The Minx Who Met Her Match

by Christi Caldwell

  Josephine gnashed her teeth. Leave it to the world to believe everything stemmed from a woman’s bitterness over a broken relationship and a feckless man.

  Refusing to be further goaded, Josephine set her features in a serene mask. “Surely you aren’t suggesting I’ve developed a sudden interest and a capability in legal matters because of my broken relationship.” Anger swirled in her chest.

  The color on his cheeks deepened, and she saw the flush for what it was—embarrassment. “I haven’t accepted your help in a long while.”

  “You took my help on the Cato Case.”

  “Shh,” he demanded. “This time,” he whispered, “it is altogether different.”

  She stalked over until the tips of her boots brushed his desk. “And how is it different, Henry? Enlighten me.”

  “Because there are certain expectations and requirements of and for ladies.”

  “Marriage?”

  “Marriage,” he confirmed with a nod.

  Josephine Pratt, however, wasn’t like most ladies. It was why she even now stood before her elder brother. “If my making a good match is your concern, I assure you, you needn’t worry.”

  He eyed her warily. “Oh?”

  She beamed. “I’ve no intention of marrying anyone.” She’d loved a man and then been spurned by him and his family through no fault of her own. “Ever.” Men were unreliable, faithless creatures, and she’d no desire to tie herself forevermore to any of them. Why, even Henry had betrayed his first love.

  “What utter rot. Of course, you’ll marry.” Returning his focus to his books, her brother shook his head. “‘Not marry,’ she says.” Licking the tip of his index finger, he caught the corner of the top page in his notes. “Now, if you’ll excuse me? I must get back to my—”

  Josephine slapped a hand down hard and kept it firmly in place.

  “Hey!” he exclaimed.

  “I’m not marrying, nor am I going to rely upon my brothers to provide for me.” Ignoring his protestations, she settled herself into the lone chair across from his desk. “I wish to work.”

  She might as well have said, I wish to dethrone the King of England and name myself Sovereign.

  “Work?”

  She nodded. “For you. Well, in any barrister or solicitor’s office, really, but as you are my brother and familiar with my capabilities, I thought to present you first with that opportunity.”

  “You’re mad,” he whispered.

  “Because I wish to spend my days doing something other than visiting shops I don’t have funds to patronize or planning soirees and balls?” Ah, the world in which they lived, where women could not pursue greater and grander purposes. Where they could not earn funds of their own.

  His spectacles slipped forward, and he shoved them back into place. “Because you are a ladyyyyy, and no lady wants to work.”

  She waggled four fingers. “I do. Furthermore, you were not always of such an opinion on my helping you, Henry.”

  He eyed her warily. “Do not,” he mouthed.

  “In fact,” she went on, ignoring that warning, “there was a time in which you welcomed it.”

  His eyes bulged. “Shh.” He slammed an index finger against his lips, emphasizing that horror-filled whisper.

  Only, she’d not be silenced. “Need I remind you of Thistlewood?”

  Her brother blanched. “I knowww.”

  “Whom you prosecuted for high treason after the Cato Event.”

  “I had enough evidence to successfully prosecute him,” her brother said tightly. “There was a mountain of evidence to go through.”

  “Which is why you failed to note the cartridge paper. ‘Your tyrants are destroyed. The friends of liberty are called on to come forward as the provisional government is now sitting.’” Those words remained committed to memory. Words, though, had always come easy to her, while Henry had struggled. In private, he’d always accepted her help. In public and before their family, he’d always shunted any intimations of the work she’d done.

  A vein bulged at the corner of his eye. “I would have eventually gotten there with regards to Thistlewood.”

  She took mercy on his bruised ego. “Of course you would have.” Perhaps baiting him was not the way to go about soliciting his capitulation. He’d not always been so resistant to her assistance. In fact, he’d sought out her support. Albeit, secret support. She opted for the assurance she’d made him long ago. “I want to help, Henry,” she said solemnly. “And there is no shame in your accepting it.”

