Lord Langley Is Back in Town (11 page)

“Yes, indeed,” Langley agreed. “Let’s stick to the facts: I have been living with your generous and very hospitable niece since Tuesday last.”

Now it was Lady Chudley’s turn to make an indelicate snort. But whether it was over his living arrangements or the notion of her niece being generous and hospitable, he couldn’t tell.

“Is it true that he’s been living here for a sennight?” This question was posed by Lady Chudley to her niece.

“Most decidedly not!” Minerva told her.

Langley leaned forward and smiled at her. “My dearest girl, we have nothing to be ashamed of, though I am certain some would find our affection for each other scandalous—”

“Ruinous, to be more precise,” Lady Chudley added.

“Precisely,” he said, nodding in agreement, “but how can we do otherwise when our passion for each other cannot be denied?” He turned to Lady Chudley. “To answer your question, yes, I have been living here. Contentedly. For a sennight.”

“Oh, good gracious heavens!” the old girl exclaimed. “This is a scandal!”

“What it is, is utter nonsense,” Minerva shot back, before she wagged her finger at him. “You set the matter straight. Immediately.”

He bowed his head slightly. “If you insist.”

“I do.”

Langley glanced up and smiled. “Last night after a delightful tumble into your niece’s bed, I proposed to her and she accepted with a most gratifying kiss.” He grinned triumphantly at Minerva, for there was nothing untruthful about anything he’d just said.

“Oh you bounder!” she said, getting to her feet. “Get out of my house!”

“After last night?” He shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “Never. Besides, I need my jacket back.”

“Minerva Sterling! I should have thought better of you!” Lady Chudley declared. “And this . . . well, this is beyond the pale. I won’t have a niece of mine become one of
those
widows—dreadful, licentious creatures that everyone gossips about and who are not received. I don’t see how you can do anything other than marry, especially if this man has been living with you for a sennight!” She shuddered and reached for another lump of sugar.

Minerva rounded on Langley. “There is no proof that you’ve been here as you say. It is only
your
word.”

Her implication was clear. Who would believe him—a known rake and a gentleman considered by most to be guilty of treason?

Then again, she barely knew him, for if she did, she would have known he wasn’t beaten yet. For the first rule George Ellyson had taught him all those years ago was to use the truth to one’s advantage.

And Langley had the truth firmly on his side. “Minerva, my darling girl, I do have proof. A most reliable witness. One who I am sure will be more than happy to corroborate my story. All over town.”

“Who? Mrs. Hutchinson?” Minerva pressed. “Was she sober when you arrived?” She sputtered out a breath. “You expect Society to believe her word over mine?”

“Really, Minerva, we need to work on your diplomacy.” Langley spared a glance at Lady Chudley and shook his head. To his delight, the old girl nodded in agreement.

“She’s always been overly blunt,” Lady Chudley confided.

He grinned back. “Fortunately, I find that one of her more endearing characteristics.”

“You’re the first,” Aunt Bedelia muttered as she tasted her tea, and then dug the tongs into the sugar bowl and selected another large lump to add to it.

“Oh, how dare you!” Minerva sputtered. “How can you find anything about me endearing when you don’t know me?”

“You would be amazed what a man can learn about a woman when he kisses her.”

Minerva’s mouth opened to say something but nothing came out.

Lady Chudley had no such so impediment. “Good heavens, Minerva! You’ve become quite indecent. Kissing strangers!”

“Betrotheds,” Langley corrected, glancing up from his scone. “Hardly strangers.”

“Well, I should hope so,” Lady Chudley declared. “For it is bad enough that you’ve gone and gotten yourself engaged without confiding in your only relative.” She paused for a moment and then her eyes widened. “I blame Lucy Sterling. Cheeky minx, that one. Living with her about probably put all sorts of notions in your head.”

“I’m indecent?” Minerva stammered at her aunt. “Have you not once considered that he is lying?”

“Whyever would I lie about kissing you?” Langley posed, reaching for the plate of scones and offering them to Lady Chudley, who took one and followed Langley’s lead by breaking it into pieces as well. “Actually it was quite enlightening.”

“Ooooh! Ooooh, you—” she stammered.

“You’re a handful as well, aren’t you?” Lady Chudley said to him, but there was none of the condemnation that Lucy Sterling had warranted a few moments earlier. In fact the old girl grinned at him.

“This has gone too far,” Minerva declared, now pacing at the end of the table. “So who is this witness you purport to have who can corroborate your story.”

“Why a lady, of course.”

“Not me,” Minerva said.

Langley winked at Lady Chudley and then grinned at his unwitting betrothed. “My dear, I wouldn’t think to call you that.”

Minerva’s mouth opened again, this time in a wide O. With her shoulders taut with indignation, she looked ready to club him with the salver. “You wouldn’t call me a lady?”

“Well, I must confess we aren’t
that
well acquainted so I can make the distinction. Rather, what I was trying to say is that I wouldn’t call you as a witness for my defense.”

“How about one for your funeral?” she shot back.

Lady Chudley began to chortle at the sallies flying back and forth across the table. But when Minerva shot her a hot glance, her aunt had the good sense to make it appear as if she was coughing.

“Then who is this witness?” Minerva demanded.

Really, she needed to learn the second lesson of spying. Right after learning how to stay alive, you never asked a question if you didn’t want to hear the answer.

And truly, Minerva did not want to hear this answer. But he told her anyway. “Miss Knolles.”

“Tia.” The name came out like a curse. Minerva had enough sense to realize she’d been outflanked and cornered. She sank into a chair, much as her aunt had earlier.

“So the little imp didn’t say a word?” Lady Chudley asked her niece.

She shook her head. “Not one.”

