Page 53 of One Thing Leads to a Lover

But what could General Scott want with her? What did the old man have up his sleeve now?

Chapter 13

As the battered old coach jerked and swayed over cobblestone streets, Amanda’s fingers plucked anxiously at the long, jagged slit in the skirt of her favorite sprigged muslin.

When Langley had stepped into the morning room, where she and Mama and the boys had just been finishing luncheon, and begged leave to speak with her, she had known instantly that something had changed. Oh, he’d moved with the same confident, easy grace as always, though his greatcoat had been draped over his arm, which had struck her as odd, as he had been upstairs, not outdoors. With a few words, he’d sent the boys to the schoolroom to read and translate a passage from Cicero. Mama had declared her intention to ready herself for her morning visits and followed them out.

Once he’d bowed the three of them on their way, he’d turned to Amanda, radiating a peculiar energy that only seemed to intensify her earlier awareness of him. “Order your carriage around to the front,” he’d said. “Have the driver wait five minutes and then be off, headed west.”

Aghast at the strange request, Amanda had nonetheless managed to ask, “And who is to be the passenger inside that carriage?”

“No one. We’ll be leaving this way.”

“I beg your pardon?”

But he had already opened the glass-paned door and stepped into the garden.

“I can’t go out without a pelisse and bonnet,” she’d insisted.

“There’s no time to waste. Can’t you make do with—with that?” He’d gestured toward the rather worse-for-wear broad-brimmed straw hat she kept hanging on a hook near the door for the time she spent in the garden with her sons.

A laugh had burst from her. “Not unless you can promise me I won’t be seen.”

“Not by anyone who gives a damn about ladies’ fashions. Come.”

Just as it had the night before, her body had responded to his command. As if under a spell, she had let the ribbons of the straw hat trail through her fingertips, abandoned, and followed him into the garden, to the fence, just as a hackney coach rumbled into the alleyway.

“The gate latch is still broken,” she had reminded him.

“Then,” he’d said, lacing his fingers together in the form of a stirrup and bending to hold them at about the level of his knees, “we’ll have to go over.”

“You can’t be serious,” she’d gasped.

But he had been. Hence the tear in her skirt. And a scrape on one ungloved palm. And the lingering awareness of where his strong hands had been—cupping her bottom, the underside of one breast—as he’d helped her awkwardly scale the wrought-iron palings, hoist her legs over the top, then perch there like the world’s worst burglar, while he ascended seemingly without effort, dropped gracefully into the alleyway, and waited to catch her when she at last worked up the nerve to let go.

She plucked nervously at the ragged threads, knowing she was only making matters worse. Martha might be a miracle worker with a needle, but even she had her limits.

Langley, sprawled on the rear-facing seat, must have been watching her, for after a moment, he said in a decidedly sardonic voice, “Sorry about that. But you did tell me you were willing to take risks.”

“Yes, well.” She jerked her gaze to the window and the buildings spinning past. “I assumed I would be risking the ordinary sorts of things: Life. Limb. Reputation.” At that last, she darted a glance toward him, not quite meeting his eyes. A muscle twitched along a firmly set jaw that did not appear to have been shaved that morning. “Not three dresses in as many days.”

“Three?”

“First,” she said, ticking off the list on her fingertips, “Lord Penhurst trod on the hem of my gown at Lord Dulsworthy’s ball. Which wasn’t all bad, I suppose, as it gave me an excuse to leave the dancing and sneak off to the study, where we—well, you remember, I’m sure. Then last night—” Heat rushed into her face, first at the memory of Martha’s raised eyebrows as she’d wordlessly examined the strained seams in the bodice of her mistress’s dinner dress, and then at the remembered feel of Langley’s hand against her bare breast.

“And now this…” With a flick of her wrist, Amanda gestured helplessly at her skirts, suddenly wondering where the injury to the sprigged muslin might be leading. “That’s three.”

Something like a smile softened the angle of Langley’s jaw. “I cannot fault your arithmetic, Lady Kingston.”

“What’s going on, Major Stanhope?” she demanded, and with that question came a rush of others, all of the questions she should have asked while standing in the morning room of Bartlett House. “Why all this subterfuge—ordering the carriage out front, while we sneak out the back? Where are you taking me?”

He straightened his spine against the hackney’s worn squabs, then leaned forward, elbows on knees. She could not escape his gaze now. “Your carriage was a red herring. In case anyone might be keeping an unusually close eye on your comings and goings, I wanted to put them off the scent. A casual observer, or even a dedicated one, will have watched that highly polished, crested coach with a liveried driver headed one way and paid no attention at all to the ancient hackney cab that emerged from the mews at approximately the same time, going the opposite direction.”

“You—you think s-someone is watching me? Following me?”

“Several someones have been watching you for days. Whether anyone will attempt to follow you remains to be seen.”

“But why? I haven’t got—oh.”