Page 47 of One Thing Leads to a Lover

“In answer to your question, Master Philip,” he said, crossing the room and drawing back the remaining chair from the table, “my spectacles sometimes interfere with close work. I laid them aside while I was working last night, and I must’ve forgotten to pick them up. I did, however, find several items of interest in the library. So many, in fact, that I decided it would be more convenient for us to go down to them later this morning.”

The young earl politely poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him. “The fencing master comes this morning, sir. At half past ten.”

“Shall you come down and watch, sir?” Philip asked, with more enthusiasm than he had previously shown for anything. “In the drawing room. Jamie and I always have a little touch at the end, and sometimes Mama and Grandmama look on.”

Langley glanced toward the clock. Nine, now. He very much doubted that an hour and a half would be enough time to prepare himself to face Amanda with anything like composure. A year and a half might prove insufficient.

Yet he was undeniably impatient to see her again. And to see how she looked at him.

“Yes, of course,” he told Philip as he reached for a piece of toast and smeared it liberally with sweet, sticky jam. “I should be most interested to observe.”

A few minutes shy of the appointed hour, he dismissed the boys to their fencing lesson with promises to join them in the drawing room shortly. As soon as they were gone, his thoughts threatened to return to last night and Amanda. He dragged them instead to the codebook. The fact that he had heard nothing from Millrose meant that it had not been found.

As he made his way downstairs, he pondered his next move. Could he use his newly created role as the boys’ tutor as an excuse to call on Dulsworthy and have another look around? Could he manage to work his way into the man’s confidence?

Or would Dulsworthy take one look at him and know what he and Amanda had done?

Langley found the library empty, as he had hoped he would, and the books he had collected still stacked on one side of the desk—not returned to their shelves, he was glad to discover, for a few of them actually might be of use in the boys’ lessons.

On the top of the books sat his spectacles, neatly folded and gleaming—rather accusatorily, to his mind—in a shaft of morning light. Wondering who had laid them there, he plucked them up and put them on to take a better look around. To his relief, he saw no further evidence of what had taken place in the room the night before. The dirty tumbler had been whisked away. The door stood, blank and impassive.

The door…

He shook his head briskly. If he let himself stay a moment longer here, let himself dwell on pleasant memories, he’d soon be harder than that mahogany desk. Immediately discarding his earlier plan of bringing the boys down to the library for their lessons, he gathered up the books in one arm and directed his steps to the drawing room.

Only the two boys and the fencing master were within. Stifling his disappointment, Langley crossed the threshold and made his way to a chair on the far wall, depositing the armload of books on the sturdiest-looking table within reach. Although he’d not previously seen the drawing room, it was easy to guess it did not typically look thus, with its expensive furnishings pushed to the edges and packed tightly together. The carpet too had been rolled up and laid to one side.

He had a moment’s flash of pity for the servants who were tasked with taking the room apart and putting it back together, time after time, all for the amusement of two young boys. Though to be fair, Lady Kingston’s servants appeared to be generally well-treated. He’d also been glad to see signs of their sympathy to the countess. Disgruntled household staff could be a point of easy entry for someone with ill intent.

“Ah, sir, there you are,” cried Philip, coming toward him, with the other two trailing in his wake.

“You must be the new tutor. A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” the fencing master said with a willowy bow. “I am Jacobs.”

Langley, always attuned to patterns of speech, caught a slight French accent, despite the English name. The discovery didn’t surprise him—not exactly. In London, one might always find men from every part of the globe, and since the revolution, Britain had been playing host to many displaced people from the nation across the Channel.

The war had not diminished English passion for all things French, so much so that certain tradesmen had been known to assume a French name or mimic a French accent to increase their business. The elegant art of fencing would surely not be immune to the whims of fashion. So, was Jacobs in fact English, and merely playing at being French to attract more customers?

Or was he a Frenchman trying to hide the fact?

Langley’s skills of perception had been honed from childhood, in the dank, crooked East End streets he’d called home. He had not needed years of army training to teach him to regard every person he met with suspicion. Suspicion came naturally to him.

“Stanhope,” he said with a bow, forcing himself to unbend, despite the distrust that prickled along his spine. Sometimes appearances were not deceiving. Jacobs was likely just some poor chap who earned his coin by teaching the sons of nobs to fence. Langley wasn’t here to stand in his way.

However, the fencing master’s presence was a useful reminder that Bartlett House was porous, hardly an impenetrable fortress, despite the men standing guard outside. Even within its walls, Langley must stay on alert and focused. Yesterday’s games, last night’s…amusements, were a distraction in which he could ill afford to indulge. Becoming Lady Kingston’s lover was not part of his mission.

And becoming something more than that was out of the question.

“I’m glad you’ve come, sir,” Philip enthused.

His elder brother sent him a sidelong glance. “Of course you are, Pip. How else is Mr. Stanhope to discover you’re a prodigy?” The label, it was easy to guess, had not come from young Kingston originally, and its application was clearly a bone of contention.

“We shall endeavor to provide you with something worth seeing, Mr. Stanhope,” Jacobs said, though the modesty of the words was undercut by the man’s rather pompous air. “Come, young sirs.”

Philip and Kingston returned to the far end of the room and stood two arms’-lengths apart, facing their audience of one, bodies straight, swords up, toes out. Then Jacobs shouted, “En garde!” The thin, flexible blades of their foils sang as the boys whipped them through the air, moving through a series of poses, pausing on each at the fencing master’s command.

Langley saw very little either to impress or dismay him. Philip, the more naturally athletic of the pair, held his sword with greater comfort and moved with greater assurance, though not necessarily demonstrating more true skill. Young Lord Kingston, on the other hand, showed no sign of realizing that his lightness could have its advantage. On the whole, it seemed to Langley that either the lessons could not have been going on very long, or the fencing master was overpaid for his efforts. Had an unsuspecting Lady Kingston been taken in by the man’s dramatic flair and subtle French air?

Eventually, Jacobs ordered the boys to face one another for a bout, “a little touch,” as Philip had promised in the schoolroom. Langley caught himself looking expectantly toward the doorway, awaiting the arrival of their mother. But the threshold remained empty. Reluctantly, he dragged his attention back to the match.