Page 17 of One Thing Leads to a Lover

“I am aware.” The butler thrust a closed umbrella into Langley’s chest. “Out front with you. No one will notice your crow’s feet in the rain.”

Langley nodded and turned away to take up his post. The assignment had one advantage: he’d see every person who entered the house. But he would have to find an excuse to get inside later to look for the book.

“If even one lady enters this house with a damp hem,” Evans called after him, “you’ll be lucky to find yourself mucking stables at your next job.”

“Yes, sir.”

He lost the next hour to skulking under a temporary awning with another footman, who was considerably younger but evidently no more satisfactory to Evans’s critical eye, with his freckled face and unfashionably slight frame, which did not fill out the uniform. “We’re to wait until we hear the clock on St. George’s chime eight before we roll out the carpet,” he repeated, every so often. “Mr. Evans don’t want it sopping wet.”

The lad didn’t offer his name, nor any further comment. The monotony of waiting in the chilly rain was broken only by an occasional word from a deliveryman or a coachman. Mostly, Langley was at liberty to imagine the house’s interior—warm, dry, half its rooms alight with the blaze of wax candles, the rest dark, closed off to guests.

Where had Dulsworthy stashed the book?

And when would Lady Kingston arrive to search for it?

Her early morning visit to the bookshop suggested the sort of person who would land on the doorstep precisely at the hour specified on the invitation. Her midnight traipse through the garden, however, had revealed a woman somewhat at odds with the dossier’s rather staid description of her. Something about her demeanor yesterday afternoon had also hinted at a certain reluctance regarding Dulsworthy’s ball. Now, Langley hardly knew which to hope for, promptness or fashionable lateness.

Most disconcerting was the discovery that he was hoping anything at all. He’d been wrong to accept her offer of assistance. He was putting her in unnecessary danger.

He hadn’t any business looking forward to seeing her tonight.

At long last, the sound of eight bells rippled along Brook Street and there was a bustle to unroll the carpet and light the last lanterns before the first carriage rattled to a stop. She was not the first to arrive, nor the second. In fact, he’d lost track of how many crested coaches had deposited lords and ladies dripping with silk and jewels—a dozen, at least—when he saw her.

Langley nearly had to shoulder the freckle-faced lad out of the way to ensure it was he who helped her from her coach and walked slightly behind her from the street to the house.

As she descended, her face nearly disappeared into a calash of dark green, paired with a satin cloak entirely inadequate to the weather, tied loosely around her neck and open enough to offer a glimpse of the rest of her: an enticing display of bosom in a low cut gown made of some flimsy reddish stuff over a pale underdress. The effect was to make it seem as if one could see right through to her bare skin.

No, Lady Kingston was not at all what he’d expected when he’d been told she was a widow.

She briefly touched his palm as she stepped to the ground, and with the other hand, he clutched the handle of the umbrella in a death’s grip, afraid he might give in to the temptation either to reach across and wrap the cloak more securely around her—or worse, to unwrap her entirely.

They were halfway up the walk before he remembered to speak. “My lady.” He kept his voice low, hardly parted his lips. “Once you are inside, you must—”

“Oh, it is you,” she began and turned toward him slightly before seeming to think better of it and walking on. “I wasn’t certain—you make a masterful footman, by the way. Even better than your bookshop clerk. I think I understand now why they call you Magpie. I read up on the species in Bewick’s Birds this morning, you see. ‘Crafty and familiar,’ he says. They’re great mimics apparently. Do you know, they can be made to repeat whole sentences? I suppose that’s why some people try to domesticate them.”

“My lady—”

But that was that. They were at the door, where conversation between them could too easily be either seen or overheard, and would in any case be regarded with suspicion, given the part he was playing. He was obliged to bow and back away, handing her over to the care of another liveried footman just inside, who had the honor of helping her to remove her cloak. Rubies glittered at her ears and throat. He might have lingered for another look if not for the sound of an approaching carriage.

He had had no chance to convey his plan. No notion of how or when he’d reconnect with her tonight. If Dulsworthy caught her snooping, it could mean trouble—for both of them.

Yet his thoughts, such as they were, had once again wandered far away from codebooks and Lieutenant Hopkins. Far even from this Brook Street mansion. Some walrus-faced nob had to speak sharply to him before he realized he was letting the rain drip off the edge of his umbrella and down a lady’s back. Evans would have his head, and might even fire him before he had a chance to sneak into the house.

Still, he was lost in the winding stream of Lady Kingston’s silly chatter.

Crafty and familiar.

A mimic.

Was that how she saw him?

If she only knew…

Chapter 5

Amanda drew back her shoulders, lifted her chin, and walked toward the ballroom, fighting with every step the impulse to make sure her bosom was still contained within the shallow bodice of her gown.

Guilt, not gravity, lay behind the impulse, as she well knew. She’d had to engage in subterfuge to escape the house in this dress, rather than the one her mother had chosen, which had been blue, of course, and perfectly demure. A dress not for dancing and flirting and adventure, but for sitting in a straight-backed chair on the fringes of the ballroom with the other matrons.