Lord Langley Is Back in Town (3 page)

“Hang the dead often, Brownie? You arranged for my death once before, so what makes you think this time you’ll actually manage to get the deed done?”

If there was ever a moment in a man’s life where he looks back upon his actions and sees the long, rippling line of consequences with all the clarity of a Cassandra, this was Sir Basil’s. His heart stilled as if it was going to stop, and he tried to breathe, but the air rushed from his lungs.

“Dear God, no,” he wheezed. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

His adversary leaned closer, the nose of his pistol sitting a hairsbreadth from Sir Basil’s temple, a pair of blue eyes glittering dangerously above the scarf that masked the rest of his features. “Sorry to disappoint you, you double-dealing upstart bastard. It’s me. I’m back in Town.”

“W
here is he?”

“I know he is here! Show me to him at once!”

“To you? Whyever would my
liebling
want one such as you?”

“Your
liebling
?” This derisive snort was followed by a catty laugh. “I doubt as much.”

This let loose a cacophony of insults and taunts in no less than four languages—German, Russian, French, and Italian. Slurs, retorts, and what Minerva Sterling suspected was outright profanity, flew about the room without any hint of decorum.

In all four directions of her previously quiet parlor stood a lady who had arrived at the house on Brook Street in the past half hour all demanding one thing: to know the whereabouts of Lord Langley, the Duchess of Hollindrake’s infamous father. And in between this collection of Continental nobility was a landscape littered with luggage, trunks, hat boxes, valises, cases, and even a traveling desk. An equal number of colorful servants and maids stood at attention in the foyer.

“Who did you say they are?” Aunt Bedelia asked over the continuing argument.

“The nannies,” she replied, diplomatically. “The duchess’s former nannies.”

Truly, Minerva would have confessed it was impossible to think of these ladies by any other title than “Nanny,” for that was how the duchess had always referred to them.

“Nannies, my old reticule!” Aunt Bedelia snorted. “They are Lord Langley’s Continential collection of doxies.”

Yes, they were that as well. For the Duchess of Hollindrake, for all her airs, had been raised—alongside her twin sister Thalia—by her widowed father’s mistresses. Felicity constantly quoted her beloved “nannies” as if their outrageous and often questionably moral advice had been engraved in gold, and now they were here . . . in Minerva’s salon.

The lady who sought her “liebling,” the Contessa von Frisch, or rather Nanny Brigid, stood at attention with a small black dog seated at her feet. The black, monkey-faced little devil, which she called her “Knuddels,” looked alarmingly like Thalia Langley’s wretched dog Brutus—the one who had chewed nearly every shoe and footman’s ankle at Hollindrake House. No less than three of the duke’s underfootmen and half a dozen maids had quit rather than continue with that “French devil of a dog” nipping at their heels.

And now there was another of these vermin masquerading as a hound in England.

“Whoever are you to question me?” Nanny Brigid was saying, directing her scathing tone at the far corner, where the Princess Natasha, late of St. Petersburg, and known as Nanny Tasha, stood in regal elegance, though she had just referred to the Austrian noblewoman as a “mewling heifer,” if Minerva’s French was correct.

“When my
liebling
arrives,” the contessa declared, “he will send the lot of you back to the gutters from whence you came.”

This only inflamed her rivals, who flung back equally insulting comments about Nanny Brigid’s apparently infamous reputation in diplomatic circles.

Minerva heaved a sigh and sent an imploring glance at Aunt Bedelia.
Do something!

Aunt Bedelia glanced around the room and just shrugged.
Whyever would I?
The old girl sat happily ensconced on the settee, having stayed for the proceedings like an eager theatergoer.

For certainly not even a Haymarket playwright could have envisioned such a scene.

“Ladies, please!” Minerva said, pushing her way into the middle of the room. “I will not stand for such behavior in my house!”

There was a sniff from one of the corners.

Apparently being designated as merely a lady was not enough for her highbrowed company. So Minerva tried a more diplomatic approach. “Your Grace, Your Highness, Contessa, Margravine, please, all of you, I implore you to listen to me. Lord Langley is not here. You have made a terrible mistake, and I would ask for you to leave my—”

“Not here! Impossible!”

“Of course he is here! I had it from a very reliable source—” the Duchessa di Oristano, the onetime Nanny Lucia, said, waving a letter she’d plucked from inside her pelisse at Minerva.

“You think you can keep him to yourself? You? What could you be to such as him?” This remark came from the formidable Wilhelmenia Charlotte Louise, Margravine of Ansbach, or simply, Nanny Helga, the fourth and last lady of this unwelcome party. The margravine and her rivals all cast scathing glances that ran from the top of Minerva’s head down to her shoes.

Good heavens, what an insufferable woman! And while Minerva hadn’t even the slightest idea how one properly addressed a margravine, right now she thought it more preferable to discover how to get rid of one.

Nanny Lucia chimed in right behind the margravine. “Yes, Lady Standon, if you think you can satisfy my Langley—”

“Cease this instant!” Minerva said, adding a stamp of her foot as an exclamation point to her annoyance. “I will call the watch and have all of you arrested if you are not silent.”

There followed some general sniffs of displeasure and a few muttered complaints about English hospitality, but the nannies came to an uneasy peace accord, their hostilities held in check.

At least for the moment.

“Now once again, Lord Langley is not here—” Minerva began.

“Of course he is!”

“I have conclusive information that says he has been seen—”

“Why do you keep insisting that he is not here, when the evidence—”

“Enough!” Minerva bellowed, forgetting every bit of decorum she possessed. “If, and that is a very big if, he were here—”

“But he is, and I insist—” Nanny Helga started to say, but as quickly stopped when Minerva turned her most quelling look on the lady.

