A Duke by Default (Reluctant Royals #2)(51)

“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.

Portia tried to be professional. She’d messed up and ’fessed up on the job plenty of times. But outing Tav as a duke was slightly different than tweeting inappropriate photos of a statue’s junk when she forgot to switch to her personal account.

“I was trying to be organized, so I composed an email overview of your situation. I wanted to be ready in case you decided to go ahead with this,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly even. “I was just going to keep it in my drafts, but then Cheryl came in and her phone went flying and the computer rebooted and—” She glanced up at him. “I’m so sorry.”

The look on his face was not “calf in a box.” It was “honey badger who just gnawed its leg off to get out of a trap and is now going to beat you senseless with said leg.”

“In other words, the time I was taking to decide whether I wanted to do this has been rendered moot,” he said gravely. “And if I had decided no, that would also be moot.”

She nodded, and noticed the responding tic in his jaw and flare of his nostrils.

“I’m—”

He scrubbed a hand over his scruff. “Yes, you’re sorry. I know.” Tav had said unkinder things to her before. On a scale of one to ten, that jab barely registered. But it was the way he said it—talking past her, not even able to look at her, that made it so hurtful. She would have preferred a string of blistering curse words to that mild acceptance. People only accepted what they saw as inevitable, meaning he’d known it would only be a matter of time before she screwed up.