One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,7

Porter’s, he had intended to make a simple exchange of books. Certainly he hadn’t expected to need to leave his calling card.

Would the simple etching of a magpie pique her curiosity about him?

If so, then he’d have to find a way to assuage it.

More likely, though, she wouldn’t spare him another thought. Would she even remember to return the book, as she’d promised? Worse, would she take up the suggestion of the pompous ass who’d met him at the door and send it back to the bookshop in the careless hands of a servant? He’d need to set a watch on Porter’s if that might be the case.

“Damn it,” he muttered—or perhaps he hadn’t muttered, given the shocked expression on the face of the elderly woman who drew abreast of him on Curzon Street at precisely that moment.

He lifted a finger to the brim of his hat. “Apologies, ma’am.”

Count yourself lucky it wasn’t worse.

Past St. James’s, on a street lined with establishments that catered to gentlemen—clubs, discreet pleasure houses, even a gaming hell or two—Langley wheeled into a glass-fronted shop. The bell jingled merrily, unperturbed by the force with which he’d opened the door. The high walls were lined with drawers and shelves of jars, all filled with varieties of snuff and tobacco, their perfume spicing the air.

“Right with you, sir,” called the proprietor, Mr. Millrose, a portly Black man with close-cropped silvery hair. He was perched on a ladder, leaning precariously toward a jar that was still almost out of his reach. The customer at the counter did not turn his head.

With one deft flick of his hand, Millrose swept the jar from the shelf into his arm and clattered back down the ladder, chatting amiably as he measured out and wrapped the other man’s purchase.

When the door had closed behind the customer, but before the bell dangling above it had ceased its dance, Millrose shifted his attention to Langley. “Well, sir?”

Langley spread his hands on the counter. “I’ll need a paper of the Kingston blend.”

Millrose’s gaze flickered from Langley’s empty hands to his face, betraying no hint of recognition or surprise. “Right away, sir.”

As Millrose turned toward the shelves behind him, Langley took a quick glance around the shop before ducking under an opening in the counter, sliding behind the ladder, and slipping through the door at the back of the shop.

A dozen years ago or more, when the war with France had been in its infancy, General Scott had ordered the purchase of the tobacconist’s shop, to be used as a front for the intelligence officers whose work would be endangered if they were regularly seen coming and going from Whitehall. Hidden away on a side street, tucked between some of the wealthiest and seediest parts of London, the shop still sold tobacco, just as the shingle outside proclaimed. The number of men who passed through its door was therefore perfectly unremarkable.

But below, in place of what must once have been the kitchen and servants’ quarters, now lay a warren of offices and spartan bedchambers, connected through a series of low-ceilinged passageways to what had been the kitchens and cellars of other establishments up and down the street. No one on the block seemed to know that beneath their floors, a hand-picked collection of secret agents and codebreakers worked day and night on behalf of the Crown.

No one, that was, but Mr. Millrose—Colonel Millrose, more correctly—who served as both General Scott’s aide and a purveyor of fine tobacco products. Langley had heard the man complain more than once, and only half-jokingly, that learning to recognize the different varieties of tobacco by sight and smell in order to appease the suspicions of the most particular customer had been far more difficult than learning how to break a Vigenère cipher.

Despite his impassive expression, Millrose must have been disappointed to see Langley return empty-handed. In the wrong hands—and more especially in the right ones—a codebook was a far more deadly weapon than any cannon. Hopkins had risked his life to steal this particular one.

Langley, tasked only with the simple act of retrieving it from some confused widow who’d been handed the thing while out for a shopping spree, had let everyone down. Again.

At the bottom of a narrow flight of stairs, a series of doors branched off a dimly lit corridor. Langley opened the second door on the right. He should have gone straight into the workroom and confessed his failings to the codebreakers hunched over the tables there, waiting