One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,16

to understand that his presence in her garden in the wee hours of the night meant that good old Duls. hadn’t kept his promise.

“No doubt he’ll see it delivered there in the morning,” Langley tried to reassure her, feeling anything but reassured himself. Had Dulsworthy entrusted the return of the book to someone else? Or had he kept it for some reason? If he had, what next?

Lady Kingston seemed to read his thoughts. “And if he doesn’t?”

Despite the limits of his vision, Langley glanced around the little garden, at the green-black swathes of leaves dotted with splotches and streaks of color, flowers that had burst into glory in the heat of the afternoon and some that had hidden themselves away again at nightfall.

Nothing was clear, anymore.

“Then I’ll be in touch.” After tucking his broken spectacles into his breast pocket, he gave another crisp bow. “It’s late. You should retire, your ladyship. Does this gate lock?”

“Yes.”

“Then see that you lock it after I leave.” Before she could say anything more, he slipped back through the gate and into the shadows, pausing only to listen for the grating sound of a key in a lock.

From Grosvenor Square he made his way to Brook Street, where he knew Lord Dulsworthy resided, though the dossier hadn’t included the number. He strode up and down the street twice, spotting just one window in which a light burned. It might be anything, of course: a sick room, a servant lost in the forbidden pages of a novel. Only a fool would imagine the lone candle belonged to Dulsworthy, up half the night, poring over the codebook he now had in his possession.

Surely the best explanation for the man’s behavior was the simplest one. He had taken the purported French cookbook from Bartlett House purely for the comfort and convenience of the woman he was to wed. He meant to save her the trouble of having to return it to the bookshop. Something innocuous had delayed him. In the morning, when Dulsworthy did return it, Langley would recover it and be one step closer to recovering his good name in the process.

So why was he standing on an empty street in the dark, weighed down in equal parts by unease and something like regret?

He ought to be glad the damned thing was out of Lady Kingston’s hands. Ought to feel relieved to be free of her headache-inducing chatter—to say nothing of her headache-inducing flowerpots. Why, she probably wasn’t even as appealing as his shortsightedness gave her credit for being. She probably wanted to marry Dulsworthy and settle into the safe, predictable sort of life a man like him offered. And if that was the case, then Langley would do well to keep his distance.

The last thing the Magpie had to offer any woman was safety.

The bells of St. Martin-in-the-Fields were chiming three when he returned to the Underground and left word with the watchman on duty to wake him if nothing had been heard from Porter’s by ten o’clock. Then he closed himself in his dark cell, shucked off his boots, and collapsed face down on the bed, for once falling instantly asleep.

Sometime later—minutes, hours—something roused him, calling him back from sleep, from the edges of a familiar dream—or nightmare. As always, no faces he recognized, no voices he understood, only shapeless anxiety, like hands dragging him down into the abyss. He had to shake free of them, had to get away, or else…or else…

Then the dream shifted. The aroma of flowers—roses—hung heavy on the night air, and the touch transformed, drawing him closer, coaxing him, and he wanted—needed—to chase that sensation, to reach out, to touch in turn.…

I’ll be in touch.…

“Wake up, Major Stanhope.”

That chilly voice chased away the last fragments of the dream, replacing its vaguely pleasant promise with a dull, throbbing pain at the base of his skull. The scent of roses still filled his nostrils. Perfume. Of course. He turned his head toward the woman who wore it but did not open his eyes.

“What is it, Fanny? It can’t be ten already.”

“Just past six, actually.”

He cracked an eyelid, grateful not to be able to see clearly the expression on her face, the one that no doubt matched her voice.

A flash of red greeted his half-opened eye. The scarlet coat of his uniform, which she dangled from one fingertip. He scrambled upright. “What’s happened?”

“General Scott’s had a message from Lieutenant Hopkins’s captors,” she said, tossing the coat toward him, having apparently forgotten her earlier