Lord Langley Is Back in Town (28 page)

The boy gave him the same sort of look Minerva had. The one that said,
You can try.

For she had him dead to rights. Having her in the carriage iced their journey with a sweet coating of innocence.

That, and he wouldn’t put it past her to go fetch the pistol, if only to further her point.

“Oh, demmit,” Langley muttered, letting go of the reins and throwing himself back in his seat. “I am getting too old for all this,” he muttered, but said nothing further, realizing that setting them both out would cause more gossip than leaving them in. As it was, it was exactly as Minerva had said, that it would appear to anyone watching him—and he was positive someone was—he was out for an early morning carriage ride with his betrothed.

Taking this as a sign of defeat, Thomas-William clicked his tongue at the horses and they once again began to trot down the empty street.

“You are getting too old for all this,” Minerva agreed as they came up to Grosvenor Square and she said to Thomas-William, “You will want to turn on Oxford Street.” So she even knew the way. Why was he surprised? “Now Langley, at your age—”

“At my age?” He straightened up. “How old do you think I am?”

Lady Standon shook her head and glanced down at the buttons on her gloves. “I know how old you are.”

“Been checking up on me?”

To this she sent him a scathing glance. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Perhaps I should do the same with you, Lady Standon.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Do some checking up on you,” he said. “And the company you keep.”

She flinched a bit before she bluffed and said, “Be my guest.”

Oh, he would, once he got done with his own troubles, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Instead, he wrapped his coat up around his neck and leaned against the wall, closing his eyes.

“Langley, what are you doing?” she asked, nudging him.

He opened one eye and looked at her. “Trying to get some rest.” With that said, he closed it and nestled deeper into the corner.

“Has Thomas-William been to your house before?”

“No.” He didn’t bother to open an eye this time.

“Does he know the way?”

He could hear the rising annoyance in her voice and didn’t feel like abating it. “No.”

“Then how are we supposed to get there?”

This time he opened both eyes. “You seem to be quite informed as to my business—you direct him, my lady.”

Instead of an argument, she nodded and leaned forward to give the man directions. “Take the Blackfriars Bridge, then make your way to the Kent Road—”

“Westminster is closer,” he offered without thinking.

“I thought you were sleeping,” she said, arms crossing over her chest. “Certainly, Blackfriars is a more direct—”

“Westminster, Lady Standon, or you can get out.”

“Well, then,” she huffed, “Westminster it is, Thomas-William. But if Lord Langley gets us lost, he’s the one getting out to ask for directions.”

“L
ord Langley,” came a soft voice, nudging him out of a deep sleep. After a night spent searching for Nottage, he was exhausted and still too tired to be roused quickly—not that he could avoid it. Lady Standon finished her task with a heavier jab to his ribs and a stern order, “Wake up. We’ve come to a village, and I don’t think you want me to call a lot of attention to our arrival by announcing ourselves at the local inn.”

Langley opened his eyes and straightened, glancing around to get his bearings. For indeed they were in the village near his ancestral home, at the crossroads that would lead one on to Croydon or across the green hills to Langley House.

And she certainly had the right of it. He didn’t want to call attention to his arrival. The prodigal son as it were.

“Lady Standon, are you always so astute?”

“I’ve learned to be,” she replied.

Once again there was that mysterious, wistful note to her words, the one that said there was more behind her confession, but just as he wasn’t quite willing to reveal his true intentions, he didn’t think he had the right to press her.

He stretched again, this time coming fully awake, and found the carriage sitting atop the hill that looked down on the pretty little green valley where his family had lived for generations. In the middle sat a familiar, good-sized manor house, done in brick with three great chimneys rising from a steep gabled roof.

“Is that Langley House?” she asked.

“Aye,” he said, feeling a bit of awe and trepidation. Home. He’d traveled halfway round the world and back only to stand here and feel as awed as he had in the Sultan’s palace. No glittering gold, no towering minarets, just the green grass and tall oaks that called to his very roots.

“It’s a lovely place,” she mused.

“It is,” he said, shaking his head for a moment, as if he didn’t quite recognize it. Behind them, Grady slept, curled up in the tiger’s seat, Minerva having at some point put the lap robe over him.

At least he assumed it was Minerva.

She turned in her seat and smiled. “How long has it been since you were here?” she said in a soft voice, so as not to wake the boy.

Langley sighed. “Since I joined the Foreign Office.”

Minerva’s mouth fell open. “So long?”

“Yes, so long,” he said, nodding to Thomas-William, who turned the carriage down the drive. “My father and I quarreled and . . . well . . .”

“I take it he didn’t approve of your choice of professions,” she said, her gaze scanning the well-manicured lawns and the line of pretty trees coming into view.

“My father rarely approved of anything I did,” he told her. Farther along, the pond sparkled with dappled sunlight, and there were children by its edge, fishing poles in hand and their laughter a sweet greeting.

The pond! Good God, he had all but forgotten about the pond. It had been one of his favorite places as a child. One of many, he now recalled. How ever could he have forgotten it?

“My father loved this place, and all I could ever see was the horizon beyond it.”

“That isn’t all that unusual,” she said, her gaze sweeping over the meadows and the graceful trees.

“He said someday I would come home and regret ever leaving.”

She murmured something, perhaps her own remembrance of a place lost. “Do you?” she said after some time.

“Yes . . . I mean to say, no,” he corrected. “Oh, bother, I don’t know.”

“Don’t fret over it. You can’t get back the time you’ve lived, and all you have is what is before you,” she said sagely.

