by Alyssa Cole
Portia couldn’t disagree, though she envied his ability to distance himself from “fake personas” and “silly rituals.” She couldn’t imagine moving through the world without having to do the calculations for about a million different variables that factored into how people would treat her. She felt the slightest bit of irritation that Tavish didn’t have to think of all of this, then she saw the uncertainty in his eyes and sighed.
“Tavish, what did you think of me when you met me?” she asked.
His irritation slipped away and was replaced with an uncharacteristic blank stare. “Pardon?”
“Actually, I don’t want to know,” she said quickly, waving her hands. It wasn’t too hard to figure out given his past behavior. “But when you talk about fake personas and silly rituals, remember that some of us can’t opt out of that stuff. Before I even open my mouth, I’m judged based on whether I’m perceived to be pretty enough or wearing the right thing—not too revealing, not too frumpy, not too cheap looking, not too fancy. When I do talk, it’s whether I’m articulate enough. So while you’re rightfully annoyed by this, just remember that at least half of the population has to adopt these fake personas and silly rituals just to get through the day.”
She expected him to push back, but he dropped his elbows to the table and stared at his hands. When he looked back at her, his brows were lifted and he looked both shocked and ashamed.
“Christ, you’re right.”
Portia was confused. “About what? The patriarchy? Well, yeah.”
“No. Well that and the other thing about when I first met you. Don’t you see? I was your David Dudgeon.”
It was clear his exhaustion had finally gotten to him.
“Maybe we should take a break? Do you want some tea?”
“No. Well, I always want tea, but listen. When you showed up I acted like an arsehole to you for . . . reasons. That were no fault of your own. And then we went to Holyrood and David acted like an arsehole to me for no reason.”
“Well, your taking his money and title is a pretty strong reason,” she said. She wasn’t sure where this was going and was slightly worried.
“I’m not being clear,” he said, shaking his head. “And aye, I’m a bit knackered, but I’m not hallucinating or anything. I’m realizing. Realizing that I treated you unfairly and never really apologized for it. And that was when the only power I had was master-at-arms. If I’m going to think myself a better man than David, not being a bigoted wank stain is the lowest bar to clear. I need to do better. And I need to apologize, for real this time. So: Portia Hobbs, I’m sorry for being a shite boss and making you feel bad about yourself, and for doubting you just because I made a snap judgment. It wasn’t all right, and you’ve my word I won’t do it again.”
Portia was stunned. She was usually the one doling out heartfelt apologies. She was tempted to sooth him, to tell him it had been fine.
“Yeah. That really sucked and I was disappointed and felt like an idiot. Thank you for apologizing.”
They sat in awkward post-apology silence until Tav stretched in his seat.
“What next?” he asked. “Do I have to balance a book on my head?”
He gave her his normal smile, and she returned it, resetting the serious mood that had blown up out of nowhere. That had been awkward, but she felt happy. Seen. Respected. She wanted him to feel the same way.
“Actually . . .” Portia pushed out of her seat and strode around the table to stand behind him. She placed her hands lightly on his shoulders, but pulled them away when he jumped at her touch. “Sorry, I should have asked before touching you.”
“No, it’s fine,” he said, his voice a bit gruff. “You can, erm, touch me.”
His voice went low on the last two words and desire unfurled and spread its wings someplace beneath Portia’s rib cage.
Touch me.
The words echoed in her head, turning what should have been something ordinary and platonic into a heated challenge.
She placed one hand on his shoulder this time, tentatively. He didn’t jump, but she felt his muscles bunch beneath her palm in response. “I think you’re used to bending over things, with all the grinding, and forging, and poring over medieval texts. You need to work on your posture. Pull your shoulders back, just a bit.”
She squeezed his shoulder more firmly and pulled. She placed her other hand flat against the middle of his back and gently pushed up and forward. His body followed the motion naturally, his chest moving up and out and shoulders dropping back and down. She noted how the muscles of his back flexed beneath her palm, then twitched even though he was supposed to be relaxed. She pushed the thought aside—she was helping him, and she could keep any dirty thoughts about Tav’s musculature to herself.
