Page 2 of One Thing Leads to a Lover

Ah. Not, of course, that she begrudged George having a say in her sons’ upbringing. Her husband’s will had named both of them guardians, after all. And in the first months of her widowhood, she had been grateful to have a friend in Lord Dulsworthy, to whom she could turn when the inevitable questions arose. Grateful too to her mother, who had swooped into Bartlett House and taken command so that Amanda could focus all of her attention on her grieving boys.

But months had turned to years. Nearly three of them. And though the Countess of Kingston was perfectly capable of handling matters herself, over time, people seemed to have forgotten it.

Including, occasionally, Amanda herself.

“Did Mr. Jacobs happen to say wh—?” She bit off the question, saving it for later. For Mr. Jacobs himself, perhaps, or for George when he called. “Thank you, Matthews. Please send Mrs. Hepplewythe to me in my sitting room.”

If Mama had risen late, then the matter of the menus was yet to be decided, and Amanda could finally enjoy a week without—

“Certainly, my lady. I’ll tell her as soon as she returns from Mrs. West’s chambers.”

Though tempted, Amanda did not suck in a sharp breath of disappointment or grimace or even shake her head. As her mother often reminded her, the servants saw everything and knew even more; therefore, she must mind her step around them most of all.

Occasionally she wondered if she might not be better off if she let a bit of her frustration show.

With a nod to Matthews, she climbed the stairs to her own suite of rooms at the back of the house, passing through the bedchamber, with its cheerful yellow curtains and floral paper; shedding her pelisse, bonnet, and gloves in the dressing room; and coming at last to her small sitting room, more than half filled by a velvet-covered divan, an overstuffed chair flanked by a marble-topped table, and her escritoire. At that elegant writing desk, positioned between two tall windows overlooking the garden, she sat down.

The small stack of invitations still lay on the center of the desktop. At least Mama had not taken the liberty of writing replies—yet. Nevertheless, she had made clear her opinion about the necessity of declining them.

But why must Amanda continue to limit her social engagements? She was no longer in mourning. Surely no one would think it improper for her to spend an evening at the theater with the Hursts?

This time, her sigh escaped, but the room’s silence absorbed it.

More than twenty years her senior, James Bartlett, the late Earl of Kingston, had been a quiet gentleman of bookish tastes who had generally avoided frivolities. Though he had been gone for three years, Amanda had had no opportunity to discover anything of the supposed liberties a widow of her status might take.

Because now it was Mama who sorted through the post. And Mama had decided that the only invitation it was proper for her to accept was the one that lay uppermost: the invitation to Lord Dulsworthy’s ball. Because George was an old friend and the boys’ guardian. Because he always behaved with strict propriety. Because everyone knew that he intended someday to make Amanda his—

Enough of that.

She laid the package from the bookshop on top of the invitation, pressing down slightly as if to smother the folded note. She would rather think of the treasure she had found and imagine the light in Jamie’s eyes when he saw it.

One look at the package brought back the memory of the jarring blow the stranger had struck against her arm. She could see the book fly from her fingers, arc into the air, and get lost on the ground among the feet of the crowd. Uneasily, she traced the torn wrapping, fingered the frayed string with which it was tied. Had the fall damaged the book’s binding? Only one way to find out. She rummaged in the tray for the penknife, sawed through the twine, and peeled back the brown paper to reveal a little book bound in green leather.

In her mind’s eye, she pictured the clerk’s long, ink-stained fingers holding the slim volume out to her. But hadn’t the cover of the book the clerk had put into her hands been blue…?

Reaching forward to lift the green cover, she caught herself holding her breath. Could she have been mistaken? For just a moment, as she flipped through the book, she was reassured by what she saw. French phrases. Numbers.

But as the pages sped past, fanned between her fingers and thumb, her eye caught more and more that did not belong in a treatise on mathematics. This was…why, this was a…a cookery book? Filled with recipes for elaborate pastries, it would appear, though her knowledge of baking came entirely from the eating side of things. The kitchen had been another of the places a lady of her station did not set foot, according to her mother: The housekeeper is your intermediary with the lower servants, dear; make her come to you.

“Oh, bother.” Somehow the clerk had wrapped up the wrong book or given her someone else’s package. Now she would have to make a second trip to the shop to set things right, and as soon as possible. What if they mistakenly sold the Pascal to someone else in the meantime? “Oh—” A stronger epithet rose to her tongue, but even in the privacy of her sitting room, she squelched it out of habit. “Bother,” she finished again, though more emphatically this time.

“Mama, Mama! You must come and watch us. Mr. Jacobs says I’m a—a—” Philip was already halfway across the room, having burst in between the first and second bother, weaving between the chair and the little table and making its fragile top spin. She twisted toward him, welcoming both the distraction and the burst of energy he brought.

“Prodigy,” his elder brother supplied, following a pace behind, tossing dark hair off his narrow brow with a jerk of his head. “But I shouldn’t think so much of the compliment, if I were you, Pip. Uncle George pays him, you know.”

Stockier and nearly as tall as Jamie, though the younger by almost two years, Philip looked surprisingly formidable as he squared his shoulders and crossed his arms over his chest. Perspiration shone on his round, red face and dampened his blond hair. “That’s as may be,” he retorted, glaring at his brother. “But I still knocked your foil from your hand, didn’t I? Twice.”

“Boys!” Amanda’s mother was the next to sweep into the room, wearing a morning gown of pale blue and clutching a gauzy shawl around her shoulders. Thanks to her maid’s artful arrangement, her hair still looked more blonde than gray. “What have I told you about barging in on your mama? You and your brother are young gentlemen, and a gentleman never interrupts a lady’s much-needed repose.”

“Oh, pshaw, Grandmama.” Philip dismissed the notion out of hand, though Amanda rather suspected he hadn’t the faintest notion of what repose might be. “Mama likes a bit of noise now and then, don’t you?” he demanded, turning toward her.

Yes, she wanted to cry out. Yes. During the months of her late husband’s illness, and for the period of mourning afterward, she had been cocooned within a muffled world of sickness and grief. Even now, her mother was still trying to wrap Amanda in cotton wool. She was almost as tired of the quiet inside Bartlett House as she was of watching her step whenever she dared to leave it.

But she was prevented from replying by the nearer approach of her elder son, Jamie, the eleven-year-old Earl of Kingston. A shadow of worry hung on his slight build and sallow complexion. “Is something troubling you, Mama?” He spoke low, his voice almost inaudible beneath the clamor of Philip regaling his grandmama with his fencing triumphs.

Amanda could not keep herself from brushing the cowlick of dark hair away from his eyes, though he was growing old enough to be annoyed by the gesture. “Why do you ask, my dear?”

“You were saying ‘oh, bother’ when we came in. Has something happened?” Even before his father’s illness, Jamie had been the sort of boy who always feared the worst.