One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,37
you, ma’am. I will do my best to make something of the opportunity.” He gave a rather pointed bow, as if taking his leave, though of course as he had already relieved the other guard from duty, he would be going nowhere tonight.
As he had hoped, she mirrored the gesture with the dip of a curtsy. Then, as he had not dared to hope, she laid a hand on the iron railing again. As if reaching for his hand. As if reaching for him.
He held himself rigidly still, never more a soldier than in the endless moment until her hand fell away once more.
“Good night, Major Stanhope.”
Was it his imagination, or was the fatigue in her voice now tinged with disappointment?
“Good night, Lady Kingston.”
He slipped back into the shadow of the hedge and from there, watched her make her way into the dark house.
* * * *
Amanda woke at the usual hour the next morning and did not wince at Martha’s ringing voice or the light stabbing through the curtains, though her sleep had been checkered with shadowy dreams.
Dreams rarely bore scrutiny in the morning, she had found. They slipped through one’s fingers like water. And since a good many of her dreams last night—or had it all been one long, repetitious nightmare?—had ended with George arriving to announce she was not fit to have charge of Jamie and Philip, she had no particular desire to try to shape those hazy fragments into something like a memory.
Instead she rose, dressed, and went upstairs to the schoolroom for her usual breakfast with her sons.
The room at the top of the house was not overlarge, but light-filled with its rows of high windows around three sides. The furnishings she had kept deliberately simple: bookshelves, wooden chairs, a table almost too big for the space. Already the chairs’ lower rungs bore the scuff marks of restless, swinging feet, and the table, the scars of pen knives and spilled ink. Those signs of schoolboy use brought a soft smile to her lips.
On either side of the stairwell, on the wall without windows, sat two doors. She tapped softly on the one to her right.
“Jamie? Philip? Ready to begin the day?”
Time was, the boys would have been up before her, the table covered with toy soldiers or spillikins—some charged battle between them—while they impatiently waited for breakfast and for her. But they were growing older, less eager for their mother’s companionship. Jamie in particular would as soon not rise at first light, and both of them had declared that she must not open the door before they were dressed.
So she sat down at the table, traced with one fingertip the start of an angular P that had been carved into its top, and took her turn at waiting in the schoolroom quiet.
Too quiet.
She was on her feet again a moment later, straightening some books on one shelf before crossing to the second door, which opened onto a room almost too narrow for the bed and washstand it contained. A nurse had occupied it when the boys were small, and under more ordinary circumstances, it would then have been turned over to a governess. Amanda used it for storage.
When she emerged a moment later, bearing two rolled-up maps and a box of geometric shapes, Lewis was just stepping into the schoolroom with the breakfast tray.
“Good morning, milady. I didn’t see you there.” He placed the tray on the table, executed a swift bow, and then hurried forward to relieve her of her burden.
“Good morning, Lewis,” she said, blowing from her eyes a lock of hair that had worked its way loose during her search and then brushing the dust from her hands.
“Just say the word, milady, and I’ll see that storeroom made spick and span.”
“Oh, it’s hardly worth the effort,” she answered, seating herself as he poured her coffee. “If it were all clean and organized, I might never find anything again.”
Lewis dared a smile. “Yes, milady. Will there be anything else?”
“Thank you, no.”
He bowed in acknowledgment but nevertheless paused before descending to give a considerably firmer rap than she had on the boys’ door. “Breakfast, Lord Kingston, Master Philip. Your mother’s waiting.”
She still had time to butter and eat her toast, sample the eggs, and start on her second cup of coffee before two sleepy faces joined her at the table, Philip first, declaring he was famished, as always, and Jamie a moment later, yawning as he pushed his hair out of his face.