Page 32 of One Thing Leads to a Lover

George gave a skeptical “Harrumph!”

She very nearly echoed it. In her mind’s eye she pictured the cramped, dusty chamber adjoining the schoolroom. The narrow bed. Mightn’t even a soldier balk at such quarters?

But she had no business imagining alternative beds in which he might lie.

“Should you like to go up now and meet your charges, Mr. Stanhope?” she offered, turning toward the door.

Lord Dulsworthy had other ideas. “Our conversation here is not finished, Amanda.”

Oh, how dare he! To address her so familiarly before another, to act as if she welcomed his address, to make it seem as if his claim had already been staked. For the first time in all the years of their acquaintance, her palm itched to slap him, and she might have done if she had not at just that moment glimpsed Major Stanhope’s hand, hanging loosely at his side, curl into fist.

She shook her head, both amused and bemused by the two men’s posturing. What on earth had got into Lord Dulsworthy? And why should Major Stanhope care? They were worse than Jamie and Philip, spoiling for a fight.

“The rest of what we have to discuss can surely be deferred until Mr. Stanhope has something to report,” she said. “Good morning, my lord.”

She did not wait to see how he accepted his dismissal, but marched through the doorway and toward the stairs, praying the Magpie followed.

Chapter 8

Langley had been impressed—

Reluctantly impressed—

Well, by all rights his response ought to be reluctant where Lady Kingston was concerned—

He gave a vigorous shake of his head, then straightened his spectacles. Good God. His thoughts were in danger of becoming as fragmented and jumbled as hers.

Though he could not help but notice that she fumbled and rambled less when speaking to Dulsworthy. Oddly, he doubted it was a mark of her comfort in the other man’s presence. She had conducted herself well in the library, to be sure, and had managed the fellow with aplomb. But whatever Dulsworthy inspired in her, it was not confidence.

And then Langley found himself wondering what it might mean that she was so willing to speak freely, to be herself, in front of him.…

“You are to have use of any of the books in the library, of course, Mr. Stanhope,” she was saying, her voice echoing slightly as she crossed the high-ceilinged, marble-tiled hall. “Now, if you’ll follow me upstairs…”

He did as he was bid, hustling to catch up, as she seemed in a great hurry to be off. Dulsworthy grumbled as Langley nearly collided with him, the other man striding purposefully, even angrily, for the door. A footman, the same one who’d admitted Langley a few days past, bowed Dulsworthy out, and Langley could have sworn he glimpsed a twitch of a smile on the servant’s face.

Now Langley had to trot up the steps, for Lady Kingston had already reached the turning and was saying something he couldn’t quite catch about the dining room on the first floor. “The family apartments are on the second and third floors,” she explained as they reached the landing but did not pause.

He was still a step or two behind her, enough to give himself a chance to look at her without being observed. Without his spectacles, he had been confident in his assessment of her beauty, but equally certain that she benefitted from the softening effect of his short-sightedness, as most everything and everyone did.

Now, however, he could see that she required no such help. Her skin was as flawless, her features as delicate, as they had first appeared to be. This morning, she wore her golden brown hair in a style somewhere between the easy looseness of their first meeting and the elegant arrangement of last night. The weight of its honeyed coils gave a saucy tilt to her chin. He liked it.

The skirts of her blue and cream striped gown swayed, summoning him like a bell. Trotting up the steps, he closed the remaining gap between them, expecting a chiding, questioning look from her dark eyes, or a series of fumbling questions from her lips.

He got nothing, not even a glance, as she droned on in a voice that hardly seemed her own, the sort of rehearsed speech about architecture and paintings he might have expected from the housekeeper of a grand country house frequently tasked with showing the place to visitors and hoping for a perquisite at the end of the tour.

When they reached the stairway to the fourth floor, some of the house’s grandeur fell away. The steps were narrower, uncarpeted, steep. And they opened not onto a landing but right into the schoolroom itself, a sparsely furnished but pleasantly light-filled space.

At a large worktable sat the two boys he’d caught only a glimpse of on his first visit to Bartlett House. One dark head, one fair, both bent over some joint project spread out in front of them.

“Blue paint, please,” the darker-haired one said.

“I’m using it,” was the reply. “Have the brown.”

“We’re meant to be drawing rivers. They can’t all look like great sludge-filled worms.”

“The Thames does—ow! Why’d you hit me?”

Less a hit than nudge, really, the dark-haired one having realized the two of them were being observed and pushing quickly to his feet. The elder, Langley guessed, though he was slighter of build. The young earl.