The Minx Who Met Her Match

by Christi Caldwell

  Back and forth.

  Back and forth.

  That slow, measured glide against her skin brought her eyes shut, and she leaned into the touch she’d hungered for since the day he’d made love with her. “I am excited by it.” Her voice trembled. She was, however, more excited by the man before her and his magnetic pull over her.

  “Why do I sense a ‘but’ there?” he murmured, lowering his mouth close to her ear.

  “There is no…”

  His lips moved over the soft, sensitive shell.

  Josephine’s breath caught, a wicked little rasp made louder by the extreme quiet of the marquess’ library.

  “I have missed you.”

  Were those her words or his?

  Everything was all confused in her mind.

  On a groan, Duncan’s mouth covered hers, and Josephine met the violent slash of his lips. She didn’t want gentle or tender. She hungered for him and this moment. As they tangled with their tongues, a primal thrust and parry, she collapsed against the wall.

  But Duncan was there.

  Gathering her hands in his, Duncan brought her arms up above her head and anchored her between his body and the wall.

  “Duncan.” She moaned his name between each kiss. “Duncan.”

  He caught the fabric of her dress and guided the hem up, exposing her stocking-clad limbs to the air, a cool caress upon her heated skin.

  And then there were no more words.

  No words were needed in that moment.

  Nothing could come between them or this stolen interlude.

  The door abruptly opened.

  Josephine gasped. She’d been wrong. Something could—and had—ripped that magic from her.

  Even as Duncan placed himself between her and the interloper, his efforts were futile.

  Ewan Holman stood in the doorway. He looked first at Josephine and then over to Duncan. And then back once more to Josephine. Shock and horror marched across his face. “Miss Pratt? What is the meaning of this?” His hardening gaze went to Duncan. “Or perhaps my question should be for you, the man I’m paying to defend my brother.”

  Her stomach curled. Oh, God.

  This was bad.

  Chapter 20

  He’d been sacked.

  It wasn’t the first time.

  Usually, Duncan was released after his clients or their families discovered his dubious past.

  After Josephine had made a hasty retreat, Duncan had remained behind with Ewan Holman, his employer. Now, his former employer.

  Duncan’s loyalty to Lathan’s case had been immediately called into question—and then he’d been summarily dismissed.

  Never was it easy—always it was awful—being confronted with the fact that one was so despised that Society wouldn’t hire one for the only work one was good at.

  Not so very long ago, when Duncan had questioned his own self-worth and had fixed on how his past reflected on him and his name, this would have destroyed him.

  This time, he cared for altogether different reasons. He didn’t give a jot about his own name. This time, it was about Josephine. Josephine, who’d been discovered in a compromising position and whose reputation mattered. And Duncan wanted to marry her. Not because they’d been caught in Lord Tennyson’s library, but because he loved her and wanted to spend forever with her.

  And it was also about Lathan Holman. Holman, whom he’d no longer be able to defend.

  Twelve hours after he’d returned from the marquess’ ball, Duncan remained seated at his desk in the same garments he’d worn. He wiped his hands down his face. There had to be a way to make this right.

  The loud shuffle of Mrs. Joy’s footsteps announced the interruption even before the older woman’s customary sharp knock. And he welcomed the diversion. “Enter,” he called the moment her knuckles landed on the panel. Reaching back, he rubbed the tight muscles of his neck. “Good evening, Mrs. J—” That customary greeting died on his lips.

  Over the top of the diminutive woman’s head, Lathan Holman met Duncan’s stare with his customary icy grin. “Everleigh.” From his place in the doorway, his client passed a derisive sneer over Duncan’s cramped offices. “Impressive space.”

  Lathan Holman managed the seemingly impossible: He pulled a frown from the always cheerful Mrs. Joy. “You need a lesson on kindness, sir.”

  Duncan jumped up. “Thank you, Mrs. Joy. That will be all,” he said before the loyal old woman could issue his client any further chastisements.

  Or, rather, his former client.

