Never Gamble Your Heart (The Secret Society of Governess Spies #2)

Chapter 14

L ater that day, while Cecelia slept, Frankie paced her chamber and strategized about how to break into Jasper’s study without getting caught. She only hoped she could do it sooner rather than later, especially now that his guard was up. If he brought up the reason for her attempted lock-picking again, she would simply tell him she was too curious for her own good, and hope he didn’t call her bluff.

Oh, who was she jesting? Of course he would call her bluff. Which meant her only recourse was to stay as far away from him as possible. If he did not run into her, he could not ask her about his study or mention the other thing they’d done last night.

Unfortunately, each scheme Frankie thought of to gain entrance to Jasper’s study was more outrageous than the last, and by the time she’d planned to swing from a rope knotted around the chimney and break in through the study window, she realized she’d officially lost it. She wasn’t making any progress. In fact, she was going backward at that point.

That afternoon she received a package wrapped in brown paper from Perdita’s. She thanked the delivery boy and raced into the sun-bleached courtyard to rip it open. With the August heat beating on the back of her neck and the scent of honeysuckle and the stench of the Thames in her nose, she read the note lying on top of the ledger inside.

Frankie,

Over the next several days there will be a number of discreet deliveries to your residence. The packages will contain the financials of the dozen grooms we have identified as Dowry Thieves. Enclosed in this package is the ledger of Lord Larchminth, the first groom. I have been through the twelve ledgers with a fine-tooth comb but I have found no commonality beyond the men’s memberships to Rockford’s. It is time I pass the information to the expert. I can give you a week, and then they will need to be returned to their respective owners before they are noticed missing.

I will remind you that this is sensitive information and the ledgers must be kept in a private location.

—The Dove

Frankie nearly wept with relief to have a task that might help the Dove discover who was behind the Dowry Thieves. Her failure to acquire Jasper’s ledgers thus far was making her feel like a useless fool.

Her mind already on the task ahead, Frankie returned to her chamber, for once relieved that Cecelia was unavailable. She knew some of the bridegrooms had children from previous marriages, and therefore had governesses in their homes, but others did not. She did not even want to know how the Dove had come by their financials.

Twelve hours and three melted candles later, Frankie stared into the unlit fireplace as the clock over the mantel struck 3:00 a.m. Three more packages containing six more ledgers had been delivered that evening. Ledgers were splayed across every surface, her fingers were smudged with ink, and there were hastily scribbled notes on scraps of paper scattered about the room. There was a pattern hidden within the financials. She did not have the full scope of it yet, but she knew it was there; it danced just out of reach in her mind. Soon she would have the link that tied the men together—a link that did not involve Jasper Jones.

The next morning Frankie walked into the schoolroom with shadows under her eyes. Gray light slanted through the windows, weak and watery. Cecelia was pacing in front of the bookshelf, hands interlaced behind her back, her brows drawn together. She was dressed in another hastily altered gown: this one a sedate, fudge brown that was one shade away from ugly.

When Cecelia caught sight of her she leapt forward, her cheeks rosy with excitement. “My soirée was a splendid success, Miss Turner! While I slept yesterday Uncle Jasper received a mountain of invitations and thank-you notes and calling cards. I knew he was occupied, so I took it upon myself as lady of the house to arrange a tea with Lady Evelyn Barker this afternoon.”

Frankie blinked as she emerged from an alternate reality of numbers and selected a text from the shelf behind Cecelia. “You think to ask your uncle to join you and then discreetly disappear?”

Cecelia gasped. “I would never! That could lead to a compromising situation, since a lady must never be left alone with a bachelor. Unfortunately, Aunt Margaret has been invited to a rousing game of whist with Mrs. Hollendale at that time and will not be available to chaperone.” Her eyes twinkled.

Cecelia’s scheme did not sit right with Frankie, even if Lady Evelyn Barker was a far more appropriate match for Jasper than a governess in perpetual disarray. Evelyn was beautiful, well connected, and highly esteemed in the ton . She would be a great asset to Jasper’s ambitions, while someone like Frankie would only be a liability.

And why was she even comparing herself to Lady Evelyn? Frankie had no interest in Jasper, nor he in her, even if she could not explain why a slow burn had started at her lips and traveled to her toes when he’d kissed her.

Evelyn could give her future husband all the things a man desired out of marriage: an orderly home, an heir, and entrée into society. Frankie had listened to her mother’s litany of desirable qualities in a wife enough times to know she possessed none of them.

