The Minx Who Met Her Match

by Christi Caldwell

  She proved as punctual as she’d claimed. She came in every day, completed her daily assignments, and then continued on her way.

  There was nothing improper in any of their exchanges. She never went about trying to bait him. They were perfectly polite to each other.

  As such, he shouldn’t have been aware of her. At all.

  And yet, there was no denying the truth—his awareness of Josephine Webb grew with every day.

  He dipped his pen in the inkwell and underlined key details and history about Lathan Holman’s previous tenure at the Home Office.

  Lathan Holman had worked for one of noble rank, the identity of whom Holman refused to divulge. That gentleman was the one who’d be able to shed light on…

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Josephine as she exited the storage area and deposited a handful of books on the pile along the wall.

  As quick as she’d entered the main floors of his office, she returned to that damned closet.

  Duncan tapped the end of his pen upon Holman’s file in an angry staccato.

  Unlike their first exchanges, when she’d set out to tease and engage him in discourse, now Josephine worked as efficiently as a bee, never once looking over at him. Never once shifting her focus on the task occupying her attention. She’d periodically step out of the office, her arms laden with files high enough to reach her nose and nearly obscure her eyes. She’d set that pile down and then return… with never so much as a glance in his direction.

  Given the set-down he’d handed her about Sarah Elton, he should only be grateful that Josephine had obliged his wish for silence.

  Only to find himself a contrary bastard for missing her chattering and her teasing…

  And her smile.

  His neck burned up, and he tugged at his sloppy cravat. Where in blazes had that come from?

  And yet, there it was. He enjoyed even Josephine Webb’s smile. Unaccustomed as he’d been with that expression during his marriage, and more recently with his increasingly irate daughter, Josephine’s wide grin brought a welcome lightness to his chest.

  Just then, she reappeared with an even higher stack of dust-laden files in her arms. He swiftly jerked his gaze back to his book and trained all his attention there.

  Or he attempted to.

  The sheer size and weight of that burden would have bent the backs of most men. Josephine Webb, however, moved with grace and ease.

  Duncan scrambled to his feet. “Here,” he said gruffly, reaching her in several long strides.

  Josephine abruptly stopped and gave him an odd look.

  Duncan motioned with both his hands. “That stack is heavy.” He made another reach for it, but the young woman sidestepped him as if she held nothing in her hands, especially not a pile so high that she had to peak around it to meet his eyes.

  “How do you know? You’re not carrying it.”

  His lips twitched. “It doesn’t take much to evaluate the height and depth of those files to gather just how heavy it is.” He took a step toward her.

  Shifting the burden in her arms, Josephine stepped around him. “It is mightily presumptuous of you to assume I need help carrying papers simply because I’m a woman.”

  “If you were a man, you wouldn’t have been employed.”

  She bristled. “And whyever not? Are you suggesting that a man is above the work I’m doing here?”

  “On the contrary, Josephine. I’ve had several gentlemen come to seek any employment.”

  “And?” she asked, nearly entirely concealed by the files she held.

  This time, Duncan proved quicker. He relieved Josephine of her burden. “They didn’t possess your determination or strength.”

  In his life, he’d spoken no truer words than those.

  Alas, the minx proved decidedly unimpressed.

  She looped her arms under the stack of files and attempted to wrestle it from his hold. “You hardly strike me as one to deliver false praise.”

  Duncan shifted, preventing her from her efforts. “You’re correct. I don’t.”

  The stubborn minx hesitated… and then reluctantly ceded the battle to him.

  “Very well.” Not bothering to wait to see if he followed, Josephine turned on her heel and entered the storage closet.

  Duncan hurried in behind her and abruptly stopped. “Good God,” he whispered.

  “You don’t like it.”

  Hers was a statement that he couldn’t manage to counter.

  Duncan took in this new room.

  In the time since she’d begun working for him, the office had been completely transformed. And now, there could be no doubting exactly what this space had been intended for—clerks or an additional barrister.

  Not one but two desks had been uncovered. Heavy brocade curtains were drawn back to reveal glass windows that ran the length of the room. Sunlight streamed through the still dusty panels and spilled upon the floor.

  Josephine hurried over to six wooden safes that she’d either unearthed amidst the sea of filings or carried over from some other place. Either way, they sat upon a satin birch library table. “I placed a case file in each,” she explained. Opening one of the doors, she revealed the shelving and dividers inside, neatly filled with ledgers and stacks of paper. “I was thinking it might be beneficial for you to have a case for each client so that all the materials can be properly organized. Although cases ultimately come to a close, one never knows when one might have some need of information from it.” She shut the door with a decisive click. “In the meantime, I’ve made use of the empty boxes you had here and filed away the other cases there.” She rushed to the other side of the office and gestured to the newly converted storage units. “They should do… they will do adequately for now. There is also—”

  “I love it,” he interrupted.

  Josephine’s big eyes formed even wider circles. “What?” she blurted.

