She eased herself from his grasp. “I have to, your grace.”
“You don’thave to, Portia—you want to! I just don’t bloody understand why?” His arms folded. “So tell me why you cannotbewith a duke? What is so vastly different in the composition of my human body and yours that we cannot possibly mix?”
With her customary impeccable timing, that was when his mother arrived. But this time, Portia was grateful for it. “Leo!” She burst through the door without knocking, blinked at them both and then smiled. “I am so sorry to interrupt—but there is a horrid little red-faced man here who is causing quite the commotion on the doorstep. He absolutely insists on having an immediate audience with you.”
The duke’s furious gaze refused to leave Portia’s. “Not now, Mother.”
His mother was not the least bit fazed by his icy tone. “I’ve toldhim that you are convalescing, but he won’t have it. A Mr. Nilly or Nally something. Anyway, he wants a warrant apparently, although why I have no clue. He is ranting so much it’s difficult to make head nor tail of what he wants.”
That was when the constable stalked in and slammed the latest copy ofEquitason the desk.
“Now they are accusing us of perverting the cause of justice!” Clearly it was Portia’s latest opinion piece that had incensed him so. The one she had written on the back of the authorities moving Reynolds’s trial from Bristol to Winchester to ensure a conviction, seeing as that had seemed quite a timely and topical subject.
Nolley jabbed his finger at the headline. “State-Sanctioned Meddling Most Foul: How the law legally perverts the course of justice.” She regretted that provocative headline too now that she was stood barely two feet from a man who wanted her hung, drawn, and quartered just for writing it. “If that is not seditious and blasphemous libel then I do not know what is! So I want that warrant today, your grace!” He slapped the article hard enough that Barkington began to growl at him. “And I am not leaving until I get it!”
The duke’s temper snapped. “I am clearly in the middle of another important meeting, Constable Nolley.” He pointed to the door. “So you will wait outside until it is concluded!”
Nolley banged the desk with his fist, causing Snifferson, who was hiding underneath it, to whimper. “With respect, your grace, nothing could be as important as this!” He glared at Portia. “Your fancy woman can wait!”
“Why don’t Miss Kendall and I leave you to it, dear?” The duchess grabbed Portia’s elbow and tugged her toward the door.
“I want this Pendle fellow’s head on a pike.” The constable was repeatedly slapping the table now as if he imagined it was her head, so Portia was only too happy to be dragged to wherever the duchess wanted to drag her to. “And I want every bit of wherever they print that treasonous, slanderous rag razed to the ground!”
The duchess closed the door and pulled a face. “Well, that was unpleasant.” Portia nodded. Too shaken by all this morning’s unpleasantness to know what else to say.
The door reopened and the duke was framed in it. His handsome face now a barely contained mask of fury. “MissKendall.” He had never sounded so clipped and cold. “As you are so determined to escape me at your earliest possible convenience, know that it is not convenient for me for you to do so. If you consult your contract, you will see that you are required to give me a month’s notice. Be assured that this duke expects you tobehere for all of it!”
Then the walls shook from the force with which he slammed the door.
Chapter
FIFTEEN
“Have you seen this?” An irate Abigail slapped today’s copy ofThe Bath Chronicleon his desk, reminding him of just how sick and tired he was lately of people shoving unpleasant pieces of paper at him. “Your lot have moved the trial of a reformer to Winchester simply to get an undeserved guilty verdict!”
There was so much to take issue with in that accusatory sentence, he didn’t quite know where to start. But because he had been in a foul mood for days and wanted to take someone to task for the wretched way he was feeling, he started with the most offensive. “By ‘your lot’ I presume you mean every unfortunate soul here in Somerset who has taken on the thankless responsibility of upholding the law?” Which was about as fair as assuming that just because he had to be born a duke meant that he couldn’t possibly have genuine feelings for a blasted chaperone, or vice versa.
“I specifically meant the magistrates’ bench, as they are the idiots that had to sanction this. Please, tell me that you did not have a hand in this travesty, Leo?”
“I did not. This was decided in my absence after you decided to put me on enforced bed rest for a trivial sprained ankle.”
“Did you not like your freedoms being curtailed on the back of aminor injury, big brother?” She pulled a sarcastic sad face. “At least yours were only taken from you for a week, whereas mine have been stolen for the entire summer. But I digress.” She folded her arms and glared. “Now that you are no longer on enforced bed rest, what are you going to do about this travesty?”
“Nothing,” he said folding his arms too. “The decision was made by a quorum of magistrates, and I cannot overturn it. Nor will I even try to.”
“Even if an innocent man is convicted?”
“Matthew Reynolds is not an innocent man, Abigail. He’s a rabble-rousing thug.”
“His only crime is being a reformer! But apparently that is all one needs to be guilty of nowadays to get charged with incitement to riot and clapped in irons!”
“He might well be a reformer, but that isn’t why they clapped him in irons!” Bloody hell, did nobody ever consider all of the facts before they jumped to unfair conclusions? “He took a gang of armed men to the home of our local member of Parliament, had him and his wife tied up, dragged them out of their house in their nightclothes, and then he stuck a gun in the man’s face. So your holier-than-thou Mr. Reynolds isn’t up on trumped-up charges of incitement to riot like it suits him and his violent gang of followers to have everyone believe—he is up for attempted murder.” Seeing as everyone else seemed to do it, he bashed his own desk. “And frankly, so he jolly well should be!”
“Don’t you think that himallegedlyhaving a gun could be a convenient lie that is being spread by those who unjustly arrested him for protesting? It certainly justifies their heavy-handed actions. I’ll wager every witness they have to corroborate that falsehood was paid handsomely by the authorities for their statements.”
“I can assure you that the authorities really do not have the funds to pay off the thirty-two neighbors and random passersby who stepped forward.” Suddenly the sheer bloody futility of trying and failing tobe the voice of reason weighed him down. After the last few days, he was sick to the back teeth of being both a magistrate and a duke, when both titles apparently made him the enemy. “Not that I expect you to believe me on that score. Why let the truth get in the way of a convenient pack of lies and your own blind prejudice?”
Sadly, it did not surprise him that his sister wasn’t the slightest bit convinced. “I would believe that were it not for the fact that Matthew Reynolds was also the assistant editor atEquitasand your constable has a personal vendetta against that noble publication. If anyone has a prejudiced view here, it is he. Surely you can see that, Leo?”
