Until he’d made one mistake and trusted the wrong person.
That moment had cost him his confidence in decision-making where people’s characters were concerned.
That lasting lesson he’d earned after falling prey to the Viscount Rowley’s scheming indicated he should send the voluptuous stranger away. He wasn’t the naïve, trusting boy he’d been. He’d learned the darkness and evil all people were capable of… including himself.
As such, he should grab the door and shove her through it and let her go back to wherever she’d come from, storm and all.
But something called him back.
It was weakness on his part.
Don’t be a damned fool.
Lathan flicked a cool, assessing stare down the soaked creature before him. “Madam, this is my household, and I can do whatever I damned well please, and it would please me if you were gone.” He started back over to his broken door.
“O-of course you can,” she said on a rush. The woman rushed to put herself between him and the door he sought to throw her through. As if sensing that, she draped her frame against it and spread her arms wide. “That is, you can send me out. It is, as you pointed out, your residence, and I am a stranger.”
“An intruder.” Likely sent by someone at the Home Office.
The shapely stranger wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t necessarily call myself an intruder,” she said defensively.
“Oh?” he drawled. “Well, I’d hardly call you a guest.”
“That is a fair point.” She nodded sagely, as if he’d imparted a point they could both agree upon. “After all, guests don’t usually go about shooting or pointing blades at one another.” She blinked innocently, those long dark lashes sweeping up… and down.
Was she being… serious? Lathan couldn’t make out a damn thing where the peculiar woman was concerned.
The chatterbox cleared her throat. “My name is Francesca.”
“Francesca,” he repeated dumbly. The chit was performing… introductions?
“Cornworthy. Miss Francesca Cornworthy,” she said, putting it together with a neat little curtsy, and Lathan didn’t know whether to laugh or press his fingertips against his temple in a bid to rub out the slow-spreading headache this one was causing him. “My father called me Franny, but I quite despised it.”
“I can see why.”
Anyone else would have been offended.
Francesca Cornworthy’s eyes brightened. “Indeed?” She didn’t allow him a beat in which he could answer. “Do you know, you are the first to admit as much. Everyone generally gives a polite smile and ignores my preference and opts for Franny, and—”
“Do you ever stop talking?” Ironically, it wasn’t annoyance, but curiosity, rather, that pulled the question from Lathan.
She stared, unblinking. “No. Well, when I’m sleeping or alone…” She puzzled her brow. “Perhaps just sleeping, then. There are times I talk to myself. Therefore, I wouldn’t necessarily say…”
She must have seen something in his eyes. Horror. Confusion. For she did that which she’d sworn she couldn’t… she went silent.
It lasted no more than two heartbeats.
“And you are…?”
He narrowed his eyes, searching for some hint in her expressive eyes that she really didn’t know who he was.
When he failed to offer her an introduction, she again made a little clearing noise with her throat.
“Returning, then, to the matter of my staying—”
“You’re leaving—”
“It is your right to ask me to leave,” she carried on over him. “However, you can’t very well send me out.” She paused. Her brow wrinkled with creases of contemplativeness. “That is, you can send me away, but it would hardly be prudent.”
Now, this he had to hear.
Lathan folded his arms.
She stepped aside and swept an arm up and down the entryway into his kitchen. “One, there’s a storm raging outside.” A gust battered the doorway, accentuating that very point and blowing snow and wind through the opening made by the missing door handle. “And two, I’d certainly perish if you sent me out.” She stared expectantly at him.
“That’s it?” he asked flatly. “Two items is all you’ll pull out?”
She gave him a long, disapproving look to rival his mother’s. “I should think my dying in a snowstorm would be sufficient reason.”
“You would think,” he drawled.
That pert little nose, set amidst a heavily freckled face, scrunched up, and he didn’t want to note just how damned endearing that was. “I’ll not be a bother, sir.”
“I’m no ‘sir,’ and you already are.”
“Hmph.” The magpie tapped the tip of her soaked boot on his floor, sending little flecks of water splattering about.
“You were the one unwise enough to venture out.” Again, the implausibility of her being out in this for any other reasons than nefarious ones resurfaced.
“That is also an entirely fair and accurate point.”
Lathan masked his surprise. He came from a very long line of people who’d rather lose a limb than admit to wrongdoing. In his desire and willingness to own his guilty actions, he’d proven the exception rather than the norm, where the Holmans were concerned. And yet, this bizarre woman so freely took responsibility for her mistakes.
He contemplated the dangerously fascinating creature before him. Yes, everything inside him said to send her away. But would the powers that be at the Home Office really have sent someone so inept as this magpie? That was, if the goal was, in fact, to kill him once and for all, why not send their best? One who’d silence him and be gone without… this production or, at the very least, without the noise and prattling.
She must have sensed his wavering. “I’ll not trouble you while I’m here.” Francesca Cornworthy turned her palms up. “Please, do not send me away.” There was a faint entreaty there.
Bloody, bloody hell.
