Page 19 of One Thing Leads to a Lover

Instead, she gathered her skirts in her hands and hurried upstairs.

In the drawing room, the card players were too much occupied to notice her passing the double doorway. In the dining room beyond, servants bustled to prepare for the late supper that was to be served. She overheard George’s butler, Mr. Evans, speaking sharply to someone about the parmesan ice cream. Glancing quickly around to ensure she wasn’t spotted, Amanda slipped into the shadowy corridor past the dining room, where the sconces had not been lit, signaling that the rooms there were not open to guests.

A dozen silent steps took her to the door of George’s study.

She surprised herself with the firmness of the hand she stretched out to open it, though what lay beyond that door was a familiar battleground, the site of innumerable discussions about the boys and their future. No trembling—except, perhaps, with excitement. If the book was inside, she would retrieve it and smuggle it to Magpie below… Oh.

How did she intend to sneak out of the house in the middle of the ball carrying a French cookbook?

The less-revealing blue gown might have been better suited to the evening’s activities after all.

No matter. She could…why, she could stash the book somewhere else in the house and return for it at the end of the evening.

And with that plan, she opened the door and plunged herself into the study’s total darkness.

* * * *

By ten o’clock, the street was quiet, and the footman inside the front door had departed for other duties, ordering Langley and the freckle-faced lad to give admittance to any late-arriving guests. Langley knew better than to be surprised that Dulsworthy’s guests were not the sort to start their evening closer to midnight. In fact, he supposed it would not be long before the stodgiest ballgoers would be calling for their carriages to take them home. If he was to get inside and have a look about, he needed to act now.

“Damn this rain,” said his partner, shifting uncomfortably. “Makes a chap need to take a piss, eh?”

“There’s bushes t’ the side,” Langley offered with a jerk of his chin. “Nobody’ll notice if you give ’em a little extra water.”

The lad needed no further encouragement. With a nod of thanks, he hurried down the steps and disappeared around the corner of the house and into the shrubbery.

Likely before the other man had unbuttoned his fall, Langley had shed his wig and livery coat, stuffed them behind a stone urn, and entered the house wearing the tight-fitting attire of a gentleman, running a hand through his hair to give it a rakish air, transformed from a lowly footman into a late-arriving guest.

With no one the wiser, he stepped easily into a stream of dancers leaving the ballroom for the supper room. In the crowd and without the aid of his spectacles, he held out little hope of finding Lady Kingston—although the color of the dress she wore might prove helpful in that regard.

When he saw no telltale flash of red, he once more wondered whether to curse his luck, or praise it. Had she already managed to slip away from Dulsworthy to go in search of the book?

He ascended the stairs, mingling so thoroughly with those around him that no one seemed to notice he had not been there before. A lady who clearly had had too many glasses of something stronger than lemonade reminded him that he still owed her a set. “After supper,” he promised in a drawling voice that was no more his than the one he’d used with Evans and his fellow footman, then fobbed her off on some hapless chap just leaving the card room.

He couldn’t be certain he was heading in the right direction, but he’d seen no library on the ground floor, and Dulsworthy might just as well have laid the book aside in his dressing room as anywhere else. An unlit corridor and the suggestion of private rooms beckoned ahead, and while a dozen people bustled past him, calling out to an acquaintance or debating whether they smelled goose or duck, he disappeared into its shadows.

The first door he opened led into a room so dark he had to pause just past the threshold to gather his bearings. The mingled scents of leather, paper, and beeswax hinted at a study, a library, an office. The row of large rectangles scarcely visible along the far wall must be windows, though they shed no light, only suggested something less than utter blackness. He waited for his eyes to adjust, though without a candle it would be impossible to search for anything here.

Beneath the rumbling noises on the staircase, the clatter and conversation from the nearby diners, all in this room lay utterly still. Yet awareness prickled along his spine and sent him onto the balls of his feet.

He was not alone.

After a moment, he began to make out the shapes of furniture, and recognized the reflection of the windows in a mirror above the mantle. He would likely find a tinderbox there, but the pathway to that promise of light was still too indistinct, doubtless cluttered with chairs and small tables his eyes had yet to identify. He waited in silence.

“Caw-caw-caw.”

The sound was low, uncertain. He tried to tell himself it had come from outside the room.

But after a moment, he heard it again. Closer. Louder.

“Caw-caw-caw.”

The call was vaguely reminiscent of a crow’s. Or rather, someone trying to imitate a crow. But why—? And who—?

Ah. Of course.

“Lady Kingston?” he whispered into the dark.

“Oh, thank goodness.” The reply came on a rush of relief as a figure hurried toward him from somewhere near the fireplace. “I thought it might be you, but at first I couldn’t work out a way to be sure without revealing myself. And you just stood there for so long. I realize it’s terribly dark in here—the natural effect of a rainy night, I suppose, and we’re quite at the back of the house—but I began to fear—”