The Duke Before Christmas - Bianca Blythe Page 0,1

bit lost.”

“You went there in the dark?” Jonesie halted unbuttoning Portia’s afternoon gown, as if Portia’s statement had been sufficiently shocking to render them to stone like in some Nordic legend. “I assumed a carriage had dropped you here.”

Fiddlesticks.

“It wasn’t dark most of the time. And I wasn’t that lost.”

Gusts of wind blustered noisily, filling the silence.

“Do you want to attend the ball?”

“It would be terrible to stay in the house,” Portia replied.

For a moment, Portia thought her lady’s maid might protest. After all, Portia had only just arrived from a lengthy visit with her dear friend Daisy. Instead, Jonesie inhaled, as if being in the same room as Portia required copious quantities of oxygen. “Very well, Miss.”

Jonesie assisted Portia into the shimmering yellow fabric.

“I doubt Sir Vincent would mind if you desired to stay home after all,” Jonesie mused.

“Nonsense,” Portia said. “I already wrote Sir Seymour’s wife that I would come. I can hardly not make an appearance.”

“Yes, she is bound to be overwrought with despair should you be absent.” Jonesie brushed Portia’s hair firmly, then pulled it into a simple chignon.

Portia stared at Jonesie. “Was that irony?”

A sense of humor was not something she associated with Jonesie. Nobody in Sir Vincent’s house laughed.

Her maid gave a tight smile and finished arranging Portia’s hair.

Finally, Portia exited her room and proceeded down the steps.

Cranston assessed her, and she shivered. Perhaps she’d lived here for over a year, ever since leaving finishing school, but the servants still made her feel like she was a bumbling, unwelcome guest. When she’d arrived, she’d imagined marrying a peer, and having all the servants marvel that they’d underestimated her. She’d imagined men calling at the house, and Sir Vincent escorting them into the drawing room for tea and interrogation.

But no dashing peers carrying glossy black walking sticks had ever arrived.

Nobody had arrived.

Her heart clenched. No doubt, Sir Vincent simply wanted to speak to her about something trivial. Perhaps he didn’t want to remain in London for Christmas.

Or perhaps he doesn’t want me to have another season.

She should have found someone to marry her. That was why Sir Vincent had taken her to dressmakers to get fashionable clothes.

In truth, the clothes would have been more fashionable if they’d waited until they’d arrived in London to purchase them. Apparently, the styles the dressmakers lauded in Newcastle were not the same ones typically seen in London ballrooms. Portia had suspected that, since Matchmaking for Wallflowers and similar material aimed at women had extolled dresses with wide hems, equipped with abundant flounces and ribbons.

Still, Sir Vincent had liked the idea of Portia dressing like a Greek goddess, and Portia had acquiesced to the dressmaker’s enthusiasm.

London had reacted with less enthusiasm. Apparently, Greek goddesses were considered dull. Since Portia could hardly go about telling people about the time she’d clambered from her school window in order to visit the nearby village for a festivity, or the time she’d spent playing with the neighborhood boys over summers when her father was still alive, long after they’d begun attending Harrow, she had to allow herself to be called such things.

Dull. Provincial.

Fortunately, other members of her finishing school were also debutantes, though unfortunately, most of them were now married.

Next season she wouldn’t have the advantage of being new. There would be a slew of younger women, with fresher faces, whose eyes sparkled more at the majesty of each ballroom, for whom the exact pattern on the ceilings would be novel.

Portia sighed and entered the library.

Sir Vincent glanced at her from his red leather armchair. “Have a seat, my dear.”

“Very well.” Her voice squeaked, even though her nervousness was absurd. Sir Vincent had taken her in after her father had died. Perhaps he never chuckled, and perhaps his eyes never twinkled, but he was a kind man.

She’d been lucky to have him as a guardian. Other people had fared worse when their parents had died. Some people had considered it odd he was unmarried, but it was hardly his fault his wife had died. Death was a misfortune and not an etiquette lapse. Perhaps Sir Vincent had never had his own children, but that was the sort of thing that happened when one’s wife died in childbirth. It was a tragedy, not lessened by the normalness of it. People seemed more drawn to stories of winter drownings in lakes that were less frozen than they appeared or malaises brought on by unassuming insects crawling about the banks of the Nile.

Portia was fortunate her father’s