This was the weakness Rowley had seen in him. The kind that had led Lathan blindly down the path of betrayal and treason. For he couldn’t send her out. Not in this.
“You can stay,” he gritted, and those revealing eyes of hers lit. The purplish-blue hue, unlike any he’d ever before seen, gave him brief pause and distracted him.
She blinked slowly. “Yes?”
Yes, what? Then it hit him. She was awaiting the terms of her remaining.
Lathan gave his head a clearing shake.
“You’ll have access to one bedroom and not anything more in my cottage.”
“The kitchens?”
He ground his teeth. “Given I don’t want you here at all and would have happily sent you away, do you truly care to debate the terms with me?”
There was a beat of silence. “Well, it’s just that it hardly seems reasonable that I should be confined to one room.”
God, the chit was either brave or stupid. Or mayhap both.
“I’ll require food and…” She must have seen something again in his eyes, for she let her words trail off.
“If I catch you going through anything, I’ll toss you out.”
“Fair enough.”
He considered her… and her easy capitulation. All his earliest suspicions pressed to the surface. “Open your valise and show me the contents.”
She sputtered. “I beg your pardon, sir? You simply expect me to—”
Lathan was already stalking across the kitchen. Ignoring her indignant gasp, he struggled to get himself onto his haunches, straining his legs in ways that he’d pay for later. Not taking his gaze from his nighttime visitor, he popped the valise open and fished around inside. A sapphire-blue dress. A chemise.
She gasped when he briefly shook out the intimate articles. “How dare you?”
Ignoring her indignant outrage, he stuffed the article back into the valise. No weapon. No secret compartments. A notebook, emblazoned with three initials: FAC.
Lathan flipped it open, revealing a neat s
crawl with exaggerated loops and swirls.
“Give me that,” she rasped, yanking the article from his fingers. She clutched the book close to her heaving chest and glared at him.
They locked gazes in a silent battle.
When she again spoke, her voice was in complete control and calm. “I am grateful to you for allowing me to stay, but that generosity does not allow you access to my private thoughts.”
How… interesting. Her panicky outrage at his reading those private thoughts served as the very real confirmation that Francesca Cornworthy was, in fact, as she’d said, nothing more than a woman lost in a snowstorm. Mayhap she’d left her husband… or lover…
Either way, her business was her own. “Grab your bag and follow me, Miss Cornworthy.” Lathan started for the door, not bothering to see if she followed. All his efforts and energies remained focused on making his left leg move… and masking his limp. All the muscles strained and screamed, and Lathan concentrated on breathing to keep back a groan.
To be reminded every moment that he walked or moved—or, rather, couldn’t do either—of the sins that had brought on that suffering had been another part of his penance, the devil’s due for Lathan having wanted more and failing so miserably.
It wasn’t until he reached the base of the stairs that Francesca Cornworthy’s steps lagged behind even his slower ones.
He glanced back.
The chit, clutching the handle of her valise in two hands, struggled along behind him.
Oh, bloody hell.
With a sigh, he stomped over.
“What—?”
Lathan grabbed the heavy bag from her and motioned to the stairs. “Go on.”
“I assure you I’m quite capable of—”
“Go. On.”
The chit apparently had sense enough to pick her battles. She began her climb. Any other time, every other time, he climbed these stairs, he was able to focus only on that pain… until Miss Francesca Cornworthy sashayed her generous hips back and forth. That lush waist and womanly form were temptation all wrapped up in black muslin.
“I really cannot thank you enough,” she said in her perky tones.
Had the chit followed his lustful musings, she’d have shoved past him and taken her chances with the snow.
“I don’t want your thanks,” he muttered as he followed along behind, the destroyed tendons of his leg making it even more of a chore than walking had become.
“Because, given our dubious start, you very well were within your rights to send me away.”
“Remind me again and mayhap I will this time, Miss Cornworthy.”
She laughed softly… as if he teased. As if he were capable of teasing anymore. Or laughter.
They reached the landing, and she held a hand out. “You really should call me Francesca, given that we are going to be living together.”
He ignored her palm. “We are not living together.”
Francesca—Miss Cornworthy—kept her long, white fingers stretched out, determinedly. “Well, technically, we are. Even if just for a short while. And since we are going to be keeping close quarters, then you really should call me Francesca, and I should call you…?” She gave a little, encouraging nod, as if she were some patient governess trying to ring an answer from her student.
Mayhap that was what the loquacious creature was, then, for he found himself capitulating. “Lathan. My name is Lathan Holman.”
His name had been splashed over all society’s papers. A source of gossip for the respectable and not.
“Lathan,” she murmured, not as if repeating it so she’d recall it, but rather, as if tasting it in those dulcet tones.
It was just his name. One he hated for the peculiarity of it. Except, when this woman spoke those syllables, there was a lyrical beauty to them. Shoving back the pathetic thoughts, he stomped over to the last door in the hall. “Your room is here,” he said. All perfunctory business, he pushed the door open.
The woman stepped past him without hesitation and with a carelessness that provided the last bit of confirmation he needed: She was not employed by the Home Office. Even those of the lowest level knew never to barrel into a room until one had verified there was no threat.
