One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,27

you return to the party. I don’t want to make Dulsworthy suspicious of your behavior.”

Her lips parted on a tiny huff of sound that might have been intended for a laugh. “No, that wouldn’t do, would it?”

“Is this room the most likely place for him to have laid it? Has he a sitting room off his bedchamber, for instance?”

Though he was no longer touching her, he felt her bristle. “I wouldn’t know, Major Stanhope. Lord Dulsworthy and I are not on such intimate terms as that.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest—” he began.

But in truth, he had. For reasons that he was beginning to fear lay far beyond the scope of his usual investigations, he wanted—needed—to know whether she and Dulsworthy really did intend to marry. Whether they were, in fact, already lovers.

Never before had a vague, incomplete dossier troubled him quite like Lady Kingston’s did.

“Where else might he have stashed it?” he asked, trying to shift the subject.

“I—I suppose it’s possible he tossed it in his phaeton on his way home—we’d been out driving that day. Or palmed it off on a servant when he returned to the house.”

Damn. Perhaps he’d shed his borrowed livery too soon.

“It’s—it’s so unlike him to be careless,” she murmured.

Less and less did Langley think the man’s behavior was a sign of carelessness, but he still did not know the meaning of it. “Then it seems most likely to be in this room. You go enjoy the supper, make up some excuse for your absence. I’ll light a candle and have a look arou—”

The door rattled in its frame, as if something had fallen against it. Then someone whispered—or thought he whispered—drunkenly, “How ’bout here?”

A feminine giggle, followed by somewhat quieter words in a voice he could have sworn belonged to the woman he’d passed on the stairs. “Ohhhh. You’re an eager one! But upstairs…” she pleaded.

Langley pictured her pulling the man along the corridor with her, in search of some hidden place for a tryst, a theory confirmed when the door rattled again as if the man’s weight had been lifted from it. Langley dared to let himself breathe.

Then the latch clicked and the man said, “I’m not waiting for a proper bed.”

Lady Kingston flailed in the darkness and, finding his arm, gripped it and whispered frantically, “What are we going to do?”

They could hide, of course. The drunken couple would be too busy to bother noticing they weren’t alone in the room. Of course, that would mean crouching with Lady Kingston in the darkness, just feet away from whatever went on between the other two. Waiting. Overhearing…everything.

The list of things a man and woman might do, even without a proper bed, was long.

“Kiss me,” Langley said, throwing his arms around her again.

When the door flew open, the faint light of the corridor would illuminate just enough of the two of them, locked in an apparent embrace, to persuade the couple they needed to look elsewhere for a trysting spot. Not enough that he and Lady Kingston could be identified. He hoped.

“I beg your pardon?” Within the circle of his arms, she grew rigid but did not struggle. “Did you say—?”

“Kiss. Me.” He almost growled the command the second time, no opportunity to explain his plan as the door swung inward.

For once, she didn’t babble or ask questions. She did as she was told.

Pressing her body against his, she rose up onto her toes and brought her lips to—well, to the edge of his jaw. Her aim must have been thrown off by the darkness. Then she dragged her petal soft lips along the determined stubble that had reappeared over the course of the evening, at last reaching the corner of his mouth. Was that—Christ have mercy, was that the tip of her tongue?

He dropped one hand to her hip to turn her slightly out of the path of the light, out of the view of the intruders. He had no fear of being recognized, but he had to take care she wouldn’t be either. At this angle, nothing of her would be visible but perhaps the edge of her skirts, and in the semi-darkness, their color could not be easily identified.

God, but her dress was just as wicked to the touch as it was to the eye, the way that filmy red layer—the one that promised to reveal everything to a man’s eager gaze—slipped and skated over the silky stuff beneath, revealing her curves to the palm of his hand. His fingers curled