As Lathan shrugged out of his snow-dusted jacket and hung it up, a thousand butterflies fluttered low in her stomach… and there should be guilt for what had transpired here earlier that morn. After all, almost-betrothed ladies didn’t go about kissing, let alone wanting to lose their virtue, with a stranger in an abandoned country house.
When Lathan again faced her, Francesca took care to smooth her features, more than half fearing that he saw all her secrets and knew of the marquess awaiting her.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
The haze clogging her mind and senses lifted.
“Where should I be?”
He limped over to the hearth and warmed his palms. “Not here,” he said impatiently.
“Well, it certainly makes more sense for me to be here in the kitchens than it does for you to be outside in the midst of a storm.”
“I didn’t refer to the kitchens, Francesca.”
Francesca frowned as his words—nay, the meaning of them—registered. Well, then. “You thought I should leave today?” She didn’t give him a chance to reply. “Why…” Francesca glanced to the heavy white flakes falling outside. “It’s still snowing.”
“And that’s still not my problem.”
Well. Francesca silently fumed. The lout. Here, she’d been all starry-eyed and dazed by the thought of him and what they’d shared, and the great lummox was content to send her out to perish in a blizzard.
“Well, I’m not leaving. You’ll have to throw me—” He cast a glance over a broad shoulder. That glance all but dared her… As such, she opted to not rise to that challenge. Instead, she chose an altogether different approach. “It never snows in England. I trust it will stop soon.”
When it did, she’d be on her way, back to her carriage or town… and then onward to her future husband.
The thought left her bereft, and to hide the sudden sheen of tears, she made her way over to one of the kitchen tables. At some point, he’d brewed coffee.
She eyed the pot for a long moment.
Try something new…
She’d never even tried coffee.
And how singularly sad and odd, at the same time, to realize how very safe and staid her existence was. That she strayed so little from societal expectations for ladies.
He reached past her, and she jolted at the unexpectedness of his presence. But he only gathered the pot. “Afraid, love?”
“Of you? No, I’m not.”
His dark red brows shot up.
Why was it that he went out of his way to ask whether she feared him? And even attempted to elicit that very response in her? “I was thinking about the coffee,” she explained as he made himself a cup.
“Do you have a problem with coffee?” He set the pot down.
She opted to ignore the faintly mocking quality. “No.” Francesca reached for a cup and poured herself some of the black brew. “I’ve never had it before.” She stared into the contents of her cup.
It was the simplest of things, and yet, what did it say about her life and how she’d lived it?
“I’ve only really drunk tea,” she murmured.
Never spirits.
Never anything different.
Lathan didn’t press her or probe, but rather, he left her to her own musings. She found herself grateful for that.
For, over nothing more than the unfamiliar drink, she was forced to examine the whole of her life.
And the vow she’d made in her father’s memory.
Before this moment… nay, before she’d found herself snowed in and removed from the expectations placed upon her, she’d not thought of her father’s request beyond the practicality of it. He’d wished to know she was secure and settled.
They were the same worries and concerns that compelled nearly all members of society and were the catalysts for most marriages.
She’d been at peace with that.
Until she’d spent twelve hours here, with this stranger.
Francesca carried her drink over to the table, where Lathan sat… and where they’d nearly made love mere hours ago.
Unable to meet his eyes, she slid into the chair across from him. Only, glancing down proved a mistake, for she saw herself as she’d been, stretched upon the table.
“You’re not one for following directives, are you?” he asked curiously. It was the first he’d put a question to her that hadn’t contained a mocking cynicism.
“No. And it seems we are at an impasse,” she remarked, cradling her cup between her hands. “Because you are one given to issuing them.”
He revealed no outward response to that observation. He just sipped away at his coffee, staring at her over the rim of his porcelain cup. “You going to drink it?”
Rising to meet that challenge, she raised the cup and took a sip. Her lips pulled on a grimace. “That is hideous.”
“Coffee beans were quite popular in the thirteenth century with the people of Arabia. They discovered the brew had a potent ability to keep a person awake and was therefore helpful during long prayer sessions.”
“Is that why you drink it?” she asked, experimenting with another sip. “So that you might keep awake?”
A sad grin brought his lips up. “I don’t require anything for that end.” Lathan went back to drinking his coffee, his gaze distant as it fixed on a point beyond her. On a place only he could see.
He was one who struggled to sleep, then.
She thought of him as she’d found him hours ago, working on that door handle instead of sleeping. She’d not thought much of it at the time. Only to now have questions whisper forward.
“I’ve never been one able to sleep,” she said into the quiet.
Lathan stiffened, but said nothing, and she was encouraged to continue.
“There was never really a reason for it. Not one that I knew of anyway. It was ever since I was a little girl. My papa tried everything. He insisted upon reading me a story, except whenever he finished, my mind would come alive with questions about the book and the characters.” Francesca dragged her chair closer to the edge of the table. “After he’d gone, and I should be sleeping or trying to, sleep would elude me as I sometimes wrote different ends to those tales.” Picking up her cup, she took another sip of coffee. Odd, it wasn’t quite as foul the more one drank it.
