Well, that hadn’t gone as she’d expected.
Any of it.
Not the broken window.
Not the quarreling that had taken place through the same broken window.
And certainly not the black-haired, darkly handsome gentleman who looked too young daughter as old as Charlie.
Her cheeks warmed. Oh, stop, you’re not a silly ninny to be besotted over a handsome face. It spoke far more about the gentleman’s character that he’d not even known his daughter’s whereabouts.
Furthermore, not all of the exchange had come as a complete surprise—the gentleman had been visibly outraged at being called out.
Such was the way with all men: even tolerant, patient, loving brothers like Nolan. No man, regardless of station, age, or wealth, cared to be called out… for anything.
Which made the nameless gentleman’s capitulation all the more unexpected. And if she were the cool-headed, docile figure Mrs. Belden had attempted to make her into, she would have wisely turned on her heel, left the girl with her negligent father, and allowed the pair of them to sort through the remainder of their existence together.
Josephine jammed her straw bonnet back into place and hurriedly tied the faded ribbons.
Alas, she had never been one to turn from a challenge. It was why Josephine even now quickened her stride to the alley, lest the same darkly handsome gentleman thought better of his silent allowance and instead turned her off without having her piece said.
She’d not been silent when Mrs. Belden and her dragonlike instructors had shamed other students for some imagined failings. And she’d not be silent now.
Women defended one another. It was, quite simply put, what one did.
If women didn’t look out for one another, then who would?
Enlivened by that belief, she hurried around to the back of the mews and found the servants’ entrance.
Before the implications of exactly what she was doing hit her.
Fact: She was visiting a stranger.
Fact: Said stranger had grounds to be angry, and more, he was also male.
Fact: If she were discovered alone here, she would be ruined.
Ruined because of nothing more than the perception. Ruined not because she’d, in fact, set out to engage in a scandalous meeting, but rather, because she sought to engage in discourse with… a man. That was how limited the world was for women. One couldn’t so much as speak one’s mind and deliver a deserved censure because of appearances’ sake and propriety.
That only fueled her resolve as she strode up the handful of wood steps in a sorry state of disrepair. As if to accentuate that very fact, the heel of her left boot sank into the soft wood.
The door was yanked open, and whatever she’d been about to say—the diatribe she’d prepared on her walk over with Charlemagne, the warnings about what harm might befall a girl running around London on her own, the worry at confronting a complete stranger—faded away.
With the previous distance between them, she’d not had a proper gauge of his height. Up close, separated by a mere handbreadth, she was faced with another fact: He was… tall.
And, drat her for noticing once more, nothing short of magnificent.
With high, sharp cheeks and a noble square jaw. Even the slash of his aquiline nose bespoke the masculine beauty carved into those statues she’d been so hopelessly bored by on the visits she’d taken with her governess to the museums. Now, with this tall, broadly powerful stranger before her, she appreciated that which she’d been unable to appreciate as a girl—the perfection of a masculine frame.
He flicked an icy stare over her that lingered briefly upon her bonnet. “Well?”
Just that… one syllable—and an impolite one at that, not even including a greeting. “Well?” And blast if it wasn’t her turn to parrot him. She, who was always in control of her speech, particularly arguments she put to… anyone. But, really, that was what he’d say?
Mr. Insolent Stranger leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, blocking his offices from her vision. “Your piece, miss. Say your piece,” he said impatiently, eyeing her old bonnet.
Well, granting her permission in that annoyed tone certainly took some of the satisfaction out of lecturing a person. And staring at her ancient headwear on top of it. “I’m not doing it out here.” Josephine yanked her ribbons loose and removed her bonnet.
He snorted. “You’re certainly not doing it in here.”
Josephine opened and closed her mouth several times. How dare he? “Trust me, sir, if I was intending to trap a man in marriage, it wouldn’t be one who was so negligent as to forget his own child.”
Wonder of wonders, the ghost of a smile pulled at the corners of his lips. “I’m hardly concerned about your reputation.”
“Thank you.” Then the weight of his statement dawned. She gasped. “What manner of gentleman are you?” she asked on an indignant huff. Josephine jammed a finger into his chest and winced. Rock. It was like she’d slammed her finger into a solid stone wall. “Not that I should be surprised by one who can’t be bothered to…” She glanced over his shoulder, recalling belatedly that his daughter might, in fact, be about. “Look after your responsibilities,” she substituted, not wanting to risk uttering words that could hurt a person who should only be looked after. “I’m not, however, going to simply stand here with you towering over me while I—”
They spoke at the same time.
“Say your piece?”
“Say my piece.” Her cheeks burned hotter. “Precisely.”
He went silent, as immobile and infuriatingly unaffected as he’d been since he’d planted his large shoulder against the doorjamb.
The wind gusted around them, tugged at her hem, and sent it whipping against his legs.
Then, shockingly, the gentleman stepped aside to allow her entry.
Yet again, Josephine was given another long overdue pause. She stared at the cluttered space behind him. The bookshelves lining the walls were so crammed, the volumes and papers nearly spilled from the edges. An ornate desk sat at the center of the room, and winged chairs were filled to overflowing with papers and files and folders.
