The next morning, Portia woke up exhausted. It took a moment for her to realize she was still fully dressed. Her room was cold and muscles she hadn’t known she possessed,secretmuscles, ached in a way she’d never felt before.
And then it all came back to her.
She sat up with a start and covered her mouth with her hand as if to stifle a scream.
A knock sounded on her door. “Portia, have you overslept?” Minnie said. “We leave for church in an hour. Are you all right?”
Portia never overslept. And usually she was the one who knocked on doors, not the other way around. “I’m fine,” she mumbled to her sister, surprised her voice worked.
“I’ll take breakfast to Mother,” Minnie offered. “Mr. Tolliver is coming over to escort us toservices.” She left. Portia could hear her walking down the hall for the stairs.
Church. She must prepare for church.
Portia untied the strings of her cloak that was still around her. She felt like herself, and yet she felt different.
“Owl?” Portia remembered the cat sleeping beside her. She looked around the room, but there was no answering meow.
Sliding off the bed onto her knees, Portia searched under the bed. No cat. Fenella’s book was there, but no Owl.
And she told herself she was being silly. Cats had a hundred ways of going in and out of places. She was allowing her imagination to grow foolish.
Rising from the floor, Portia walked over to the washbasin. Of course the water was cold. She should have washed last night when Minnie had brought up the pitchers. She poured the water into a bowl and began undressing—and that was when she saw the bloodstain on her petticoat.
For a second, the room seemed to spin around her. “No, no, no,” she said softly, and then she met her face in the looking glass on the wall.
The woman who stared back at her looked as if her world was about to come to an end. Howfoolish she had been. The rampant desire, the lust of the night before evaporated in the light of this new day.
“It’s over. It’s done,” she told that image. “Don’t think on it.”
All would be fine; all would be well.She needed to carry on as she normally did. That was what she would do. It was all she could do.
Portia began washing her face. She picked up a cloth and scrubbed all over her body as hard as she could. Within the hour, she felt a bit like her old self, although she had no appetite for breakfast.
She was absolutely certain that her sister and her mother and even Mr. Tolliver could see a change in her, because she could see the change in herself. She was certain of it. Her eyes were darker, her skin lighter, her features older.
But no one else in her family seemed to notice.
And the barn where the deed had been done seemed remarkably normal. No signs of struggle or savage passion. Even Honey, who had to be a witness to the goings-on, greeted Portia with her usual nicker.
None of that stopped Portia from feeling guilty. Her penance was to worry as Mr. Tolliver drove them to the church meeting.
There was no church in Glenfinnan, well, no proper church as they’d had in London, which was something else for Lady Maclean to complain over. However, the Duke of Montcrieffe had a chapel on his estate, and his chaplain, a very kind man by the name of Reverend Ogilvy, read services each Sunday.
Portia was not truly thinking about where they were going and its implications, until they arrived and she saw the crowd gathered there. She was not up to facing very many people. She ducked her head and hurried to the chapel, running right into Lady Emma.
Her Ladyship looked positively fetching with a berry red velvet jacket over a creamy muslin gown. A cap of the same velvet was tilted at a jaunty angle over her perfectly styled hair.
Beside her, Portia felt dowdy and haggard—in more ways than one! Her Sunday dress was a sprigged muslin that had been out of fashion when it had been handed down to her by a distant cousin and her hat was the one she wore every Sunday for church. Nor was there anything “jaunty” about her.
“Hello, my lady,” Portia murmured.
Lady Emma replied with a lift of her brow and a look down her nose. She moved on.
“Are you all right?” Minnie asked, taking her arm.
“I’m fine,” Portia answered a little too quickly. Then paused, turning suspicious. “Why do you think something is wrong?”
“Just a sense I have,” Minnie answered. “You’ve been so quiet.”