  “I—”

  Before he could repeat himself, she began to speak so quickly her words tumbled together. “Obviously, it’s just been several days.” Three. It had been three. “So the office is not quite finished. I still have several ideas…”

  As he closed the space between them and stopped before her, she abruptly ceased her ramblings. “I love it,” he repeated. He took in her masterful work here. Absently, he opened each safe, one at a time, briefly assessing the contents, and then he closed them. “I’ve been so focused on my case that I’ve not even had the time to properly consider”—anything—“what to do with previous case materials and the offices.”

  “It is understandable. Being alone, one cannot be everything and everyone one needs to be.”

  He shifted his focus from the newly organized safes to Josephine. Had he truly found her ugly upon their first meeting? Now, he noted eyes that had appeared too large then were, in fact, fathomless pools framed by deep red lashes that were fire to the ice blue of her irises.

  And studying her as close as he now did, he noted previous details that had escaped him. The high color in her cheeks. The frenetic way she twisted and untwisted the front of her dusty skirts.

  She was nervous. It was not at all dissimilar to how every other person had been in his presence.

  It was, however, an altogether unexpected reaction from this woman.

  Her clear, clever gaze followed his movements, and she released her hold upon her dress. “I’m happy you approve of the changes.”

  This same woman, who’d rightly called him out for being a neglectful father, stormed his offices, and challenged him at every other turn, now stood before him, uneasy. Shame—not an unfamiliar modicum of emotion for him—twisted in his chest.

  He’d become a damned bully.

  She cleared her throat. “I trust you have much to do with Lathan Holman’s case. I’d not keep you from that important work.”

  Was she trying to be rid of him? Or less than subtly reminding him of the chastisement he’d delivered earlier that morning?

 
“I’m… sorry,” he said gruffly.

  Her brow furrowed. “Duncan?”

  What was it that made him so love the sound of his name rolling from her tongue, spoken not with the vitriol he’d long known, but a husky warmth?

  “Earlier this week, I was boorish.” Nay, that wasn’t quite true. He grimaced. “I’ve been boorish to you since you arrived on my doorstep, and I apologize for that. You see, I’m unaccustomed to company. Or people. Of course, people are company.” He was rambling. He knew as much, and yet, his tongue moved with a damned will of its own. “Not that I’m explaining those details to you, as you already know as much. What I am saying…” What was he saying? Or trying to… “What I wanted to say is—”

  She settled an ink-stained palm upon his left hand.

  “Sorry,” he finished lamely. Now, he was blathering on. He, who was laconic in life and measured in courtrooms, now found himself unable to stop the flow of his words.

  She tipped her head.

  At some point during her efforts, her chignon had loosened, and now more strands hung down around her shoulders than remained pinned in that previously neat coiffure.

  He coughed into a fist. “I should have never made mention of…” He shifted on his feet. “I should not have spoken about…”

  Josephine sent a single brow winging up. “Hanging. The word you are searching for is ‘hanging.’” How neatly she turned his words back upon him. “And you needn’t apologize, Duncan. I hadn’t been properly thinking about the fact that your work demands and deserves your singular focus.” She shrugged. “Just as you were correct with your words on Sarah Elton, you proved correct on this score, as well.”

  She stepped around him, ready to resume her task.

  Duncan hurried into her path. “What did you say?”

  “Which part? The one where I acknowledged I was wrong and you were correct?”

  Duncan rocked back on his heels. “But…” Words failed him.

  “You were right,” she repeated. “There is nothing valuable in your being distracted.” A little smile curled the corners of Josephine’s rosebud-shaped mouth. “You seem altogether surprised.” She slid closer. “Tell me,” she went on, curiosity in her tone and in her big eyes, “is it because you think a woman incapable of self-reflection?”

  “Yes.”

  Her brows lifted.

  “No. Yes… I don’t know,” he finished weakly.

  She lifted herself on tiptoes so her lips were near his ear, and God help him, the citrusy scent of lemon, pure and crisp, filled his nostrils and senses, and he fought to hear her words. “Let me help you, then,” she whispered. “We’re not.”

  His own wife had been wholly incapable of that feat. Not even during the darkest moment of their marriage, when he’d discovered the depth of her betrayal, had she brought herself to admit she’d been wrong. It’d been Duncan’s fault for failing to see her outfitted as she deserved. It had been Duncan’s fault for edging out his brother for her hand. “It is not just women,” he said when he’d found words. “In my experience, most people are incapable of acknowledging any weakness.”

  She drew herself up on the edge of the table. “There isn’t any weakness in admitting one’s wrong. There is, however, weakness in being too arrogant to accept points of view that one had failed to previously consider.”

  With that quietly spoken pronouncement, Duncan found himself appreciating Miss Josephine Webb in new ways. Admiring her. And unable to leave her side, even though his work required it.

  Duncan rested his left hip upon the sturdy table and angled himself so he might face her.

  “It was not simply my…” God, he’d been obnoxious. “My…”

  “Lessons?” she supplied.

  His neck heated. “On Mrs. Elton and Lathan Holman.” He paused. God, how pompous he’d been. “I’ve been boorish.”

  “Yes, you have,” she said, so quick in that agreement that she rang a laugh from him.

  Josephine joined in, the tinkling, clear, almost bell-like quality of that amusement so very different from the sharp, short bark that emerged from his chest. The sound of his own mirth came out gravelly from lack of use.