Just like that, pity replaced her reservations. The gentleman was… scattered. Based on her once-over of his offices, it was no wonder he’d lost his own daughter.
“Dare I hope you’ve changed your mind and intend to let me get on with my business while you get on with yours?” he drawled, snapping her back to the moment.
Bringing her shoulders back, Josephine sailed past him and entered the insolent stranger’s lair.
With a remarkable and unexpected control, he carefully closed the door behind him, shutting them in… alone.
Not for the first time, reservations at being here alone with him, a stranger—an angry one, at that—filled her.
“Might I offer you a spot of tea? Biscuits? Peppermints?”
Josephine jumped. “No. I assure you I’ve not come for refreshments.”
“I was being facetious,” he said with a dryness that added ten levels of heat to her blush.
“Of course you were,” she muttered.
Charlemagne’s father quirked a black brow. “Never tell me, your lecture has expanded to include my manners?”
“It should,” she shot back. “But no, your hideous manners are hardly my concern.” Which brought them to the real reason she’d risked her reputation to enter his offices. “As a father,” she began, “you have an obligation to know where your daughter is…”
He bristled. “I know where my daughter is.”
“At all times,” she countered over that weak protestation. “I’m not referring to now, but rather, twenty-five minutes earlier.” And whoever knew how much longer on top of that. “When you were busy”—Josephine stalked over to his desk and slashed her hand at the cluttered mess there—“working.”
A muscle leaped in his jaw, but he said nothing. Finding her bearings at last, Josephine warmed to her lecture.
&n
bsp; “Nothing is more important than family. Not one’s work. Not one’s societal obligations.”
“I don’t have societal obligations,” he mumbled, sounding so very much like a properly scolded boy that there was something endearing in it. Or there would have if there still wasn’t the matter of his forgotten daughter.
Josephine thumped his desk with her spare hand. “And it is a good thing, too, that you do not have societal obligations. I cannot imagine how much more you would forget, sir.” Josephine had always been loved, but she’d also been forgotten, an underfoot sister to older brothers. Sent away to finishing school so one’s family could continue on with their own pursuits and pleasures. As such, Josephine knew all too well what it was like to be… Charlemagne.
“Are you done?” Mr. Insolent Stranger asked, adjusting his double-breasted wool tailcoat.
Then she noted a detail that had previously escaped her. “You’re lopsided,” she blurted.
He cocked his head, going all the more crooked.
It was, of course, a silly detail to note, particularly given the battle she waged with the negligent father, and yet—
Josephine motioned to the middle silk button of his navy blue jacket.
The gentleman followed her gesture, and with something that sounded very much like an inventive curse she’d never even heard from her former rascal of a brother, Mr. Insolent Stranger presented his back to her and proceeded to adjust those buttons.
She sighed. Poor Charlemagne. The little girl’s situation appeared dire indeed.
*
His offices had been infiltrated.
Invaded by an insolent bit of baggage.
And what was worse, Duncan had no one to blame for his miseries in that moment other than himself. After all, he who barred all people from these rooms—his own daughter included, his clients and their witnesses excluded—had opened the door and let in this waiflike stranger.
A stranger he’d taken for a child, but who presented a case better than any barrister he’d gone up against in the whole of his career.
“Have you finished?” the minx asked impatiently. She dipped her head around his arm, assessing his buttons. “Unless you require help?”
And he, more jaded by life, his late wife’s betrayal, and the cases he worked, felt himself doing the impossible… blushing. “I assure you I do not require help with my buttons,” he choked out. As if to make a mockery of that affront, he struggled—in vain—to slip the frayed satin button through the proper hole. Giving all his efforts to that minuscule task, he spun and faced her.
“I know.” A mischievous sparkle lit the chit’s amber gaze. “I was being facetious,” she whispered, tossing his earlier words back in his face.
Duncan sought for words. Any of them—mocking, scolding, curt. He’d really settle for any. And yet, he came up… empty. Wholly off-kilter by her teasing. People didn’t tease him. Not the late wife who’d left him. Not his daughter. Not Mrs. Frameworthy and Mrs. Joy, the two responsible for raising his daughter while he worked. And certainly not the men with whom he had any business dealings.
The insolent baggage rested her hip on the lone sliver of space on his desk that was free of paperwork. “Ahh,” she said with such understanding and shades of pity that it pulled a question from him.
“‘Ahh’ what?” he asked, angrily sliding the last silk button through its proper hole.
“You are unaccustomed to being teased.”
“Or lectured,” he muttered automatically, failing to refute her frustratingly accurate read on his existence.
“You would benefit a good deal from it.” She paused. “From both a lecture and a good teasing. And,” she tacked on, “from lessons in fathering.”
“No such classes are offered,” Duncan returned, dusting his hands over his finally even lapels. And he should know. There wasn’t a lecture or lesson he hadn’t attended first as a student and then in his quest to become a barrister.
The still-nameless minx didn’t miss a proverbial beat. “No, but there should be.” She swung her mud-stained boot back and forth. “Young men are sent off to Eton and Oxford. Cambridge.”
“St. Andrews.” He felt compelled to add his own university to her list.
