Page 70 of One Thing Leads to a Lover

She watched her toes peep from beneath her skirts as they hurried along, a part of her as desperate as Lot’s wife to take one last curious look around. But the rest of her was lost in the memory of Jamie and Pip, tearing off their shoes and stockings and racing into the cool river.

Would that be the last time she saw them alive?

“I’ll pay anything,” she murmured, only half speaking to Langley. “Any sort of a ransom.”

He gripped her hand where it lay on his arm. “I suspect they have but one form of currency in mind.”

The codebook, of course. Which Langley had handed over to General Scott. She had been surprised to learn the general had no immediate plan to trade it for his captured agent. Would he be similarly reluctant to use it to buy back her sons?

She blinked furiously against a fresh surge of tears, thick enough that when Langley said, “Here we are,” she could barely make out the sort of doorway through which they passed.

The warm, spicy scents of a hundred varieties of tobacco acted more effectually than smelling salts. With a little jerk of awareness, she began to look about herself, at the wood floor polished with the traffic of many years’ worth of footsteps and the tall windows through which sunlight streamed, setting aglow dozens of glass jars stacked almost to the ceiling. Drawers and shelves, a long wooden counter, and behind it a portly man with brown skin and silvering hair, who was helping a pair of customers.

She recalled having noticed the faintest scent of tobacco clinging to Langley’s coat, that night in the library. But she’d seen no other sign that he smoked. Why on earth were they popping into a tobacco shop, especially at a time like this?

“I—I’ve never been inside a tobacconist’s before,” she said to Langley, who was peering at a selection of enameled snuff boxes in a display cabinet.

“You still haven’t, my dear,” he replied without looking at her, hardly even moving his mouth. “Not exactly. Wait a moment.”

“Be right with you, sir,” the shopkeeper called to them, and Langley raised a finger to the brim of his hat in acknowledgment.

At long last, the other two gentlemen made their purchases and left. A bell jangled above the door as they passed through it. “Good afternoon, sir,” the shopkeeper said to Langley. “Pleased to see you again.” He glanced at Amanda, and she had the impression that though his dark eyes passed quickly over her, they took in a great deal. “The Kingston blend, I take it?”

Amanda started. Kingston? It could hardly be a coincidence.

“Aye,” said Langley.

The man scanned the otherwise empty shop and the street beyond the windows, his mouth set in a strangely grim line. “I’d have thought you might find it a bit rich for the likes of you,” he said with a sigh. “Ah, well,” he turned and reached for a glass jar, as if fetching the tobacco Langley had requested.

At the same moment, Langley moved, lifting a hinged section of the wooden countertop that formed a pass-through and dragging her along with him, past the shopkeeper, who seemed not at all surprised to find customers on his side of the counter, then through a small door she had not noticed before. A steep set of stairs pitched downward, into darkness.

“Welcome,” said Langley, “to the Underground.”

She laid her palm against the cool, rough-plastered wall, feeling her way as she descended. At the bottom of the steps ran a long corridor, lighted by a single sconce, closed doors along either side.

“The nation imagines that the British army runs its intelligence operation out of an office in Whitehall. But here’s where much of the real work is done,” Langley explained. He opened one of the doors, which gave way to a tiny bedchamber, hardly bigger than the one in which he’d slept in the attic of Bartlett House, hardly big enough for a narrow cot and a washstand. “You can wait in here. I’m off to tell my fellow intelligence officers what’s happened. And to beg their help.”

She watched his jaw move as he spoke, weighed its chiseled firmness with the quiet uncertainty of his words. “Thank you, but no,” she said, laying her hand on his and drawing the door closed again. “I’m coming with you.”

She wasn’t quite sure what to call the expression that flickered into his warm brown eyes. Surprise? Annoyance? She settled on relief as he pressed his lips in a disapproving line and marched her toward another door across the corridor.

The room behind it was larger, its plain whitewashed walls lighted by several lamps and decorated with maps—no, the maps weren’t merely decorative, she realized with a start as she noted the colored pins in one, though she could not begin to guess what they marked. At one of two tables, a young man dressed in ordinary clothes sat in straight-backed chair, surrounded by stacks of books and paper. “Major Stanhope,” he said, lifting his head his from his work, then jerking to his feet, his surprised gaze focused entirely on her.

“Would you be so good as to relieve Colonel Millrose for a few moments? I need to speak with him.”

“Yes, sir,” the younger man said, marking his place in the book he’d been reading.

“This is the workroom,” Langley explained after he’d gone. “Code breaking, primarily. The men have been itching to get their hands on a certain French cookbook.”

Amanda did not know what to say in reply. Was this all some strange dream? Had she perhaps struck her head when she’d fainted and dreamed everything that had happened since?

He pulled out a chair and gestured for her to sit down, but her legs tingled with restless energy. She needed to be doing something. She wanted to pace, despite the room’s narrow compass. But perhaps that would look too much like nosiness? With a wavering sigh, she sank onto the hard chair.

A moment later, she popped to her feet again when the door opened and the shopkeeper entered. “My lady,” Langley said, “may I present Colonel William Millrose. Colonel Millrose, the Countess of Kingston.”

Despite the wobbliness in her knees, she managed a curtsy. He bowed and waved her back into the chair. “You must be nearly done in, my lady. I’ve sent for some refreshment.”

“Thank you, sir.”