“Nobody knows. For heaven’s sake, Portia, we can’t go chasing after him like hounds on the scent. Do you never know when you’re beaten? If Lord Walgrave had been willing to help us, he would have done so.”
“He was clearly busy….”
“And always will be.”
“There must besomethingwe can do.”
He drained his cup. “If there is, you must find it then, for I’m at a loss. The only way I can see to raise the wind would be to go to the moneylenders, and the interest they’d charge would break us anyway.”
“So, we go home, do we, and prepare to hand everything over to Major Barclay?”
“What choice do we have?”
Portia fixed him with a look. “We can chase after the earl like hounds on the scent.”
“Portia!”
“Oliver, I will not give up until the very end. We will wait a few more days in case Lord Walgrave sends word, but if not I am going up to London to seek news of him. If you don’t come, I will go on my own.”
Oliver was most unhappy with the plan, and it took Portia nearly a week to get him to agree. Even as they waited in the inn yard for the London Fly to roll in, he was still arguing. “Mother is going to have fits to think of you in the wicked city with only me for escort.”
“There won’t be much she can do about it,” said Portia firmly. “And anyway, I hope to be home triumphant before Mama realizes we’ve left Maidenhead. It will surely only take a moment of the earl’s time to settle matters, and with such good news, she’ll forgive us.”
“If he’s there,” said Oliver despondently, but he climbed into the coach without further protest.
Portia spent the six hour journey planning how best to approach the earl. He was an old-fashioned Puritan sort of man, and would not take kindly to a woman’s voice unless she were pleading prettily for mercy. That wasn’t in Portia’s style, but if she left it to Oliver she wasn’t sure he would carry it off.
By the time they reached the city she had decided she must accompany Oliver to the earl’s house. She resolved to do her best to be a quiet, properly behaved lady whilst there. Perhaps she could even squeeze out some tears.
That reminded her of Bryght Malloren. How had he known that she did not cry? How had he known that she hated to give up?
In truth, the dratted man had a distressing way of sneaking into her mind, and if she blocked him from her conscious thoughts he invaded her dreams. It was preposterous. He was a gamester and a bully.
But she could still remember lying beneath him, remember his lips on hers. There were wicked moments when she wished she had not held herself impassive and had experienced that kiss to the full.
She was twenty-five and had been wooed, but her suitors had all behaved correctly. She had never been kissed like that. It seemed a large gap in her education, and despite his wickedness, she suspected Bryght Malloren would be an excellent teacher.
Oh but really, her mother was right when she claimed that the St. Claire blood inclined her daughter to wildness. Portia shook her head to throw these thoughts out causing Oliver to ask if she had the headache.
It was as good an excuse as any, but it was her heart which pained her, not her head. That was evidence of acute mental instability. Portia knew it was her fate to be a spinster. She was too short, too thin, too outspoken, and cursed with red hair and freckles.
As the straggling cottages and market gardens became the close-set houses and busy streets of London, Portia fought her insane attraction to a high-born stranger.
By the time she climbed out of the coach in the inn-yard of the Swan, she had won the battle. After all, even if some suitable man were now to make her an offer of marriage, she could not take it. She would be needed at Overstead. She and Oliver were going to have to live quietly and labor hard for many years if they were to pay off the loan the earl was going to give them.
Portia had expected London to be grand and exciting, but this part certainly wasn’t. As soon as they ventured from the inn-yard she began to wish herself safe in the country. London was crowded and noisy, and the sewers were clearly inadequate for their purpose, for the place stank.
And it was riddled with vice.
A couple rolled by drunk, and it was not yet dark. She saw a ragged woman leaning against a wall be approached by an equally ragged man. She could not mistake the transaction that was taking place, but the sum involved must be pennies.
How horrible.
She soon discovered that London was expensive for almost anything except whores and gin. It was as well they were not intending to stay beyond a few days for their small purse of guineas would not last long here.
Oliver wanted to look for rooms in the fashionable part of town where he had stayed before. Portia squashed that plan and found them cheap ones on the fringes, in Dresden Street in Clerkenwell. They took two bedchambers and a parlor for two guineas a month, but had to pay an extra ten shillings a week for a daily fire in the parlor, which was a necessity in December.
Portia looked around the simple rooms. “It is a ridiculous amount of money to be paying for such meager accommodations.”