Langley snorted this time. “Of course she didn’t. She was too busy emptying my pockets every night playing
vingt-et-un
. If I had known what those Bath schools teach young girls, I would never have sent my Felicity and Thalia to one. I shudder to discover how they’ve turned out.”

“So does most of Society,” he thought he heard Lady Chudley muttering. “Lovely girls,” she amended when she found all eyes on her.

“Aunt Bedelia,” Minerva began, her hand resting on her forehead as if it were pounding with a megrim. “Whatever are you doing here this morning? Doesn’t your cook make breakfast?”

“I broke my fast hours ago. The early bird, my dear. The early bird.” She leaned over and confided to Langley, “Dr. Franklin had a bit of a
tendre
for me and I so adore his sayings.”

“From what I have heard of you, my lady,” Langley teased, “Franklin wasn’t the only one. You’ve always been the lady to court. I daresay, looking at you, you prescribe to his notion of air bathing?”

Lady Chudley blushed at the implication. “You wicked man!”

Across the table, Minerva groaned, her gaze rolling upward. “Truly, Auntie, whyever are you here?”

“Tut tut,” the lady said, waving her napkin at her niece. “Don’t you remember, I promised that gaggle of nannies a shopping expedition today.”

Minerva’s gaze swiveled down to her aunt. “You were serious?”

“You of all people should know I never jest about shopping.”

And as if on cue, the ladies began trooping in, Brigid in a sapphire blue gown with Knuddles at her hemline, Lucia following close behind in a pink gown that only accented her dark hair and lithe figure, while Helga had gone with red—garnet red with touches of black here and there—and finally came Tasha, all in black. Tasha always wore black for it set off her fair hair and pale skin, making her seem almost fragile inside it.

A mistake many a man had made thinking she needed to be rescued, protected, cared for.

Langley cringed. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

About any of them.

It would be like thinking one could pluck a jewel from the case at Rundell & Bridges and not be caught.

Or punished.

“Langley, darling!” Tasha purred as she slid around the others with her catlike grace. “Did you sleep well?”

“The better question is how did you sleep, Lady Standon?” Lucia posed, her smile perfectly set but her eyes focused sharply on her opponent.

Langley had always suspected that the duchessa had more Borgia blood in her than she let on.

Tasha ignored the duchessa’s remark and replied with one of her own. “We mustn’t pry, ladies. What a betrothed couple does late at night in a lady’s bedchamber isn’t that hard to imagine.” She swung an assessing glance at Minerva. “Well, most of the time.”

“Good heavens, it is true!” Lady Chudley exclaimed. “You were in her bedchamber?”

“Guilty,” he replied with a grin.

“You see, I told you,” Lucia said. “This betrothal is madness. Not even the aunt knows of it.”

“Exactly!” Minerva agreed. “There is no betrothal.”

Lady Chudley got to her feet and faced her niece. “If there wasn’t an engagement before, there is one now.”

A
unt Bedelia was true to her word. And true to her character, she would brook no arguments over the situation.

If Minerva and Langley had been caught in a state of
dishabille
, or as Nanny Lucia so aptly put it,
in flagrante delicto
, then they were betrothed, and the sooner the wedding took place, the better.

So with a stamp of her foot the indomitable Lady Chudley herded the other ladies out the door on the pretense that she wanted their input on an appropriate trousseau for her niece, thus leaving Minerva alone with Langley.

Minerva took a deep breath and told herself she should never have opened the door last night and allowed the nannies in. Further, she should never have allowed Aunt Bedelia in her house.

And certainly she should have called the rat catcher and had the house exterminated from attics to cellars.

The largest rat sat back in his seat, hands folded behind his head as he lounged, looking more like the cat who had swallowed the canary than the vermin she knew him to be.

Well, not quite vermin, for he was far too devilishly handsome to be so crowned.

Truly, how did a man of his age remain so well put together, so charming, so utterly desirable? Then despite herself, she couldn’t help wonder exactly how old he was—what with two grown daughters and all.

There’s a copy of
Debrett’s
upstairs. Look him up . . .

No! She wasn’t going to start prying into the particulars of Lord Langley, and she certainly wasn’t going to be forced into another marriage. Not by anyone. But in her long years of widowhood, if there was one thing she’d learned, it was patience and timing.

So she sat in her seat, composing herself as Aunt Bedelia shooed the ladies out the front door. Well, all but one of them, for apparently Nanny Helga had other ideas and refused to go out so early, ordering her maid to discover what had become of the sausages she’d ordered and then stomping back upstairs muttering something in her own language that Minerva had to guess was a lengthy condemnation of English hospitality.

Glancing out the door of the morning room, Minerva smiled, for all-too-soon she was going to give the Margravine of Ansbach and the rest of her companions a lesson in English hospitality that would put even those ladies to blush. But the first one to be dispatched was Langley, the root of all her problems.

Once the front door slammed shut and the margravine had done much the same to her door upstairs, Minerva counted to twenty.

Then she got up, walked across the room and stopped in front of him.

Lord Langley grinned up at her, unrepentant scoundrel that he was. “Come to give your betrothed a proper morning kiss?”

Leaning forward, Minerva gently placed both of her palms on his chest, smiling ever-so-sweetly.

Just before she shoved him over backward.

The man landed with a satisfying thud. Brushing her hands together and then over her skirts, the first of the dirty business done, she stalked back across the room.

Meanwhile, there was a scramble of boots and the scrape of the chair as the baron tried to right himself. “Christ sakes, woman! Are you trying to kill me?”

Minerva’s gaze once again wandered over toward the silver candlestick on the sideboard and considered the suggestion for a moment. Then she sighed and resigned herself that at least for now killing him outright probably wasn’t the best course of action. She had to assume, and rightly so, that the Duchess of Hollindrake would be more put out with her than she already was if added to her crimes against the Sterling family was that of killing Her Grace’s rapscallion father.