The Spinster Who Saved a Scoundrel (The Brethren Book 5)

by Christi Caldwell

  “No, you’re not.” She directed that at her notebook. “You’re talking to me.” Licking her finger, she turned a page.

  Lathan fell back in his chair. No wonder she’d been so damned worried about ensuring he’d not throw her out, because… well, blast and damn, he wanted to toss her out.

  Licking the tip of a finger a second time, Francesca used the damp digit to turn another page.

  He opened his mouth to deliver a blistering diatribe just as she stole a glance up. Francesca offered an innocent smile before she resumed her reading.

  Lathan froze.

  Who am I anymore?

  This man he was whenever Francesca was around—one without restraint who so easily lost his temper—was who he’d been for so long that he’d forgotten that he’d ever been any other way.

  Which he had been.

  He’d dealt with all manner of people and personalities, all who’d tried him and his patience, and yet, he’d never allowed a single one of them to fluster him. Because he’d never really felt anything. He’d been purpose-driven… for his work. The Home Office. Everything had fallen a distant second behind his devotion to the King and Crown. Lathan hadn’t really felt any human connection to even the gentleman whom he’d served and respected above all others.

  Business.

  It was all business.

  All the time.

  Even burying himself away in the cottage had been singular of intent—sharpen his wits and his skills so that he might one day offer himself up as some use to the Crown.

  With Francesca, he was something he’d never been before… human.

  And he quite despised it. Nay, he didn’t despise it. He despised the unfamiliarity of it. Of what it made him feel.

  And wish for…

  Because, with her constant chattering and eccentricities, he’d a glimpse of what life might have been like.

  A life he could have never seen for himself before her.

  And one that would never be… because of him.

  Because ladies didn’t marry traitors.

  Because no one married traitors.

  People didn’t even talk to them, for that matter. Only ever about them.

  The muscles of his stomach seized, and to distract from the pain of it, he made a show of setting the stack of files and books down at his feet. All but for one file.

  Perhaps that is really why you allowed her to stay. Because, in an unexpected and peculiar way, they weren’t so very different. The same way she’d sought the anonymity of completing the items of her list, away from the prying eyes of Society, Lathan had run and hidden from those same gawkers and gossipers.

  He set the file on his lap, just as Francesca had her leather notebook, and he read through his most recent notes.

  Soon, he managed to find a companionable comfort with the woman opposite him and became lost in the numbers and letters upon the page.

  “What are you working on?”

  Of course she’d engage him the moment he’d focused on his work.

  The only thing that kept him from shifting under the intensity of her stare were the years of training he’d undergone at the Home Office. “It is… a puzzle, really,” he settled for. His brother would return in a fortnight and take Lathan’s latest efforts back to the Home Office.

  Where they would once more go nowhere, and Lathan would continue working on the impossible task of restoring his name and honor and role with the Brethren.

  Francesca wouldn’t let him to his maudlin thoughts. She set aside her things. “A puzzle, you say?” she said with an eagerness he’d not witnessed before in, well, anyone.

  She’d never be content. She’d only press for more.

  As such, he should have packed up and left the moment she’d entered the parlor.

  He took a moment to weigh a response that would satisfy her curiosity and preserve his secrets. “It’s not so much a puzzle as a letter,” he finally said.

  Francesca dragged her seat closer so their knees nearly brushed. “I don’t follow.” But she wanted to. He saw that in the excited glimmer in her revealing eyes.

  Setting aside his work for the safer history books at his feet, he searched through the pile and located the text. “Are you familiar with Thomas Jefferson?”

  “I am.”

  A lady with her wit and cleverness would be. And it was hard not to be impressed by such a woman. Lathan flipped through the pages, most of them dog-eared, looking for one particular section. He stopped. “Here.” He turned the small leather volume over. “This is a copy of a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a man named John Page,” Lathan said once she took it and began to read. “They were college classmates, though the relationship isn’t as important as the letter sent. Jefferson began experimenting with encrypted letters.”

  Francesca’s eyes formed perfect circles. “As in coded notes.”

  “Yes, but most encrypted letters or documents are really a blend of regular text and cipher. Like, here.” He pointed to the Latin phrases peppered within the text and then a Greek word.

  She puzzled her brow.

  “The Greek characters used here are, in fact, an anagram for Rebecca Burwell.” As a clerk and third son, he’d never been in a position where anyone cared much about what Lathan had to say, beyond how he might serve others. There was something so very enlivening in speaking with someone and not being spoken to. “Miss Burwell was a young woman he wished to marry. Just days later, Jefferson decided the code was too obvious and worked on a revised system for communicating privileged information.”

  The type of privileged information he’d once been in possession of. That stark reminder effectively killed his excitement.

  Lathan went silent as every mistake he’d ever made came rushing up to serve as reminders that he knew nothing about this woman, a stranger, and he’d trusted the wrong people before. What was to say she wasn’t any different? That he wasn’t running his mouth off to someone with ill intent?

  Francesca, however, gave no hint that she was aware of his wariness. Instead, she skimmed his book. “This is fascinating,” she piped in. “People speak in code. Can you imagine that?”