“Am I doing this right?” he asked.
“Hm, this usually works better with a mirror . . . oh! Look at your reflection in Cheryl’s restaurant fridge. This is the posture you should aim for.” She flexed her hands for a moment, emphasizing exactly how his body was aligned beneath them. “Imagine there’s a string from the top of your head and down through your spine, and someone is pulling it up. Yes, lift your chin like that. Can you see how this posture gives you an air of power and grace?”
“Aye.” His voice was rough, and she could feel his heart begin to beat faster beneath her palm. Her pulse was apparently trying to be polite, too, because it rushed to keep pace with his.
“When you walk into these events, people are going to try to intimidate you. But most of them only have their wealth, so they’ll use backhanded compliments and insinuation that you aren’t good enough.”
“Well, they wouldn’t be wrong there, would they?” He said it with a laugh and not even a forced one, but Portia felt a flare of indignation. Her hand left his shoulder and went to his chin, gently turning his face up toward her.
“Don’t joke about stuff like that, Tavish. Not anymore and definitely not in front of any of these people you’re going to meet.”
His hazel-green gaze was hot as it locked on to hers.
“Isn’t that some advice that you should heed yourself? Self-deprecation is your stock-in-trade.”
“It’s different for me,” she responded. Quickly. Annoyed. Because everything I say is true. “Don’t sell yourself short just because you didn’t go to a fancy school or learn all the ways money can be used to make someone feel small.”
His fingertips brushed her elbow, trailed up her forearm leaving a wake of goose bumps, and then his fingers encircled her wrist.
“Thank you, squire. I’ll agree to that if you’ll do me one better—don’t sell yourself short, full stop.”
She realized that she was maybe getting a bit too intense, and also still holding him by the chin like a weirdo, so she pulled her hands away and marched stiffly back to her seat across from him. She could still feel the pressure of his fingers dragging across her wrist as she’d pulled away. “Um, sorry about that.”
“Sorry for trying to help me?” he asked. “Don’t worry, I can handle myself.”
“Look, you talk about rich fucks this, and rich arseholes that, but you don’t understand how these people operate. I don’t even understand. There are plenty of perfectly nice rich people, don’t get me wrong.”
“Oh heaven forbid I misjudge someone who can go cry into a wad of bills about it.”
Portia sighed and ignored that jab. She knew he hadn’t aimed it at her, but it had landed right in a sensitive spot. “All it takes is one jerk to scent a whiff of uncertainty on you. Then they have their in to bring you down a notch. If someone is going to be petty, make them work for it. Don’t hand your insecurity to them on a platter.”
“Is that what it was like for you?” There was concern in his eyes and this was all wrong because she was supposed to be the one helping him, but he was the one apologizing and telling her to think better of herself. She should just say “no” and move on.
She pressed her lips together. “In my family, Reg
gie was the smart and reliable one and I was the pretty and flighty one. That alone gave people a lot of ‘ins.’ I got a lot of ‘don’t worry, she’ll find a wealthy husband to put up with her’ type comments.”
Tav shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. You’re twins. Do you not look alike?”
“We’re not identical, but we look close enough. That kind of makes it worse, huh?” She shrugged, and then decided she’d talked about herself enough. “So listen, don’t get cocky or anything, but you’re already pretty impressive. If you walk into a room with your back straight and your head high and your ‘Yeah, I’m the new duke in town’ swagger, most people will be ready to fall at your feet. It won’t matter where you went to school or who your mother is.”
“Not rolling my eyes is really paying off,” he said lightly.
“I wasn’t trying to compliment you,” Portia said. She felt a little exposed. Tavish was looking at her in that new way he had, like he was trying to figure out what she was thinking—like he cared what she was thinking. She almost preferred when he’d been rude and hell-bent on ignoring her.
