the Royal Crescentcovered in the same level of dirt as William. She gestured to his oily hands. “Have you and Bessie had a fight again?” Bessie was the name he lovingly called the machine because she apparently reminded him of his mother—forthright, formidable, and prone to temper tantrums.
“Print day wouldn’t be print day without Bessie and I having a tiny disagreement.” He grinned. “But I think we have reached an accord.” He jerked his fluffy gray head toward the machine and the pair of legs currently sticking out of it. “Jim is putting her back together.”
“Morning, Jim.” Jim was a laborer by trade, and it showed because he was huge. “Are you winning?”
“Not yet, Portia, although I remain hopeful that we’ll emerge victorious in the end.”
He was a gentle, thoughtful, and resourceful soul, despite his bulging muscles and towering height, who could neither read nor write, but helped out with all the manual work, which he excelled at. His lack of literacy was, sadly, not uncommon. Few from his lowborn station were ever taught their letters or numbers because their impoverished families could not afford the luxury of schooling. They instead needed their offspring to earn their keep in the fields or the factories or shoved up chimneys or down mine shafts from a young age.
She turned back to William. “Will we be ready to go when Bessie is?” They had been nine-tenths of the way there when she had left here last night.
“Edgar is finishing the typesetting as we speak.”
The last member of their motley crew was Edgar, a solicitor’s clerk who wore the thickest spectacles Portia had ever seen but who, ironically, had the most meticulous eye for detail. He was also one of the sourest individuals she had ever met. While the others had all cheerily greeted her, Edgar merely lifted his brow in acknowledgment when she offered him a smiling hello, his attention never wavering from the tiny metal letters he was arranging neatly in the block.
“Here is my article, Edgar. I am sorry it is so late.” It was the lastone to arrive and so there was a lone empty space right at the top of the front page waiting for it. “My piece is under five hundred words—exactly as specified.”
While adhering to Edgar’s imperious instruction chafed, space was tight inEquitas. To keep printing costs to a minimum and to avoid having to pay the ridiculous stamp duty imposed by the government on any political newspaper printed at least monthly on two sheets or more, the entirety ofEquitashad to fit on just one side of a large piece of paper. That meant that every article in it had to be succinct, and difficult editorial decisions had to be made. As she had been the one making them alongside William, she did appreciate the need for brevity in her own article. It had made it harder to write, but it was sharper as a result, and she was proud of it.
Immensely proud.
