her palm against his chest. “Not alone,” she whispered. “Two for mirth.”
Beneath her hand, his heart beat a little faster. “Marriage, as I always heard it.”
“Oh?” She curled her fingers against his coat. “Those sorts of variations are fascinating, aren’t they? For instance, as a young woman—and certainly as a widow—it would never have been evident to me that mirth and marriage could have anything at all to do with one another. But recently, I—”
“Amanda.”
She spoke over him, ready, quite ready, to take the greatest risk of all. “I—I began to ask myself whether—whether it might not be possible to—if, for instance, a marriage had some…spark behind it, if it were what people call a—a…love match, then perhaps—”
“Amanda.” He took a step forward, and the brass buttons on his coat clanged as he pressed his chest against the iron bars.
Silently she mirrored his movement, closing the narrow gap between them. “Yes?”
“Do you always talk this much when a man’s trying to tell you he loves you?”
“Oh. Well, I can’t honestly say, you know, because no one has ever—”
With a quirk of one dark brow that turned her insides to custard, he leaned in and silenced her with a kiss, sweet and hot, filled with the promise of passionate adventures yet to come.
“I think,” she said, when her breath was mostly her own again, “I should probably invite you in.” With her other hand, she turned the key in the lock and opened the gate. “Matthews told me just this morning that the smith came while we were in Richmond.”
Langley laughed as he stepped into the garden and put his good arm around her waist. “It’s just as well. I doubt you’d find it terribly—dashing, was that your word?—if I tried to scale that fence just now. Though Colonel Millrose did say he thought you’d be willing to pick me up if I fell flat on my face.”
“I like him.” She tipped her head against his shoulder. “And he’s right, you know.”
His gaze flickered toward the morning room. “I also wasn’t expecting to declare myself in front of an audience.”
“We were just having a little celebration,” she explained as she urged him along the curving path. “It’s Jamie’s birthday today.”
“I won’t be intruding?”
“I know how much you dislike sentimental turns of phrase. But I rather suspect you’ll be the best present of all.” She glanced up at him with a wry smile. “After all, I only got him a book.”
The boys poured out of the morning room and raced toward them. “Major Stanhope! Major Stanhope!”
“Sir Langley,” her mother said from the top step and sketched a curtsy.
Langley released Amanda and bowed. “Mrs. West.”
“I take it the two of you have something to tell us?”
Amanda could not decide whether her mother was displeased.
“I would be sorry to steal the spotlight from Lord Kingston on his birthday, ma’am.”
“It’s all right, sir,” Jamie insisted.
“Well, then,” Langley began, and he tightened his grip around her waist, as if he needed the support. “Your mother and I are—”
“Getting married?” inserted Pip, sounding entirely unimpressed by the revelation. “We’d guessed that much already, sir. Oh, I meant to tell you”—he came to Langley’s other side as he spoke—“I used the parry-thrust to get away from those chaps, just like you taught me.”
“That’s very good…Pip,” Langley said, venturing the familiar name.
Jamie’s dark eyes glittered. “Imagine how impressive it would’ve been if you’d had a sword and not a dressmaker’s yardstick.”
“Well.” Mama tipped her head to one side, surveying the foursome with thinly disguised amusement as the ascended the steps. “I’d say this calls for cake.”
While Jamie cut thick slabs of Mrs. Trout’s excellent orange sponge and Mama poured tea, Amanda slipped away to retrieve the book.
“Open it,” she said when she returned and pressed the package into Jamie’s sticky hands. Then she sent a shy glance toward Langley. “I suppose you could say it’s from both of us.”
“Ah,” Jamie cried as he tore away the paper, “De l’Esprit géométrique. Thank you, Mama.” He pressed an even stickier kiss on her cheek. “And thank you, sir.”
“You know,” Langley said, accepting an awkward left-handed handshake, “Pascal’s work has been instrumental in the science of encryption.”
Pip snatched the book from his brother’s hand. “You mean codes and such? Like spies use?”
Langley’s lips quirked. “The very same.”
Her younger son’s eyes flared with a heretofore undreamt-of expression of interest in mathematics. “Will you teach us, sir?”
A catch rose in Amanda’s throat. The boys’ attachment to Langley overjoyed her, of course. But for just