One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,73

you think Dulsworthy is involved?”

“Obviously, he’s involved. The question is, on which side? Too many people are eager to get their hands on this.” Scott thwacked the codebook against his palm. “Maybe you’ll turn up the answer, eh?”

Langley dropped his head into his hands. Yet another assignment, but never the one that could help restore him to his fellow agents’ good graces. Clearly, his retrieval of the codebook hadn’t been enough to renew General Scott’s faith in him, either.

“Your intimacy with the family could be a great benefit to us,” Scott continued.

“Intimacy, sir?” He jerked his chin upward to discover the general fixing him with a piercing blue gaze, as if he could see into Langley’s innermost thoughts.

“Yes, yes,” he murmured, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Very clever, to present yourself as the tutor. Ideal for intelligence gathering. A trusted confidante within the household. Can mingle with ease both upstairs and down.”

Langley nodded at the general’s description, though in truth, claiming to be the boys’ tutor had been more impulse than calculated disguise. “I decided upon it when Lady Kingston let slip that Dulsworthy was being rather high-handed about the boys’ education. He intended to send them away to school without her approval.”

Despite the grim picture Langley’s words painted, a smile twitched at one corner of the general’s mouth. “And you saw an opportunity to aid both country and countess, so you took it.”

“I suppose so, sir. Yes. But I don’t see how Dulsworthy’s plans for his wards could explain…” He darted a glance to the codebook.

“Time will tell if there’s a connection or not.”

“Time Lieutenant Hopkins may not have,” Langley countered.

General Scott carefully set the codebook atop a precarious mountain of paperwork. “Leave that to me. You stay focused on Lady Kingston.”

Langley hadn’t any doubt the man could rattle off the contents of every piece of parchment on his desk, even lay his fingers immediately on whatever he needed, despite the apparent disorder. It was all part and parcel of Scott’s performance, the role of a rather muddle-headed old man who in fact commanded a regiment of spies with the snap of his fingers. The chess master who foresaw his unsuspecting opponent’s every move before either of them had touched the board.

Somehow, Langley had not understood until just that moment that for all his training, his responsibilities, his promotions, he was still only a pawn.

“Sir, when exactly am I to have told you that the countess is ‘an inordinately clever woman’?” he demanded, repeating the general’s earlier description of Amanda.

Scott’s smile deepened. “Isn’t she?”

“That’s beside the point.”

“Is it?”

Langley’s shoulders sagged with something like exhaustion. His life as an intelligence officer defined him. He’d always thrilled to the chase, the cat-and-mouse, as he’d told Amanda. But he was growing tired of playing games he couldn’t possibly win. Not today’s.

Definitely not last night’s.

“Perhaps I was mistaken,” Scott began, with all the assurance of a man who was never wrong, “but when you entered this office, I thought I sensed…something between you and Lady Kingston?”

Langley had expected to be met with annoyance, anger, maybe even disappointment if the general ever discovered that he had slept with the woman he was supposed to be guarding.

Instead, Scott looked…hopeful.

Sharply, Langley shook his head, partly to deny the general’s insinuation, partly to drive such a thought from his head. He couldn’t afford to let what happened last night raise his expectations. It was ridiculous to imagine the general matchmaking at all, let alone between Langley and the Countess of Kingston.

Anyone must see that Amanda deserved better than a street urchin turned spy.

“You’ve never shied away from a risk, Magpie,” the general continued. “Not in the thirty years I’ve known you. Have you made mistakes in all that time?” Impatiently, Scott waved aside his own question with his free hand. “Of course you have. We all have. But you’ve also earned both my gratitude and your country’s.” His gaze softened, though somehow without losing its intensity. “Stop telling yourself you aren’t worthy of the rewards.”

“Is this about that damned knighthood again?”

“The knighthood.” Scott shrugged. “Also a not-insignificant inheritance from the man who was proud to call you his son, though you resisted the label.”

“It would have been a lie,” Langley insisted.

“Would it?” Scott shook his head, dismissing Langley’s objections. “Nevertheless, you now have a title and a home. Perhaps it’s time for…” His brows rose once, suggestively, as his bright eyes drifted toward the outer office.

Langley jerked to his feet and strode toward the door without waiting to