Or she attempted to.
Her legs tangled with the hem of her cloak and skirts, and she came down hard. The drift of snow softened her fall… and also soaked her garments.
“B-blast and d-damn.” Her teeth chattering, Francesca hefted her bag up and went out in search of shelter and help.
Some time later, her skirts heavy and her skin numb from the bite of the cold, Francesca continued through a heavy copse. She dragged her hem with one hand and held her bag in the other.
It was official: She was going to die here.
And where prior it had seemed preferable to dying alone in a carriage while waiting for help to arrive, now she wished she’d remained. She’d considered heading back, and she would have if she could recall which way “back” was. But snow swirled, tiny flakes making a thick curtain.
She stumbled and managed to right herself and press on.
Of course, the moment she was set to marry… the moment she’d resolved herself to that fate with a stranger, she would perish. It was a farcical fate for any spinster.
And then, she couldn’t take one more step.
Francesca went pitching forward, landing facedown in a deep drift. Her already soaked gown and cloak were drenched further by the heavy, wet snow. She struggled to get herself upright, but her sodden garments made the task a near insurmountable one. At last, she wrenched herself up and free. A sob escaped from her.
Wrestling her bag from the snow, she marched on, periodically wailing.
And then she stopped.
She was imagining it. She must be. Francesca blinked. And yet…
That flash of orange on a backdrop of all white remained.
Muttering and crying, she set off after that faint light.
Chapter 3
The roosters had quieted.
But another animal was determined to persist in torturing Lathan.
Lying in his bed, Lathan cursed roundly. He’d resolved to suffering their sounds in the morning… and even in the afternoon. Night, however, had always been quiet… until now. This night, Lathan was to be besieged by some other miserable creatures.
The caterwauling had come on and off for the better part of thirty minutes.
Whenever Lathan was close to a welcome sleep, those tortured sounds split the quiet and stole all hope of escape from yet another day.
In fairness, any creature caught out in the storm that raged outside his windows was entitled to their misery.
That didn’t mean Lathan wanted to suffer through it with them. Nay, he’d far prefer… nothing. That was the reality. He didn’t want the company of his brother or any other member of his family. Or a damned chicken. He didn’t want that either.
Nay, that wasn’t altogether true. There was someone whose presence he’d welcome. It was a visit that would never come. One from any superior at the Home Office to inform him that they’d forgiven his sins and crimes and had a post awaiting him.
Lathan stared blankly overhead. Fanciful dreams were what they were. And he, traitor to the Crown, impressed, beaten, and then put through a second trial, knew better than to allow himself anything fanciful.
He was lucky to be alive, for having betrayed his superior.
The wind buffeted the cottage. Ice pinged against the sturdy brick and old lead windowpanes.
“Lucky.” The muscles of his mouth moved up in a cynical, bitter twist. Flipping onto his side, he pounded away at his pillow before settling once more onto the lumpy mattress.
Silence came, and he closed his eyes in welcome of the quiet, appreciating the storm that raged outside, the volatility of it. The unpredictability and violence all something he could relate so very well with and to.
“Ahhhhhh. Ahhhhhh.”
Lathan’s eyes shot open. The caterwauling came closer than it had been. There was something less plaintive about these cries. He cast an earnest look at the window. Almost… humanlike in their quality.
His senses immediately went on alert.
Lathan swung his legs over the side of the bed and strode to the window, his footfalls the nearly soundless kind he’d perfected in his all-too-brief tenure with the Home Office. Stopping at the edge of the windows, he peered through the crack in the curtain, out. At the same time, he reached back and withdrew the dagger fastened in a special holster at his hip.
Not for the first time in his twenty-seven years, he cursed his eyes, the ones that made spectacles a necessity and prevented him from having unimpeded vision.
Then he caught it, the flash of black, stark and vivid against an otherwise white landscape.
Lathan stiffened. No one would dare come out on such a night.
