Page 51 of One Thing Leads to a Lover

After all, he had tupped the boy’s mother against a door last night.

But whatever it was, the lad seemed to have overcome his initial hesitation toward Langley, and Langley was prepared to return the feeling. He accepted the handshake, then waved an arm toward the table in a silent suggestion they sit down for what came next. “Well, then, Jamie. What was it you wanted to talk with me about?”

As Langley pulled back one of the unforgiving, undersized wooden chairs—whatever the subject, this was destined to be an uncomfortable conversation—Jamie swerved past him, to the door of his bedchamber. “One moment.”

If Langley angled his head just so, he could see into the boys’ room. Beside his neatly made bed, Jamie dropped down on one knee and fished his arm beneath the mattress, withdrawing a small, flat package. With his chin tucked too low for Langley to meet his eye, he returned to the schoolroom and laid the paper-wrapped package on the table. “It’s this, sir.”

“And what is this?”

“A book.”

It could, of course, have been any book at all. An adventure story the boy had been forbidden to read. Or something more salacious still.

Nevertheless, Langley’s thoughts darted in another direction. Anticipation vibrated through his chest, like a bell that could not be un-rung. But how ridiculous of him to imagine…

“What sort of book?”

“You can see for yourself, sir,” the boy said, poking the package toward him with a fingertip. “The wrapping’s torn.”

Slowly, Langley drew it the rest of the way across the table, afraid to hope. As he peeled back just enough of the paper to reveal what was inside, he fought the impulse to close his eyes. It was extraordinarily unlikely for Jamie to have somehow laid his hands on…

“A—a cookbook?” He struggled for something like a tone of mild curiosity. “How did you come by this?”

“I found it in Lord Dulsworthy’s phaeton. The other day, when he took us for a drive. Before—before you came.”

Certain his hands would tremble if he dared to thumb through the codebook, Langley carefully laid it on the table in front of him. Think, think. What did he most need to know?

“And you were so…alarmed by the discovery that your guardian had purchased a, a cookbook that you”—thank God—“took it from him?”

“Well…it isn’t just any cookbook.”

Langley’s heart stuttered and nearly stopped. “Oh?”

“No. The man—the one who came to the house, asking for it—he said it was quite valuable. Oh, I’m not doing a very good job of explaining, am I? You see, not quite a week ago, my mother went out and bought a book. I’m not sure what it was, but later that day a chap came from the bookshop and said her package had got mixed up with another customer’s. She’d brought home some rare book that belonged to someone else, and could he have it back, please?”

“And you saw this exchange?”

“Well, overheard it, really. Pip and I were in the library. I wasn’t trying to listen,” he insisted earnestly. “Anyway, Uncle George—Lord Dulsworthy, I should say—was there too, and he told the man to come back another time. And then that afternoon, when we were all sitting down for tea, Mrs. Hepplewythe, our housekeeper, brought in a cookbook and said it was French and no good—it was the book Mama was to have returned to the bookshop, as it turned out—and so Lord Dulsworthy took it and said he would see to the matter. But”—Jamie sent the package a wary glance—“he didn’t.”

Langley toyed with a loose end of the twine that held the wrappings in place, trying to sort his thoughts. “Surely that’s why Lord Dulsworthy had the book in his carriage? To return it?”

The boy gave an uncertain nod. “That what I thought at first too, sir. Or that he’d meant to do it, but forgot. It had slid quite far underneath the seat. I picked it up and started to ask him, and that’s when I happened to notice the direction written on the wrappings. I—I’m quite sure the man said he came from Porter’s.”

With his thumb, Langley lifted the package and flipped it over onto his palm, displaying an unfamiliar name and address, scrawled across the paper in what he could only assume to be Dulsworthy’s hand.

“A strange affair, certainly.”

“I don’t want Mama to get in trouble. The man from the shop said it’s worth a lot of money. Uncle George shouldn’t’ve…” As the words trailed off, he shook his head, his gaze distant, as if envisioning his guardian’s displeasure when he discovered the book missing. “Anyway, now I’ve got it, but I don’t know what I should do with it,” he finished simply, bringing his eyes back to the table, looking first at the book, and then at Langley. “Can you help?”

Langley still wasn’t sure whether it would be fair to say that Jamie trusted him. But the boy’s distrust of Dulsworthy was palpable—and evidently, not misplaced. Could the man somehow have discovered the true value of what he’d had in his possession?

“Would you like me to see that it gets where it belongs?”

Jamie hesitated. “Will you tell Mama?”

“Are you worried she will be unhappy with you for taking it?”

He shook his head, causing his hair to fall into his eyes. “She would be more unhappy to know Uncle George didn’t keep his promise.”