  He opened his mouth, but she answered for him.

  “Well, of course you can. You’ve read the book and just said as much. But I’ve never thought of it. How very exciting.”

  Yes, exciting was how he’d viewed everything he’d done with the Home Office. Even his clerk role, he’d happily filled. That didn’t mean, however, that he hadn’t wished for more…

  That desire had proven his downfall.

  “I should allow you to return to your puzzles.”

  Did he imagine the regret as she relinquished his book on Jefferson and returned to her notes, and as she’d encouraged, Lathan went back to his?

  Or he tried to.

  Despite his best efforts to focus on the codes that represented the best—and last—hope he had of rejoining the Home Office, Lathan let his gaze continually stray to her.

  Francesca, unlike his own distracted self, remained engrossed in her reading, pausing only periodically to turn her pages.

  “What are you working on?”

  “I’m not working,” she said, lowering the volume to her lap.

  “Is it your list?”

  Francesca hesitated. “It is.” She eyed him for a moment, suspicion in a gaze so revealing she could have sunk the secrets of the nation, had she possessed them.

  She expected him to make light of her.

  Again, because of her, he had a glimpse of the man he’d become… and he found he didn’t like himself so very much.

  He grunted. “I’ll let you get back to it.” Even as he wanted to continue talking with her. And he found himself missing her chattering.

  He cringed inside. Good God, was this what isolation had done to him?

  Only, something said that after meeting the whirlwind who was Francesca Cornworthy, he’d have felt the same way regardless.

  Lathan n
eedn’t have worried for long about her silence. “My father urged me to do something wicked,” she said.

  He puzzled his brow. What manner of father urged his daughter to do something wicked?

  Drawing her knees up, she wrapped her arms about them and rested her now closed book atop them. “He wasn’t a bad father. It’s more that he knew I always do the right thing, and as such, he wished for me to… to… well, not.”

  Lathan abandoned his already futile attempts at work. “I didn’t say he was a bad father.”

  “I know.” Her pretty eyes twinkled. “But I knew what you were thinking.”

  How was it possible for this woman, a stranger, really, to so unerringly wander the path his thoughts had taken?

  Francesca patted her seat, urging him closer, and before he thought better of it, and the distance that was safer to keep between them, he dragged his chair over to hers. “Do something wicked,” she repeated as she read those words written in her book. She stared contemplatively at the pages. “What does that mean?” she murmured, that query spoken more to herself.

  Betray King and Country. Kill a man. Almost kill a man. Almost get another man’s wife killed.

  Lathan’s view of wicked would be altogether different than anything innocent Francesca Cornworthy and her now departed father would have ever had in mind.

  She looked up, a question in her eyes.

  So she hadn’t been speaking to herself.

  He cleared his throat. “I don’t know. ‘Wicked’ can and does imply any manner of things, and I trust that varies from person to person.”

  A frown puckered in the place between her eyes. “But to your earlier point, my father likely didn’t want me going off to visit gaming hells and overindulging in spirits. What did he mean?”

  It was a mark of her innocence that the darkest ideas she’d conjured were of visiting scandalous places. It was also a reminder of just how very different they two were.

  “Why does it matter what he meant?”

  She frowned. “Because to not consider it goes against what he wished for me.”

  He sat forward. “Well, by all intents and purposes, shouldn’t it be your list?”

  Francesca let her feet drop to the floor. Leaning closer, she searched Lathan’s face. Did she look for some hint that he made light of her?

  “It is my list, Lathan.”

  “Not if he wrote it,” he corrected. “By the request he left for you, he wished for you to live joyously and fully. But by that list there”—he pointed to the book she held in her hands—“and your devotion to see it carried out precisely as he wished, you’re not really living for yourself, but rather, for him. If the whole purpose of that list is your happiness, then shouldn’t the items upon it be things that you decide upon?”

  A log shifted in the hearth. The embers crackled and hissed, the only sounds in the parlor.

  Francesca snapped her book closed and held it close in a protective gesture that said he’d crossed a line. “You don’t know anything of it,” she said tersely, and it was the first time he’d ever seen her as anything but glowing and bright.

  As such, he should let the matter rest, and yet, he’d be doing her no favors if he did. And he would have, except she wasn’t content to let the matter rest. “My father wanted me to be happy, Lathan.”

  Which was a good deal more than even his own parents had sought for him. And yet, neither did that mean her late father’s intentions had ultimately been what was best for her in his mind. “Unless you made that list, then you aren’t making yourself happy… You’re making him happy,” he said quietly, without intent to wound or mock.

  Even so, her entire body went whipcord straight. “That is ridiculous,” she said, taking to her feet.

  Using the arm of the chair to leverage himself, he stood. “I’m not wrong. And I suspect if you took time to consider it, you’d agree with me.”

  They locked gazes in a tense, silent exchange…

  That Francesca broke first. “I’ve not come to debate you, Lathan. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll let you return to your puzzles. It wasn’t my intent to distract you.” With a little curtsy, she quit the parlor.