It was why, at four and twenty, she was an on-the-shelf spinster. When she was younger, bolstered by her sister’s adoration and her father’s amused tolerance, she had still believed she would fall in love. Had believed that, despite her mother’s claims to the contrary, there was someone out there who would want a wife with intelligence and curiosity.

Then, during her first Season “out,” her mother had dragged her to a small musicale put on by a third cousin. It was there that Frankie had met Mr. Broadclave, the handsomest man her sixteen-year-old eyes had ever set upon. He was two years older than her, with thick blond hair and a pretty frock coat that had made her own clothing seem outdated and worn.

She’d been bursting at the seams for an introduction, and when they finally met toward the end of the musicale, she’d known straight away she was in love.

“Do you sew?” Mr. Broadclave asked. He smiled down at her, and Frankie’s heart beat wildly at the expression in his eyes.

“No,” she said proudly. “I do not sew, paint, or play the piano.”

Now she really had his attention. Mr. Broadclave lifted both brows. “What are you good for then?”

“I am intelligent.”

He scoffed. “For a woman, perhaps.”

“No, not just for a woman. I wager I am smarter than you.”

He smiled indulgently. “Let us test that. Pick a subject.” When she chose arithmetic, his smile widened.

There was something ugly about the smile, and it gave Frankie pause. Her mother had told her time and again that men could not tolerate a woman with intelligence, and she wondered briefly if she were making a mistake, but then Mr. Broadclave asked her to calculate a ridiculously easy equation and she could not help answering within seconds. He frowned and asked another. When she answered that one, too, enjoying the game, she asked him a question.

After a few moments of thinking, he leaned forward and said savagely, “You impudent little bitch. Your father barely has enough inheritance to clothe you in rags, and yet you come here acting as if you are worth even a fraction of the carpet on which you stand—and you are not.”

Frankie was speechless, but that didn’t stop his tirade.

“Your nasty habit of mocking men will end poorly for you, Miss Turner. You are inferior property without any skills. Your only worth lies in what is underneath your skirt, and based on your plain countenance, there is very little value even in that. It would do you well to remember your place the next time you attempt to humiliate one of your betters.”

He stomped off, and Frankie stood against the wallpaper shaking with humiliation and anger.

“What did you say to him?” her mother hissed, appearing at her side. “Mr. Broadclave will one day inherit a fortune from his merchant father. It is possible he may be able to look past your small dowry.”

Frankie was too shaken by the altercation to lie, and when she finished recounting their verbal volley, her mother’s mouth flattened into a line. “He should not have said those things to you, but he is not wrong. It is what I have been trying to tell you since you were old enough to understand. Someone like you must be more patient and sweeter than even the most dignified lady if you wish to secure a marriage match.”

“What do you mean, ‘someone like me’?”

Her mother did not mince her words. “I mean someone who is plain and poor-sighted with very little grace, far too much intelligence, and a piddling dowry. No man wants to marry a woman with a superior intellect, Francis.”

Frankie turned hurt eyes on her mother. “I shall never marry then!”

“I doubt you would have the choice anyway,” her mother replied snippily.

Frankie groaned inwardly as she banished the memory to the vault where she kept all her secret shames. She’d thought she’d learned her lesson about men years ago, but it seemed she had forgotten it when she was kissing Jasper Jones. She was a plain, undesirable spinster, and Jasper had only returned her kiss to spare her the humiliation of rejection. No man of Jasper’s wealth, reputation, and handsome visage would ever truly look twice at her. Certainly not when they could have a woman like Lady Evelyn.

Embarrassed for perhaps the hundredth time by what she’d done, Frankie vowed that from that moment forward she would act as cool as a cucumber should she run across her employer. Any and all future tingling caused by the memory of the kiss would be immediately squashed. Frankie had once heard of a method for stopping cravings: One was supposed to pinch oneself whenever one felt the craving, such as when pudding was served at dinner. The kiss was Frankie’s pudding, and from now on whenever she thought of it, she would pinch herself until the memory and even the sight of Jasper Jones made her uncomfortable.

Pleased with her plan, Frankie’s attention returned to Cecelia, who was going into lengthy detail about the types of cakes that were to be served with tea.

“I beg of you to reconsider, Cecelia. It is not right to take Mr. Jones’s choice from him. Besides, plans do not always proceed as we wish.”

Cecelia sniffed. “Typical governess, determined to kill all joy. Do not worry, Miss Turner. There is more to my plan than simply tea.”

Frankie groaned.