One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,67

paper and pen, scratched out a quick note. Then he got up, tucked the book inside his coat, and donned his greatcoat. “Going out for a breath of air,” he explained to the indifferent footman as he strode through the entry hall and out the front door. With quick eyes, he found Lieutenant Eggleston standing guard across the way, dressed after the fashion of one of the square’s older residents, pretending to watch the birds on the green.

He approached the other man with an impersonal nod of greeting, feigning interest in a pair of doves. “Take this to General Scott,” he muttered under his breath a moment later, handing off the folded note. “I’ll wait here.”

For three-quarters of an hour, Langley strolled leisurely back and forth along the square, the book heavy against his ribs, glancing only now and then, and always with perfect indifference, toward the row of houses across the street.

He’d slipped into and out of so many roles, so many disguises in his life, never pausing, never looking back. Why should the present occasion be any different? Success at one mission meant moving on to the next. Scott’s best agent had got exactly what he’d come for.

Oh, yes. And a little more besides.

Lost in his thoughts, he nearly missed Eggleston’s return, as the man strolled by and a slip of paper fluttered from his kid-gloved hand to the ground. Langley pinned it with his toe, then bent to retrieve it. Just a few words, in General Scott’s improbably elegant copperplate.

My office, without delay.

Like any good soldier, Langley would accept his commanding officer’s order, of course. He would stop for nothing.

Not even goodbye.

Zebadiah Scott had never been a man of sentiment, not even when he’d rescued an urchin from the streets. He moved with deliberation, kept his mind on the endgame, and now Langley must do the same. From a few yards away, Eggleston had already resumed his guard duties, meaning Amanda was safe inside Bartlett House. Far safer, now that the codebook had been found.

Far safer without him.

As he crumpled the note, his eye caught another line of print, hidden at first beneath a fold. A sort of postscript. He had to read the words through twice to make sure he had not imagined them.

And bring the countess with you.

As he marched back toward the house, the note clenched in his fist, an uneasy breath shuddered from Langley’s chest. He did not dare to call it relief, not even to himself.

He was grateful, yes, for the chance to see her one last time.

But what could General Scott want with her? What did the old man have up his sleeve now?

Chapter 13

As the battered old coach jerked and swayed over cobblestone streets, Amanda’s fingers plucked anxiously at the long, jagged slit in the skirt of her favorite sprigged muslin.

When Langley had stepped into the morning room, where she and Mama and the boys had just been finishing luncheon, and begged leave to speak with her, she had known instantly that something had changed. Oh, he’d moved with the same confident, easy grace as always, though his greatcoat had been draped over his arm, which had struck her as odd, as he had been upstairs, not outdoors. With a few words, he’d sent the boys to the schoolroom to read and translate a passage from Cicero. Mama had declared her intention to ready herself for her morning visits and followed them out.

Once he’d bowed the three of them on their way, he’d turned to Amanda, radiating a peculiar energy that only seemed to intensify her earlier awareness of him. “Order your carriage around to the front,” he’d said. “Have the driver wait five minutes and then be off, headed west.”

Aghast at the strange request, Amanda had nonetheless managed to ask, “And who is to be the passenger inside that carriage?”

“No one. We’ll be leaving this way.”

“I beg your pardon?”

But he had already opened the glass-paned door and stepped into the garden.

“I can’t go out without a pelisse and bonnet,” she’d insisted.

“There’s no time to waste. Can’t you make do with—with that?” He’d gestured toward the rather worse-for-wear broad-brimmed straw hat she kept hanging on a hook near the door for the time she spent in the garden with her sons.

A laugh had burst from her. “Not unless you can promise me I won’t be seen.”

“Not by anyone who gives a damn about ladies’ fashions. Come.”

Just as it had the night before, her body had responded to his command. As