“Your mind running nonstop?” Lathan drawled. “That is rather… hard to believe where you’re concerned.”
Francesca peered at him. Why… why… was he teasing? He was. If she drew attention to that fact, he’d shut down. She’d known him but a day, and she knew as much. “Then, I’d a nursemaid who insisted I count.”
“I take it that didn’t work either?”
“Not at all! Sometimes, I’d use my fingers.” She ticked up those digits. “Except, I couldn’t sleep because my hands were moving. And so, I forced my arms to my sides. Then I couldn’t count because I could only focus on the fact that I was working so very hard not to move my arms.”
A sharp laugh burst from him, and she joined in.
The moment her mirth melded with his, however, he abruptly stopped. His expression darkened. “What’s your point?”
“I eventually learned to sleep. In the summer, I’d imagine myself huddled up in the dead of a winter’s storm under my blankets. And then, in the winter, I imagined myself somewhere warm.”
“And how did that help?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps it distracted me so that my mind wasn’t going, and I was just thinking of how I felt. And if it helped me, then mayhap it could do the same for you.” It was the wrong thing to say. She knew it as soon as the words left her mouth.
His entire body coiled. “Is that what you think?” he whispered. “That I need help?”
Francesca lifted a palm. “I… really don’t know, Lathan. I don’t know you.” Or your demons.
He pushed back his chair and towered over her. “Well, I don’t. Nor do I want help or your well-meaning suggestions.”
; He’d called her story well-meaning. Did he even realize as much? Even in his bid to lash out, he couldn’t quite bring himself to be the angry bully he, for some reason, wished to be.
Lathan took a long swallow of his coffee and set the cup down hard. “The bedroom and the kitchens. I’ve allowed you that, Francesca. Not one space more.” With that, he made for the jacket he’d hung on the hook behind the door. He pulled the panel open hard, and a gust of wind sent snow swirling about the kitchens. With that, Lathan stepped out into the storm and pulled the door shut behind him.
Shivering, she raised her drink and took a small sip.
Mayhap it was because she’d lived alone, without her father’s company, for almost a year now, but even with Lathan Holman’s often surly disposition, she’d not wanted him to go. Just as she didn’t want to leave this place, either this kitchen or this cottage.
The cup trembled in her hands, sending several drops spilling over the edge, and she made herself put the coffee down.
What was this? She didn’t want to… leave?
Why, of course she did. It was preposterous to think of anything but leaving. The Duchess of Sutton’s house party awaited her, and—
Her shoulders slumped. She dropped her head to the table.
She didn’t want to go.
She was loath to leave Lathan Holman’s cottage because it felt so wonderful being removed from the world.
Here, where she wasn’t Franny the spinster.
Nor the pitiable wallflower.
Nor the orphan at thirty.
Here, in this isolated world on the fringe of civilization, she existed as Francesca, just as she’d always wished to be. Despite what everyone—her own father included—had insisted on calling her.
Once she left here, what would become of the list of requests her father had put to her? What would become of her joy and her plans for fulfilling those requests? Would she simply see to them, but as the betrothed and then the wife of the illustrious Marquess of St. James?
Would the respectable and always propriety-driven lord appreciate her undertaking?
Or worse, if… when… they were married, would he seek to prevent her from carrying through on those wishes?
She fisted her skirts.
She’d considered none of this before now.
Or, really, the fact that she knew the Marquess of St. James not at all and was journeying to meet him… to marry him.
And…
It was too much.
She didn’t want to leave.
So why do you have to? the suggestive voice whispered around her mind.
Francesca scrunched up her brow. “Of course I have to leave.”
Do you, though? Do you?
She did… eventually have to go and, as her father wished, meet and marry the Marquess of St. James.
But she didn’t have to see to that request… now.
No, why couldn’t she stay here and complete the bucket list her father had given her and then go? She could do so without judgment or worry of judgment from her future husband. Or anyone else.
Well, that was aside from Mr. Lathan Holman, who, when he wasn’t kissing her, seemed content with either ignoring her or casting her into a raging storm.
A lightness filled her chest. Mayhap that was why she’d become snowed in here, alone, more or less, in a cottage in some town she knew not. Because this was the only time and place where she would truly be able to carry through with that list.
Humming a little song, Francesca hurried from the kitchens, more eager to face the day than she’d been in… more years than she could remember.
There was, of course, the matter of persuading Mr. Lathan Holman to let her remain.
She, however, had no intention of being deterred.
Francesca smiled.
Chapter 7
The lady wasn’t a sound sleeper, and she rose early. Certainly earlier than most of the fashionable sorts.
After just a handful of exchanges with Francesca, Lathan had gathered as much, both from what she’d shared and by the way she’d left her rooms and joined him in the kitchens.