  “Hmph.” Before she drew the door shut, Mrs. Joy caught Duncan’s gaze and gave her head a shake. “Rude fellow,” she mouthed. With that, she pushed the door shut behind her.

  “Tell me,” Holman began as he settled himself, uninvited, into one of the two chairs in Duncan’s office. “Are all your servants the rude type? Or do you only have the one?”

  “I trust you’ve not come around to discuss the individuals I employ and how they conduct themselves. Particularly given I’m no longer representing you.” Duncan made no attempt to take his seat. He’d no intention of this exchange being a long one.

  The hint of a smile hovered on the younger man’s scarred face, revealing a glimpse of who he’d likely been before his life had fallen apart. “Ah, yes. I understand my brother relieved you of your responsibilities after your tryst with a certain lady.”

  Tension whipped through Duncan, but he retained control over the anger pulsing inside him. He’d not discuss Josephine with this man, or anyone.

  “Yes, my brother came round immediately and informed me of your… involvement with Mr. Pratt’s sister.” Lathan made a tsking sound. “It’s bad form bedding the opposing counsel’s sister. It makes one question your loyalty.” The younger man chuckled. “Though, in fairness, I’m hardly one to speak on loyalty.”

  “What do you want, Mr. Holman?” He had neither the energy nor the inclination to be baited by a former client.

  “I want to know why.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did you go to Tennyson’s?” Holman asked impatiently, as if Duncan should have followed the abrupt shift in discourse.

  “Because I believe in you and your innocence.” He looked the younger man in the eye. “I know there are others responsible and that you don’t deserve to pay for their sins with your life.”

  Holman gripped his left thigh tight enough to drain the blood from his knuckles.

  Duncan followed that distracted gesture. And recalled what he’d learned in his research for Lathan Holman’s case.

  He’d been shot. He suffered some paralysis, but had learned to move so that most couldn’t even notice.

  Catching his gaze, Holman abruptly stopped rubbing his leg. “I’ve no loyalty to a traitor,” he began, his voice emerging gruff and hesitant. “My loyalty was to the Crown. Where it remains.”

  Even as the Home Office had cut him loose and would end the young man’s life, Lathan Holman maintained his loyalty.

  Duncan lowered himself into the leather folds of his chair. “I understand. However—”

  Holman shook his head, indicating the desire for Duncan’s silence, and Duncan immediately went quiet.

  “The man I clerked for was an honorable man. Polite Society had a different opinion of him. A womanizer. A gambler. A drinker. That was what the world saw. His superior came to me. He made me doubt the opinions I’d already formed about my superior. I allowed myself to be swayed. I’d been fed reason to doubt and came to believe that my initial opinions of my superior were, in fact, wrong.” Lathan Holman’s face crumpled, and then as quick as that crack in his composure had come, the mask was firmly back in place, so fast that Duncan might have imagined it. Reaching into his jacket, Holman withdrew a small folded sheet. Without hesitation, he leaned forward and slid the parchment halfway across the desk. “Rowley is his name,” he said, his voice blank. His eyes, however, contained the threat of death in them. “Viscount Rowley.”

  Taking
the paper, Duncan unfolded it. Meticulous, copious notes filled the entire page.

  “He was the higher-up,” Holman went on to explain. “He was determined to take down the superior officer I directly reported to.” Tennyson. “Rowley had links to the Cato Street Conspiracy.”

  Duncan briefly lifted his eyes. “The plan to overthrow the prime minister’s Cabinet?”

  “The same.”

  Then Lathan Holman’s case of high treason, in fact, did have ties to the Cato Event. And yet, he’d not been linked in any way to the perpetrator who’d been executed for his role in the plot. “Everyone knows the conspiracy was a product of the Spencean Philanthropists. Men angry with the Six Acts and the Peterloo Massacre.”

  “That’s certainly what the world believes. It is what they are expected to believe. It’s safer for all when none look for more details than that.”

  Duncan sat upright. “You’re saying there were other factors at play.”

