Lord Langley Is Back in Town (30 page)

Thus speaks the woman who not a day earlier ordered me to seduce my betrothed
, Minerva had mused silently. Nor was she moved by her aunt’s plight, for Lady Chudley had been Society’s leading gossip for more than thirty years. But it was obviously a bitter broth for Bedelia to swallow, especially now that she was on the other side of the spoon, so to say.

But the day had passed, and now it was well after midnight, and Minerva had more pressing concerns than the maelstrom of gossip and scandal swirling around her. Glancing out the window of her bedroom, she willed the darkness to reveal the one thing she wanted to know above all else.

Where the devil was Langley? And Thomas-William as well?

Whatever were those two up to?

Not that she cared, she tried telling herself. She didn’t. Not in the least.

Oh, but she did. And she could help, if only he’d let her.

Then perhaps he’d help you . . .

Pushing away from the window, she snuffed out her candle and flounced down on her bed, a thin shaft of moonlight streaming through the gap in the parted curtains.

No, she couldn’t ask Langley for help. The man had enough worries not be saddled with her poor problems.

Treason . . .
She shook her head at the evil implications that word held, but she also suspected the answers could be found with the clues at hand . . .
the grooves in the frame . . . the bits of black velvet . . . the nannies arrival . . . Langley’s hidden intelligence shipments
.

Minerva sat up as the parts came together.

It was obvious that someone had learned of his means of sending intelligence home to England and then used the same devious channel for their gains, leaving Langley’s reputation to be sullied. And when he returned, they had tried to kill him.

Minerva shook her head. Oh, it was all too far-fetched. Wasn’t it? Aunt Bedelia would say she’d been reading too many novels of late, but still . . .

Oh, if only Langley would come home and tell her he had finished the wretched business once and for all. Then they could . . .

They could what?

She rolled over and punched her pillow. However had this happened? This . . . this anxious, devilish concern.

No, concern wasn’t the right word. Concern was what you felt when a friend fell ill. Concern was something you wallowed in when your quarterly accounts ran over.

This ache in her chest, this trembling in her limbs, was something altogether different.

Yet how had it happened? And even as she searched her memories of the past few days, it was that wretched vision from the other morning that continued to haunt her.

The pair of boys, with Langley at her side, a life that could be hers if only she would . . . if she dared . . .

Risk her heart
.

Minerva shook her head. Oh, no, that would never do. Trust her heart? Look where it had gotten her the last time. She’d trusted Gerald Adlington and he’d betrayed her by marrying her sister in hopes of gaining an heiress’s fortune.

“It isn’t just that,” she whispered, thinking of that meadow, the white drifts of snowdrops blooming in haphazard clumps. It wasn’t just the pair of mischievous lads.

But something else.

For Langley’s confession that sometimes all a man had was his honor had prodded her about her very dishonorable existence.

Honor
.

For that had to be why Langley was lurking about London in some secretive attempt to clear his name.

To regain his honor.

There is nothing to regain,
she would have told him. No, he had more honor than any other man she’d ever met.

And that called to her. So very deeply. How she longed to live free of her own deceptions. The lie that had imprisoned her as Minerva Sterling. Kept her living in the strictest confines for fear someone would see the truth: She was no lady.

Mayhap if she could help Langley, restore his name, then that would redeem hers . . . for there would be no stopping Adlington, not until he was placated or finished off.

For a moment she lay atop her bed in silence, the entire house asleep around her, nothing stirring, not even a crackle from the coals in the hearth.

The vastness and the emptiness of the night weighed heavily upon her, and once again she glanced toward her window and sent up a silent wish.

Please. Let him come home.
Yet, she didn’t have the courage to add the very secret prayer she had tucked in her heart.

Let him come home to me.

She paused for a moment, hoping to hear the telltale creak of the gate or the kitchen door being picked open, or however it was Langley and his Foreign Office cohorts got barred doors to yield to them.

But there was nothing but silence to greet her, so she closed her eyes and tugged her pillow close to her breast.

Close to her heart, where for so many years she hadn’t dared to let any man come near.

Until now.

T
he house was dark and still when Langley slipped through the gate and made his way up the garden path in the back, his steps laden with discouragement.

After finding nothing at Langley House, save more questions, he and Thomas-William had shadowed Sir Basil, not letting up their surveillance of the man in hopes he’d slip up or that Nottage would show himself. But to his dismay, the mushroom continued to lead his smug and orderly life as if he had everything well in hand.

Nor had there been any sign of Nottage.

No, Langley realized, the only way to discover the truth was to search Sir Basil’s office at Whitehall, despite Lord Andrew’s protests that it would be foolhardy.

There he would find the proof he sought. He had to find something and quickly. For Langley felt his time running out, the danger to Minerva cutting him to the core. She was in far too deep, and if the incident at the theatre hadn’t shaken him, it was her earnest desire to help him that had.

Even Thomas-William had reluctantly agreed to his mad plan and come along, though most likely only to ensure that he didn’t get himself killed in such a foolhardy endeavor.

But gain the man’s office they had, though it was as dull as Sir Basil himself, with nothing out of the ordinary to be found—and they had nearly taken the place apart searching it.

No, it was as Lord Andrew had said, whatever evidence there was left, it would not be easily found, if it even existed.

All they had discovered was the signed paperwork that indicted one Ellis, Baron Langley, for high treason.

