“I’ll go talk to him.” Portia stayed Letitia who was about to do just that, and scurried after him down the hall.
The walls shook as he slammed his study door but for once Portia did not knock on it.
“Did you honestly think that that was the best response to the situation?”
“I do not need a lecture from you to tell me how to deal withmyfamily.”
“Too bad because they are currentlymyfamily too so you are going to get one.”
“Do not—”
“Oh stick a sock in it, Leo! You are wasting your breath if you think all your overbearing bluster will intimidate me. The day that I do not speak up for an injustice will be the day that pigs fly!”
“Injustice?” He had the temerity to look outraged as he waved his arms in the air. “What the hell is unjust about trying to keep my baby sister safe from the clutches of a dangerous revolutionary?”
“Well, as I am not sure where to start with that ludicrous set of accusations, I shall begin with your misunderstanding of basic words.” She stalked to the bookshelf and grabbed a dictionary that she quickly thumbed through. “‘Revolutionary—a person whoadvocatesortakes part ina revolution.’” She slapped the book down on his desk so he could read what she just had. “If we ignore, for one moment, that the last revolution to take place in this country was the English Civil War which ended almost two hundred years ago, Percy has never advocated for revolution in his life! He is a reformer.” In case Leo struggled to understand the difference, she rifled for that entry in the dictionary too. “‘Reformer—a person dedicated to the improvement or amendment of things that are wrong, corrupt, or unsatisfactory.’”
He opened his mouth to speak but she cut him off. “As for needing to keep Abigail safe from his dangerous clutches, have you quite forgotten that twice in quick succession your sister has put herself in danger? The first expressly against Percy’s wishes and thesecond entirely without his knowledge!” She wagged her finger like the governess she used to be when one of her charges had disappointed her. “And finally, what sort of a narrow-minded, arrogant, and insufferable fool thinks that the most sensible way to break up two people who are hopelessly in love is to forbid them from ever seeing each other again? Because that worked so well on your parents when your grandfather forbade them from a liaison, didn’t it? Or am I mistaken and they did not make a baby out of wedlock and then run away to Gretna Green at the first opportunity when they were both just a few months older than Abigail is now?”
She shook her head and sighed. “I know that you feel responsible for her safety and I suspect you have done ever since she fell out of that tree, but all you are succeeding in doing is pushing Abigail and Percy together. All the while pushing more of a wedge between you and your sister than there needs to be. Don’t make her hate you, Leo. Especially when you are too good a man to be hated.”
He raised his finger to wag it and then dropped it to his side. “Then how am I supposed to keep her out of harm’s way when she seems hell-bent to keep running toward it since she met him?”
“Is there a chance that Abigail’s involvement in the reform movement and her love for Percy are two entirely separate things?”
“Oh let me see…” In the absence of a real argument, he resorted to sarcasm. “He’s a reformer and she’s a reformer so…” He tapped his chin as if it were a great conundrum.
“He’s a liberal-minded person with a strong social conscience and so is she. And so, unless it has escaped your notice, are you.”
“And your point is?”
“That you and your sister are both your father’s children. That you cannot, no matter how much you rant and rave and lay down the law, possibly win this, so you must compromise. Learn to meet people halfway. I appreciate the concept is anathema to you because you are obsessed with being in control, but there aren’t many people in this world who are as stubborn as you are and one of them is your sister.”
“It is a man’s job to protect those under his care.”
“Just as it is apparently a wife’s job to make her husband a better man, so please try to listen to me in your usual rational and reasoned way because this deaf, irrational, and irate version of you isn’t the slightest bit helpful.” His brows furrowed but he seemed to be calming down. “I know you carry this huge burden of guilt for what happened to Abigail on your watch all those years ago, Leo, but you are not that careless sixteen-year-old boy any longer.” The irony wasn’t lost on Portia that they had both set themselves on a rigid path of righteousness at the same age that likely wasn’t the right path for them to still be on.
“And your sister isn’t a silly little girl with fluff for brains anymore either. Time marches forward. Things change. People mature. But we all, one way or another, have to become who we are meant to become alongside those we are meant to become them with. Your headstrong sister will likely still marry Percy whether you approve or not, so what you need to decide before it is too late is if you want to be a part of her future or not. Because you are currently losing her and you know it.”
He sunk into his chair as if all the fight had gone out of him, so she kissed the top of his head. “Perhaps it is time for you to release Abigail fromyourclutches, Leo, and trust that she might know what is best for her far better than you do? I guarantee if you let her go, she won’t go far. She loves you too much to ever truly leave you.”
As that seemed as good a moment as any to leave him to pickle in his own juices for a while, she headed back to the breakfast room where Abigail’s heartbreak had, unsurprisingly, turned to anger. “I take it that as he is not with you, my overbearing brother has refused to see any sense?” Then, exactly like him, she stood up ready to knock some into him herself.
“Give him some time and I am sure that…” Portia’s words trailed off as Leo reappeared.
As Abigail prepared to pounce, he held out Percy’s letter like an olive branch. “I apologize for taking this. You are right. Your private correspondence isn’t any of my business.” Then, as his sister’s jawdropped to the floor, he made a concession that even Portia could not have possibly expected so soon on the back of his temper tantrum. “If you are serious about your Mr. Digby and he is serious about courting you, you should invite him to dine with us one evening when we get back to Bath. I should like to get to know my beloved sister’s fiancé before he joins our family.”
Then, as everyone blinked at him in shock, he took his own seat at the table. Only Portia was aware that he reached for her hand beneath the tablecloth and held it as if his life depended on it while his mother tactfully changed the subject.
Chapter
THIRTY-THREE
“Remind me again why we are here?” Leo caressed her fingers where they rested in the crook of his arm as they walked through Hyde Park, no doubt fully aware of the effect it was having on Portia’s increasingly wayward body. “Because if you had pleaded a headache like I suggested half an hour ago, we could have spent the entire afternoon making love in a blissfully empty house instead. We travel back to Bath tomorrow, so it will be at least a week before I can have my wicked way with you in the afternoon again.”
“Because it is apparently a family tradition that you and your sisters take a boat out on the Serpentine whenever you are all in London. And, more importantly, your mother also decreed that the entire Sloane family should promenade this afternoon to prove to the rest of the ton that we do not give a jot what any of them think of us.”
A decree that had come about because yet another gossip column had spread some unfounded speculation about the Delinquent Duchess of Debden. This one suggesting that she and Leo hadn’t caused the king grave offense by absconding early from his court reception five days ago, like all the other scandal rags had intimated. But had instead been forcibly removed by the palace guards because Portia had insulted the king when she had been presented to him by stating that she could not wait until he was deposed in a revolution. “And wecannot waste every afternoon in bed just because you have suddenly become insatiable.” Although she did rather enjoy that he couldn’t seem to get enough of her—almost as much as she enjoyed what they did in bed at all hours of the day.