“Even better,” he said. Her forearms rested flat on the table in front of her and he reached out and brushed his fingertip over the back of her hand. That soft touch sent a thrill up her arm that left raised hairs in its wake. “Thank you. For all this. I—”
“Special delivery!” Jamie announced as he shuffled into the kitchen lugging a huge trunk behind him. Portia quickly pulled her arms back across the table.
Tav stood up and glanced at her. “Always stand when someone enters the room,” he said in the exaggerated posh accent he used to mock his etiquette lessons.
He made his way over to Jamie, somewhat reluctantly, and she got up to follow. She should have been happy for the interruption, right? They didn’t need to keep finding reasons to touch one another.
“Here you go, Your Grace,” Jamie said, bowing at Tav as he presented the trunk. He was super enthusiastic about Tavish’s news, and apparently the novelty hadn’t worn off yet.
“Don’t call me that,” Tav snapped, shocking Portia with his sudden mood change.
“I was just joking, bruv,” Jamie said, but he looked surprised too, and a little hurt.
“It’s not really funny is it, Jamie?”
Portia had noticed the way Tav seemed to stiffen up every time Cheryl and Jamie said the word duke, which was admittedly a lot, but they were his biggest supporters. Jamie had started doing much of the non-artisanal labor so deliveries wouldn’t fall behind, and Cheryl and Kevyn had been leading some of the kids’ classes. Portia always felt a bit of shame seeing how they threw their support behind Tav, remembering the one crisis her family had gone through and how she’d run off instead of helping her parents or spending more time at the hospital. She couldn’t understand why their enthusiasm angered Tav.
Jamie’s hurt expression morphed into one of annoyance—perhaps the first time Portia had ever seen it on his face. “I don’t see what the problem is. Unless you’re planning on cutting and running, that’s your title, aye?”
“Give it a rest.” Tav glared at him as he ripped at the tape surrounding the trunk and pried it open. “It’s bad enough other people will call me that. I don’t need to hear it in my own home.”
Jamie’s mouth twisted. “Oh, you mean the home that you got from your father the duke, along with a title, power, and who knows how many millions of quid?”
“Hey, guys,” Portia said, stepping in between them. Two large men who knew how to grapple and use swords arguing was a little frightening, even if she knew they’d never hurt one another. Physically, at least.
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re jealous,” Tav said, ignoring her. “You think I asked for any of this?”
Jamie exhaled a frustrated noise and ran a hand over his face, before using it to gesture in Tav’s direction. “Obviously I’m jealous. Who wouldn’t be jealous of someone who had won the absentee father lottery? But that’s not the problem here. Your whinging all the damned time is the problem!”
“Whinging?” Tav seemed to choke on the word and Portia stepped back from between them.
Jamie’s face scrunched up. “For years, we’ve all had to hear about how little you care about this building, even though you encouraged me and Cheryl to invest our livelihood in it. As if being gifted a grand old building was a burden. And now you’ve been given a title and money and power and all you can do is complain about that, too! Fuck’s sake, Tavish, you really are a wanker, you know that?”
Jamie turned to go.
“Jamie. Jamie!”
Jamie stopped. His hands went to his waist, his shoulders slumped, and his head dropped forward. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. Guess I’ve kind of had tunnel vision about all this. Or wankervision.”
Jamie chuckled a bit, then sighed and turned around.
“Come here, bruv.” He held his arms open and beckoned Tav with his hands. “You know I don’t like arguing. Family have to stick together. Bring it in.”
Portia watched as Tav lumbered over and clapped his baby brother in a hug. Just like that, all the angry energy between them dissolved like cotton candy under a sprinkler. If there was anything to be jealous about, it wasn’t Tav’s title.
She glanced over at the trunk. “Oh, your clothes have arrived!”
She busied herself pulling out the various slacks, jeans, sweaters, and suits and laying them carefully over the backs of the kitchen chairs.