She might not have these ladies’ flair for fashion, she may not have their natural beauty, but she was an Englishwoman through and through, and that, in Minerva’s estimation, counted for much.

And as a marchioness she had to guess she outranked a mere margravine. At least she hoped she did.

It was at this point that Aunt Bedelia finally decided to wade into the fray.

About demmed time
, Minerva would have said aloud if she were inclined. Another half an hour in this company and she’d probably be inclined to say much more.

“Please, ladies, my niece is a respectable widow,” Aunt Bedelia told them. “She lives here only with her servants. Alone. Unmarried. Without even a suitor or any hope of—”

“Auntie!” Minerva blurted out. “Your point?”

Aunt Bedelia blinked and then shook her head. “Oh, yes, my point is that your search for any gentleman—here of all places—is for naught.” Minerva groaned, but her aunt continued, undeterred. “As for Lord Langley, he is not here for one simple reason: He is not alive. I myself know that the man was lost in the war. My former husband—God rest his soul—was with the Foreign Office when the baron was lost. He’s been dead for some time, so I fear your travels here have been in vain. Lord Langley is lost.”

“Bah!” Nanny Tasha snorted. “You do not know the man. He could never be, how did you say, ‘lost’! Why, it is a preposterous suggestion. Langley has simply been indisposed. And now he has come home.”

The others nodded emphatically.

“It is how she said,” Nanny Brigid agreed, gathering her dog to her ample bosom. “Langley is in London and I have it on the best authority.”

Another round of agreement circled the room, and Minerva was at a loss as to how to argue with them in the face of their conviction that the Duchess of Hollindrake’s father was not only alive, but here in London.

In her house.

It was all so ridiculous. Too fabulous to believe. For if indeed Lord Langley was alive, wouldn’t his daughter, Felicity, be the best person to answer their questions?

And more to the point, house them?

“I would suggest,” Minerva began, waving a gracious hand toward the door, “that if you do indeed think Lord Langley is here in London, you seek him in the most likely of places, his daughter’s house. I am certain the Duchess of Hollindrake would be more than happy to accommodate your needs as well as discover the truth to this most vexing mystery.” She managed to say all this with a concerned air and a placid smile on her face, as if coaxing four madwomen off London Bridge. “I can even call a carriage to take you all—”

“I will not be tossed out again just because you want to keep him to yourself!”

“This is an outrage! I am cousin to the tsar! I will not be sent begging like some peasant!”

“Nor I! This is an affront to my country!” Nanny Helga stomped her boot to the floor with a sharp resounding
thud
. Apparently the margrave hadn’t the lofty relations to fling about, but Minerva knew she didn’t want to be the catalyst of some foreign debacle that drew England into a war with a minor principality that most likely could only muster a single regiment.

Then again, war could hardly be imminent. It would probably take the English army some time and effort to find Nanny Helga’s outraged populace.

Minerva stole a glance over at her aunt.
Really, now would be the time to help.

Bedelia’s gaze rolled upward and her hands went up in defeat.
There is no talking sense with these sorts
.

But Minerva wasn’t about to give in so easily. “I am simply asking you to go to Hollindrake House and—”

“Whyever would we go back there?” Nanny Brigid asked.

Nanny Tasha shook her head with an imperious air. “I will not be so insulted again. That awful man at the door”—Staines, the duke’s imperious butler, Minerva guessed—“refused me entrance. He said that the little duchess had gone into the country and would not return for a fortnight.”

Minerva tamped down the desire to go over and strangle Staines. Wretched man!

“But of course, Langley would come here,” Nanny Helga added.

“Whyever would he come here?” Minerva dared to ask. For if she had been feigning a megrim before, one was really coming on now.

Nanny Lucia snapped her fingers and one of her servants who had been hovering in the foyer came bustling in. The duchessa issued her order in brisk Italian, and the young man reached inside his coat and produced a packet of letters for his mistress. Nanny Tasha and Nanny Brigid did much the same, bringing out packets of letters, some tied with ribbons, others just a loose collection of missives. Each lady sorted through her papers and came up with a single letter, which they handed to their servants, who passed them on to Minerva.

“You will find your answer there on the second page,” Nanny Lucia instructed, wiggling her fingers at the document.

Minerva glanced down at the letters in her hand, all composed in the Duchess of Hollindrake’s familiar hand and written about a year earlier. She scanned the lines—bits of gossip, questions about fashions, and finally came to the one that stood out.

That answered that very important question.

Why this address?

I would be ever so grateful that if you hear word of my father, to direct him to return to London. And when he does, to take refuge in my house on Brook Street. Number 7. Despite rumors to the contrary, I am most assured he is alive .

Minerva glanced up at the ladies, who all smiled like cats who’d discovered the cream uncovered. And then she sank into her seat. Alive? The man was alive?

But still, this was hardly proof that the missing baron was in her house. Certainly she would know if she had an uninvited guest living under her roof.

That is, if her house was run like most houses in London. By regular servants. Not the hodgepodge collection of Seven Dials thieves and miscreants that Felicity Langley had hired when she hadn’t two shillings to rub together and, if rumors were true, had moved into this house without actually renting it.

“I shall not leave without him!” Nanny Lucia declared. “I will not.” She then took over the corner of the sofa opposite Aunt Bedelia.

“Nor I,” Nanny Helga said, boot heels clicking together and her hand coming to rest on the desk beside her as if she were claiming that corner for her homeland of Ansbach.

Not to be outdone, Nanny Tasha flounced down on the sole remaining chair, planting herself in Minerva’s parlor with the same stubborn (and unwanted) presence of a deeply rooted dandelion in a rose garden.