One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,51
them in mischief of all sorts. He would thrive.
Young Kingston was unquestionably the more bookishly inclined of the two and obviously well-prepared academically for school. Still, Langley could guess how the boy might fare there, and why Amanda was worried. Even the teachers could not be counted on to be kind to a lad who was slight of build, delicate of feature, and quicker of tongue than was wise. Away from home, Kingston would have only his title, and perhaps his younger brother, to shield him from the inevitable cruelties to which he would be exposed.
After the boys had had ample opportunity to boast, Langley had taken a page from General Scott and asked them about their most spectacular failures. Mistakes inevitably taught more than successes.
From what they chose to show him then, Langley learned more still. Philip was smarter than he’d first suspected. And Kingston was braver. When the boys eventually had to leave their mother’s care—and it would happen, of course, possibly over their mother’s objection and whether Dulsworthy had his way this autumn or not—Langley began to think that with a little help, they could manage quite well. Both of them.
Yes, there were things he could teach them. Amanda’s lessons had sometimes been more creative than concrete, but on the whole, he was impressed—
Reluctantly impressed?
No, there was nothing reluctant about his admiration for her, for how and what she had taught her sons. Girls and young women were largely kept from the subjects that men self-servingly considered the foundation of “real” knowledge: philosophy, higher mathematics, Latin and Greek. But Amanda had somehow managed to acquire an extraordinary education, and to pass it on to the two young men seated before him.
Langley was not sure it made him feel better to discover that Amanda possessed a fine mind in addition to a fine figure. Certainly he had no business being attracted to either one.
To say nothing of both.
A footstep sounded on the stairway, and he looked up from the page he’d been pretending to read while the boys resumed work on yesterday’s river map—one of their failures, they’d confessed. He frowned. This would make the second interruption of the morning.
The footman, Lewis, looked appropriately contrite as he delivered yet another note—no, the same note, Langley realized as he retrieved the folded paper from the tray in his hand.
The boys looked up too, their curiosity piqued. One quelling glance from their tutor sent them scurrying back to their work—no squabbles over the blue paint, today—and once their heads were bowed over the map, he slowly unfolded the note.
Beneath his earlier answer, Amanda had written just two words, in her delicate, feminine hand.
Dinner, then.
Not a question, this time. She had pressed down so firmly when making the point that the tip of her pen had nearly gone through the paper. Barely even a request. In fact, it rather looked like…an order.
Slowly he refolded the little square of hot-pressed paper and moved to slip it into the breast pocket of his coat.
“No answer this time, sir?” said the footman.
“No answer,” he concurred, tucking the note out of sight.
At least, not one he meant to make publicly.
Over the course of the afternoon, he found more than one occasion to remove the note from his pocket and reread it. Dinner, then. Oh, but she was clever. By four o’clock, when lessons finished for the day, those words had succeeded in making Langley ravenous.
And his hunger had very little to do with food.
* * * *
Two hours later, his hair freshly combed, his spectacles polished, and his cravat rather too tightly knotted, he followed the boys downstairs to the empty dining room. His rapid glance took in the soaring painted ceiling, silk curtains, crystal chandelier, and a table that would easily seat twenty, though at present only one end was set. Young Kingston directed him to the seat beside Philip, across from their grandmother’s place, as it turned out when that lady swept into the room a few moments later and introduced herself.
“I am Mrs. West, Lady Kingston’s mother,” she said in a voice whose warmth only highlighted its faint northern notes as she dipped into a shallow curtsy. He knew she must be fifty, perhaps even on the far side of that number. But the years had been kind to her, and Mrs. West made every effort to exploit their generosity: the arrangement of her hair, the drape of her gown, even the softening glow of the candles.