“Clothes?” Tav and Jamie said at the same time.
Portia grabbed one of the shirts, a blue houndstooth button-up that was impossibly soft, and walked over to Tav, holding it up against his chest. “They’re from a service that delivers clothing. You try it on. If you like it, you keep it. If not, you send it back with the trunk. No need to go to shops.”
Tav rubbed the material of the shirt between his thumb and forefinger. “Hm. You know, I can’t even take the piss out of this. Doing the whole fitting mess without leaving the house? I could get used to that.”
“Try it on, Tav!” Jamie said. His anger was gone, and he was already excitedly digging through the clothing, picking out items he thought would look good.
Portia’s phone vibrated on the kitchen table. “I’ll give you some privacy. But Jamie, take a photo of every outfit so I can check them out later.”
“You’re not going to supervise?” Tavish said with a quirk of his brows.
“I trust your judgment,” she said quickly. She didn’t really, when it came to clothing, but the last thing she needed was to be in a room with a half-dressed Tavish. The kernel of a crush was a full-grown stalk, budding ears of corn that could not be harvested. She swept up her phone and turned her back on Tavish and his inviting brows. Besides, one of her parents was on the phone and she was certain she couldn’t hold a conversation if Tav was stripping down in front of her.
“Hello?”
“Portia Monique Hobbs.” Her mother’s voice was sharp on the other end of the phone. “Why did I have to find out about this duke business from your sister?”
“Reggie told you?” Portia was blindsided. She’d told Reggie because it was pretty huge news and Tav had agreed that she could announce it in the travel column she’d been doing for Reggie. Low key, high visibility, totally in their control. She hadn’t expected her sister to run and tell her parents, but then again, Reggie had conversations with them that consisted of more than flailing defensively.
“Well, she stopped by the office and Vanessa started talking about your little trip, since she’d seen some stuff about it on Reggie’s site. Vanessa then started talking about some photo of you with this man you’re apprenticing with, and when I asked if the only reason you’d gone was to ‘hook up’ with some Scottish man, Reggie explained what was going on.”
Portia couldn’t even muster up the energy to be angry at her mother’s assumption, though she was sure it would come eventually.
“I told you that I to
ok this apprenticeship because I was interested in helping build this business and in learning this craft. You really thought it was possible that I came here to chase after a man?”
“Portia, I never know what’s possible with you. Then Vanessa started showing me all this gossip on social media and I didn’t know what to think.”
Tears stung Portia’s eyes. The anger had arrived earlier than she’d imagined. “What do you want, Mom?”
“Well, I just want to know what was going on.” Her mother’s voice was suddenly warmer, friendlier, than she’d heard it in ages. “And if these rumors were fact. Because if what Vanessa said is true and if what Reggie said is true, well . . . your father and I wanted you to come fill this position, but we’d certainly be proud to have a duchess in the family instead.”
Portia felt actual nausea building in her stomach, but her mother kept going.
“I know you’ve never clicked with any of the men your father and I tried to set you up with, but we always thought it would be best if you had a good man to look after you, and why not a duke?”
Portia hadn’t heard this tone from her mother since she was sixteen and had just slipped into her frilly white debut dress. It was a tone of pride, and the only thing that had brought it out half a lifetime later was the possibility of Portia marrying well.
“My duties have taken on a wider scope since the discovery, but I’m his apprentice and that’s it,” Portia said. “It’s really hard work, not a dating service.”
“Is there any reason why now you’re suddenly fickle when it comes to men? You’ve always been like this. Happy to do something until I make a suggestion. Reggie always had her own goals and plans, but yours seem to be just whatever it is that your father and I don’t want.”
Ouch. Portia had no regrets about her past, but having her mom throw it in her face fell under the “probably need to talk to my therapist” column of life.
“That’s not true.” Sure, she hadn’t lived up to their expectations. And somewhere around her second semester of college she’d stopped trying to—that had been the easiest thing for everyone involved. But she had tried.