“I will not.” Yes she would! “I will be a little sad, of course, because he has always been decent to me and Leo is an affable, likeable sort most of the time, despite his obnoxious title and despotic need to bend everyone to his stubborn will. But he is a duke, for pity’s sake, and I am a reformer to my core and never the twain shall meet.” Except when they had, it had been magical.
“There is such a thing as compromise, Portia. Perhaps if you findsome middle ground, you will find a way to muddle through. Especially as you have clearly fallen in love with him.”
“I have not!”
“You have too!” Kitty yanked Portia’s menu down so that she could jab the air between them. “I have known you since we were both sixteen years old and I have never seen you so bothered by a man in all that time.”
“Of course I am bothered by him. I am accidentally married to him and need not be! Both for my sake and Leo’s.”
“Are you aware that something peculiar happens to your face each time you say his name? Or of how gushing you were about him in your letters despite all your lofty claims of twains never meeting? Or how fondly you speak of him despite his despotic need to bend everyone to his will or how utterly wretched your expression becomes every single time you mention the word annulment?”
“I am not made of stone, Kitty. This is an awful situation and I do feel wretched about it.”
“I think you are falling on your sword, Portia, because you think he wants to find a way out of the marriage, and you think you should want out of it because you have always been convinced that marriage wasn’t for you.”
“I value my independence and am, and always have been, wedded to the cause. I cannot pursue my political ambitions as some man’s chattel—.”
Kitty yawned loudly. “Oh for goodness’ sake! People change, Portia, and what they want changes too. It is perfectly acceptable for a grown woman of four-and-twenty to reevaluate what she thought she wanted as a child of sixteen! You have grown up a lot since then and I sincerely doubt that you still believe that everything is as black-and-white as you did back then, do you?” Her friend did not even give her time to nod at that irrefutable logic. “Just as it is perfectly acceptable to be scared to dare to want different.”
“I don’t want different!” But perhaps she did and that really was a scary prospect. Especially with him.
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” said Kitty, waggling her finger. “And, for the record, not every husband treats his wife like a chattel. Georgie’s doesn’t and neither does Lottie’s, so if our friends can find happiness with a partner and still lead fulfilling lives why can’t you? They are living proof that itispossible to have it all.”
A part of her wanted to believe that, no matter how unlikely or practical it would be in her case. “Neither of them are married to dukes nor constricted by the strict societal confines of being a duchess.”
“You are just making excuses now when you know that he didn’t have to marry you but did anyway. Probably because he still has feelings for you just as you do him, so perhaps you would do better to consider that rather than using pathetic excuses to overcomplicate things.”
“Thingsarecomplicated, Kitty. He married me in haste to get me out of trouble—not because he had a burning desire to spend eternity with me. There is nothing romantic in that.”
“Are you sure? Because from where I am standing, his noble sacrifice sounds like the most romantic thing in the world.” Kitty swept her hand in an arc as if painting the sky. “Duke tells a chaperone she calls to his soul, rushes to rescue her from prison—twice—then marries her to save her from transportation to a penal colony and perhaps certain death.”
“It really wasn’t like that.” Although if viewed through a less cynical lens than Portia was prone to, perhaps it was. Leo had been the only one there for her. Jumped in front of a bullet for her. Put her safety over his own happiness and what was that if not hopelessly romantic?
Kitty must have seen her indecision because she reached across the table to squeeze Portia’s wrists. “Nobody who loves you would judge you for deciding that you do not have to completely be the person that you chose to be at sixteen. You can still be an idealistic, lecturing, crusading pain in the backside and make a little room in your life for love.”
Like Leo would let that happen! He practically hit the roof whenhe assumed she had been writing sedition again. “I would have no choice but to pick one or the other. If I remain his duchess, he has made it repeatedly plain that I cannot have both.”
“I’ll wager you could if you both stopped being such stubborn fools and gave love a chance. Especially when you clearly like him—so much in my humble opinion that it terrifies you—and he has made it plain that he liked you well before you married.”
“Kitty—”
“Well, he did, didn’t he? And you were not immune to his confession. In fact, if I remember it correctly, you wrote to me at the time that you wished he wasn’t a duke because then you wouldn’t have had to rebuff him.”
“I was confused and—” Portia found herself talking at her friend’s raised palm.
“I know you better than anyone and I can see that your martyring and oh-so-convenient belief that you couldn’t possibly ever give up your precious independence for something as wonderful as love is wavering! If you forget for one moment that he is a duke, then he has obviously affected your heart enough that you are tempted to want more of him. And let us not forget that his kisses made you swoon—just as yours did him.” Her incorrigible friend wiggled her brows. “All that pent-up lust between you isn’t healthy you know. Nobody can think straight with all that complicating matters—so uncomplicate them and give yourlove, in all its splendid forms,a chance.”
“Things are complicated enough without addingthatinto the mix, thank you very much, and we can hardly indulge inthatanyway if we want an annulment.” No matter how much her body and, heaven help her, perhaps even her heart, craved different.
“You do know that there are only three criteria in English law for an annulment to be granted, don’t you? And the only one you stand any sort of chance with is fraud because the other two are incompetence andimpotence.” Thankfully Kitty made sure to whisper that last word. “If neither party is underage then the only way to proveincompetence is to have one of you declared insane by a physician and then they would have you locked up. A physician would also have to prove impotence, and the tests for that are extremely invasive. Your poor duke would have to physically display before witnesses that he is notcapableof consummating your marriage, and from what you hinted at in your letter about your midnight tryst beneath the moonlight, he very much is.”
A ferocious blush bloomed on Portia’s cheeks but she did not doubt her friend because for all her chaotic flakiness and optimistic, overly romantic nature, Kitty’s brother was training to be a lawyer, so the strange complexities of the English legal system was something she knew about. “So proving my fraud is ouronlyhope?”
“Unless a couple of expert courtesans—or better still, you—can’t stir something in the Duke of Debden’s breeches in front of a doctor, it is.” While Portia’s jaw hung slack, her incorrigible friend gestured for the waiter and then grinned. “Therefore, even if the marriage is doomed not to last as you seem so stubbornly convinced that it has to be, it would be a crying shame for you both not to have enjoyed at least one of the benefits of it while it does.”
“Why the devil aren’t you wearing your court clothes, Leo?” The fanfare of feathers atop his mother’s head quivered in outrage as much as they could within the confines of the carriage as he joined all the ladies in it. “Or did you not see that I had them expressly laid out on the bed for you?”
“I saw them and then expressly ignored them because they are hideous.” It would be a cold day in hell before he ever donned those unflattering gold satin breeches and gaudy red satin and gold brocade coat again.