That was no sane man and certainly not one without a purpose.
The stranger tried the door handle, jiggling it once. When it didn’t open, he jiggled it again, this time more frantic. Noisier.
And not at all befitting one who’d come here to off him for once and for all.
That was, of course, if the stranger down below cared about ending Lathan in his sleep. Mayhap he couldn’t care either way and was just as eager for a match.
The frantic rattling of the door handle stopped. There was a beat of silence before the person outside his window started ’round back.
Edging away from the window, Lathan hurried for the bedchamber door. The heavily greased hinges—another product of his lessons from the Home Office—didn’t offer so much as the faintest squeak as he drew the panel open. Ducking his head through the crack, he peered up and down the hall. Empty.
As he slipped from the room, he kept his eyes everywhere. His left heel depressed a loose floorboard. Creeaaak.
Having lived here the better part of six months, he’d gleaned every last floorboard that groaned or creaked, and yet, knowing them as he did meant shite where his leg was concerned.
He silently cursed and railed at the injured leg that had ruined his step and made walking with any real ease an impossibility. Stepping over those planks, Lathan found his way belowstairs.
He kept a gaze on each window he passed, braced to see the stranger out there.
The one searching for him.
It had been only a matter of time.
He’d known it for as long as he’d realized the mistake in betraying his superior at the Home Office—and even after his name had been cleared by that same, far-too-magnanimous official.
Ultimately, men such as Lathan—guilty of treason, even if it was accidental treason—found themselves paying the price. And given that his life had been an empty hell since, with no family or friends or… much of anything, it was a fate he should be at peace with.
But then, mayhap that was just further proof of his cowardice—he wanted to live still.
More, he wanted to prove himself.
Lathan moved with slow steps down the corridor toward the kitchens and the back entrance.
Another jiggle of a door handle came.
This time, from the kitchens.
This time, more insistent. Whoever was on the other side of that old oak panel had no intention of abandoning his efforts.
Blood pounded in Lathan’s veins, along with the fierce rush of adrenaline that came at the heart of danger, as he crept closer. Holding the blade flush to his chest, he kept his other arm flat at his side.
Jiggle-jiggle-jiggle.
The intruder’s efforts grew more frantic.
Thunk.
There came a clatter as the handle hit the kitchen floor.
Silence reigned, except for the whistle of the wind as it whipped through the cottage, a forlorn wailing made all the louder by the gaping panel.
A moment later, footfalls drew closer, and then they abruptly stopped. The stranger in his kitchen pushed the door shut with a soft click.
Always maintain the element of surprise. As a clerk for a spy with the Home Office, Lathan hadn’t been trained in the field. Everything he’d gleaned had come from his superior, a gentleman who’d imparted lessons almost haphazardly as a
n afterthought, plus what he’d silently observed and stored away in the hopes of a future doing more than clerk’s work.
He stepped out. “I take it you are looking…”
The stranger gasped and spun about.
Just like that, the remainder of Lathan’s response and the element of surprise were gone as he faced down his intruder.
The woman’s auburn hair hung limp about her back and shoulders. Her skin was red from the cold. Her eyes were filled with fire and rage, a lethal and dangerous combination that promised trouble.
Lathan tensed as the woman reached with shaking fingers into her pocket and fumbled about.
They spoke as one: “Don’t move.”
“Do not move.”
When Lathan’s sharp command had no effect, he jabbed the tip of his knife in her direction. “Hand out of your pocket, hen,” he barked.
The color leached from her cheeks, and then she swiftly complied.
Oh, hell.
The woman leveled an ancient firearm at Lathan’s chest. “P-put it d-down,” she cried.
“The hell I will.” He flared his nostrils. “Lower your weapon, hen.” With his spare hand, Lathan motioned with his fingers, urging her to hand over the gun.
“With y-you pointing a weapon at me?” she squawked like the namesake he’d settled on for her. “I th-think not.”
