Lord Langley Is Back in Town (6 page)

It wasn’t like he could spend the night on her ledge.

He blinked, trying to discern anything in the room to gain his bearings, and took one tentative step toward where he hoped he would find the door.

Instead, he tripped over the bed and landed atop the lady herself.

M
inerva had fallen into an uneasy sleep rife with dreams of her unwanted houseguests and their paramour, Lord Langley.

While the ladies were all as clear as day, and just as unwelcome in her dreams—Lord Langley remained in the shadows, a figure she couldn’t quite see, a man who moved with catlike elegance, enticing her to come closer.

Minerva twisted fitfully from one side to another until her fanciful flight was interrupted by an equally shady figure falling over her.

The man’s body—for there was no doubt it was a man—covered hers, pinning her down in the depths of her mattress. One of his hands had landed quite squarely over her breast.

“Aaaah,” she began to cry out as she struggled to bolt upward, but he clapped a hard hand over her mouth, silencing her scream.

“No, no, no,” he told her in a voice deep and rich. “I’m not here to harm you.”

His reassurances did nothing to stop her from struggling, but it was to no avail, for her arms were trapped under the coverlet and he had her entirely pinned.

Covered with his long figure, the muscles that seemed to be . . . well, everywhere.

If only she could reach the nightstand . . . where earlier tonight she’d concealed one of Thomas-William’s pistols.

After all, her house was filled with strangers, and now it seemed a thief as well . . .

“Truly, my lady, I will not harm you, you have to believe me,” he continued, his hand still covering her mouth. There was a cultured air to his plea, tinging his words, as if it had been a long time since English had been his native tongue.

A long time since he’d been home . . .

Minerva’s lashes blinked as she tried to discern in the darkness some hint of his features, spy something about this man that might soothe her panic.

Then the words on the duchessa’s letter from Felicity echoed through her rattled senses.

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, advise him to take refuge in my house on Brook Street. Number 7.

“I am no villain. But I must beg of you to be quiet.”

Lord Langley?

Ridiculous!
she told herself. Whatever would a respected—well, infamous might be a more apt description—English diplomat be doing sneaking into her bedchamber like a common thief?

She blinked again, and this time, in the dim moonlight, she could make out his face—the handsome Roman features, the cleft in his chin, and the rich curve of his lips. His aristocratic features shocked her, for she hardly expected to discover such a handsome man—and certainly not one in her bed.

Then out of the blue she heard the declaration she’d made the other day to Lucy and Elinor, words that now sounded something akin to prophecy.

A man will have to fall out of the sky and into my bedroom before I marry him . . .

How was she to know such a thing was possible? For there was her window, open, and here he was.

The sort of man she’d always dreamt of marrying. Long before her dreams of a happily-ever-after had been quashed by her father’s plots and her forced marriage to Philip Sterling.

Oh, what utter rubbish!
She was far too practical to believe that perfectly handsome husbands just tumbled out of the heavens.

No, it was better to hold onto her reason and realize that the only sorts who stole into a lady’s bedchamber in the middle of the night had other thoughts on their mind.

Then again, whatever his reason, this fellow had yet to molest her, other than his initial landing and holding his hand over her mouth.

“Please, I don’t want to cause a scandal—” he whispered.

Then whatever are you doing in my bedchamber, you wretched beast?

“—I merely came to get my belongings and then I’ll be gone. If the door hadn’t been locked . . .”

Get his things?
As in, they were in her house?

“I know it might be hard to believe—”

Impossible would be more like it
. Wouldn’t she know if there was a man living in her house? Certainly one of the staff would have said something . . .

Well, perhaps a real staff, she conceded.

“Now I am going to take my hand off your mouth,” he was saying, even as he was slowly easing his fingers away, “but only if you promise not to—”

There was such a seductive lull to his voice, so deep and enticing, that it almost had her believing he wasn’t there to harm her. She even found herself nodding in agreement to his request like some dimwitted simpleton.

Whatever was she doing? Oh, this was all madness, and so was this fellow.

So the moment his hand slipped from her mouth, she screamed. Bloody murder.

And just as quickly her hand snaked out from beneath the covers and snatched Thomas-William’s pistol from the nightstand.

Shoving it forward even as she scooted back, her knees tucked in front of her like a walled fortress, poor blockade that they were, they were enough for now.

Now that she’d gained the upper hand.

Taking a few gulps of air, she said in an unsteady voice, “Don’t think I won’t shoot.”

“My lady, from what I know of you, I’m surprised you haven’t already.”

“I
will shoot,” Lady Standon averred, the pistol trembling traitorously in her hand. “See that I don’t.”

Langley reached out and with a single finger steadied the barrel. “If you must, make a good shot of it. All that wavering about is making me nervous.”

All through the house he could hear the scrambling of feet—the curious and the wary—rummaging about as they tried to determine whether her round of screeching cries were worth their own life.

Apparently they were, for now the footsteps were on the stairs and in the hall, and a thread of light began to creep under the door as candles in the hall were lit and furtive search for the source of the alarm began.

“It was in her room!” he heard a lady with a deep, gravely voice say.

Langley cringed.
Helga!

So it was true. His past was now at his doorstep.

Or rather on Lady Standon’s. “Yes, please, in here!” she called out. “I am being accosted.”

He glanced over at her, more amused than annoyed. “Truly? Accosted? That is the best you can come up with?”

