Page 3 of One Thing Leads to a Lover

“You’re coming, ain’t you, Mama?” Philip interjected. “I want you to watch me whoop him again.”

“Don’t say ain’t, Philip,” his grandmother corrected.

“Or whoop,” added Amanda. “And don’t worry, Jamie.” She turned back toward her elder son even as she gathered the wrapping paper, the twine, and the book, along with the invitations on which it had been resting, and stuffed the lot into the escritoire’s shallow center drawer. “I’m not troubled by anything. And neither should you be.”

“I’d wait,” Philip insisted, “until you’ve seen him fence. What’s to become of him when he’s old enough to be called out?”

“Gracious, Philip.” Amanda avoided her mother’s eye as she swallowed a laugh. “Why ever do you imagine anyone would challenge your brother to a duel?”

Philip considered for a moment before replying airily, “Oh, the usual things, I s’pose. Card sharping or trouble with a petticoat or—”

“That’s quite enough from you, young man,” their grandmama said, steering Philip from the room. With a shrug, Jamie followed. From the threshold, Amanda glanced back toward her desk. The matter of the book would have to wait until later.

Much later.

The next hour was given over to a display of fencing in the drawing room, with Philip crowing over every hit. Contrary to his brother’s taunts, Jamie was not altogether hopeless, though Mr. Jacobs appeared more interested in striking poses than in teaching the boys much of anything. Amanda weighed whether to mention it to Lord Dulsworthy. Luncheon followed: “You never eat the creamed turnips, dear,” Mama observed with exaggerated solicitousness. “I can’t understand why, when I ask Mrs. Trout to prepare them especially for you.” Afterward the boys declared it the ideal time to observe the bees at work in the spring flowers, though by three o’clock it would not have been an exaggeration to call the sunshine hot.

The slightest headache had begun to form behind her eyes even before they returned to the house to find George, Lord Dulsworthy, in the entry hall arguing with a stranger.

Well, no. Arguing implied a degree of passion that George would have found shockingly inappropriate under any circumstance. Murmuring reprovingly, then, his remarks directed mostly to Lewis rather than to the stranger, who stood apart from the fray.

After the brightness of the garden, the house was dim, and she had to blink away the spots before her eyes in order to bring the gentleman—tall, lean, brown-haired—into focus.

Or perhaps not a gentleman?

“—letting a tradesman in through the front door?” Lord Dulsworthy was scolding the footman.

If the cut and fashion of the stranger’s clothes had been insufficient proof of his lowly status, he carried a small, paper-wrapped package.

And yet there was something in his bearing that made her wonder whether George had been quite accurate in his assessment of the man.

“Why, one might even wish to mention the matter to Matthews,” George continued, and for the briefest of moments, Amanda wondered whether he would truly be so bold as to reprimand her servants. Doubtless if he did not, her mother would.

“My lord.” With one hand, Amanda waved the boys into the library as she stepped closer, not quite into the circle of their conversation. George, Lewis, and the stranger all turned to look at her, and she sent a glance over her shoulder to see that Jamie and Philip had obeyed her silent command. The pair of them were just disappearing through the library door, though Philip moved jerkily, as if Jamie might be dragging him by the other arm.

Although she had addressed George, the stranger spoke first. “Lady Kingston?” He hadn’t quite the deferential manners of a tradesman, either. When she nodded, he bowed, then held out the item he carried. “I believe this is the volume you purchased at Porter’s bookshop this morning? As you may already have discovered, you were given an item intended for someone else.”

“I had discovered it, yes.” Readily, she took the book from him, though both George and Lewis had reached for it too. “Thank you.”

The answering dip of his head was not the gesture of a shop clerk. Or an errand boy.

No, for a man of thirty-five or so, with broad shoulders and features that bore the stamp of experience with the world, the term boy was entirely inappropriate.

Nevertheless, Lord Dulsworthy seemed eager to dismiss him as such. “Well, well. You’ve got what you came for, what? On your way, then.” With his still-raised hand, he motioned for Lewis to open the door.

The stranger made no move to leave. In fact, he gave no indication of having heard George at all. “If it’s quite convenient,” he said to her, “I’ll take the other book now.”

“Lewis can retrieve it,” Lord Dulsworthy said, a command the footman thankfully did not immediately heed.

When she darted a glance up the staircase, she noted that the stranger’s dark eyes followed the movement. She thought of the package tucked away in her escritoire, nowhere she wished a servant to pry. “I suppose I could go myse—”

Lord Dulsworthy broke in again. “Lady Kingston is too well-mannered to tell you that your request is quite inconvenient at present. She has a prior engagement to go driving. With me. As you can see, she’s just on the point of going out.”

Now the stranger shifted his gaze, and his study of her, though brisk, was more than a little unsettling. She was still wearing a coarse holland apron over her morning gown. At her side, she dangled a straw hat by its ribbons—a concession to her mother’s insistence that the sun would brown her dreadfully. Its broad brim was not always compatible with her close observation of the boys’ lessons, however, and she had taken it off and on so many times over the course of the afternoon, her hair must be a tumbled mess. Indeed, she could feel a few straggling curls clinging to her damp neck.

No one, not even a tradesman, would mistake her for a lady ready to spend an hour or two on display among the fashionable set in Hyde Park. He must suspect that George was rudely hurrying him away.

Her cheeks, still flushed with warmth from the time spent in the garden, grew warmer still. But the stranger only gave a slight smile and a nod of acknowledgment. “Forgive me. Will you be so kind as to tell me when I may call for it?”