He still hadn’t decided, or so he’d said, but three days had passed and instead of focusing on invoices and sandpaper orders, her mind kept formulating plans for how to proceed if he decided to go for it. This was exactly what her parents had always scolded her over—already thinking about the next pipe dream before this one has even run its course. But to Portia, what seemed disparate to other people made perfect sense to her. For example, her parents saw her apprenticeship as a lark, instead of a way of testing the years of crafting classes, art history studies, research, and her innate talent at putting other people’s best face forward. If Tav was about to become a royal duke, that was just another way in which she could help.
She ran through the list she’d created in her Brain Basura under the heading “Project: New Duke.” Not entirely original, but if it worked for her it could work for Tav. She had subheadings like “style upgrade,” “dinner etiquette,” “not cursing at people,” but she was currently staring at “contacts.” She couldn’t work on any of those other things—maybe ever—but she could get an email drafted and ready to go. She had to do something. She’d come to Scotland to learn how to make swords, and to put the Bodotria Armory on the map. This was so much more than that.
In the days since she’d told Tavish the news, the immensity of her revelation had had time to sink in. Whatever he decided, her actions had changed the course of his life, completely. Unless they perfected a memory erasing serum sometime in the next week, he couldn’t go back to not knowing he was technically a duke. Whether he acted on it or not, that knowledge would be with him forever, all because of her. Her actions had consequences and she couldn’t fuck up.
“You can’t even manage not to flunk philosophy 101? Do you know how much we’re paying for school? It’s not like you got scholarships like your sister.”
“Dad, I told you I’d do better next semester.”
“Portia, why can’t you manage even a portion of what Reggie is handling? Sometimes I wonder why—”
She closed the Debrett’s for a moment and pressed her hand to her chest, taking deep breaths against the panic. She’d always reached for a drink whenever she’d felt this sick sensation take hold of her. It had been like a more enjoyable version of an IV drip, because once it hit her bloodstream, the tightness in her chest would release and she’d be the fun-loving Portia that people enjoyed being around. Perhaps a bit too fun-loving, as her friend Ledi had tried to gently point out over the years. But it wasn’t until Portia had cut it out of her life that she’d realized it had stopped being fun and started being a coping mechanism, long, long ago.
She inhaled through her nose, then out through her mouth. Breathing through her anxiety would have to suffice for now. She had work to do. Maybe work was just another coping mechanism, but at least it was productive.
She re-opened the Debrett’s to “How to email a royal secretary” and began composing her email. It turned out, there wasn’t exactly a tactful way to say “I am writing on behalf of His Grace’s secret baby,” so she stuck with some approximation of that and attached her evidence.
“Oh my gosh!”
Cheryl burst into the office, the strings of her TARDIS apron flailing behind her and her phone caught in a death grip.
“What’s wrong?” Portia had learned to ask before immediately going for the mace.
“GirlsWithGlasses!!!” Cheryl shouted, performing some strange circular dance routine that was maybe a reenactment of the mating dance of the flamingo. “You wrote about Doctor Hu’s on GirlsWithGlasses! And then your sister shared one of the photos from the social media account you had me create. And then THE LATEST DOCTOR QUOTE-SHARED IT.”
Cheryl’s cheeks were pink and her eyes were glossy with tears as she stuck the phone in Portia’s face.
Hoping I get to make a visit to this dimension, the food looks great.
Portia felt her adrenaline return to baseline, though she was happy that Cheryl was so happy. “That’s awesome! I bet you’ll have an uptick in customers—”
“Customers? Who cares about customers! The Doctor knows who I am and it’s because of you!” She pulled Portia into a hug, which was apparently the culmination of the mating dance. “Thank you! You really are a superhero!”
“No, you’re the hero. Um, the Food Lord, or something. Is that right? Close enough?”
Cheryl let out a peal of laughter and began clapping, and then everything happened in slow motion, or so it would seem to Portia later. The phone in its cute piglet case sliding out of Cheryl’s hand, Portia ducking to the side to avoid a face full of smartphone, the crash as it collided with her laptop.
“Oh no. Oh no, oh no.” Cheryl’s clapping had slowed, but not stopped, and her face was scrunched in horror.
Portia heard the blip sound her computer made when it rebooted, and turned to see the phone resting on the keyboard and the emergency mode reloading bar on the screen.
Fuck.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Christ, that looks like a really expensive computer.” Cheryl was near tears again, but this time they weren’t tears of happiness.
“It is! Which means it should be hard to break, and if it does, it will be easy to fix or replace because I’ve got a warranty. Don’t worry.”
They waited in tense silence as the computer loaded, Portia mostly so she could reassure Cheryl. When it did, everything seemed to be working normally.
“See,” Portia said as the approximately one million tabs in her web browser restored. “Good as new. Nothing to worry about.”
She glanced at the screen then and felt the sick sensation of her heart dropping into her stomach, where it was dissolved by stomach acids, which was likely to be the most pleasant thing that would happen to her that afternoon.
“Shhhhhhhhhhiiiiiit. No.”
“What is it?” Cheryl asked.
Portia simply stared at the subject of the new message at the top of her in-box, and the snippet of the message body.
Automated message: Re: Dukedom of Edinburgh—Thank you for your inquiry. Our general response time is 12–24 hours . . .
There was no way to recall the email. There was no way to take this back.
“Tavish is going to kill me,” she said, dropping into her seat. Worse, he was going to hate her. She could take being run through with a two-hander, probably, but the inevitable disappointment in his face was what would hurt the most. And what if he kicked her out, ended the apprenticeship? She’d return home a failure.
It’s what everyone expects anyway.
She wrapped her arms around herself.
“What’s wrong?” Cheryl knelt beside her.
“Fuck. I just messed everything up.” Tears welled up in her eyes and she blinked them away. No time to feel sorry for herself. She had more unexpected news for Tavish, and though he didn’t seem to be into baseball, she was fairly certain three strikes and you’re out was a universal rule.
“What do you mean? I’m the one who chucked my phone at your computer!”
A deep voice cut into the conversation. “Cheryl, I thought I told you to keep your phone on a leash after the last time you got excited and put a hole through the kitchen window.” Tav was leaning against the door, a slight smile on his face. The smile faded as he took in Portia’s expression.
“What’s with the eyes?” he asked, making his way into the room. It was a large room, but his presence seemed to crowd everything out. Even Cheryl seemed to sense it, stepping back and away from Portia.
“What about my eyes?” she asked.
“You’re looking at me with those ‘calf stuck in a box’ eyes. What’s the script?”
Oh god, she was really going to have to tell him.
She glanced up at Cheryl. “Cheryl’s phone hit my computer. While I was composing a sensitive email to save in my draft folder.” She took a breath so deep it made her a bit dizzy. “An email was just accidentally sent to the secretary of the Duke of Edinburgh.”
“Get out, Cheryl,” he said, not taking his eyes off of Portia, even as Cheryl brushed past him.
“What do you mean?” he asked. His voice was low and dangerous; it walked the fine line people usually flew past on the way to saying what they really felt about someone.