  “I’m saying the world does not necessarily know how widespread the conspiracy was,” Holman said cryptically.

  In other words, Society—polite and impolite—had all been fed one story regarding the Cato Event, and seated before him was a man who had the power to lay the government’s secrets out before the world, if he chose to speak in the hopes of clearing his name. Duncan scanned the notes in Holman’s handwriting. “And this viscount?”

  “Rowley,” Holman reiterated.

  “He was determined to take down your superior. Because your superior had pieced together details that no one else had about these additional origins of the Cato Street Conspiracy.”

  Holman snapped his fingers once and pointed an index finger in Duncan’s direction. “Precisely.”

  After Peterloo, none would have dared look further than insurrections against the government. Insurrection would have been enough.

  Duncan quickly read the words written before him. By the way their quality deteriorated, Lathan Holman had grown increasingly frantic as he’d recorded them.

  “Rowley wanted to rid the world of Lord Liverpool,” the other man said as Duncan scanned the notes. “He’d made a fortune off the slave trade.”

  Duncan lifted his head once more. “And Lord Liverpool set out to abolish it.”

  “He was coming for Rowley’s slaves.” His expression darkened. “And Rowley would have done anything to stop that hit to his profits.”

  “Including using an eager-to-serve-the-Home-Office clerk?” he asked solemnly.

  Sadness paraded over the younger man’s features. “Precisely,” he whispered. “It was my fault for letting myself believe the worst about my superior. He’d given me work and entrusted me with… everything. I did betray him. I failed in that.”

  “You reported to his superior,” Duncan ventured. Folding the sheet, he set it aside. “I trust you didn’t take that information from Rowley outside the organization.”

  Holman blanched. “Good God, no.”

  “You were asked by a ranking member to report on a lower-ranking member, who also happened to be your supervisor. And that was what you did.”

  “It is.” The other man’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and Lathan Holman looked down at his lap for a long while. When he lifted his gaze, he’d full mastery of his emotions. “You oversimplify it, though.”

  Duncan held that flinty stare. “I don’t believe I do. What I state is precisely what happened.”

  “It wasn’t,” Holman cried, jumping to his feet. A hiss escaped him as his leg crumpled under him, and he collapsed back into his chair. His face spasmed, a twisting of pain and regret melded into one. “My misstep nearly cost Lord T—” Holman quickly caught himself. “My superior his life and those of his wife and brother-in-law.”

  “Lord Tennyson,” he began. “I believe he might speak on your behalf.”

  A half laugh, half sob burst from the other man. “He wouldn’t.” Holman massaged his leg, shoving his white-knuckled grip into the muscles before he caught Duncan’s attention on him. “Even if he would, I’d not ask him to put himself or his family in danger to save my neck.”

  It was a testament to Lathan Holman’s honor.

  Holman struggled to his feet. “That’s all I intend to say on my case. Do with that what you will.”

  Duncan called out, halting the younger man. “Why have you told me this? Why now?” Why, when he’d contributed nothing to his own defense until this moment?

  Holman glanced over his shoulder, sadness etched in the scarred planes of his face. “Because you believed in me enough to go toe-to-toe with Tennyson. Because you believed in me when even my own family hasn’t. When they’d be quite content with me having my neck stretched and being free of my presence.”

  With that, he left.

  Long after Lathan Holman had gone, Duncan remained closed away in his offices, recording everything his client had revealed. And then he sat back with the not unfamiliar, and always welcome, thrill of excitement that came when finding a breakthrough in one’s case.

  After weeks of obstinate silence, the former clerk for the Home Office had given Duncan everything he needed to frame a case and present it before the world. And there was no doubt that Duncan would persuade any jury to see Holman’s case for what it was—a young, powerless man had taken the fall for higher-ups in the Home Office, men of the peerage whose names remained clear while Holman’s had been forever stained.

  The case would highlight the plight of the people. It was a trial he’d undoubtedly win and that would see him with more cases and… funds.

  His attention on his notes, Duncan considered all the information Holman had imparted… and then froze.

