“At the moment, they do see me as the enemy, Miss Kendall, but I will not apologize for thinking only of their safety. Especially when…” He had no clue why he felt the overwhelming need to justify himself to this confounding woman, but he did. Probably because she had justified every single bold claim she had put in her bloody thorough letter! “There was a particular incident in London recently that necessitated that I bring them both here immediately.” She didn’t need to know the ins and outs of it. “And stay here they must until the dust settles. That is, if we all survive their outrage at my necessary decision.”
“Few respond well to an edict either, your grace.” Was that more barely veiled criticism? Her glare was so unyielding he could not tell if she possessed an objectionable character or if she was purposefully trying to be objectional. Or if she simply objected to him. “Laying down the law often leads to unhelpful belligerence. As the old adage says, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and I’ve always found that gentle correction and misdirection are more effective methods of getting my charges to do the right thing than laying down rules like a dictator.”
Heaven only knew what he had done to this confrontational and unconventional woman to get her dander up. “I fear keeping my sisters on the path of propriety will take more than gentle correction, Miss Kendall.” Abigail and Emilia were going to eat her alive if that was the best weapon in her arsenal. “They are here in Bath under duress and blame me for that, so I am being punished and, by default, any chaperone I appoint to them will also be punished. Their shenanigans of late would try the patience of a saint.” Leo sat back, ready to terminate this interview, and she sat back too, her dark eyes suddenly amused by either him or his situation.
“I would still argue that makes your sisters easier to deal with than children.” Because of course she was going to argue; that seemed to be the one thing she excelled at! Both on paper and in person! “As I mentioned before, your grace, children are unpredictable creatures.”
“And I can assure you, Miss Kendall, so are my sisters.” Honestly, the flippant confidence of this unusual woman was starting to grate.
“Yes—but there is a logic to the adult brain that is entirely missing in a child’s. Children act often entirely on impulse with no rhyme or reason. With adults, there is always a reason. Once you have worked out what that reason is—and I think that it would be fairly safe to assume that their current reason is the overwhelming desire to rebel against you—a good chaperone would be more than two steps ahead of any shenanigans. If you can predict it, you can thwart it.”
Her confidence really was astounding—but he liked it. He also liked that she had worked out the crux of the matter. They were rebelling against him. To such an extent that relations between Leo and his sisters had now been reduced to a stubborn battle of wills. A battle he was currently outnumbered in and losing. “My sisters are fast, Miss Kendall.”
“One of the benefits of being so much younger than all your othermore maturecandidates is that I am fast too, your grace.” She looked him dead in the eye and folded her arms. Then, despite the lack of paper and pen before her, gave him another well-argued paragraph on why he would be mad not to employ her. “I am also, in case you haven’t noticed, wily, tenacious, determined, unflappable, unbelievably stubborn, and annoyingly clever. And, because I am a dreadful cynic by nature—as everyone who knows me will attest—I absolutely always expect the worst of people.” From her expression, he was left in no doubt that also included him. “I can assure you that chaperoning your sisters will not faze me in the slightest—but I will definitely faze them.”
Chapter
FIVE
Portia still could not fathom why the duke had given her the job.
Convinced that the interview had been a perfunctory waste of her time, while also irritated at her body’s peculiar reaction to a man who was the antithesis of all that she stood for, she had been rude and combative throughout it. She had been so annoyed at him, his dimples, and his dismissive tone toward her that she hadn’t held any of her feelings back. Irrespective her egalitarian ideals and dislike of the privileged aristocracy in general, she had never done that to someone of his ilk before. Only an idiot bit the hand that fed—but she had bit his, and hard.
Her jaw had hit the floor when he had asked her if there was any chance that she could start tomorrow, and she had been in a state of utter bafflement ever since.
Now here she was, not twenty-four hours later, once again sitting in the Duke of Debden’s study, waiting for him to find the time to see her. He had said one sharp, and according to the big clock on his mantel it was already twenty-five past, but at least in this instance she was being paid to sit around waiting for him to learn how to tell the time.
“My apologies for being late once again.” The duke strode throughthe open door, followed by his two incongruously matched loyal hounds and the disdainful cat, looking all windswept and disgustingly interesting. “I was unavoidably delayed in town with my sisters.”
