Leo checked the address the local postmaster had given him again and frowned. He hadn’t expected her ailing mother to live above a shop. He searched down the side alley for a separate entrance and when he couldn’t find one, went into the draper’s shop to inquire. He was instantly greeted by a handsome, smiling dark-haired woman in her middle years.
“Can I help you, sir?” She returned a heavy bolt of fabric to the shelf before approaching him.
“I am looking for a Mrs. Kendall.”
“Are you indeed? Now there is a name that I haven’t heard in a few years.”
“Then she doesn’t live here?”
“She does—I just go by Mrs. Byrne nowadays to please my husband.”
This could not be Portia’s mother despite the more-than-passing resemblance. Portia’s mother wasn’t well and needed looking after, while this woman looked to be as fit as a fiddle. She was probably a relation of some sort. An aunt or some such because Portia’s mother was all on her own. Far too old to be on the right side of fifty like this woman with Portia’s exact dark brown eyes. “I don’t suppose you have a relative called Portia, do you, Mrs. Byrne?”
“I do, as it happens.” Friendliness turned slightly into wariness. “Portia is my daughter. Why do you ask?” Wariness instantly gave way to worry. “She’s not gone and got herself into any trouble, has she? As I wouldn’t put it past her. I’ve warned her time and time again that her opinions are dangerous but she’s a headstrong girl. Always has been.”
“She’s not in any trouble.” It wasn’t his place to tell her mother about last night. “I was just passing and urgently needed to talk to her.” As that comment made a pair of dark eyebrows as expressive as Portia’s shoot skyward with alarm, he tried to ignore his twitching scalp and introduced himself. “I am Leopold Sloane.” When she still blinked at him blankly, he was forced to use the title Portia hated. “The Duke of Debden.”
“Oh good heavens above! My humblest apologies for my informality, your grace.” Mrs. Byrne, who was apparently neither a widow, an invalid, nor a Kendall, bobbed a surprisingly spry curtsy. “I would be happy to send whatever word to Portia that you need me to—although I cannot fathom why on earth you would need to speak to her.” The eyes went back to suspicious again. “But if you apprise me and I deem it important enough, I will give you her address in Mayfair if you would prefer to write to her yourself.”
The hairs began to prickle on Leo’s neck. “Mayfair?”
“That is where she works, your grace.” Portia’s mother smiled proudly. “She’s been the governess to Lord and Lady Warley’s daughters for the past two years.”
The plot thickened. “I take it that you haven’t recently seen her then?”
“Not since Christmas, your grace, when she came home for her last visit.”
What the blazes was Portia up to? Whatever it was, there were alarm bells ringing in Leo’s head now. Big, clanging, and insistent alarm bells. Because the woman he suspected he loved was clearly a liar as well as a conundrum—but by the end of today he was now doubly determined to get to the truth.
Mrs. Byrne’s dark brows kissed exactly like her daughter’s did. “Might I inquire how you know my daughter?”
“We are friends,” he answered not entirely sure what they were anymore. “We met in Mayfair… recently.”
“She’s never mentioned any sort of acquaintance with a duke in any of her recent letters, your grace. To be frank, that she is surprises me given her visceral dislike of the aristocracy in general.” Portia’s mother now looked perplexed, which mirrored his own feelings because none of this made any sense. “Not that I am insinuating that she dislikes you, your grace.” A blush bloomed on Mrs. Byrne’s unbelievably healthy face as she backtracked. “You must be a very fine duke indeed for Portia to even consider calling you a friend.”
What the blazes did that mean? “She is clearly a woman who keeps her cards close to her chest.” The duplicitous minx! “On the subject of which, I’ll confess, I believed you to be a widow, Mrs. Byrne.” One knocking loudly on death’s door.
“I am—or I was. Portia’s father has been dead over a decade. But I remarried two years ago.” She gestured around her shop. “So I am now Mrs. Byrne, the draper’s wife.”
“She neglected to tell me that, despite our many conversations.” That and a whole host of other important things!
“She excels in neglecting to tell things, your grace. Especially if she knows that you will heartily disapprove of them.” Her lips pursed briefly before she smiled, uncomfortable, her eyes wary again but also apologetic. “But what can you do? A daughter will only let you mother her for so long, and Portia is used to doing as she pleases nowadays.She’s always been headstrong like that, truth be told, which I am sure, as her friend, you would know.” Eyes, so like Portia’s, narrowed in challenge.
“I do indeed,” he agreed, chuckling as if he did while his head spun. If she didn’t spend every single evening and all of every Sunday here, where the blazes did Portia go until silly o’clock every night? And why the bloody hell would she constantly lie about it? “I’ve often been at the sharp end of one of her lectures.”
“Oh good heavens above, that girl! Only she would be brazen enough to lecture a duke!” Mrs. Byrne shook her head. “But she can be intractably single-minded about causes when she has a particular bee in her bonnet.”Causes?“I take it that’s how you met her?” At his blank expression, she elaborated. “At the United League for Reform?”
“Didn’t I tell you that you were playing with fire!” It was hardly a surprise that Edgar had little sympathy for her predicament as Portia shared her awful news with everyone, but the venom in his tone was particularly vicious. “You weren’t satisfied with dallying with the magistrate and now the bloody constable has a personal vendetta against you!” The spiteful typesetter immediately turned to William. “She’s put us all in enough danger, I say we send her packing back to London and lie low for a while.”
“This isn’t Portia’s fault.” That came from Percy, who was still as white as a sheet at discovering that his beloved fiancée had been arrested too. “She had no choice but to go after Abigail—it is her job.”
“None of us were supposed to go anywhere near that protest!” Edgar glared at her with malice. “And you should have done a better job of handling your woman, Percy, else this wouldn’t have happened!” But of course, he didn’t expect William to send Percy packing back to London.
“Pointing fingers isn’t helpful.” Gentle Jim tried to pour oil ontroubled waters. “What’s important now is keeping everyone here safe and most especially Portia, who is in the most danger.”
“Agreed.” William was his usual circumspect and supportive self as he patted her hand. “We need to get you out of the duke’s house today. Can you stay with your mother until we can find you another job and less exposed lodging?”
“Of course.” She knew that she couldn’t risk staying at the Crescent anymore, but it still hurt to have to do it. Leaving Leo and never seeing him again, irrespective of how angry she was at him, would be a wrench. She had too many complicated feelings for him even if they were all as foolhardy as they were futile.