  “I no longer need assistance.”

  From you.

  Those two words were as real as if he’d spoken them.

  At that firm deliverance, Josephine resisted the urge to stamp her foot, because that was no doubt what was what her infuriatingly stodgy, elder brother expected of her. “You’re still angry that I was discovered helping you.”

  “Not just discovered.” His nostrils flared. “You took great pride in sharing with my father-in-law all the ways in which you’ve helped over the years.”

  She bristled. “How was I to know he’d not be impressed?”

  “Because Society doesn’t approve of females involving themselves in business affairs,” he snapped. “That is how.”

  “Well, Society is foolish.”

  He pressed his hands atop his immaculate desk and leaned forward. “The only one foolish is you, for thinking I’d bring you on again to work with me.” With that, he dismissively grabbed his pen and ran the tip over the page he’d been reading when she’d entered his offices.

  Josephine remained there in silence for several long moments, studying his bent head as he read through his notes.

  Poor Henry.

  Poor Nolan.

  None of the endeavors they’d undertaken had come easy to them. Nay, they’d only ever been difficult. Nolan, her eldest brother, was rot with numbers, but thankfully he had a wife with a head for mathematics who’d managed to make sense of the Pratt finances. And Henry? Henry had always been eternally hopeless in truly understanding words and how to use them to make his case and, more important, how to win his cases.

  “You’re being stubborn, Henry,” she said gently.

  Her brother briefly lifted his focus from his work. “What is that?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  With slow, deliberately drawn-out movements, she opened the clever clasp at the front of her bag and withdrew her diary from within.

  Henry groaned and returned to his work. “Go away.”

  Ignoring the same order he’d doled out when she’d been a small girl asking to play with him, Josephine pulled the chair closer to his desk and perched herself on the edge. “You’re only prosecuting one of the most heinous villains of our time.” A traitor amongst them who’d subverted the Crown and who’d been recalled from his impressment for the chance to plead his case. “And you don’t require any help?”

  Pointedly ignoring her, Henry slapped a book closed and reached for another.

  Well. That was quite definitive. Blasted men and their egos and their inherent inability to take help when they needed it. Josephine shifted tactics. “Let me do this, Henry,” she cajoled. “I’ve no commitments to see t—”

  “You mean you have no husband and suitors.”

  At one point, that harsh dig had stung. In time, she’d come to learn that biting sarcasm was a means of self-protection. She pointed her eyes to the ceiling. “A lady cannot have both a husband and suitors.” His cheeks again fired at that grammatical correction. She tapped at her chin. “Though I suppose she could. It would just be a matter of adultery. I believe what you meant to indicate was that I’ve neither a husband nor a suitor. Both true.” She lifted a finger. “Which, fortunately for you, allows me the time required to work with you. Moving on—”

  He didn’t allow her to continue before cutting in. “Go home.”

  “You’re being unreasonable, Pratt.”

  This time, he didn’t so much as shift his bespectacled gaze fr
om his pages. “I’m the one who’s unreasonable? You’re the one who’s pulled out your childhood diary to make an unlikely case.”

  “It’s not a childhood diary,” she snapped. “And you know it.” Granted, it was a gift from her mother, the late baroness, who had urged her to fill the pages with everything running through her clever mind. Not allowing him to sidetrack her from her purpose, she carried on. “After all, I assisted numerous times in your studies with notes from this very book.”

  He blanched. “Shh,” he whispered, his cheeks turning a mottled red.

  Oh, bloody hell. She was blundering this.

  Josephine swept over and rested her hands on his desk. “Henry, you know I’m more capable than most men.”

  “Hmm.” That noncommittal utterance indicated precisely what he thought about that. Finally, he set his pen down. “You want to work for me.”

  With him. It was not only about earning her own coin but also the case she might work on. But she’d not haggle on semantics.

  “You’re so very confident in your skills,” he said.