  Once their amusement abated, a comfortable silence fell between them. Since his wife’s death, and the subsequent murder accusations, Duncan had forgotten how to be around people. In short, because there were few around him. This was the closest he’d been to feeling like a human… in so many years. “I promise to make an attempt at being better.”

  “An attempt?” More of the young woman’s patent amusement underscored that query.

  “As you’ve pointed out, I’m unaccustomed to company.” He’d once been a master at all exchanges. It’d been why he’d won his wife when his elder brother had failed. His mother had always teased that he’d been a natural charmer, born smiling and chattering before the age of one. After his marriage, that affability, the ease in being around others, had died a slow death.

  Josephine lightly squeezed his fingers, bringing him back from the abyss of regrets and dark memories. “I’m not asking you, or even wanting you, to treat me somehow different than you would another clerk simply because I’m a woman, Duncan.” There was no inflection in her tone. Rather, she spoke as one schooling him on her expectations.

  “I’m rubbish with all people, really. I wasn’t always…” he said distantly before he realized what he’d said, before he could call it back. Perhaps she’d not probe. Most any other person wouldn’t, for politeness sake alone.

  At every turn, however, Josephine proved herself unlike… any and all.

  “What changed?” she asked curiously.

  His family had turned on Duncan. The fellow barristers he’d once called friends had ceased all contacts with him. It hadn’t mattered that his brother had helped clear his name, preventing Duncan from going to trial. The same brother who’d destroyed Duncan’s life hadn’t given a jot about Duncan. No, ultimately, he’d involved himself to spare the Everleighs from any further scandal. In the end, no one had cared that Duncan had been declared innocent of wrongdoing.

  Once a person was so much as associated with a crime, one was seen as guilty in the eyes of the world, and all associations were cut off. He couldn’t tell Josephine as much. Nay, he didn’t want to tell her as much. When she found out, she’d flee, as everyone did. And being honest with himself, at last, he could acknowledge he liked having her near. Even if she was here only because she didn’t know whom she worked with and for. “Life happened,” he finally brought himself to say, taking the coward’s way out with vagueness.

  Outside, on the main floors of his office, the clock chimed, marking the new hour.

  With that, reality intruded.

  Reluctantly, Duncan stood. “I should return. I’ve Holman’s case.”

  “Of course.”

  Except, he lingered.

  Why did he?

  Because I enjoy her company.

  “And your case is… going well?” she ventured.

  “Yes,” he said instantly, and then with a sigh, Duncan shook his head. “No.” At last, he surrendered to the frustration he’d felt since Lathan Holman had stepped through his office door, a client intent on swinging for his crimes. “I’ve a man who is accused of high treason and I’ve made no headway on his case. The last major trial for high treason was—”

  “The Cato Event.”

  “Exactly, and even if Lathan Holman does testify, which I have no indication he will—”

  “It is unlikely his statement will be seen as reliable,” she said more to herself. “After all, Edwards, who was also with the Home Office during the Cato Event, was found unreliable and never called to testify because of his work on behalf of the Crown.”

  Her knowledge of that famous trial knocked him off-balance. Josephine rushed off and when she returned with a journal in hand, he was fairly certain he found himself falling half in love with the clever young woman in possession of information not commonly known b
y most people.

  “Now,” she was saying as she settled onto the edge of the table, “the thing with Thistlewood is there was substantial evidence linking him as a conspirator.” Josephine turned the pages of her book, scanning the elegant scrawl there.

  Dragging a chair over, he joined her.

  “He planned to murder the Cabinet. He was not the only perpetrator.”

  “There was the whole of the Spenceans.”

  “Precisely,” she said, not looking up. “There was the police agent George Edwards. The murder of an agent at Thistlewood’s hands. There was the cartridge paper, written in his hand, with his intentions clearly stated.”

  “What are you saying?” he asked slowly.

  “I’m saying, where are the witnesses? Where is the evidence? What are you building your case on? The question we’re left with is, why is the Home Office keeping secrets that would clear one of their own?”

  He stilled. “They’re protecting those involved. The Home Office is preserving secrets—”

  “At the expense of Mr. Holman. Otherwise, there’d be far more than speculative whispers in ballrooms and scraps of vague details in newspapers.” She glanced up, a question in her eyes. “Why would that be? So that the public doesn’t fear more subversives?”

  That great fear of which had dogged England since the Peterloo Massacre and Cato Event.

  It wasn’t that.

  Josephine returned to her reading.

  He sat up slowly. “It is some internal conflict within the Home Office.”

  She picked her head up.

  “That is the only thing that makes sense.” In his haste to lay out the pieces of the puzzle that at last made sense, his words tumbled together. “It’s why Holman won’t speak. It is why the Home Office hasn’t responded to my request for information on the previous trial.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, putting her notebook down.

  “The conflict doesn’t involve mere subjects of the Crown.” Gathering up her notes, Duncan turned them facing out and pointed to the details she’d compiled. “It is men involved with the Home Office. Otherwise, who are the players? Subversive men tend to not act alone. Their views are shaped out of a movement, and they surround themselves with like-minded individuals.”