She did a sweep of the small quarters—the narrow mattress, the ancient bedding, the faded brocade curtains.
“I trust it meets with your…” He curled his upper lip in a sneer, the expression all too familiar and far more comfortable than any other. “Expectations.”
The quarters would have horrified any respectable member of Polite Society, his mother not excluded. The countess had inherited the property after her father’s passing. She’d paid one visit before abandoning it altogether. And so, Lathan had been the beneficiary of that arrogance, ensuring himself no one would ever dare come here… and certainly not his parents.
Francesca shifted her gaze away from the threadbare contents of the room and over to Lathan. A smile filled her full cheeks. “This shall do quite nicely,” she said as she pulled at the tips of her gloves. “Until tomorrow, Lathan.”
Until tomorrow.
When the garrulous minx would leave, and he would be free to his own company once more.
Without so much as a parting word, Lathan limped off and shut the door hard behind him.
Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.
Chapter 5
Something was not quite right.
Nay, rather, something was…
The fire had gone out. Why had the maid let the fire go out? Papa always preferred the house warm. The servants knew as much. Of course, Francesca was the one who’d advised them and guided them for years, her father having long left those and so many other responsibilities and undertakings to Francesca.
So why had they forgotten to stoke the fires this time?
Through the weight of exhaustion, Francesca struggled to open heavy eyes to an inky black darkness.
She blinked several times, bringing the room into focus.
The unfamiliar room.
Confusion settled around her mind, rooting through the haze cast by sleep.
What in blazes…?
Then it all came back to her: Papa was dead and gone. Most of the servants were gone. And a new future awaited Francesca.
A future that included a very proper, very respectable husband, the Marquess of St. James.
And the carriage ride that was taking her to meet her someday husband had gone amiss and seen her stranded with… another man. Suddenly, all trace of exhaustion lifted.
That other man was snarling and scarred and rude and decidedly nothing like the manner of man her father would have wished for her to cross paths with, let alone share a roof with.
Shivering, she huddled under the blankets and lay there for a long while, staring overhead at the cracked plaster. Then, slowly, she reached under the pillow and pulled out the letters, beloved and hated at the same time, from her father. Francesca unfolded the heavily creased pages. She smoothed her palm over the thick vellum. The black of night made it nigh impossible to make out any of the words, but no light was necessary. She well knew what was written… and what was asked of her.
A sad smile toyed with her lips. These letters were her last link to her father, and it was one where he called to her from the grave and urged her to look at her life and do more and be more… and marry.
A faint squeak filled the quiet. Francesca returned her note to the underside of her pillow, and sitting up, she drew her knees close to her chest, folded her arms about them, and held tight.
Not allowing herself so much as to blink, move, or breathe, she stared intently at the door.
She was imagining things.
She was trapped in an unfamiliar home with a strange man and a storm that raged outside.
Why, with the howling of the winter wind, it was impossible that she’d hear anything, let alone a—
Squeeeeak.
She jumped.
Francesca’s heart raced. Nay, she’d not im
agined it after all.
That high-pitched squeal came and went.
She made herself release the death grip she had on the covers. “You are being silly,” she mouthed into her empty, borrowed rooms. “Imagining monsters where there are…” None.
Only, Francesca couldn’t make herself form that single-syllable word. Because she couldn’t be so very certain that there weren’t monsters lurking close. Men who wielded knives, and knocked down ladies, and threatened to send them out into the snow.
Except, monsters also didn’t relieve a woman of her heavy bag and carry it for her. Even with a limp that he struggled so very desperately to conceal.
She lay back down and burrowed into the lumpy, hay-stuffed mattress.
How did a man come by such a limp? Had he been born with it?
And how did a man come to be… here? Alone in the middle of the empty English countryside?
Squeeeeak.
Abandoning all attempts at sleep, Francesca sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The moment her chilled feet touched the stone-cold floor, a loose plank again groaned its protest.
She froze and held her breath, more than half-expecting Mr. Lathan Holman would storm her room for daring to move about. When he didn’t come crashing through the door, Francesca resumed her walk over to her valise.
Wiping the sleep and exhaustion from her eyes as she went, she fished a dress out of her valise. Her fingers collided with soft satin, and she stared down at the deep blue sapphire, so dark it was almost black, and yet… not, and not the mourning garments she’d been donning.
It was the dress she’d wear when she was introduced to the man her father had handpicked for her.
Stuffing it back inside her bag, she reached for the serviceable black muslin. Pulling the article on over the undergarments that had been serving as her makeshift sleepwear, Francesca padded across the room.
She eyed the rusty handle of the door for a long moment. All the while, she debated the wisdom in leaving, particularly given his explicit instructions that she not venture out.
Of course, the man should have sense enough to know that telling a person not to venture out only invited them to do just that… And caused one to wonder even more about the secrets kept.
The Spinster Who Saved a Scoundrel (The Brethren Book 5) Page 5
