One Thing Leads to a Lover

Book 2: Love and Let Spy

by Susanna Craig

Genres: Women's Fiction; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Amanda Bartlett, widowed Countess of Kingston, is a woman beyond reproach. Married at nineteen, she dutifully provided the Earl with an heir and a spare before his death three years ago. Since then, Amanda has lived a simple, quiet life—a life that, if she were honest, has become more than a trifle dull. So when an adventure literally drops into her lap, in the shape of a mysterious book, she intends to make the most of it—especially if it brings her closer to a charismatic stranger... Major Langley Stanhope, an intelligence officer and master mimic known as the Magpie, needs to retrieve the code book that has fallen into Amanda’s hands. The mistaken delivery has put them both in grave danger and in a desperate race to unearth a traitor. But it’s also stirred an intense, reckless attraction. Langley believes the life he leads is not suitable for a delicate widow, but it seems he may have underestimated the lady’s daring—and the depths of their mutual desire.

Release date: April 6, 2021

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 384

Sample

Chapter 1

For as many of her thirty-two years as Amanda could remember, her mother had been urging her to mind her step.

Not that Amanda was particularly clumsy—barring the summer of her twelfth birthday, when she had grown several inches taller in mere weeks and both the dressmaker and the dancing master had thrown up their hands in despair over her ungainliness.

No, the wrong-footedness Mama fretted over was primarily of the social variety. Did Amanda comport herself properly? Did she say the right things to the right people? Did she attract neither too much notice, nor too little?

Amanda had always been a little too curious, a little too bold to suit her mother.

One might have hoped—Amanda certainly had—that her mother would relax a bit once Amanda, at nineteen, had received and accepted a much-coveted offer of marriage from the Earl of Kingston. If not then, surely once the vows had been spoken in St. George’s in front of hundreds. Or once the requisite heir and a spare had been born.

But if in fact Mama had ever allowed the phrase to fall into disuse, she soon took it up again when Amanda found herself a young, and most eligible, widow.

Though she loved her mother, Amanda despised being told to mind her step. To be forever minding your step meant worrying more about others’ thoughts than your own. Making yourself small, fearful of taking up space. Always looking down instead of looking up.

But when the glorious June sun shone from a sky of cerulean blue, dotted with puffs of white clouds so fat and happy they appeared to have been added to the world’s canvas by an enthusiastic five-year-old, then who, on such a day, would not rather look up?

Heedless of the potential for either gossip or freckles, Amanda tipped her face to the sunshine and reveled in its warmth, watching light and shadow dance across her eyelids in a rose-tinted quadrille. The sounds and smells of Bond Street washed over her like a raucous stream flowing around an unmoving stone. Clutching her parcel—a copy of Pascal’s treatise on geometry in the original French—so that one sharp corner fitted against her ribs, she drew in a deep breath and—

A sharp blow to her left shoulder and elbow jerked her from her moment’s reverie. Her chin snapped downward and her eyes popped open as the paper-wrapped book flew from her hands. Before she could bring him into focus, the man who had jostled her arm was already disappearing into the crowd.

The footman who had accompanied her on the outing—at Mama’s insistence, for Amanda had been firmly of the opinion that a widow could surely go into a bookshop alone—had been trailing at a respectful distance. Now he surged forward and would have given chase had not Amanda instead directed him with trembling motions to rescue the package, which had skidded to a landing on the pavement several yards away. The book she’d bought for Jamie’s birthday was in danger every moment of being kicked by careless feet into the gutter.

Just before it met an ignoble fate on the steaming pile left by a passing dray, the footman snatched up the package. In another moment, it was back in her kid-gloved hands, the paper wrapping scuffed and torn at one corner, the string holding the paper frayed but still knotted. No real harm done.

“Thank you, Lewis. Thank you.” Once more, she clutched the book to her chest, heedless of the grime it had gathered.

“I’m only sorry I couldn’t lay hands on the fellow who treated you with such disrespect, milady.” A flush, part anger, part embarrassment, spread across his youthful cheeks and to the edges of his powdered wig, clashing miserably with the rusty orange of his livery. “Mrs. West will box my ears.”

Her eyes traveled in the direction the stranger had been walking, but of course, he was long out of sight. She had caught no more than a glimpse of him, just the back of a drab greatcoat and tall beaver hat, an identical costume to the one sported by dozens of gentlemen strolling and striding along the busy street.

“I’m sure it was an accident, Lewis. I hadn’t any business stopping in the midst of all this bustle.” The crowd still surged around them, oblivious to the incident. “But I think it’s best if my mother hears nothing of the matter. Now.” She nodded in the opposition direction. “Let’s make our way back to Bartlett House, shall we?”

Lewis sent a glance toward the package. If he had been carrying it, as was his duty, doubtless a passerby would have been unable to knock it from his hands as easily as it had been knocked from hers. But Amanda had refused when she first left the shop with it, and she made no reply to this silent repetition of his offer. He bowed. “As you wish, milady.”

