Page 10 of One Thing Leads to a Lover

But it would not be the truth. She had wanted some excuse to prolong the little adventure of the book—and what a very little adventure it was! The gentleman would laugh to know the leaps of her wild imagination, and all over a cookery book that, according to Mrs. Hepplewythe, wasn’t even any good.

Absently, she laid the pen in the tray and picked up the card, running the pad of her thumb over the printing and around the edges of the engraved bird, flicking meditatively at one corner of the stiff paper with her fingernail. Hard to believe the stranger had given it to her just that afternoon.

But as only a few hours had passed since his visit…surely the note could wait until morning?

She sent a furtive glance around the room, as if she expected to find someone spying from the folds of the drapery or the embossed scrolls on the wallpaper, laughing at her reluctance to be done with the matter of the mysterious book.

Then, with a private smile, she slipped the stranger’s card back into her bodice.

Chapter 3

Colonel Millrose had sent other agents to keep watch at the bookshop, in case the volume was returned. Hopkins’s whereabouts were still unknown. Langley was supposed to be catching a decent night’s sleep, for once.

But even in the darkness, he could not shut out the memory of the despair, the anger, the distrust on the faces of his fellow officers when he had finally forced himself to go into the workroom and confess that he had failed to retrieve the codebook.

At last he dragged himself from the bed, still fully clothed in his shopkeeper’s garb, splashed cold water on his face, and donned his spectacles. In the corridor, a pale yellow seam of light gleamed beneath the workroom door. He knew it must be very late, but work went on in the Underground at all hours.

Fortunately, at least Fanny had retired for the night, and he could slip away without being chided for the rumpled state of his coat or his unshaven jaw.

For the first quarter of an hour, he walked aimlessly, through streets he knew well from many a previous midnight ramble. The few souls he met paid him no notice, and he returned their indifference. Though he ought to have been focused on devising a plan for retrieving the codebook and saving Lieutenant Hopkins, his thoughts were as fuzzy around the edges as his vision would’ve been without his spectacles. What would become of him—who would he be—if he failed in this mission? If General Scott, who once had bravely and generously taken him in, finally decided to turn him away?

No matter how long he walked, the cool night air never lessened his searing guilt. Eventually, however, it succeeded in sweeping the cobwebs from his mind, or at least in making him regret having stepped out without greatcoat or hat. When at last he paused and took note of his surroundings, he discovered that his feet had brought him to Mayfair and Grosvenor Square. To Bartlett House.

Every window in the impressive, impassive facade was dark. No sign of wakefulness, nothing to indicate which rooms might belong to the countess. Yes, he’d intended to call on her first thing, but even dawn was still hours away. At this hour, a knock at the door would only earn him the scorn of whatever servant he managed to roust.

As he leaned against the railing and let his eyes drift over the house, he mentally ticked off the information contained in the dossier. The two boys, the young earl and his brother, likely had a room on the uppermost floor. Ten and eleven—too old for a nursemaid. But where was their governess? And what about the countess? Quarters to the front of the house, or the rear? Did her maid—Martha, wasn’t it?—sleep lightly nearby, ever attentive to her mistress’s call? Or was the whole house virtually unguarded at night, left to the lookout of some drowsy footman? The residents of Mayfair were ignorant enough to imagine themselves safe, after all.

But really, what did Lady Kingston have to fear? His wild imaginings were fueled by his own desperation to recover the codebook. Outside of General Scott and a few others, all trained and trusted intelligence officers, no one even knew she had it.

Unless, of course, Hopkins had been forced to reveal what he’d done with it…

In the distance, steady footsteps echoed off the buildings. Langley pushed himself away from the chilled metal bars. He had no desire to attract unwelcome notice from a passing watchman. He should take himself off—back to bed, if he were wise.

Instead, he walked along the south side of the square and around to the mews, softening his stride so that his boot heels did not strike the ground firmly enough to ring out. Here, no street lamps burned, and the shadows were more inviting, if the stench of slops and stables was not.

Not entirely sure what he sought, he counted off as he went, making note of the faint signs that divided the houses from one another, a change in the brickwork or the paling, the plain wooden doors that led down to kitchens or into coal cellars. Then, from the back of what must be Bartlett House…a light.

Just out of the reach of its illumination, he paused. Unlike most, Bartlett House had a small garden at the rear. He supposed that explained Lady Kingston’s apron and the state of her fingernails that afternoon.

A few rogue branches of a tall hedge poked between the slats of a taller wrought-iron fence. Between them, he glimpsed two neat flower beds, each bordered by a low stone wall and divided from one another by a narrow flagstone path that led up to a morning room, where a lamp gleamed. He saw no sign of the person who had lit it.

Cautiously, he crept to the gate in the outer fence, and when the latch lifted easily, he did not know whether to praise his good luck or curse some careless servant. If he could make his way into Bartlett House, so could others. How long before someone else discovered that the codebook lay within?

Perhaps it was that same careless servant who had failed to oil the hinge. Or perhaps the squawk of protest had been deliberately courted as a sort of alarm. In any case, he sucked in a sharp breath through his nostrils as its rusty shriek split the night, and was rewarded with the sweet, rich perfume of roses just before a thump on the back of his head sent him to his knees.

Langley Stanhope was far too hard-headed to lose consciousness. But his spectacles flew off and landed somewhere farther off, along the stone path, based on the clatter. When he tried to shake off the blow, he only succeeded in hurrying the onset of a headache. Dazed, but not so impaired that he could not move quickly, he hoisted himself into a crouch and spun, raising one arm to ward off any successive strikes as he turned to face his attacker.

The first thing he saw was the raveled end of a silk tie, the sort generally used to close a gentleman’s dressing gown. As his gaze rose, he discovered that the gentleman’s dressing gown in question had presumably once belonged to the Earl of Kingston. At present, it was wrapped around the tall, willowy form of that late gentleman’s wife.

She too had one arm raised, clutching the remaining fragment of the clay flowerpot with which she’d clubbed him. And on her face, an expression that somehow mingled both shock and horror, along with more than a dash of pride.

He wasn’t entirely sure which emotion had won out when she dropped the shard of pottery and began to babble as he got fully to his feet. “Oh. Oh, my. I am sorry! I couldn’t sleep, so I came out here. The weather was so fine today, wasn’t it?…though I suppose that wasn’t wise, so late at night. Still, I should never have done such a thing if I’d realized who…but in the shadows, it’s quite impossible to tell—”

He raised his hand again, partly to stop the flow of words, and partly to try to ease the pain shooting through the back of his skull. “Don’t apologize, Lady Kingston. It’s your garden, and I was trespassing. You have every right to protect yourself.”

Obligingly, she stopped speaking for a moment. But her nervous energy next found its outlet in reaching forward to brush the dirt and pottery fragments from his shoulders and even his hair. Her fingertips moved over him lightly, gently, the sort of touch a man could come to crave.

“And no idea who I really am,” he rasped, pushing her away with words when he could not seem to command his body. He knew better than to make himself vulnerable.