One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,21

her by the elbow and guide her toward her own chambers, evidently having discarded her previous intention of going out. “And then we must figure out what you’re going to wear. Blue, you know, is Lord Dulsworthy’s favorite color. I think you must have my Sarah do your hair. I don’t trust that girl of yours.…”

Amanda heard none of it, though her thoughts were running along parallel lines. A ball, after all these years. The music, the dancing.

George…

Why hadn’t he returned the book to Porter’s, when he’d promised to?

Where in his house might he have laid it?

And if she found it, would that be enough to earn a look of approval from the Magpie’s bright, warm eyes?

* * * *

Standing for inspection had never been Langley’s favorite part of army life. When the inspectors in question were Mrs. Drummond and Colonel Millrose, so much the worse.

At long last, Fanny gave a nod of reluctant satisfaction. Millrose had called her in to have a lady’s eye, and though Langley knew she preferred to keep her distance from him, she certainly seemed to be enjoying the opportunity to find fault. “It’s fortunate that Lord Dulsworthy had to hire extra servants for his ball.”

“Yes, yes,” Langley agreed, forcing himself not to fidget beneath the weight of their combined stares. Perhaps no uniform was ever comfortable, but he was rapidly discovering a footman’s livery was worse than most. The powdered wig, especially. It itched.

“And fortunate that you’re tall enough to carry it off. A little long in the tooth, though,” she added with one of her usual wry smiles as she patted his cheek—a little too firmly for comfort. Earlier, she had smeared his face with some stinging concoction that was supposed to…well, he couldn’t quite remember what the stuff was meant to do. She’d used words like smooth and soften, and he half wondered whether it was something for improving the look of one’s skin or one’s old shoes.

“Especially fortunate that one of the newly hired men was taken ill,” Millrose said, stepping forward. At that, Fanny—thank God—moved back. “No one will pay you the least mind, Stanhope. Unless, of course, you drop a tray full of dishes in some grande dame’s lap.”

Langley forced a smile. “If you two are quite through?”

“I wish we’d been able to supply you with a floorplan of the house.”

“I’ll manage.” He’d told Millrose nothing of his previous afternoon’s exchange with Lady Kingston.

“Of course you will, Magpie. It’s only…”

At his speaking glance, Fanny gave a shallow curtsy. “I must see to matters in the kitchen. Best of luck, Major Stanhope.”

Even after the door closed behind her, leaving them alone in Millrose’s private office, neither one spoke. Weak afternoon light filtered through the single small, high window, whose mottled glass offered the only view of the outside in all of the Underground, a view now further distorted by streaks of rain.

Millrose retreated behind his desk. There, the light was strong enough to highlight both the silver in his hair and the worry in his expression. “Be careful, Langley. General Scott doesn’t want to lose you too.”

“Did he tell you that?”

For answer, the other man glanced down at the papers scattered across the desktop and idly shifted two or three with his fingertips.

In spite of himself, Langley laughed. “I didn’t think so.”

His meeting with the general yesterday morning had been brief and brusque, a quick reporting of Langley’s attempt to secure the codebook and nothing more. No one who had observed the exchange would have imagined the thirty years of history between the two men. Scott had revealed nothing of what he knew of Hopkins’s fate, nothing to the agent he’d once proclaimed his best. The closest the general had come to showing any emotion at all had been a strange sort of smile when Langley had admitted he would have to return to Bartlett House to meet with Lady Kingston a second time—when, in other words, Langley had admitted his failure.

“I’m sure he—”

“Save your breath, Billy.” He started to raise a hand, but paused when the coat tautened uncomfortably across his shoulders. How did footmen manage to get any work done, when they were apparently dressed for show? “You’ll both have a full report when I return,” Langley assured him instead. He knew what he had to do win Scott’s approval. “With the book.”

He arrived at Dulsworthy’s Brook Street house in the pouring rain. “You’re late,” snarled a man Langley assumed to be the butler, Mr. Evans, who was