Did her voice shake from cold, or was it fear? Likely, it was the latter. And yet, since he’d returned from his impressment, the whole world, his family included, had looked at Lathan only with horror. How singularly odd that this stranger should prove the exception.
That was also further reason to not trust her or her presence here.
Lathan took a cautious step toward her.
“S-stop!” The panicky timbre to the woman’s voice brought him to a stop. “I-I’m not looking t-to fight w-with you.” As she spoke, she waved her hands wildly, and her cloak tangled with her arms.
Hen had proven an apt name for her after all. Hen-brained indeed. She waved her gun, and Lathan followed its erratic movements closely, ducking and weaving.
He’d wager almost anything that moisture had soaked her powder, and yet, he was not willing to risk his life on that assumption either.
Muttering to herself, his night visitor wrestled with her clasp and let her cloak fall with a heavy thwack upon his kitchen floor.
It was then that he noticed all manner of things he had no place noticing in this instance, and certainly not with an armed intruder pointing her pistol at his heart. Her black gown, soaked as it was, put her full figure on magnificent display. Her auburn-streaked hair hung about her waist. Strands that didn’t know whether they wished to be brown, red, or golden gleamed from her jaunt outside, those tresses framing the generous curves of her hips. Lathan’s mouth went dry. With ample buttocks and an even more ample bosom, she was a lush Athena.
The woman kicked her cloak aside. “Now,” she said, waving that damned pistol again. “Wh-where were w—”
The sharp report of her pistol effectively shattered Lathan’s lust, and he fell facedown in the middle of his kitchen floor.
It turned out Francesca would prove correct in her worries after all: This day, someone was going to die.
On her wild carriage ride from London, she’d assumed that she would be the one heading on to meet her Maker. Only to find it wasn’t to be her after all, but rather, a tall, ginger-haired stranger.
What was worse… she was the one who’d killed him.
The gun clattered from her fingers and landed with a noisy thunk. “Oh, God,” she whispered, her voice faint.
The wind knocked against the door, Mother Nature paying a night visit. Except for the ice and snow she hurled against the windows, there was an unearthly silence. All the while, the man she’d felled lay absolutely motionless.
Nausea turned in her gut.
“H-hullo?” she called over to the stranger on the floor. His floor. She, after all, had invaded his home. In retrospect, he’d been absolutely entitled to his suspicions. He’d come into his kitchens to find a stranger had broken in, and then she’d aimed a gun at him. In the immediacy of the moment, however, all she’d seen was a vicious-looking, scarred stranger with a gleaming dagger pointed at her.
She bit the inside of her cheek, and with a swift-growing dread, she approached the prone man.
Nay, not prone man. Dead man.
The man she’d murdered in cold blood. Was it still cold blood if she’d not intended to murder him? Did it matter either way? Only one thing did matter: she’d killed a man.
“My God.” This time, the Lord’s name emerged as a prayer. Her teeth quaked, that chattering having absolutely nothing to do with the cold. She made herself kneel beside him and slowly reached a palm toward the still figure beside her. Scrunching her brow, Francesca peered closely at him. “No blood?” she whispered.
A hand shot out, catching her by the wrist.
She gasped. Her skirts, combined with the unexpectedness of the man coming to life and her already precarious position, made her clumsy.
In one fluid motion, the man had her under him, her wrists caught between one of his much-larger hands as he pinned them above her head. Terror clawed at her mind, and Francesca twisted and writhed in a bid to free herself.
The man might as well have been playing with a rag doll.
Between her present efforts and her earlier exertions of tromping through the snow, exhaustion won out. Gasping, Francesca went still and lay there with her eyes closed. From fatigue. From cowardice.
Being honest with herself in these, her likely last moments on earth, she’d concede it was more of the latter. “I-I will a-admit,” she said, breathless. “I-I d-don’t kn-know what you i-intend, but I’m very m-much glad you’re a-alive.”
