One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,98
will not be necessary,” a voice declared in soft voice, lightly inflected with French. Behind her veil, she narrowed her gaze at the man who had joined them.
Jacobs.
For a moment, Amanda was too stunned to react. Then she fished in her reticule for an handkerchief and shook it out with a flourish—the prearranged signal, which she hoped would be visible through the grimy front window—before reaching beneath her veil to dab surreptitiously at her nose. “My good sir, will you not take pity on me? I can promise your shop a year’s custom in exchange for this small assistance now.” She had to prolong their exchange as long as possible, to give Langley and the others time to act.
“Why, of course we will assist you, my dear lady,” insisted Jacobs. “If you will just follow me into the back, I will personally see that everything is taken care of.”
For the first time, Amanda felt the danger of her situation. If she were not careful, and clever, she would succeed only in adding to Jacobs’s number of hostages. Or victims.
A shudder passed through her. “I wouldn’t wish to intrude,” she said, hoping the thick veil muffled her speech past the point of familiarity.
Fanny stepped between them. “My lady is too faint to stand. I can fetch what’s needed, if—”
A shout rose—from somewhere beneath their feet, if Amanda weren’t mistaken. The cellar. Alarm sketched over the face of the supposed clerk. Jacobs’s eyes narrowed. “Va voir,” he ordered the other man, who dropped the bolt of fabric and the dish of pins on the counter and scurried once more behind the curtain. More shouts, and a bang that might’ve been a gunshot. “Now,” Jacobs said, approaching Amanda, apparently indifferent to the noise below, “I cannot help you unless you will let me see…”
Footsteps thundered up the stairs. At once hopeful and fearful, Amanda turned her head toward the sound, and in that moment’s distraction, he snatched her veil away.
“Why, Lady Kingston,” he sneered into her face. “What a surprise.”
At that same moment, Jamie and Philip burst into the room from behind the curtain, their faces streaked with dirt but appearing otherwise unharmed. “Mama!” They raced to her, almost knocking their former fencing master off his feet as they passed. “You should’ve seen it! Mr. Stanhope—”
Desperate to gather them into her arms, she instead shoved them away, to safety. “Go, boys. Out the door with Mrs. Drummond. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Jacobs snatched at Fanny, but she was too quick for him. She slipped through his grasping fingers and grabbed the boys by the hands. “Come!”
They resisted, terrified, but Amanda hadn’t breath to urge them. Jacobs had her by the throat, pinning her to his body with his forearm. Something hard jabbed into the middle of her back—the barrel of a pistol, she feared. Fanny managed to drag Jamie and Philip out the front door, just as someone else raced up the back steps. Surely another of their captors, in hot pursuit. Amanda’s cry of warning came out as a croak, and Jacobs jerked her into silence with a flex of his arm as a figure burst through the curtain.
Langley.
Deprived of breath, she could only mouth his name as he staggered into the room, gasping for air himself, with one arm hanging limply by his side. Blood seeped through his coat sleeve, staining the dark wool almost black.
“That’s right,” Langley replied, shaking sweat from his eyes. His spectacles were missing again, and Amanda saw no sign of a weapon in his hands.
“I cannot say I am disappointed.” Jacobs prodded her forward with his knee until they were face to face. “It was clear days ago that the threat of losing Lieutenant Hopkins was insufficient to get me what I wanted. I had thought that the boys…but alas,” he said with a Gallic shrug and a glance toward the door to the street. “Surely, however, you will not sacrifice a lady—this lady,” he said, shaking her, “for an old cookbook?”
“Let her go,” Langley calmly ordered. “You can’t win.”
“Perhaps not,” Jacobs agreed with a mirthless laugh, turning her body just enough to reveal the gun. “But either way, you will lose.”
That slight motion put the counter within Amanda’s reach. Closest at hand sat a little box that had once been filled with pieces of chalk, the sort dressmakers used to mark patterns on fabric before cutting. Scrunching shut her eyes and mouth, she reached for it