“They provide Latin to prepare boys to master English. They teach ancient history so that young men might learn about human nature. One should think that somewhere along their studies, young boys and men should receive some lessons on how to be decent fathers.”
How to be decent fathers.
That charge found its intended mark. He, who’d excelled in his studies and court cases, had failed so miserably in the very area this stranger had identified on sight. His marriage. His daughter. “And you have a good deal experience with bad fathers?”
She frowned. “Not at all. My father was quite devoted.” The minx leveled him with a look. “Hardly the manner of man to go about losing me.”
The peculiar creature also delivered a defense of her father in ways he’d wager Charlemagne never would. Filled with a sudden need to rid himself of this woman and that reminder, he stalked across the room. “Your displeasure is duly noted.” Duncan grabbed the door handle. “Now, if you would?” He jerked the panel open, and a light gust of wind whipped through the doorway.
It sent papers flying and fluttering from his desk. The ivory and white parchments danced in the air, forlorn scraps containing his most recent notes.
Cursing, he slammed the panel shut and sprinted across the room.
Miss Minx was already on a knee.
“I have it,” he barked, and dropping to his haunches, Duncan grabbed for his loose papers.
“With the mess atop your desk and now the floor, it does not look as though you have—” Her words abruptly cut off as she fixed on the heavily inked page in her hands. “What is this?”
“Give me that.” He made to swipe the sheet from her fingers, but she fell back on her heels, attending that page with a singular intensity that only he had ever bestowed on them.
Granted, his writing was more like a code most people couldn’t make sense of.
The nameless interloper picked her head up so quick, her chignon sagged. “Lathan Holman?”
Duncan gritted his teeth. She would be the one person who could decipher his nearly illegible scribblings.
“That is not your business.” Duncan made another grab, but the young woman was already scrambling to her feet, retaining her tight grip upon his work.
Tipping her chin up a notch, she backed away from him. All the while, she held on to those pages of Holman’s file like she’d captured the king’s crown and had every intention of making it her own. “You stand corrected. Lathan Holman and his treachery are the business and concern of all the country.”
“What do you know about Lathan Holman?” he demanded, eyeing her with an altogether different suspicion.
She snorted. “And do you think I shouldn’t know about him? Because why? Because I’m a woman?” she supplied her own speculation. “I’m well aware of Holman, who infiltrated the Home Office and sought to enact a plot against the Crown.”
Interesting. That same story she was so familiar with was one that had been largely obscured, buried deep within the gossip pages.
“In fact, I’m very familiar with the gentleman’s crimes,” she said.
The details had not, however, made their way onto the front pages for the ladies clamoring for delicious-to-them gossip.
Despite his earlier opinion of her age, by her knowledge and demeanor, the woman was far older than he’d credited. And not for the first time since she’d pounded on his door and broken his window, his curiosity about the insolent creature was stirred. “Are you some manner of bluestocking?”
The young woman folded her arms at her chest, molding the fabric to her bodice, and messing his papers in the process. A detail which should be all he noted…and not the young woman’s bosom. And yet, his gaze lingered. “Pfft,” she scoffed, and he felt his ears go h
ot. He yanked his attention upward where it belonged. “When a man is in possession of information, he is intelligent. Clever. Or even just informed. When a lady possesses the same knowledge, why must there be a ‘term’ to define her and her grasp of that same information?”
He started. Hers was, of course, a fair point. One he’d never considered, but one far secondary to that proprietary hold she had on his file. And one that he’d certainly never concede to her. He’d battled in enough courtrooms to know to never cede an inch, or risk losing a mile. “What is the alternative, then?” he asked coolly, slipping across the room toward her. He knew better than to be anything but wary where women were concerned. “That you should come here and just so happen to dig your way through my papers?” With his earlier appreciation for her grasp on Holman’s history gone, Duncan’s suspicions deepened. “Who are you?” he demanded, taking a step toward her.
At his advance, her eyes widened, and she inched away as, for the first time since he’d allowed her entry, her gaze reflected the young woman’s unease. “I’m the woman who found your child,” she said in the cool tones of one who’d add you idiot to the end of her statement. “Furthermore,” she said as she retreated, brandishing his file and waving it about like she were Joan of Arc with her sword braced for battle. “What are you doing keeping company with traitors?”
Her opinion didn’t matter, and yet, even knowing that, even knowing it would be best with her gone as quickly as possible, he was unable to stop his own questions. “That is the conclusion you reached?” Duncan slid into her path, blocking her escape. “That Lathan Holman is a traitor?”
She feinted left, and he matched her movements. “Of course he is. Everyone knows that. What do you do here?” she asked, looking around his messy offices.
How certain she was. She was as confident as the world had been when Duncan had been accused of murdering his wife. But then, wasn’t that the way of all Society? To form generalizations about others without any true knowledge of the person or their circumstances. He tightened his mouth. “I’m a barrister. Duncan Everleigh.”
“You’re a barrister?” she repeated dumbly.
She couldn’t have sounded more surprised than if he had confirmed her suspicions that he was a traitor to the Crown. Of all that had managed to throw this spitfire off-kilter, it should be that?
The Minx Who Met Her Match Page 5