“I know that you do not function without at least three pints of Darjeeling in your system.” She handed him a steaming mug. “Did I miss anything important last night?”
“Only Bessie having another conniption.” He rolled his eyes. “And Edgar sent his apologies that he will not be joining us here today and tomorrow as he feels a little under the weather.”
“Is he really under the weather or is he sulking because I am still here?” Relations between Portia and their onery typesetter had deteriorated even further in the last two weeks. “For heaven forbid our crusade for equality be extended to include a woman, irrespective of how good at her job she is.”
“I actually suspect he is avoiding me to prove just how invaluable he is.” William chuckled. “Which I suspect will backfire when you and your new assistant manage to complete all the typesetting to the highest possible standard in his petulant and contrived absence.”
They both froze at the knock on the door, until Sir William checked his pocket watch. “And speaking of your new assistant, I’ll wager that’s him now.”
Portia pasted on a smile as William went to the door, and she prayed that the new recruit had more respect for women than their woman-hating typesetter did. A handsome, smiling fellow in his very early twenties came in and immediately stuck out his hand.
“Miss Kendall—it is such an honor to officially meet you. I have always loved your articles. And the speeches that we all know you had more than a hand in back at headquarters.”
“Officially? Have we collided before?”
He nodded. “Twice, although I am not the least bit offended that you cannot place me as I have been a mere dogsbody in the organization up until now.” A comment that he immediately apologized for. “I know that I am still a dogsbody here, of course, and quite rightly as I still have so much to learn, but it feels like a massive promotion to even be allowed inside the hallowed walls ofEquitas.” He gestured to those tatty walls with such reverence Portia decided there and then that he would do very nicely.
“Portia is going to show you the ropes as you will be working for her.” William seemed keen to hand him over. “I do hope you learnquickly, young man. We have a great deal to do over the next two days if we are going to get a paper out tomorrow.”
She gave him a quick tour, then sat him beside her at Edgar’s desk so that they could muddle through all the typesetting together.
“I very much enjoyed your last column on the state of the British justice system,” he said after they had worked in companionable silence for an hour. “Probably because I have experienced the overly heavy hand of the law.”
“Really?”
“I attended the Westminster workers’ protest last month which didn’t end well.”
Portia had been about to leave London for Bath then and hadn’t attended, but it had been all over the papers. “They sent in the army, didn’t they? Were you arrested?”
“I wasn’t, thankfully but my fiancée was injured in the fray and needed stitches.”
“You are engaged to be married! Congratulations!”
“It is still unofficial because her family do not approve, so we have to wait until she turns twenty-one in a few months before we can do the deed, although we’ll still probably have to run away to Gretna to do it.”
“What don’t they approve of?” She now knew that Percy was an independently wealthy third son of a viscount, so it couldn’t be either his connections or his fortune.
“My involvement in the cause. Campaigning for change is not the done thing in Mayfair.”
“Ah… Yes. Mayfair can be like that. I take it she’s one of the ton too?”
He nodded. “But she isn’t like most debutantes. She’s clever and liberal and believes as passionately in reform as I do and…” Percy’s expression turned slightly soppy. “Obviously, she is also the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“Obviously.” Despite her cynical nature and her current futileattraction to one of the aristocracy, Portia had a great deal of sympathy for the young man’s plight even if she could never imagine herself feeling that deeply about anyone. “Love apparently always finds a way, so I am sure things will work out for you and your beloved in the end.”
“They will,” he said with utter certainty. “Because she is my soulmate, and we are meant to be.”
She wanted to scoff at that but didn’t, because in the last year, two of her friends had said much the same thing before they had hastily, and in Portia’s humble opinion recklessly, wed their husbands after barely weeks of knowing them. Almost as if they could not wait to start their lives with them. Neither Georgie or Lottie were sentimentalists like Kitty, but both had quickly fallen head over heels in love with the unlikeliest of men and were now deliriously happy with them, so perhaps love did sometimes find a way?
“Do you have someone special in your life, Portia?”
“Good heavens no,” she said emphatically—but oddly not without some regret. “I am wedded to the cause.” Which was true and always had been. She liked men. Had experienced both attraction and desire, and wasn’t averse to indulging in some harmless flirtation if the mood struck, as it clearly had last night, but she had never seen herself as a man’s wife. Never wanted to be one, truth be told. Being a wife, in the eyes of the law, meant being a chattel and that had always put her off the idea of marriage. Her independence and her freedom to follow her own path was something she valued. Too much to ever want to give it away.
Jim arrived then, his expression grave. “I’ve just heard that they have moved Reynolds’s trial forward a month to next Thursday—from the local Bristol assizes to Winchester. It was posted on the court schedule last night apparently and has caught even him by surprise.”
“Can’t he appeal?” asked Percy. “It will take at least a week to get his lawyer down from London to be able to represent him.”
“Apparently he already has.” Jim shrugged his beefy shoulders. “And was flatly turned down.”