  Had he been listening to her for the better part of fifteen minutes? That was the very point she’d been making. “I am.” It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway. “As well as reasonable and logical,” she added.

  “And yet, reasonable and logical as you are, surely you see the scandal you’d bring upon the family if”—not when—“it is discovered that the impoverished Pratts have reduced their sister to work.”

  So that was what this was about? Protecting his Pratt pride? Josephine slapped her diary on his desk. “Ah, but that is the distinction. I’m not being reduced to work.” She smiled widely. “I am choosing to do so.”

  “On a criminal case not fit for any lady’s ears.” Grabbing his pen, Henry went back to making notations on his page. “The answer remains no.”

  She slammed her book down again. “You continue to be unreasonable.”

  “If you’re so certain I’m the unreasonable one, run along, make your suggestion to Nolan, and then tell me his opinion.”

  Her cheeks went hot. “He’s not stodgy.” And yet, neither could she guarantee that her former rogue of a brother would be supportive of her endeavors—and for the very reason Henry had provided. “And he allows his wife a large say in their business dealings.” That reminder was as much to reassure herself as it was to chastise Henry.

  Her brother snorted. “If you’re so confident, then have him set you to work with his business.”

  This time, she did stamp her foot, taking some satisfaction in the thump of her slight heel. “He can’t help me the way you can.” And of course, she should require the assistance of the sternest, most pompous of her brothers. Such was the world for a woman.

  Henry tossed down his pen again and then, in his other infuriating mannerism, pinched the bridge of his nose. As if she was giving him a megrim. As if he had a reason to be put out.

  Clasping his hands together, he stared across his immaculate desk. “Just so that I’m clear,” he began in his obnoxious barrister tones, “you are asking me to hire you to conduct legal research on cases which you have no knowledge of or experience with. You”—as if, by that slight emphasis, there might be another someone in question—“who has no legal experience.”

  She let out a deliberately patronizing sigh. “You are being redundant, Henry.” Josephine lifted a finger. “Which I should point out is one of your weaknesses in trying cases. You’ve a tendency to repeat yourself, saying the same thing over and over, just in different ways.”

  Her brother’s eyebrows came together, forming a single line. “I do not… repeat myself.”

  She continued smiling through his terse defense of himself. How very typically male he was, wanting to have his ego stroked and his weaknesses glossed over. “Hmm,” she countered in a noncommittal, vague response. She was unwilling to lie, but also wise enough to realize further offending her sensitive brother wasn’t the way to go about securing his capitulation. She’d revisit his dreadful repetitiveness at another time.

  Henry gave a toss of his head. “Regardless, it is not my experience in question, but rather your lack of—”

  “I have experience.”

  “Formal experience, then,” he elucidated.

  In a world that barred women from any of those meaningful roles, he’d use that against her.

  Josephine balled her fists, refusing to give in to the rage running through her. After all, that was what he expected. That was what everyone expected. “That is unfair, Henry, and you know it.”

  Sighing, Henry doffed his spectacles and wiped the already immaculate lenses in an affected gesture he’d been orchestrating since he was a boy recently fitted for those frames. “Josephine,” he began so patronizingly that her teeth knocked together painfully, “women do not work and certainly not my sister.” With that, he grabbed his pen in a wholly dismissive manner, dipped it into his crystal inkwell, and continued writing in his book as if he’d never stopped.

  “Servants.”

  He didn’t break stride with his writings. “Beg pardon?”

  “Women are servants and scullery maids and serving girls at taverns.”

  Henry dissolved into a strangled choking fit, and he wrenched his head up. “Surely you aren’t suggesting that you would take on the work of a… a…” Her brother darted a gaze around his office.

  “Servant. The word is servant,” she supplied dryly. She rolled her eyes. “It’s hardly a dirty word, Henry. Women taking on a role to support themselves and their families? I see more similarities there than differences. And though I’m grateful for the servants and the roles they serve, that is not the role I wish to serve.”

