Lord Langley Is Back in Town Read Free

be . . .
    “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.