Lord Langley Is Back in Town Read Online Free PDF

just gave him time to see the original assignment finished?” Thomas-William said, arms folded over his chest. “Or simply the reason to have you openly declared a traitor and hung?”
    “I can’t sit around and wait.”
    Thomas-William looked as if he wished the baron would do just that. Wait. For by taking his cause—their cause, really—out into the open, it put them both at risk.
    “What if it is true, Thomas-William? What if I am a traitor and I just don’t remember it?” He looked over at his old friend to see what the other man thought of that, for it was something that had been festering in the back of his mind for months. Years, really, ever since he’d woken up in a Paris prison.
    “Then why did you come back to England?” he asked. “Why even bother?”
    Langley stared at him. Why bother? “Because it is utter nonsense! I can’t be a—”
    Thomas-William laughed softly and then clapped him firmly on the back. “Exactly, my lord. You are no traitor. Ellyson trusted you. And I trust you as well.”
    “Thank you, sir,” he said, bowing slightly.
    “Enough of that,” Thomas-William told him, looking embarrassed. “Now it is time for us to leave.” He leaned over to retrieve his valise. “Not even for Miss Lucy will I stay in this house. Not if you intend to stand out in the open like a stag in the meadow.” He smiled at his own joke.
    “Come now, my old friend,” Langley cajoled. “It isn’t like you to pass up what might be a rout. You always did like a losing proposition.”
    The man looked over his shoulder at the house behind him and shook his head. “We had better odds playing cards with Miss Tia.”
    That bad, eh? Langley looked back at the house, the shadows of figures passing back and forth in front of the curtains like a regimental parade. Egads, how many of them could there be inside?
    And as if he’d read his thoughts, Thomas-William told him. “Four.”
    “Four?” Langley’s gaze narrowed. “Which ones?”
    “A Russian—”
    “Tasha?” he murmured.
    Thomas-William nodded. “An Italian—”
    “Lucia?” Langley glanced again at the house. His fiery Italian countess with his ruthless Russian mistress? Good God, he was shocked the house wasn’t yet in flames and London burning down around them.
    “A contessa with a dog—”
    “Brigid,” he said, a chill running down his spine. If anyone was capable of killing him, he might look no further than Brigid—for the lady was as beautiful as she was deadly.
    “And a margravine with a temper,” Thomas-William said.
    “Wilhelmenia?” Langley couldn’t even imagine the lady leaving her corner of Europe unless she was following her ancestors’ tradition of conquest and pillaging. Saint George, save them all, if that was the case.
    It had been difficult enough sneaking in and out when Elinor Sterling and her young sister Tia had been living in the house, but now? Why, it would be nigh on impossible.
    For even with his careful planning, Tia had caught him a week into his residence. She’d snuck down to the kitchen in the middle of the night and discovered him and Thomas-William playing cards. They’d tried to fob her off with lies, but she’d coolly regarded the stranger at the table, declared him a gentleman and obviously a spy, and then anted into their game of vingt-et-un , soundly beating them both before she’d toddled off to bed again, declaring, “I care not if you are living in the attic, but best not let Minerva find out.”
    Luckily for Langley, the rest of the servants were much like Tia, and had taken little notice of Thomas-William’s mysterious guest in the attic. For as long as there was no work associated with his care and upkeep—it was no matter to them.
    But the baron suspected the sole remaining mistress of the house would not share their largesse.
    Proper and strict, Minerva Sterling, from what Thomas-William had told him, would most likely set a pack of hounds on him. If she owned any.