Read Online Lord Langley Is Back in Town by Elizabeth Boyle - Free Book Online Page A

“Langley is not dead, you fool. He’s alive and in London. And you need to get out of Town. Now.”
    Langley, alive? Impossible . Chudley had seen a copy of the report detailing Langley’s last day in Paris. No, the man couldn’t be alive.
    A skepticism shared by his cohort. “Are you sure you didn’t have too much of the Prime Minister’s infamous claret? Because you’re talking nonsense. Langley is dead.”
    “Not as dead as you would like,” Sir Basil said, reverting to that lofty sort of mushroom tone of his.
    Upstarts! Lord Chudley would have snorted. Thought they had to act and sound superior to make up for being utterly common.
    Yet, how could Langley live? As distasteful as it was to agree with the likes of this shady fellow, and having had more than his fair share of the Prime Minister’s claret a time or three, he was inclined to agree that Sir Basil was as foxed as the poor unwitting Tibballs downstairs.
    “Bah, you’ve gone ’round the bend. He’s aloft, I tell you. Now if you will excuse me—”
    “He’s alive, you fool,” Sir Basil insisted.
    The strident note to his declaration had Chudley unshuttering his lashes enough not to give himself away, but enough to see the Foreign Office’s junior minister take hold of the other man’s lapels and drag him up close. “Langley got in my carriage tonight and demanded an accounting of how he was betrayed.”
    Betrayed? Chudley didn’t like the sound of that. Any more than he liked the idea of Langley back in Town.
    Devil of a fellow, Langley . Not always on the up and up. Just before he’d been killed in Paris there had been rumors, nasty ones, that he’d been working for the French. Rumors of thefts. And that eventually his French contacts had finished the man off once they were done with him.
    Messy business, dealing with frogs.
    “He is demanding a full hearing. Wants to see the reports. Wants his name cleared.”
    Good luck with that , Chudley would have added. Once a traitor . . .
    “You’re serious,” the other fellow whispered.
    “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?”
    “No, this can’t be. I saw him—”
    Chudley stilled. Saw him what, my mysterious friend?
    “If Langley is back in Town—”
    Sir Basil shuddered, letting out a breathy sigh.
    “Yes, now you see how that could complicate matters.”
    “Complicate matters? He could—”
    Chudley strained to hear more.
    “Yes, that’s it, exactly.” Sir Basil cleared his throat.
    “If he delves into—”
    “He cannot!” Sir Basil declared, and then realizing he’d raised his voice, glanced over at Chudley.
    Both men stood there for a time, an eternity to Chudley, but he stayed stock-still, if only to sort out everything he’d just learned . . . and hadn’t.
    Langley was alive? He was still of the opinion that Sir Basil needed to lay off the claret bottle, that is until the other man spoke again.
    “Demmit, how did this happen?”
    “That is what I would like to know. You told me he was dead, and now here he is popping up like some bloody marionette. The man has more lives than my wife’s Persian cat.”
    The other man made a choking sort of sound. “He’ll ruin me, or worse.”
    “He’ll ruin us both,” Sir Basil corrected. “You need to get out of Town. Stay hidden. You’ll be the next person he comes looking for.”
    “You’ve got to stop him,” the other fellow hissed out.
    “I thought I had,” Sir Basil. “Not that he’ll escape this time if it is done right and orderly.”
    Chudley’s blood ran to ice. What they were talking about was treason. And for the life of him, he wasn’t about to see them murder an agent of England.
    Not when he had every intention of being the one to put a bullet through that demmed rogue’s heart.
    “Y ou insist?” Lady Standon threw her hands up in the air and paced in front of Langley. “You insist with my house!”
    “It seemed the practical solution at the time.” He leaned forward and