Then the situation went from futile to downright dangerous as they slipped back into the corridor, the one that had been empty not twenty minutes earlier, and found half a dozen guards blocking their path.

Luckily for them, Whitehall never changed, and since Langley had spent his first two years with the Foreign Office running errands all over the labyrinth of halls and offices, they were able to put up a merry chase, at least so it appeared until they found themselves cut off with only two choices: surrender or fight their way out.

It hadn’t really been a choice. Not with Thomas-William there. Nor had it been easy, but they’d managed to outpummel the younger guards—Thomas-William handily knocking three of them cold in quick succession.

But that didn’t mean the last three had given up as easily, and Langley and Thomas-William had suffered for it—though in the end they escaped, dashing down a long unused stairwell that led to a door concealed by a large bush. From there they slipped into the darkness of St. James Park and then doubled back to the river.

While Langley knew his identity was safe, Thomas-William was too familiar a face with the agents in the office. When his description was passed around, it wouldn’t be long before a warrant would be issued.

So with some regret, Langley had sent his friend upriver to the Earl of Clifton’s estate. He knew Clifton and his wife, Lucy Ellyson, would conceal and safeguard her father’s loyal servant with their very lives.

But as he watched Thomas-William rowing away, moving quickly along with the tide as it pushed him upstream, Langley shivered. It wasn’t from the cold, but that he was alone.

Out of chances, out of ideas.

Save his meeting tomorrow morning with Lord Chudley on Primrose Hill. Perhaps he would be better off just letting the old viscount put a bullet through his heart and be done with the matter.

For twenty some years he’d lived what some might call a charmed existence: mistresses, adventure, travel, and perhaps it had been just that. Magic.

Then it all had changed when he’d brought the girls to England to go to school. Without them it had been as if the light had gone out of his heart, and without their brightness in his days, he’d been blind to the darkness that had eventually enveloped him.

Treason
. Oh, good God, there would be no stopping Brownie now that he had the order signed. While it was all but his end, the last thing he wanted was for that stain to touch Tally and Felicity’s lives. If he was hung for treason, it would ruin them, their futures.

And it would ruin Minerva as well.

Cold, bleeding, and shivering, he’d warily crossed Piccadilly and St. James, through the byways and alleys of Mayfair, until he came to the mews behind Brook Street.

Minerva
, his heart chimed at the sight of her window.
I am so sorry.

For very soon their betrothal would mire her down in scandal, something he knew she’d abhor, come to despise him for.

Much to his chagrin, the kitchen door was locked. Mayhap this was her way of telling him to bugger off.

Not just yet
, he thought grimly, reaching into the concealed sleeve inside his boot where he kept his picks.

He quickly got the door open and staggered inside, pausing for a moment on the stairs down to the kitchen, if only to catch his breath.

“My good man, you are getting too demmed old for this nonsense,” he muttered to himself, a wry smile coming to his lips. Never would he have thought all those years ago, when his old school chum Robert Jenkinson had talked him into joining the Foreign Office, that at two and forty he would still be getting into roustabouts and lurking about like a thief in the night.

And what did he have for all of his troubles? Half his memory, his reputation in tatters, and ruination looming over everyone he loved. Langley considered one other choice.

What if he were to slip into the night, leave London? Tally and Felicity already thought him lost, had probably gotten used to the notion; they were better off without him.

Then, unbidden, came the image of Minerva standing before Langley House with a handful of snowdrops in her hands.

Hope
, she beckoned.
Remember to hold onto your hope
.

Oh, aye, he had hope. Hope that Chudley was still a good shot.

As it was, when he got to the bottom of the stairs in the kitchen, he swayed a bit, then staggered over to a chair and sank into it.

Well, hopefully he’d given as well as he’d gotten, rubbing his aching jaw. Slowly, he sorted out his various aches and pains and realized he was worse off than he first thought.

“Demmit,” he muttered.

There was naught but the glow of coals in the kitchen range, and no sign of Mrs. Hutchinson. The lady was probably off with her “dear Mudgett.” Which was good. And the glowing coals meant the water in the tank on the side of range was hot and there was no one about to witness his battered state.

Though tomorrow there would no hiding his bruised jaw and nose, which was still flowing like tapped claret.

Groaning as quietly as he could, he dragged a tub out from under one of the workbenches and began filling it from the range.

While the rest of the house was a tumbledown pile of neglect, the kitchen was of the first order. Mrs. Hutchinson said Felicity had insisted on redoing it for her, if only to keep the unlikely cook and housekeeper happily baking scones. Hence the dumbwaiter and the fancy cooking range. With each panful of hot water he emptied into the tub, he raised a toast of thanks to his scone-mad daughter.

Now all he had to do was bathe, bind the worst of his wounds, and get himself upstairs to bed. Then this night would be over.

Or so he thought as he stripped off his torn jacket, bloodied shirt, and mud-splattered breeches, because when he reached to remove his smallclothes, there was a creak on the stairs behind him.

Already wound too tight from the night’s events, Langley grabbed up his pistol and whirled around, only to find himself ready to shoot his white-faced betrothed.

“G
ood heavens, what happened to you?” Minerva gasped, not even looking at the pistol in Langley’s hand, her gaze fixed on his bloodied nose and the dark purple coloring on one side of his jaw. She crossed the space between them, her hand coming up to cup his face but stopping short when he winced. “Who did this to you?”