One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,8

both for his arrival and word of Hopkins’s fate.

Instead he threw himself onto a narrow rope cot, which all but filled the room that passed for his private quarters. He had inherited a house near Richmond, but he never visited it. Occasionally he reflected on the fact that he might have been sleeping on a feather mattress in a stately bedchamber overlooking a more scenic portion of the Thames.

Right now, however, comfort was the last thing he wanted.

An hour or so later—the passage of time was always something of an illusion, but never more so than in a windowless room—he heard a knock at the door.

“Major Stanhope?” A soft, feminine voice.

He made no answer.

Tap-tap. “Sir Langley?”

Damn that knighthood. Why had General Scott insisted he accept the honor?

“Come,” he nearly shouted, jerking himself into a sitting position, and then to standing when the door opened and Mrs. Drummond stepped into the room.

Frances Drummond was the widow of a fellow officer killed in the line of duty. Having determined that she knew more than was wise, General Scott had quickly devised a plan to keep her as safe as possible. Officially, she managed the domestic affairs of what was known among the men as the Underground. Despite her somber black dress, however, she looked like no housekeeper Langley had ever seen. Even in the dim light spilling in from the corridor, her pale hair and blue eyes gleamed coldly.

Once, he had found her beautiful.

“Ah, here you are.” Her mouth curved in a mocking smile. “When Colonel Millrose said you’d returned without the book, I though perhaps you’d gone into hiding.”

“You know better than that, Fanny.”

“Do I, Major Stanhope?”

They’d been friendly, once. Even, perhaps, friends. But she hadn’t called him Magpie since…since Langley’s error in judgment had led to Captain Drummond’s untimely death.

“Any word about Hopkins?” He forced the question from between his teeth, even as he tried to push down the memory of Hopkins’s last note, penciled on a scrap of the same brown wrapping paper that had covered the book he’d just handed over to Lady Kingston, his fearful scrawl its only encryption:

They’re onto me. Managed to switch packages with a passerby, but don’t know how long this geometry primer will fool them. Ask at Porter’s—

Who had discovered the truth of Hopkins’s mission? And once they realized he no longer had the codebook, what might they do to uncover its whereabouts? Were they holding him captive? Or worse?

The crossing-sweep who had brought the note could—or would—reveal little of use. Nothing more had followed.

When word had arrived from General Scott, Langley had expected to be sent in search of Hopkins. Instead, he’d been told that the codebook was now in the hands of the Countess of Kingston, and he was to retrieve it from her. Despite his initial disappointment in the assignment, he understood. If he could not count be counted on to save his fellow soldier, he had only himself to blame. Scott was giving him a second chance, an opportunity to work his way back into his fellow intelligence officers’ confidence.

Some job he’d made of it.

At his gruff question, Mrs. Drummond slid the folded note between her fingernail and thumb, creasing it. She did not answer. How he wished she would just scream at him, rail at him, have it out. The cool distrust, the distant resentment, was far, far worse.

Fanny passed a critical eye over him, her plump lips pursed. “I wish you’d stop sleeping in your clothes, Major.”

He thrust out a hand for the paper she held. He needed to know what was in that note before her nervous movements rendered it illegible. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

The codebook was his priority now, the only way back into anyone’s good graces. Even his own.

She slapped the paper onto his outstretched palm. “Brooding, then. The wrinkles are equally difficult to remove.”

Before he could retort, she turned and left, closing the door behind her and leaving him in darkness. He fumbled to light a lamp, then sat down once more on the sagging cot to read by its flickering light.

Subject: A. B., Countess of K— (widow), aged 32 years

Children: Earl of K— James, aged 11 years, and Philip, aged 10

Guardian: George, Lord Dulsworthy (Brook Street)

Since death of late earl in ’04, subject has lived exclusively at Grosvr. Sq. residence with her mother, Mrs. D. West (widow, aged ??)

The document went on to name most of the household’s principle servants: butler, housekeeper, ladies’ maids. He noted the inclusion of a fencing master, but