Portia stood and bobbed the expected curtsy, but made sure to put more effort into it today than she had yesterday. “Good afternoon, your grace.”
“Let us hope it will be, Miss Kendall, because my morning with them has been horrendous.” He gestured for her to retake her seat, then took his own. As soon as he did, the permanent additions of both his lumbering mastiff and the constantly staring spaniel settled on either side of his desk, while the cat jumped onto his lap and promptly curled up into a ball. “But I am hopeful that my life is about to improve exponentially now that you are here to help me with them.” He smiled and his dimples briefly flashed. To her complete disgust, that was all it took for her pulse to quicken. “But before I throw you headfirst into the lions’ den, I wondered if you have any more questions.”
As he was being unexpectedly affable, it would have been churlish for her not to make some similar concessions. So she smiled, even though it hurt her a great deal to do so. “I have none at the moment, your grace.”
His explanation yesterday had been quite thorough. With his mother unavoidably detained in London for the entire summer, her mornings would be taken up with the social secretary side of things, sorting through the invitations and passing over to him any for the evening soirees, which he would escort the ladies to. Or not, depending on what he decided the family should attend. Her purview was any daytime invitations or excursions, accompanying his sisters much like a lady’s maid would. She was to be wary of any invitations where single men might be involved, especially those from the militia, and should pass them over to him to consider. Although, he then said that she should probably immediately burn any invitations from anyone who wore a uniform, because it would be a cold day in hell before he allowed his youngest sister anywhere near a soldier everagain. “Emilia,” he had cautioned with worry in his eyes, “loses all sense if she comes within twenty feet of a redcoat.”
Portia’s afternoons were at his sisters’ leisure, where again she would accompany them onallforays into the outside world. He had underscored the word “all” repeatedly as he clearly did not trust either of his sisters as far as he could throw them. Which was why, she supposed, he needed a proper chaperone for them, and why he had been at great pains to stipulate that inallcircumstances, and again the emphasis had been on “all,” the young ladies were never to be out of her sight.
Anything that Portia felt was untoward, she was to bring to his attention. She already suspected that meant he would want to know the ins and outs of everything, whether she felt it untoward or not, because he seemed like the sort who needed to be in control. It wasn’t her place to tell him that that was undoubtedly why his sisters rebelled against him so much. She certainly would if she were in their shoes, because the Duke of Debden was obviously an autocratic nightmare to live with.
“Splendid,” he said, removing the cat from his lap before sweeping his arm toward the door. “I shall introduce you to them both and then leave you to it. We have already been out today, and the weather has taken a nasty turn, so I am hopeful that your first afternoon should be quiet enough that you can find your feet here before you have to use them to run after them. Or at least one lives in hope that will be the case—but with my sisters, one always has to be on one’s toes.” Unlike the cat, he waited solicitously for her to pass through the door first, a gentlemanly courtesy that surprised her when he significantly outranked her. But as he then allowed his dogs to go through before him too, she decided not to read too much into the gesture. “I assume my housekeeper has already shown you your office and your quarters?”
“She has indeed, your grace.” And very nice they both were too. “Thank you.”
“I trust both met with your satisfaction.”
“More than, your grace.” Her small but pretty bedchamber overlooked the garden and the unspoiled acres of common land beyond. “This is a beautiful house.” And it was. Even with the Rembrandts, Titians, and Gainsboroughs casually dotted about, there was a homely feel to this grand residence that had charmed her. One that suggested that this was a family home first and foremost rather than a mausoleum whose sole purpose was to impress others, as the Mayfair houses of her two previous aristocratic employers had been.
“Thank you.” His dratted dimples returned again as he smiled before he glanced toward the drawing room somewhat warily, almost as if he dreaded going in. “I could show you around…”
“Your housekeeper has already done the honors.” That came out a bit more clipped than she intended, but the last thing she wanted was to engage in any more chitchat with him than was necessary. Especially when everything about him unnerved her in a way that she wasn’t pleased about.
She blamed those disarming dimples.
And his bright blue eyes.
And his shoulders.
