“Not sure she feels that way, but thanks,” Portia said, then realized something. “How do you know I have a sister?”

Leslie did her head tilt thing again. “You two haven’t the slightest idea what you’ve gotten into.”

She stood, threw back the rest of her tea like it was a tumbler of whiskey, and straightened her dress. “The offer still stands of course. I can be your date to the ball, and more, if you want, Tavish.”

“But. You just said you didn’t want to?” Tavish looked as confused as Portia felt.

“You will soon understand that one must do a great many things one doesn’t want to. David gave me a command. I wanted to give you a choice. We could figure something out, if you wanted to make it work.” She looked between him and Portia, then breezed out of the office.

Portia’s phone vibrated in her hand, a message from Reggie on the screen.

Incoming. We got scooped. #swordbae’s duke news is the Looking Glass Daily’s breaking news. Your notifications are gonna be a mess.

Portia clicked on the link and held her breath—the Looking Glass Daily was world renowned for its sensationalist, lie-riddled stories—but this one was mild. It listed basic information about Tavish in a bullet point format, discussed the #swordbae meme, and talked about the Scottish peerage in general and what being a duke meant. There was the picture of them from the Bodotria Eagle, but the caption read “The new duke in town, and (more than?) friend.”

“You might want to see this,” she said, handing the phone to Tavish. She hated his frown when he saw the still from the video she’d posted and how it deepened as he read.

He took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose. “This is only the beginning, isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

He threw himself back into his chair. “What do we do now?”

Portia felt momentary confusion at the “we.” Not at the pronoun, but at what it connoted. Tavish was still the Duke of Edinburgh, but where did she stand in relation to him after last night?

“I really am going to have to pay you a million pounds for helping me manage this shite,” he said irritably, and Portia cringed. It was ridiculous—so ridiculous. She was the one who had said there couldn’t be anything more between them, but still, nothing clarified your relationship to a man better than an offer of pounds sterling for your services.

“We’ll post a statement on the armory’s social media sites,” she said, already trying to figure out what angle to take in the wording. “I wrote up something fun and charming for Reggie’s site, and she’s likely hitting publish now if I know her well enough. We’ll play this calm and casual. It was a surprise. You’re an underdog. Who doesn’t love an underdog?”

He looked over at her. “Okay. I can write the statement. You don’t have to take care of everything.”

She thought about what Leslie had said. And Tav’s offer.

“Since you’re talking about payment beyond the apprenticeship stipend, maybe you should consider getting a publicist. Or someone who actually knows what they’re doing.” She felt silly saying she didn’t want his money. Her entire trip to Scotland had been predicated on taking his money, though she was now going above and beyond anything she’d imagined her apprenticeship would entail. She was working hard and deserved payment for her work. But it felt . . . not great. Which was one of many reasons why she shouldn’t have slept with her boss.

“I don’t want anyone else,” Tav said, so quickly and definitively that her pulse raced to catch up. “But I understand if this is getting to be too much. It’s too much for me and it’s my life. Just let me know. We can go back to the original terms of the apprenticeship.”

His gaze searched her face and she tried to reveal nothing, like confusion as to why she would stay on as an apprentice—or anything at all—if he hired someone else. She didn’t think there was any going back to before, but she didn’t want to get into that.

“I don’t want to mess anything up,” she said. That was the truth, if not the whole truth.

“I don’t want you to assume you will,” he said. “It seems we’re at an impasse.”

“Tavish, this is serious,” she said. He didn’t know any better and was relying on the fact that she was already there. “This is your life. I don’t want you to put it in my hands because it’s the easy thing to do.”

“I think that’s exactly the reason I should put my life in your hands. It’s scarily easy for me. There’s that impasse again.”

A thought that had somehow been lost beneath all the madness pushed its way to the front, putting everything into a perspective of sorts.

“There are only a few weeks left in this apprenticeship,” she quietly reminded him. “You need to start thinking about what you’re going to do moving forward.”

When I’m gone. In a few weeks she’d likely assume her position at her parents’ company, cementing herself in her new, serious life and forgetting this had ever happened. Or pretending it hadn’t. Forgetting didn’t seem likely.

They stared at each other, and Portia was overcome with the urge to be hugged. It was the same feeling of homesickness that had overwhelmed her while talking to Ledi and Thabiso, except the hug she wanted—needed—was from Tav, who was about as far from home as she could get.