One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,95

This Jacobs may have one of my men too. But you must realize I can’t risk more agents’ lives without better information. If we rush in without a plan, it could put everyone in even more danger.”

Amanda looked only slightly chastened. “But surely you agree that time is of the essence, Captain Millrose?”

After a moment’s stillness, Billy gave a somber nod. “A few hours, though—”

“Send me.” Rash words, Langley knew, but he had failed to act too many times—and not just on this mission. I trust him, Amanda had claimed, though he’d done nothing to earn her trust. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Well, he intended to earn it today. He’d sacrifice himself, if necessary, to return her sons to her side.

Billy passed a hand over his mouth, as if hiding a laugh. “Into a dress shop, during business hours? Don’t you think that’s carrying your penchant for disguise a bit too far?”

Before Langley could answer, Amanda cleared her throat. He glimpsed a familiar tilt to her chin, a distressingly familiar spark in her dark eyes. “I—I do not claim to have any expertise, but as it is a dress shop, or purports to be, why not send a woman?”

“A woman?” Billy laughed, then sobered when he realized she was serious. “I do not particularly like the idea of—”

“Amanda,” Langley said warningly, forgetting for a moment the intimacy it betrayed.

Billy spun to look at him, and at the same moment, Amanda’s chin—that pointed chin, that dear, defiant little chin—jutted forward. “Why not?”

“Don’t—” Langley began. Don’t be ridiculous, he had been going to say. But of course it wasn’t ridiculous. She had never been ridiculous. Not even on that night in the garden when she’d babbled about birds and broken his spectacles.

As if to prove it, she continued with astonishing calm, “Haven’t I the right? I certainly have as much to lose.”

He couldn’t deny that, of course. She might never recover from the loss of her sons. But Langley was equally certain he could not go on if he lost her.

“She means for you to send her,” he explained to Billy, whose brows shot up to the middle of his forehead, an expression not of surprise but—damn it—interest.

“Well, now.” Billy lifted his folded arms from the table to rest them on his chest, rocking back slightly in his chair as he studied Amanda. “That certainly would not be expected.”

Because it’s utter madness! Langley almost shouted. “You cannot possibly be considering—”

Amanda sent him a glance that might have matched one of his own for sternness, then turned to Billy. “I have to save my sons.” Her voice was uncharacteristically firm—which was how he knew she was terrified. It reminded him of the way she had spoken to Dulsworthy, on the day he had tried to get her to exchange control over her sons’ future for her hand in marriage.

“They may not even be inside, Lady Kingston,” Billy explained in a gentle voice. “The safer route is for all of us to wait here until Jacobs makes his demands known.”

Langley could have told him that Amanda wasn’t interested in safe.

“He wants the codebook.” She sounded impatient at being forced to state the obvious. “Is General Scott likely to offer it in exchange for either Lieutenant Hopkins or my boys?”

Neither he nor Billy answered. Fanny gnawed at her lower lip as her blue eyes flooded with sympathetic tears. But Amanda gave a self-satisfied nod. “I didn’t think so. In which case, if Jamie and Philip are to be rescued, I’m going to have to be the one to do it.”

Fanny reached for her hand. Billy’s chair came crashing down onto all four legs as he parted his lips to say something reassuring.

But Langley spoke first: “Not alone.”

A moment later, Fanny added, “I’ll go with you.”

While he and Billy spoke over one another in protest, Amanda said only, “Thank you. I’d hoped you would offer.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be proper for a lady to go out without a maid,” Fanny explained, though privately Langley wondered whether such rules applied outside of Mayfair. “I’d loan you a different gown, if we were of a size, my lady.” Amanda was several inches taller. “But perhaps a veil?”

“An excellent notion,” Amanda agreed.

“Say something, Billy.” Langley looked at Millrose, who shrugged helplessly. “Surely you don’t mean to countenance this scheme?”

“I suspect it won’t matter what I say,” he said, with something like a smile of admiration for Amanda. “I don’t like the degree of danger, especially not with women and possibly