“My darling girl, it was never my room. I always slept in there.” She flicked her hand toward a side door that Portia hadn’t noticed. “With my husband.” Which likely meant thather husbandnow slept in there and knowing that they weren’t even separated by a solid wallunsettled Portia instantly. “It has much better views of the garden and I always slept more soundly next to Rafe.” As the laces loosened and back of Portia’s dress gaped, the duchess helped her step out of it before she kicked it out of the way. “I fear the only way to clean that is to burn it. That cell was positively filthy. Inhumanely so. Thank goodness Leo managed to get you out of it.”
By selflessly sacrificing himself. “He hates me now, doesn’t he?” He had uttered every vow curtly; staring straight ahead. So obviously hurt and angry at her betrayal that he couldn’t bear to look at her. Hardly a girl’s dream wedding scenario. Not that she had ever wanted one, but now that she had, it had been the stuff of nightmares.
“He’s hurting, dear girl. Hardly a surprise after all the lies you’ve told him.”
“I didn’t want to. I…” Her voice trailed off. “I should have left this house the second that I realized that he was a magistrate. I know that now and bitterly regret that I didn’t but…”
“It is him you need to purge yourself to, not me. He deserves the truth after all he has done for you, doesn’t he?”
Portia nodded, feeling utterly wretched. “I’ll go and talk to him.”
“Leave him be for a while. Like my Rafe used to, Leo needs to pickle in his own juices for a while before he’ll be in any mood to listen.” The duchess smiled kindly as her gaze swept the length of Portia, who was now standing in nothing but her shift. “You are covered in bruises, you poor thing. Is that all the work of that vile constable or did somebody else do the dirty for him?”
“It is all his. He enjoyed pushing me around.”
“Undoubtedly. Bullies like him enjoy taking their revenge out on the helpless and I daresay that the weaselly coward felt obligated to take it out on you after Leo gave him a well-deserved pasting right on our doorstep.”
“He did?”
“Punched the snake on the nose and sent him flying onto his backside when he came to arrest you. Of course, the soldiersrestrained him then as we all knew that Leo had only just started, and you know what happened next because they came to fetch you. But it was all rather unpleasant and unnecessary.” The duchess frowned as she took a closer look at Portia’s face and then stroked her cheek. “Did the violence only involve pushing, my dear, or were you subjected to worse?”
“Only pushing.” Thank goodness.
“I shouldn’t be relieved to hear that as a man who uses any violence on a woman is abhorrent enough—but external injuries do at least heal. Do you think you need to see the physician?” Portia shook her head. “Very well. You enjoy a nice long soak in the bath in peace and I’ll come back and put some iodine on all your bruises once you’re done.”
“Thank you, your grace.”
“It’s either Mama now, seeing as we are family, or Letitia. I really do not mind which.”
Her mother-in-law closed the door behind her as she left, leaving Portia all alone with her tangled thoughts. She gingerly removed her chemise and wandered to the long mirror in the corner to assess the damage for herself. She ached so much because she did indeed have bruises everywhere. There were grazes on her hands and knees from where she had landed on the cold flagstones of the cell floor. Her hair was a rat’s nest and her hands and face were filthy. But it could be worse. She could still be there. But entirely thanks to Leo she wasn’t.
Once she was clean and when he was ready to see her, she would have to thank him, but until then the bath called. She carefully eased her battered bones into it, sighing as the warm water enveloped her in its comforting embrace.
For the longest time, all Portia did was soak as she stared up at the ceiling, too overwhelmed to do anything else. She knew she had to think and regroup and find a way to deal with her strange new reality, but didn’t have the energy to do that yet. Her bath had started to cool before she even thought about scrubbing the dirt from her skin and,conscious that the dowager was doubtless waiting patiently for her to finish, she forced herself to set about it with some purpose.
Her hair was full of soap and bubbles when the main door suddenly opened a crack. “Just a moment, your grace! I’m not decent!”
But instead of the duchess returning as she expected, it was M’Lady Whiskers who swung in, her whole fluffy white body hanging from the doorknob by her claws. The cat dropped silently to the floor, took one disdainful look at Portia, and hissed her disapproval. Then she sauntered over, lifted her tail, and swiveled to show her bottom. That cutting feline insult delivered, she hopped up on the bed and began to paw at it for at least half a minute until she settled herself on the pretty comforter, making sure to thoroughly ignore Portia while she licked her snow-white paws.
Bizarrely, that small, unfriendly bit of familiarity made Portia smile. “If you can open doors, M’Lady, basic good manners dictate that you should learn to close them too. Especially when somebody is in the bath.”
Sadly, with the door to the landing still ajar to the width of one spoiled Persian and Portia as naked as the day she was born, she could no longer afford to linger in that lovely bath, so she quickly dunked her head under the water to rinse away the soap in her hair.
“Is your plan to ignore your new wife forever?” His mother walked into Leo’s study with her arms folded. “Because if it is, somebody should tell the poor thing. She is just staring into space with no clue what to do next.”
“That makes two of us.” After the most fraught and shocking night of his life, and now that so many of her lies had been exposed, he couldn’t bring himself to so much as look at the duplicitous minx, let alone speak to her. If publishing sedition wasn’t enough, she had also been in cahoots with Percival Bloody Digby, and that was a betrayal too far. Now, his poor, battered heart was bleeding and he feltlike the world’s biggest fool. “I am currently mulling the benefits of immediately sending her as far away as possible and pretending none of this ever happened.”
“It’s too late for that, Leo.” To add insult to injury, his mother tossed today’sBath Chronicleonto his desk. The headlineDoting Duke Makes Seditious Chaperone His Duchessglaring up at him in cruel mockery. “Somebody at the prison must have leaked it because your wedding made the front page.”
Of course it had! What fabulous gossip the whole sorry tale made for everyone else. Never mind that he had ended up heartbroken!
“But if I send her away at least I shall be free of her!” What a joke this all was, albeit an unfunny one. What a bloody joke he was now too. “She is nothing but a lying, scheming, backstabbing radical who used me abominably to serve her own ends!” One he had as good as plighted his troth to after just one kiss because she had tied him in so many blasted knots.
Probably on purpose.
Because nothing was as blind or as stupid as a besotted man, and he had certainly been all of those things. “It can hardly be viewed as a coincidence that she came to work here. What better way to keep one step ahead of the authorities than being a spy in a magistrate’s bloody house! And do not get me started on how she conspired with Abigail. I paid that damned woman to protect my sister, not to provide her with every clandestine opportunity to meet with that scoundrel Digby while they all plotted the downfall of society behind my back!” He could picture how funny she must have found that. How laughably pathetic she must have found him. “In fact, the more I think on it, the more I realize that it was no coincidence that she was arrested alongside my sister at that protest. It was Portia who encouraged Abigail to go! Portia who gave her that damn placard, and then the scheming witch shamelessly used her connections to my title to get herself released!”
“Abigail swears that isn’t the truth, Leo. You would know that ifyou deigned to talk to her rather than shoot silent daggers at her each time you stomp away.”