“Egads, I find myself betrothed to a bluestocking,” he teased. “Who was that, Aristotle?”

She laughed. “No, Aunt Bedelia.”

Then they both laughed, as did Thomas-William.

Now they had dropped down from the hill and were coming up the main drive where it curved through the lawn. Minerva was leaning over the edge and smiling.

When the lady did, her entire face lit up from its usually staid expression. There was something almost magical about seeing her so.

“What is making you grin?”

“The snowdrops—such pretty little things.” She waved at the white blossoms blooming in happy clumps throughout the lawn. “It is so odd, because just this morning I was thinking of just these flowers.”

“And now you find them,” he said, glancing over them, but not feeling the same joy, rather a sort of melancholy.

“Have they always been here?”

“Yes. At least as long as I can remember. My mother loved them. She paid the local children to dig them and divide them and then let them plant them wherever their fancy took them.” He tapped Thomas-William on the shoulder and the man stopped the carriage. Langley climbed down and held out his hand to Minerva.

She hesitated for a moment, but then slipped her fingers into his and came with him. He waved at Thomas-William to drive on, and they set off along an ambling path that cut across the lawn. He reached down and plucked a handful of the flowers for her, and like the orange blossoms last night, she accepted them with a bit of a blush on her cheeks.

“She liked to scatter hope,” Minerva said, taking his offering.

“Pardon?”

“Snowdrops. They represent hope. The first flowers in the spring. Hope for a new beginning.” She took a sniff of the delicate blossoms and then shyly glanced over at him. “Perhaps you were meant to be here today. To find your hope.”

He arched one brow. “Lady Standon, you harbor an Eastern philosopher beneath that very English exterior of yours.”

Minerva laughed. “Don’t let Aunt Bedelia hear you say that. She’ll accuse you of corrupting me utterly.”

It was almost on the tip of his tongue to ask who was the worse corrupter, he with his high praise, or her aunt urging her to take him to his bed.

But then he’d have to confess to eavesdropping, which he suspected she certainly wouldn’t approve of.

“Langley, why are we really here?” she mused, having taken a deep sniff of her flowers.

“My dear Lady Standon, we are here to visit with my tenants, the Harrows, nothing more.” He glanced ahead at the house as it came fully into view.

“Minerva,” she said, also looking straight ahead at the house, still blushing from his offering or at her own boldness.

“Pardon?”

“Minerva. I would rather you call me Minerva. Lady Standon sounds so terribly formal.”

“If that is what you wish,” he said, bowing his head in acquiescence.

After a rather too long moment of silence, she glanced over at him.

“Yes? Is there something more?” he asked.

“Aren’t you going to offer me the same courtesy?”

“What courtesy?

“To call you by your given name, Ellis.”

“Absolutely not,” he avowed, shaking his head. He’d never liked his name, the moniker of some great uncle who’d been a renowned scholar and theologian.

“Whyever not?” she persisted.

He pulled to a stop, for not far ahead came a man carrying a handful of fishing poles.

“Langley! Whyever won’t you let me call you by your given name?”

He turned and faced her, his hand coming to cup her chin. “Because my dear, lovely Minvera, I prefer it when you call me Langley, as you just did. It sounds as if you can’t decide whether you want to box my ears or kiss me.” He leaned closer, right up to her ear, so close that his breath whispered over her, “And because I like seeing you puzzle out which desire will win.”

Then he had the audacity to give her a cheeky wink, and before she could utter another exasperated “Langley,” he turned to the man approaching them.

“Hello, there. It has been a long time, Mr. Harrow!” He extended his hand and shook Harrow’s with vigor. “And most excellent to see you in such good health. I hope you don’t mind my intrusion, but I was in the neighborhood—”

“Mind? But of course not! This is your home,” Mr. Harrow said, nodding toward the house. “And you look in good health as well, my lord. All those rumors about your demise. Me and Mrs. Harrow never believed a word of them!”

Langley glanced over at him as they crossed the yard and headed toward the stairs. “You didn’t?”

The man waved a hand at the notion. “No! Why would I when your boxes kept coming just as regular as ever?”

I
t was only after an hour or more of pleasantries, a round of visits and happy greetings from the servants—for word of Lord Langley’s return ran through the house and out into the gardens like wild fire. Then there was tea and refreshments served by Mrs. Harrow, dozens of questions posed by the younger Harrows—who had heard of the legendary Baron Langley and his travels from grand tales told by the servants—and a full report by Mr. Harrow as to the well-being of the tenants and the estate, before Langley finally got to the point of his visit.

For ever since Harrow said that Langley’s boxes had never stopped arriving, he’d been in an impatient state of nerves.

They’d kept coming? How could that have been when he’d been in Abbaye Prison all that time?

“As you mentioned, I’ve had regular shipments of crates sent here—” Langley began.

“Yes, of course,” Harrow said eagerly. “And as you instructed, we’ve stored them in the attic. Save the boxes you asked I send on to your friend in Hampstead.”

“Aye, about those—” Langley began.

“Poor Mr. Ellyson,” Mrs. Harrow said, passing a plate of biscuits to Minerva. “I am sure you heard of his passing.”

Langley paused. “Yes, I did. And I had hoped—”

Mr. Harrow nodded. “I was just about to send off some of your collections to him when Mrs. Harrow noticed a line in the paper about his passing.”

“My sister sends me the papers from Town,” she explained to Minerva.

“So we kept it safe for you—”

“It’s here?” Langley blurted out, losing his characteristic debonair manner of cool disdain.

Even Minerva gaped at him.

But how could she know what this might mean? His last box to George? All his hopes.