Pressed against her as he was, she felt the rumble in his chest as it shook slightly from his low, deep chuckle. “You’re happy that I’m alive?”
“Well, I’d r-rather you not hurt me, but… I still would rather be killed by a stranger than kill one.”
He scoffed. “That’s ridiculous.”
Hope stirred in her breast. “The idea that you intend to kill me? Or that I’d rather be killed than kill?”
“The latter.”
Did she merely imagine his droll deliverance? Because that would make it a good deal easier to face him.
She forced an eye open.
The stranger grinned coldly, the ice of his smile frigid enough to rival the weather outside. She gulped. She’d be a fool to take that harsh slash of his lips as a hint of any real amusement.
“Who sent you?” His voice emerged ragged and rough, as if he’d gone years without speaking.
When she didn’t immediately respond, he lightly shook her. “Wh-who? I don’t…”
What was he asking her exactly? It was all confused in her mind. “No one,” she rasped. Except, maybe that wasn’t altogether correct. That was, if he was looking to blame someone for her being here. “If you’re looking for a name, I might say my driver, the driver, Mr. Smith.” Her words tumbled and tripped over one another in her haste to speak. “Though, he didn’t send me, per se. He was driving quite erratically. To outrace the snow, he said. Although, it’d really been storming quite fiercely, so it was utterly preposterous and reckless to think we might outrace anything. He urged me to remain behind, and I daren’t think he wanted or expected I’d leave, and yet…”
Something akin to horror lit his face and managed to stymie her until now never-ending flow of words. But the scarred stranger did not loosen his grip on her. Rather, he held firm.
“My carriage became stuck in the snow,” she said quietly when the cold-eyed stranger continued to stare silently at her, assessing her through the lenses of his spectacles. She’d wager her very soul that his blue eyes could see through her.
“You expect me to believe you’ve arrived on my doorstep—in the dead of night, in the middle of a snowstorm—as a matter… of chance?”
She furrowed her brow. “Doesn’t that make complete sense as to why I’d be on your doorstep?” What manner of man was he that he’d be so very suspicious of a wayward stranger? Questions whispered and curiosity stirred.
At last, he unhanded her.
Francesca immediately scooted away, her skirts slowing her efforts. Not taking her gaze off the man, she rubbed at her wrists.
“You can carry on,” he said in those same dark, low tones.
She shook her head perplexedly. “There is nothing more to tell.” She didn’t think he really wished to know about her father’s passing or the duchess’ invitation and the reason for her journey, the future bridegroom awaiting her. Her belly flipped. Who would have imagined that the horror of facing the marquess who’d be her husband would prove more disconcerting than facing off with a man who’d nearly killed her?
In all fairness, you’re the one who almost killed him. “That… is it,” she said softly. “That is all there is to my story.”
He eyed her like she’d popped a head out alongside her existing one. “I wasn’t talking about your damned reasons for being here.” He pointed to the door. “I was telling you to get gone.”
Get… gone? Francesca struggled up into standing. “As in leavvvve?” Her voice was strident to her own ears, and yet, the circumstances certainly called for it.
He limped over to the door and reached for the place a handle should be. Her gaze went to the left leg he favored. No wonder he wished to be rid of her. She’d gone and hurt him.
“Don’t!” Francesca called out, managing to briefly freeze him. “You c-can’t send me away.”
Chapter 4
Lathan hadn’t felt anything in so long that he’d come to believe himself incapable of any emotion or any sentiment… for anyone.
And yet…
You can’t send me away…
If he was as safely life-hardened as he’d thought himself to be, why should five words give him pause? Nay, it wasn’t the woman’s words, necessarily. Rather, it was the forlorn note threaded through them.
For almost the whole of his life, Lathan had been remarkably on point in his judgment and in the company he chose to keep.
The Spinster Who Saved a Scoundrel (The Brethren Book 5) Page 4