That was why, when the sun was already high in the sky the following morn, he found himself not focused on cutting down wood for kindling, but on his cottage in the near distance. More specifically, the doorway.
Since he’d come out to care for his mounts and replace yesterday’s firewood, he’d found his gaze drawn over to that panel. Over and over again.
Carefully balancing his weight on his good leg, Lathan brought the ax down and split another limb. The piece cracked and splintered, but didn’t part.
He again brought the blade down, and the wood cleaved in two.
Bending, Lathan tossed the pieces to the growing pile he’d started that morn.
He stole another look.
She was going to leave today.
That much was a certainty.
And yet, admitting the truth to himself, he was going to miss her very full presence. With her chattering and bright eyes and…
And the fact she doesn’t know who you are or what you did… that helps, too.
There was that appeal, too. He’d been infamous for so long, and years of being an invisible presence with the Home Office had left Lathan feeling exposed and longing to escape… for reasons that weren’t just because the world knew him as a traitor, but rather, because he simply missed being no one other than Lathan Holman.
And for one day with Francesca Cornworthy, that was precisely what he’d been… and what he’d never be again.
He’d be better off when he got back to living the only life he was destined to know, without any more of this pretending. And he would.
When she left.
Lathan wiped the back of his wool sleeve over his forehead and paused to stare at his cottage.
Then it hit him all at once.
Why, she wouldn’t just go off on her own, wandering in search of the carriage that she’d abandoned. Nor would she likely know the way to town. A trek like that would be a long one made even longer by the heavy snowfall that blanketed the ground.
Nor could he let her go off.
Oh, from the moment she’d broken down his door—literally and figuratively—he’d urged her to leave, but he wasn’t so much a monster that he’d have turned her out in the storm.
He paused to wipe the sweat from his brow again.
Sometimes, however, it was just easier to be the monster the world took him for. The role had grown increasingly familiar to step into.
Nay, she’d likely not stepped through that door he’d been watching all morn, because she was awaiting his return.
Just then, the door opened, and she was there, wearing her cloak and carrying a wide-brimmed bonnet.
His pulse hammered a little faster, and he didn’t want to think about why. Or what it meant, because it couldn’t mean anything.
The wind battered her cloak against her full-figured frame, highlighting those delectable curves, and he proved his descent into scoundrel was complete, for he drank his fill, hungering to resume where they’d left off that early morn in his kitchens.
Francesca set that wide straw hat atop her auburn strands, which she’d left falling about her, as they should be from now and forever. She tied a pair of long strings under her chin and… started off.
Lost in his admiration of her as he was, it took a moment for two previously neglected truths to hit him. One, she was picking her way along the path he’d shoveled that led to the now barren gardens. And two, she didn’t have her valise.
What in blazes?
Lathan let his ax drop and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Where are you going?”
She didn’t break stride. “Exploring.” Her voice carried, crisp and clear, in the quiet, winter air.
Exploring?
Because if he’d heard her correctly, and there was no reason to believe he hadn’t—the injuries he’d sustained the day he was shot in his superior’s offices had l
eft his body broken but his senses intact—then that would mean she was… staying. But there was one thing Lathan was absolutely certain of: The only thing she should be doing was leaving.
All his earlier maudlin regrets over Francesca Cornworthy’s departure lifted.
Lathan went loping after her, his already awkward gait made even more so by the snowfall. He gnashed his teeth, wanting to rail all over again at the effort every move of his leg cost him.
Unlike her. Francesca moved with a cheerful little pep in her step, a stride between a skip and a determined march.
“Miss Cornworthy,” he bellowed.
There was no way she didn’t hear that angry shout, and yet, off she went anyway, traipsing through his grounds and snow-covered gardens. Lathan forced himself to move faster. His left leg strained from the efforts he demanded of the limb.
And he cursed Francesca all over again.
And here I was thinking I’d miss her company when she is gone.
For he wouldn’t. There was no way a man would miss being challenged at every turn by the obstinate visitor who’d overstayed her welcome by a day.
At last, she stopped.
Her hands propped on her shapely hips, she stared out… at something.
Lathan didn’t give a damn what it was as much as he cared that she’d at last stopped, so he might reach her. He’d nearly reached her when she sprang into motion once more.
Damn it all to hell.
“Stop right there,” he barked.
Francesca Cornworthy continued on ahead for several steps before coming to a slow, halting stop, those movements more an afterthought than response to his thunderous shouts. She faced him with the deeply dimpled, customary smile he’d come to expect from her. “Good afternoon, Lathan. Were you calling me?”
Was he…?
He came to an angry stop before her. “Who in blazes did you think I was calling out to?”
“One can never be sure, though, can one?” Her slightly quickened breath, a product of the cold and the pace she’d set for herself, stirred little puffed clouds of white.
“Of course one can,” he said, exasperation drawing another shout from him. “In this case, one can be completely certain.” Lathan angrily slashed a hand back and forth between them. “You and I are the only ones about.”
The Spinster Who Saved a Scoundrel (The Brethren Book 5) Page 7