  He slapped a finger against his mouth, trying to will her to silence.

  Her favor put to him, and his decision be damned, she proceeded to enlighten him—as he required. “Women healers have played a significant role in the care of Londoners from long before the seventeenth century, and this, Henry, is the nineteenth. Nearly the middle of it. Women run orphanages and care for the homeless and sick and lunatics…”

  “Lunatics?” he mouthed, pressing his eyes closed.

  “And pregnant women, too,” she felt compelled to remind him.

  Henry’s eyes flew open, and he choked on his horror once more.

  That was also the moment she realized she’d lost any chance of regaining his support. “Go. Home, Josephine.”

  You never really had his support, though. He’d allowed her to work with him for only as long as the world hadn’t known he’d been taking help from a woman.

  Josephine tossed her palms up. “You are impossible.”

  “I am. Now get out.”

  Grabbing her bonnet, she laid her palms on the edge of his desk, crushing the straw-brimmed hat under her grip. Her brother was wise enough to slump in his chair in a bid to escape. “We’re not done here, Pratt.” With that, she grabbed her bag and, bonnet in hand, stormed from his cramped offices, slamming the door behind her. The oak panel shook hard in its frame, barely muffling her brother’s frustrated mutterings. Josephine jammed her bonnet atop her head.

  Bloody insolent males. All of them. Henry’s response wasn’t an unexpected one. But even her un-pompous brother, Nolan, a reformed rogue and baron, who’d not turned his nose up at working with his own hands to right the family finances, was impossibly ancient with his opinions about her future and fortunes. Ultimately, they were all the same.

  Ladies were to be cared for.

  Oh, there was nothing wrong with having devoted brothers who cared about one.

  Caring about a lady and caring for one were distinctly different matters.

  Josephine operated her life based on given facts:

  Fact: She’d no desire to marry or fall in love. Ever.

  Fact: She enjoyed working on legal cases.

  Fact: She should be permitted to use her skills and talents the same way any man might.

  Fact: Her b
lasted youngest brother was correct that Nolan would never be of like opinion.

  Frustration fueling her steps, Josephine marched through the empty offices. Henry had refused to hire her. That was fine. How many times at Mrs. Belden’s Finishing School had the miserable headmistress and her dour instructors forbidden Josephine from studying matters of law and politics? And after every one of the times she’d been scolded, Josephine had invariably found a way around those directives. She had ultimately managed to convince the stern instructors that an idea had been theirs and the information relevant to being a proper wife to any Parliamentarian husband.

  Josephine didn’t stop until she was outside. Drawing in steadying, calming breaths of the cool winter air, she let it fill her lungs.

  She gathered the black velvet ribbons and tying her bonnet, Josephine searched for her carriage.

  Her lady’s maid, Muriel, conversed with the driver, the smitten pair of them wholly engrossed.

  It was the same rapture her eldest brother and his wife showed every moment of every day together since they’d been married. Once, she’d wished to know those sentiments. That desire to love and be loved had made her open her heart to a man who’d turned his back on her, all because he’d wanted an impeccable bride from an impeccable family with no scandals. As if in marrying better, the viscount might somehow erase the fact that his brother was a traitor.

  A gust of wind tugged at the strings of her bonnet, and she was brushing them back into place when, out of the corner of her eye, Josephine caught a flash of blue.

  Frowning, she searched for whatever it was that had slipped into her focus.

  And then she found it.

  Or rather… her.

  A rather small her, at that.

  Josephine waited, searching for the girl’s parents or nursemaid or governess. Alas, the child flitted from storefront window to storefront window, darting with the agility and speed of the pickpocket who’d once fleeced Josephine’s purse on these very streets when she’d been visiting Henry.

  Except…

  As the child reached the end of Curzon Street and then sprinted across, no one followed after.

  Josephine immediately set chase. Taking off down the pavement, she kept her gaze trained on the little girl’s back. Her chest rose and fell.