One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,36
around in Lady Kingston’s garden, but because no one else could get in this way either.
But the tone of his voice—fatigue had made it gravelly and he deliberately avoided any temptation to soften it for her—evidently took her aback. Quite literally. She straightened her shoulders, released her grip on the cold metal, and stepped away from the gate. When she spoke again, even her voice was more remote. The sort of tone one employed when speaking to a stranger.
Which she was.
“Did you enjoy the play tonight?” Despite her sudden reserve, the question was still polite. It seemed there were some habits she could not break.
“Not particularly.” Enjoyment had not been his purpose for attending. “Cymbeline cannot make up its mind to be either a tragedy or a comedy.”
She appeared to consider his assessment for a moment. “I suppose it makes a certain sense that you prefer predictable outcomes in your entertainments—they must be rare enough in your line of work.”
He almost laughed at such a ridiculously simple explanation.
And might have done, if not for the damned ring of truth.
“I confess,” she said then, “I like a happy ending too.”
But of course she did. He shook his head at himself, at the notion they had anything in common. Other than the obvious, the physical, there ought to be nothing about her that attracted him. She was talkative, cheerful, sweet—everything he wasn’t. She had no connection to him or his world.
Or hadn’t, until Hopkins had been forced to hand off the codebook to an unsuspecting passerby, and Langley had got himself mixed up in the matter.
Until he had kissed her.
“But it must be difficult to enjoy any play without your spectacles. I am sorry—”
He raised a hand to forestall another apology. “I often manage without them.”
“Oh?” She tilted her head to the side, studying him. “I suppose they don’t fit in with certain…disguises.” She spoke that word with the same inflection she’d earlier given to the word mission.
He answered her with a brusque nod. He had not intended to invite her scrutiny, and he would not let himself enjoy her gaze sweeping over his features like a delicate, searching touch.
“Forgive me for disturbing you, Lady Kingston. I should withdraw and leave you to the pleasures of your garden.”
She tossed a glance over her shoulder, leaving him momentarily bereft of her warm, dark gaze. “No, I should retire. I only come out here sometimes to—to clear my head, I suppose. Though I don’t know as it does any good,” she added with a self-deprecating laugh, turning back toward him without meeting his eye. “I am tired. I’m not used to keeping such late hours. It’s been many years since I had two evenings out in a row, you see. So many years taken up with my husband’s illness, and my mourning, and my children…”
“A quiet life is not always to be regretted,” he said, deliberately avoiding the word she had used the other night. Dull was not the same as quiet, was it?
As if he had any experience with either one.
“Besides,” he added, “I’m sure that for one tasked with raising two boys, a quiet life is rarely on offer.”
A little huff of laughter—wry, skeptical—lifted her chest. “You might be surprised.” Then her breath caught, as if a sudden pain had stabbed through her. “And it will soon be quieter still…” Those words were spoken almost entirely to herself.
At last she lifted her eyes to her face and with an obvious effort, mustered a smile tinged with sorrow. “I have just remembered that Lord Dulsworthy will be out of his house again tomorrow morning. He is to call here at ten o’clock, to discuss his intention to send Jamie—Lord Kingston—away to school.”
“His intention?” Langley echoed without meaning to.
“A young nobleman’s education is not a matter to be left in the hands of a woman, Major Stanhope,” she said, and he knew from her stiff way of speaking that the words did not belong to her. Who had told her such a thing? Her late husband? Dulsworthy?
The affair was nothing with which he need concern himself. He ought to be considering how best to use the information that Dulsworthy would be from home. He ought to be thinking of his mission.
And he was. Just not in the way anyone, including General Scott, would have anticipated when the assignment was given.
Then again, he did have two missions. And he had not earned the title of Scott’s best agent by doing only what was expected.