  Well, I cannot believe, with the way members of Society protect their scandals, any gentleman would wish to have that information known.

  Josephine’s pragmatic opinion whispered around his mind.

  The world resumed a rapid spin.

  Lathan Holman was now willing to identify the superior officers and the most highly sensitive secrets belonging to the Crown. He could—and would—share information about the Cato Street Conspiracy and the Peterloo Massacre and respected members of the peerage. He was in possession of the most sensitive state secrets. “It doesn’t have to go to trial,” he whispered. The Home Office had known Holman’s loyalty and had banked on his silence. They’d been willing to sacrifice him.

  But that was before. Now that Holman was willing to speak, it was in the Home Office’s best interest to go to extrajudicial conference to preserve the state’s secrets.

  And if Duncan secured that extrajudicial conference, gone went all his hopes for the trial he craved. The one that represented an out for him and a way to better provide for his daughter.

  Duncan ran his palms down the sides of his face.

  On one hand, there was Charlie and her future. And on the other, there was the quickest, surest way to Lathan Holman’s freedom.

  His stomach sank.

  He knew what he had to do.

  Chapter 21

  Everyone knew no lady’s ruination ever remained a secret.

  Since she’d fled Tennyson’s library two days earlier, Josephine had waited, braced, wondering when the moment would come.

  Because all scandals eventually became public fodder.

  As such, she’d read the morning gossip pages with bated breath. She’d listened to the whisperings of maids at work in their rooms.

  By the second day, seated with scandal sheets that made no mention of her name—and worse, Ewan Holman’s discovery—she’d actually come to believe that mayhap she would escape discovery, after all.

  By the third day, she came to realize she didn’t quite care if her family and Polite Society found out what she’d done. Because, ultimately, what had she done? She’d taken on respectable work… and fallen in love.

  Rain pinged against the lead windowpanes that overlooked the yards below. Releasing a shaky sigh, Josephine touched a finger to a lone drop on the other side of that panel and f
ollowed its winding path down until it dissolved at the bottom of the frame.

  Are you aware there’s an impreciseness to muff glass that lends it a greenish tint and often possesses air bubbles?

  A half laugh, half sob escaped her as she lowered her brow against the window. How she missed him. She missed their debates and their discussions… and she missed simply being with him.

  A light scratch at the parlor door interrupted her melancholy musings. Josephine abruptly drew her head back.

  Stephenson filled the doorway. “Good day, Miss Pratt. You’ve a caller.”

  If her ruin were imminent, surely it wouldn’t come with such a very relaxed Stephenson. Which could only mean one visitor… Duncan! Josephine’s heart knocked erratically, and she forced herself to rise slowly. “A caller?” No one paid her any visits.

  The ancient butler stuck his head out into the hall and then slipped into the room with a stealth more reminiscent of his earlier years in the Pratt employ. “His lordship instructed me to share if the gentleman ever arrived at our door,” he said in a whisper that wasn’t at all a whisper.

  Her heart deflated. “Lord Grimslee?”

  Lucas was here. Which confirmed only that ruin was imminent. As such, she should be entirely focused on the impending doom ready to rain upon her. Instead, she felt nothing more than disappointment that her visitor wasn’t the gentleman she wished him to be.

  “The very same,” Stephenson confirmed with a nod. The old servant brought his already ramrod-straight posture back another fraction and smoothed his lapels. “I am of the opinion, Miss Pratt, that as you’re a grown woman now, you should decide whether to receive your visitors. Respectfully, of course.”

  For all the misery that had dogged her these past two days, warmth filled her breast. Going on tiptoe, she kissed the old man’s weathered cheek. “I am grateful.”

  Stephenson’s cheeks pinkened at that display of affection. He coughed into his fist. “And should I show the gentleman in?”

  She’d rather he didn’t. Because there could be just one reason for Lucas’ visit this day. Alas, turning away Lord Grimslee wouldn’t prevent this exchange. No, it would only delay the inevitable meeting. “You may.”