  He’d run her off.

  As such, he should be content. He now had his peace and quiet, the freedom to resume working on a code he’d been designing.

  And yet, as he reclaimed his seat, with the fireplace snapping and hissing angrily, Lathan stared forlornly into the flames and ached to call her back.

  Chapter 10

  How dare he?

  The following morn, Francesca awoke, went through her morning ablutions, and still felt the very same anger she had when she’d left Lathan last evening.

  She paced before her neatly made bed, the white coverlet perfectly pulled.

  Well, Lathan’s bed… which he’d been good enough to let her borrow.

  But that was neither here nor there, in this instant.

  Lathan, who’d not so much as ever met her late father, presumed to pass judgment on him… and the words Papa had left behind for Francesca. Worse, Lathan had thought nothing of calling Papa out. Her beloved father, who’d gone to his grave with only one concern: wanting to see that Francesca was happy.

  By the request he left for you, he wished for you to live joyously and fully. But by that list there and your devotion to see it carried out precisely as he wished, you’re not really living for yourself, but rather, for him.

  Francesca stopped so swiftly, her skirts swirled about her ankles.

  Her indignation hadn’t stemmed from annoyance that he’d called out her father, but rather, that he’d called her out.

  And what was more…

  Francesca pressed her eyes closed. “He was right,” she whispered.

  Since the moment her godmother had handed over that beloved note and Francesca had read her father’s request, she’d set out to fulfill those items. She’d felt empowered, proud in the idea of carrying out things she had never done. And she’d believed herself to be behaving in a way she’d never behaved. Doing things, when she’d only ever lived a predictable life.

  Only to find that Lathan had been correct with his accusation: She wasn’t seeing to her own happiness. Even after her father’s death, she was living for her father’s wishes. Because that was all she’d ever known or done.

  What was worse, she didn’t even know what living joyfully and fully even meant. Nor had she taken the deserved time to consider it. Likely, because it had been easier to cross items off a list and believe her life was complete than to think at all of how she’d let her life pass her by… and how she’d ceded her happiness along the way.

  Mayhap that realization should have ushered in resentment. Annoyance. Sadness.

  Only, it didn’t. Instead, a wonderful, freeing lightness slipped around her chest, filling every corner and crevice. At last, she’d looked at her life… hers. Not Papa’s. Not her godmother’s. Only Francesca’s herself. And there was something empowering in this, the chance to not let any more of her life pass her by.

  With a renewed purpose, she shifted course. Hurrying over to the nightstand, she grabbed her notebook and pencil. She scrambled into the middle of the bed, where the mattress dipped, and opened her book. With every turn of the page, she felt… enlivened. Emboldened in ways she’d never been.

  Because of Lathan.

  He deserved the credit for calling her out and forcing her to consider… nay, for making her see that though her father’s list had been given in love, the items upon it should belong to Francesca. And the list should be crafted in Francesca’s hand, of her thoughts and no one else’s.

  She stopped on an empty page. Her fingers poised over the page, she hovered the tip of her pencil there. And then she began to write.

  And write.

  And write.

  Sometime later, she picked her head up.

  All the muscles in her neck screamed and strained at the unexpected shift in position.

  Groaning,
Francesca rubbed at her stiff nape with her spare hand.

  Despite the misery of her muscles, a smile formed on her lips.

  She’d done it.

  In fairness, she’d expanded upon her father’s list some… and then some.

  What had once been fifteen directives had grown, and yet, it wasn’t the increased number of items that made the cataloging complete. It was the fact that they’d come from her. Or rather, the bones of them had. Now, all that remained was to flesh out the details of those visions.

  Flipping back to the first item she’d put to paper, Francesca circled the sentence several times:

  Do something you’ve always wanted to do, but never took time to do.

  What were some activities or pursuits she’d secretly and silently envied other ladies?

  Marriage.

  As a spinster firmly on the shelf, she hadn’t thought of the wedded state in a long while. That was, as it pertained to Francesca and her future. The dream she’d carried for children and a loving partner had been one she’d let die.

  Now, with the arrangements her father and godmother had made, Francesca would have marriage, but neither would that be the fulfillment of a dream. A woman had to settle for a state of security, and the Marquess of St. James, a staid, proper gentleman known for the strict schedule he kept while running charitable organizations and overseeing his estates, represented the surest path to dependability.

  Would he be one driven to passion, one who challenged her and who also encouraged her to live for herself… as Lathan had?

  Unbidden, their kiss yesterday in the snow-covered gardens slipped forward. And Francesca touched a hand to her chest, to the place her heart raced… as it did whenever he was near. Or when she thought of him…

  With Lathan Holman, she was alive in ways that she had never been…

  And likely would never be again, once she married the marquess.

  Tears blurred her vision as Francesca was besieged by a sudden urge to cry. She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes, to drive the tears back. Letting her arms fall to her sides, she flexed her fingers. “Enough.” Enough lamenting what she’d not had. Or what would never be. That maudlin self-pitying wouldn’t change a thing. It would certainly not bring her closer to her goal of finding happiness for herself.