One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,101

hesitant still, “he hinted that he’s written to her to say as much.”

When Langley tried to picture Amanda’s face at the receipt of such a letter, his limbs felt heavy. He must have lost even more blood that he’d realized.

“And then, of course, there’s the matter of what you told her in the dressmaker’s shop.”

“What I told her?” Langley strained to remember, but the closing events of the day had gone gray around the edges.

“You said that the two of you made a good team.”

“I did?”

“Aye,” Millrose said, tapping the stack of folded notes on the corner of Langley’s tray before jumping to his feet, as nervous as Langley had ever seen him. “This may be the most dangerous assignment I’ll ever send you on, Stanhope. But then, you’re one of the bravest men I’ve ever known. Brave enough to tell her how you feel.”

Langley’s heart pounded, making his injured arm throb. “Is that an order, sir?”

“If it’ll help things along, yes.”

Those words required more than the usual amount of time to penetrate Langley’s thoughts, crowded as they were with images of Amanda writing and sending four notes in less than a day. Surely they suggested a deeper degree of concern than one might expect her to lavish on a mere passing amusement?

“Well, then, don’t just stand there, man,” he shouted when he finally understood what Millrose had said. “Where is she?”

“Bartlett House.” Obligingly, Billy lifted the tray pinning him to the bed. “The whole family’s there.”

Less than a mile away.

Langley swung his legs over the side, then sagged against the wall as the little room spun. “Christ.” That single mile might as well be a hundred.

“Take it easy, Magpie.” Millrose extended an arm, and Langley gratefully accepted his assistance as he struggled to stand on alarmingly weak legs. “This isn’t the time for any, er, strenuous declarations.” A flicker of amusement frayed the edges of the man’s frown of concern. “But if you are determined to go down on one knee, at least we can be sure Lady Kingston possesses both the strength and resourcefulness to get you back on your feet.”

* * * *

“Happy birthday, Jamie.” As she spoke, Amanda reached out a hand to brush the hair from his brow, then stopped herself. First, because the shadow falling across his face disguised the purple smudge of a bruise beneath his eye, the visible remnants of the terrible hours he and his brother had spent in the company of Jacobs and his associates. And second because her first born was a young man now, not a child, and could decide how to style his own hair.

With a flash of a grin, he tossed his head, momentarily sending the hair back where it belonged. “Thank you, Mama. You didn’t have to go to the trouble of a party.”

Her answering smile was considerably weaker. Had she sheltered her sons so thoroughly that they could use the word party to speak of a few extra flowers in the morning room, and a slice of cake with their grandmother?

“It seems to me we have a great deal to celebrate,” she said.

But when she tried to force her smile wider, it wobbled. Yesterday’s horrors were still too fresh for her to be able to recall them without thinking of how much worse things could have been. They might have found the dressmaker’s shop empty. Jacobs, in his desperation, could have harmed her boys to get what he wanted. The blood stains on the tattered dress presently tucked away upstairs might be the last bit of Langley she would ever see again.

The rest were only horrors of the imagination. But the part about losing Langley might yet prove to be true. Despite Colonel Millrose’s reassurances about his injuries and the strange letter from General Scott that had arrived that morning, it was too easy to think the Magpie might fly away and be gone from her forever.

“Oh, bother,” she said, surreptitiously dashing tears from corners of her eyes. “I forgot your present upstairs.” On her bedside table, still wrapped in brown shop paper, lay the thin geometry book. “I’ll just—I’d best go fetch it, hadn’t I?”

“Let me,” her mother offered.

Amanda shook her head. No matter how foolish, she wanted one last, private chance to clutch that parcel, the one that had brought Langley into her life, close to her heart.

But before she could frame her refusal into words, her mother laid a hand on her shoulder and nodded toward the garden. “Don’t you think