Away from Bond Street, the crowd thinned, and though the streets of Mayfair were not empty, they were quiet enough that one could pick out the notes of the birds perched high in the lush treetops. Now and again the air was split by the cheerful shrieks of children, barely contained within the nurseries whose windows had been flung open to the fresh morning air.

With a rueful roll of her aching shoulder, Amanda slowed her steps but did not stop again. She had lost a little of her taste for soaking up the sunshine. Perhaps later, in the seclusion of the garden at Bartlett House, while the boys made observations for their project about bees.

But first she intended to meet with the housekeeper about the week’s menus, if Mama had not already done it. Then she had some invitations to which she wished to respond, if Mama had not already written on her behalf. And of course, George, Lord Dulsworthy, had promised to call on her today, and Mama was predictably delighted at the prospect.…

A swallowed sigh pushed Amanda’s shoulders a notch lower. How had things ended up thus?

When they reached Bartlett House, she paused to collect herself as Lewis preceded her up the stairs. While he held open the door, she ascended, watching the toes of her brown leather half-boots peep from beneath her skirts as they landed squarely on each step.

Inside, all was quiet—unsettlingly so, given that two young boys lived within.

Matthews the butler came forward with a reproving glance for Lewis and a hand outstretched for the package she carried. But before he reached her, the hand fell to his side and the movement folded into a bow. Lewis must have communicated, whether through mouthed words or gestures, that the assistance would be unwelcome.

“Mrs. West rang for her morning cocoa not a quarter of an hour ago, my lady,” Matthews reported.

Mama was having a lie-in? Good. “And the boys?”

“In the drawing room with the fencing master, my lady.”

“Oh? Is it…Tuesday?”

The butler very nearly smiled. “No, my lady. When Mr. Jacobs arrived, he indicated that Lord Dulsworthy had requested the change.”

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.

“You’re coming, ain’t you, Mama?” Philip interjected. “I want you to watch me whoop him again.”

“Don’t say ain’t, Philip,” his grandmother corrected.

“Or whoop,” added Amanda. “And don’t worry, Jamie.” She turned back toward her elder son even as she gathered the wrapping paper, the twine, and the book, along with the invitations on which it had been resting, and stuffed the lot into the escritoire’s shallow center drawer. “I’m not troubled by anything. And neither should you be.”

“I’d wait,” Philip insisted, “until you’ve seen him fence. What’s to become of him when he’s old enough to be called out?”

“Gracious, Philip.” Amanda avoided her mother’s eye as she swallowed a laugh. “Why ever do you imagine anyone would challenge your brother to a duel?”

Philip considered for a moment before replying airily, “Oh, the usual things, I s’pose. Card sharping or trouble with a petticoat or—”

“That’s quite enough from you, young man,” their grandmama said, steering Philip from the room. With a shrug, Jamie followed. From the threshold, Amanda glanced back toward her desk. The matter of the book would have to wait until later.

Much later.

The next hour was given over to a display of fencing in the drawing room, with Philip crowing over every hit. Contrary to his brother’s taunts, Jamie was not altogether hopeless, though Mr. Jacobs appeared more interested in striking poses than in teaching the boys much of anything. Amanda weighed whether to mention it to Lord Dulsworthy. Luncheon followed: “You never eat the creamed turnips, dear,” Mama observed with exaggerated solicitousness. “I can’t understand why, when I ask Mrs. Trout to prepare them especially for you.” Afterward the boys declared it the ideal time to observe the bees at work in the spring flowers, though by three o’clock it would not have been an exaggeration to call the sunshine hot.

The slightest headache had begun to form behind her eyes even before they returned to the house to find George, Lord Dulsworthy, in the entry hall arguing with a stranger.

Well, no. Arguing implied a degree of passion that George would have found shockingly inappropriate under any circumstance. Murmuring reprovingly, then, his remarks directed mostly to Lewis rather than to the stranger, who stood apart from the fray.

After the brightness of the garden, the house was dim, and she had to blink away the spots before her eyes in order to bring the gentleman—tall, lean, brown-haired—into focus.

Or perhaps not a gentleman?

“—letting a tradesman in through the front door?” Lord Dulsworthy was scolding the footman.

If the cut and fashion of the stranger’s clothes had been insufficient proof of his lowly status, he carried a small, paper-wrapped package.

And yet there was something in his bearing that made her wonder whether George had been quite accurate in his assessment of the man.

“Why, one might even wish to mention the matter to Matthews,” George continued, and for the briefest of moments, Amanda wondered whether he would truly be so bold as to reprimand her servants. Doubtless if he did not, her mother would.

“My lord.” With one hand, Amanda waved the boys into the library as she stepped closer, not quite into the circle of their conversation. George, Lewis, and the stranger all turned to look at her, and she sent a glance over her shoulder to see that Jamie and Philip had obeyed her silent command. The pair of them were just disappearing through the library door, though Philip moved jerkily, as if Jamie might be dragging him by the other arm.

