One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,22
at present organizing an entire regiment of servants to go into battle.
Only after Mr. Evans had shouted at a florist’s boy, wobbling beneath an arrangement twice his height and probably half his weight, and then reduced a housemaid to tears by calling her a slattern, did he turn his full attention to Langley. Unsurprisingly, his eye was far more critical than either Fanny’s or Millrose’s had been. He tugged at Langley’s lapel, straightened his wig. “I don’t remember asking the employment agency to send me an old man.”
Langley did his best not to bristle at the comment, though at thirty-seven he was considerably younger than Evans. “There’s a war on, sir,” he answered, knocking some of the usual refinement from his speech, but not so much that anyone might guess where he’d really been born.
“I am aware.” The butler thrust a closed umbrella into Langley’s chest. “Out front with you. No one will notice your crow’s feet in the rain.”
Langley nodded and turned away to take up his post. The assignment had one advantage: he’d see every person who entered the house. But he would have to find an excuse to get inside later to look for the book.
“If even one lady enters this house with a damp hem,” Evans called after him, “you’ll be lucky to find yourself mucking stables at your next job.”
“Yes, sir.”
He lost the next hour to skulking under a temporary awning with another footman, who was considerably younger but evidently no more satisfactory to Evans’s critical eye, with his freckled face and unfashionably slight frame, which did not fill out the uniform. “We’re to wait until we hear the clock on St. George’s chime eight before we roll out the carpet,” he repeated, every so often. “Mr. Evans don’t want it sopping wet.”
The lad didn’t offer his name, nor any further comment. The monotony of waiting in the chilly rain was broken only by an occasional word from a deliveryman or a coachman. Mostly, Langley was at liberty to imagine the house’s interior—warm, dry, half its rooms alight with the blaze of wax candles, the rest dark, closed off to guests.
Where had Dulsworthy stashed the book?
And when would Lady Kingston arrive to search for it?
Her early morning visit to the bookshop suggested the sort of person who would land on the doorstep precisely at the hour specified on the invitation. Her midnight traipse through the garden, however, had revealed a woman somewhat at odds with the dossier’s rather staid description of her. Something about her demeanor yesterday afternoon had also hinted at a certain reluctance regarding Dulsworthy’s ball. Now, Langley hardly knew which to hope for, promptness or fashionable lateness.
Most disconcerting was the discovery that he was hoping anything at all. He’d been wrong to accept her offer of assistance. He was putting her in unnecessary danger.
He hadn’t any business looking forward to seeing her tonight.
At long last, the sound of eight bells rippled along Brook Street and there was a bustle to unroll the carpet and light the last lanterns before the first carriage rattled to a stop. She was not the first to arrive, nor the second. In fact, he’d lost track of how many crested coaches had deposited lords and ladies dripping with silk and jewels—a dozen, at least—when he saw her.
Langley nearly had to shoulder the freckle-faced lad out of the way to ensure it was he who helped her from her coach and walked slightly behind her from the street to the house.
As she descended, her face nearly disappeared into a calash of dark green, paired with a satin cloak entirely inadequate to the weather, tied loosely around her neck and open enough to offer a glimpse of the rest of her: an enticing display of bosom in a low cut gown made of some flimsy reddish stuff over a pale underdress. The effect was to make it seem as if one could see right through to her bare skin.
No, Lady Kingston was not at all what he’d expected when he’d been told she was a widow.
She briefly touched his palm as she stepped to the ground, and with the other hand, he clutched the handle of the umbrella in a death’s grip, afraid he might give in to the temptation either to reach across and wrap the cloak more securely around her—or worse, to unwrap her entirely.
They were halfway up the walk before he remembered to speak. “My lady.” He kept his voice low, hardly parted his lips. “Once