The latch at the door rattled, but it remained closed.

“Oh, dear!” Lady Standon said. “It’s locked.” Then she had the audacity to glance up at him. “Would you mind?”

“Mind what?” He knew exactly what she was asking, but he wasn’t about to make this easy on her. If she had kept her word and not screeched like a fishwife, he wouldn’t be in this mess. Nor would she.

“Opening the door,” she said, waving the pistol at the door. “I fear it is locked.”

“Locked?” Langley glanced at it and then back at her, smiling. “How inconvenient.” Her forethought earlier to bolt her door was now gaining him some time, even as outside her room a crowd swelled—he could hear a smattering of questions in German and Italian, as well as Helga’s gruff responses.

“Get out of my way,” he heard a rich sultry voice call out, then the door rattled with a determined round of knocking. “Darling! Is that you? I shall break down this door immediately!”

Langley cringed again. Tasha! Leave it to his Russian paramour to come to his rescue. Then again, how many times had she been on the other side of the door while her irate husband had pounded away at the portal, threatening one of her many lovers?

“Then you are him? Lord Langley?” the lady beside him asked without the least bit of the enthusiasm that could be heard rising in the hallway. She actually sounded rather affronted.

He bowed slightly. “At your service, my lady.”

“I didn’t ask for your service,” she shot back.

Yes, definitely not one of the welcoming party. “Well, I didn’t ask you to invite in that circus of harpies into my daughter’s house.”

“My house,”
she corrected. “Which you weren’t invited into either.”

“Wasn’t I?” He patted his jacket as if searching for something. “I do believe I have my invitation here somewhere.”

His charm was lost on the lady, for her reply was the arch of her dark brows over her narrowed eyes.

For a moment he found himself wistfully wondering what color they were. Blue? Nut brown? Green?

The ruckus in the hall drew both their attention back to the door as it rattled loudly, the hinges—unlike the drainpipe outside—holding their own.

“I must say you are a most indulgent hostess,” he said as he rose from the bed, “for you seem to draw guests like a moth.”

“If only you were all as easily squashed,” she replied as she too got up and faced him.

“Poor, darling, Langley, you needn’t stay in there with
her
,” Tasha purred. “Come out here with me. I have missed you so.” The slow scratch of fingernails ran down the door.

“My Langley with her? Are you mad?” This came from Lucia, ever the fiery Italian duchessa. Of course, she would dismiss anyone else as being in competition with her, for she had lived her entire life as the petted and coveted jewel of Naples. “She is nothing, she is but a mouse. As if he would fancy such as
that
.”

“A mouse!” Lady Standon straightened. “Whatever does she mean by that?”

“That she thinks you are unworthy of my affections,” he said, glancing at the door and then back at the window. He was a good two stories above the ground, which would mean he would most likely break at least one limb if he made a jump for it.

“I knew she was hiding him!” Brigid declared to the others.

This spun Lady Standon around on her heel. “I am not!” she told them through the door.

“Bah! The English and all their high and mighty morals!” Helga sounded in fine form. “Would someone get a pike, an axe, a halberd? I shall break this door down myself!”

“A halberd?” Lady Standon exclaimed. “Oh, yes, I have several of those in the morning room.” She glanced over at him. “What sort of lady does she think I am?”

Langley grinned. “I believe the margravine has an entire room devoted to such things.”

There was an indelicate snort from the mistress of the house, but whether it was to the fact that Helga had a collection of sharpened weapons at the ready or that he merely knew such women, he didn’t know.

Nor did he ask.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the door, the enemy was clearly growing impatient, for Tasha began calling for one of her footmen—most likely not trusting the margravine with an axe. And if his rusty Russian was correct, the princess was calling the situation “a matter of great moral imperative.” Nor did he suspect she was creating this fuss in order to save Lady Standon’s imperiled reputation.

“This is ruinous!” his unwitting hostess declared, nudging him with her pistol. “Get out of my room!”

“Madame, if I open that door,
I’ll
be ruined.”

“Then go back the way you came,” she said, pointing at the window.

“Believe me, I’ve considered it.” For now there was a very resounding thud of boots on the steps. Apparently Tasha still favored keeping a few handsome Cossacks about.

“Well—” Lady Standon’s foot tapped, and the pistol remained stubbornly pointed at him.

“The drainpipe broke on my way up. The only way out is to jump.”

She stepped aside. “Do I appear to be stopping you?”

“I’d break my neck at this height,” he said, hands fisting at his sides. Not that the lady looked all that dismayed over the prospect of him ending his illustrious life in a heap of broken bones in her garden.

Truly he could see why the servants muttered about her and Thomas-William got that nervous twitch in his eye every time her name was mentioned.

Nor was she done with him. “So you’ve not only damaged my house, but now you are going to damage my standing? I am a respectable widow.”

He grinned at her. “I’ve known many a respectable widow in my day.”

“I am not that sort of lady!”

“Apparently not,” he replied, glancing once again at the window.

“I demand that you leave at once!” she insisted.

Good God! She was every inch the bossy bit of muslin that Thomas-William claimed. And utterly English in her superiority.

Much to his chagrin, Langley had to admit to being a bit charmed.

She continued on in quite an abominable fashion. “Lord Langley, I’ll have you know I deplore scandal! Nor will I be party to your . . . your . . . your common, ruffian ways!”