Although she had addressed George, the stranger spoke first. “Lady Kingston?” He hadn’t quite the deferential manners of a tradesman, either. When she nodded, he bowed, then held out the item he carried. “I believe this is the volume you purchased at Porter’s bookshop this morning? As you may already have discovered, you were given an item intended for someone else.”

“I had discovered it, yes.” Readily, she took the book from him, though both George and Lewis had reached for it too. “Thank you.”

The answering dip of his head was not the gesture of a shop clerk. Or an errand boy.

No, for a man of thirty-five or so, with broad shoulders and features that bore the stamp of experience with the world, the term boy was entirely inappropriate.

Nevertheless, Lord Dulsworthy seemed eager to dismiss him as such. “Well, well. You’ve got what you came for, what? On your way, then.” With his still-raised hand, he motioned for Lewis to open the door.

The stranger made no move to leave. In fact, he gave no indication of having heard George at all. “If it’s quite convenient,” he said to her, “I’ll take the other book now.”

“Lewis can retrieve it,” Lord Dulsworthy said, a command the footman thankfully did not immediately heed.

When she darted a glance up the staircase, she noted that the stranger’s dark eyes followed the movement. She thought of the package tucked away in her escritoire, nowhere she wished a servant to pry. “I suppose I could go myse—”

Lord Dulsworthy broke in again. “Lady Kingston is too well-mannered to tell you that your request is quite inconvenient at present. She has a prior engagement to go driving. With me. As you can see, she’s just on the point of going out.”

Now the stranger shifted his gaze, and his study of her, though brisk, was more than a little unsettling. She was still wearing a coarse holland apron over her morning gown. At her side, she dangled a straw hat by its ribbons—a concession to her mother’s insistence that the sun would brown her dreadfully. Its broad brim was not always compatible with her close observation of the boys’ lessons, however, and she had taken it off and on so many times over the course of the afternoon, her hair must be a tumbled mess. Indeed, she could feel a few straggling curls clinging to her damp neck.

No one, not even a tradesman, would mistake her for a lady ready to spend an hour or two on display among the fashionable set in Hyde Park. He must suspect that George was rudely hurrying him away.

Her cheeks, still flushed with warmth from the time spent in the garden, grew warmer still. But the stranger only gave a slight smile and a nod of acknowledgment. “Forgive me. Will you be so kind as to tell me when I may call for it?”

“She’ll have her maid fetch it ’round to the shop,” declared Lord Dulsworthy, now raising his hand as if to clap the stranger on the shoulder and direct him toward the door.

The man moved only slightly, not out of George’s reach, but enough that George too could see his face, which had turned…Amanda could not decide how to describe his expression but settled at last on stern. George’s hand fell.

“The book in Lady Kingston’s possession is a rarity, sir,” the man explained in a cool voice. “And much anticipated by another customer. I must insist on retrieving it myself.” He returned his attention to her as he reached into his breast pocket, withdrew a card, and held it out to her. “A message here will always reach me, Lady Kingston.”

The line of his jaw was firm and his dark eyes narrowed slightly. Intense was perhaps a better word than stern to capture his demeanor, but in any case, the look sent a prickle of uncertainty along her spine. All this, for a recipe book?

Awkwardly, she juggled the package into the crook of her arm to free one hand. Once more, out of the corner of her eye, she saw George’s fingers twitch as if he were tempted to snatch the card from the stranger. He was always so protective of her, of the boys. But the card was safely within her grasp before he made any further movement.

Across the rectangle of stiff paper, the stranger’s neatly manicured thumb nearly met her considerably grimier one. Like the broad-brimmed hat, gloves were sometimes an encumbrance during scientific pursuits. With a murmur of embarrassment, she took the card and tucked it beneath the string wrapped around the package. “Thank you. I’ll be in touch soon.”

“I await your message most eagerly, Lady Kingston.” With another bow, he turned and was gone.

Almost before the door closed behind him, certainly before she could draw breath, the boys raced into the hall, their questions echoing off the high ceiling: “What book, Mama? Who was that man? Can I open the package?” As they fell to arguing between themselves over the honor, George resumed upbraiding Lewis, his voice only adding a deeper note to the cacophony. Amanda was surprised that neither Matthews nor her mother came running to shush them.

But no one came. No one even seemed to notice when she said, “I’ll just take this upstairs, shall I? And freshen up? I’ll only be a moment.”

The stout door of her bedchamber ought to have restored everything to its usual quiet, but even in the silence, her head buzzed. The unaccustomed noise in the entry hall must have left her ears ringing. Or perhaps too much time in the sun had done it. Either way, her nerves jangled and hummed like a badly tuned pianoforte.

Out of habit, she reached for the bell to ring for . . .