How to Dance With a Duke (16 page)

“No, it is nothing like that,” Cecily assured her. “But I did want to ask you, away from Winterson, I mean, if you know anything about Will Dalton’s disappearance? Something you perhaps didn’t want to say in front of the duke?”

Lady Enwhistle started, then glanced briefly from Cecily to Juliet and Madeline.

“Anything you say to me, you may say to my cousins as well,” Cecily assured her. “They know what you told us this morning about the bloody satchel in Papa’s tent.”

Still frowning, their hostess took a seat in a wing chair opposite the divan upon which the three younger ladies perched. “I do wish you would not involve yourself in this business, Cecily. Already one man is missing and another is bedridden.”

“I find it hard to believe that you, ma’am, would warn Cecily to let the gentlemen handle the matter,” Juliet said from her position at Cecily’s side. Though she often kept her own counsel, Juliet was loyal to a fault. And like Cecily, she did not take kindly to the notion that ladies should be seen and not heard.

Lady Entwhistle smiled. “You are right about that, Miss Shelby,” she said. “I have never been one to leave things to the men. More often than not they make a muddle of things.” Her expression sobered. “However, in this instance, when my goddaughter’s well-being is at stake, I have every reason to wish for her to stay far away from whoever has stirred up this trouble. And before you ask, no, I do not believe in that ridiculous curse that is being bandied about.”

“Godmama, I promise you,” Cecily said, “I will not do anything to put myself in jeopardy. But you must know that your story earlier today of what you found in Papa’s tent would have roused my curiosity. And my fear that Papa may have had something to do with Mr. Dalton’s disappearance.”

“I regret how my words must have seemed to you, Cecily,” Lady Entwhistle assured her. “Your father and Mr. Dalton were quarreling, as I told you and Winterson earlier. But you will remember that I did not make any claim that the presence of either William Dalton’s luggage, or his traveling bag, in your father’s tent meant that he must then be guilty of killing him.”

“But Winterson believed it,” Cecily told her. “How can you have expected otherwise?”

“My dear,” Lady Entwhistle said, with a shake of her head. “Your father is a great many things—a stubborn lout, for one—but I cannot imagine him killing a man, a friend, in cold blood and then refusing to allow the poor man’s family to know what happened to him. There must be some other explanation.”

“That is what I thought as well,” Cecily said, accepting a cup of green tea from Madeline, who had taken up a position at the tea tray. “But there is something amiss here. Perhaps Mr. Dalton asked Papa to look after his luggage. If thefts were occurring with such frequency, it would stand to reason that William would not wish to leave his bags unattended. But that doesn’t explain the blood. Or Papa’s illness.”

“I have heard it said that an apoplexy might be brought on by an emotional upset,” Juliet suggested. “Papa’s uncle Fenwick suffered an attack in the middle of a roaring argument with his … um … lady friend. One minute he was shouting at her about the modiste bills and the next he was incomprehensible and paralyzed down his entire right side.”

Cecily stared at Juliet. “Why did you not tell us this before? What’s more, why didn’t your mama tell Violet?”

Juliet shrugged. “I didn’t think of it before. And you know very well that Mama would never speak of anything so tawdry. She likes to pretend that Papa’s side of the family is everything that the Featherstones are not.”

“But what if Juliet is right, Cecily?” Lady Entwhistle said. “What if your father argued with someone on the voyage home? I admit that I was the one to find him, but it was the morning before we reached France. He might well have had an altercation the evening before with no one the wiser until I came to see why he had not come up on deck as was his habit.”

“It need not have been an argument, though,” Cecily said. “What if the knowledge that he’d killed his assistant preyed so heavily upon his mind that it caused his brain to simply … shut down?”

Lady Entwhistle reached for Cecily’s hand. “My dear, you know as well as I do that your father has a temper. Recall for a moment the time he caught me sneaking you from Hurston House so that we might attend the exhibition of those naughty marbles at the British Museum? I thought he would evaporate in a flash of fire. But I cannot believe that he killed Mr. Dalton in cold blood.”

Cecily shook her head sadly. “When it comes to Papa’s work he has no patience for anyone who stands in his way. He cannot have taken kindly to William’s attack of conscience regarding the disposition of the artifacts. Papa put months of work into locating that particular tomb. For his own assistant to change his loyalties midway through the excavation must have been infuriating.”

Though Cecily herself was more inclined to think the artifacts should remain in the nation where they were discovered, she did understand her father’s reasons for removing them to England. If they weren’t taken to England for further study, the French, or worse, simple treasure hunters, would remove them sooner or later. And whatever educational or historical value might have been gleaned from them would be lost.

“In truth, I cannot fathom Father showing the slightest bit of agreement with Will’s plan. He would not have taken kindly to having his own artifacts stolen out from under him. Especially when the political situation in Egypt is so unstable right now. The French have only been gone from Cairo for a few years.”

“And there is certainly nothing your father detests more than his French rivals,” Lady Entwhistle said with a frown. “Still, I cannot imagine, even in righteous anger, your father behaving with violence toward someone with whom he had worked so closely. Nor can I believe he would put another family through the same hell of not knowing what happened to their loved one.”

Cecily nodded. She had been so small when her mother died. She could remember little from the event itself, though she knew that Lady Hurston had disappeared from their country estate and no one had been able to find her. She’d been told about it later, of course. And there were flashes of memory, though she was often unsure if they were real or imagined, where she heard her father plead with her, Cecily, to tell him if she knew where her mama had gone. She recalled trying to make him happy again, to tell him something that would erase the stricken look from his face, but in the end all she could recall was that her mother had tucked her into the large trunk in her bedchamber and told Cecily to wait. That it was a game and that Papa would find her soon. She had waited and waited, growing more and more afraid, until finally her papa had come. Her mother had been found a week later, dead on the moors surrounding their Yorkshire estate.

She couldn’t remember exactly what had happened, but the event had altered the course of her life just the same. And even now she feared enclosed spaces to such a degree that she sometimes had to leave a room if the walls began to feel too close.

“I agree,” she said finally. “But if Papa was not responsible for Will Dalton’s disappearance, then what did happen to him? Papa is the one who stood to lose the most from Will’s attack of conscience. And now that Papa is unable to speak of it, I cannot help but wonder if whoever was responsible for Will’s disappearance also had something to do with provoking Papa’s apoplexy.”

“It would make sense,” Juliet agreed. “Especially if whoever triggered it feared that your father would reveal something about what really happened to William.”

“It is a puzzle, no question,” Cecily said, sitting back in her chair with a sigh. “I only wish there were something more I could do.”

Lady Entwhistle reached out for Cecily’s hand. “My dear, you are doing quite as much as any person can do. You are trying to find your father’s journals, and you have joined forces with Winterson.

“Now, tell me more about the Duke of Winterson,” she said, her gaze becoming far too knowing for Cecily’s comfort. “I believe he is quite handsome. And a war hero, besides. It must be a great hardship for you to spend so much of your free time with him.”

“Yes, Cecily,” Madeline said, fixing her cousin with an innocent stare. “Do tell us more.”

Cecily elbowed her cousin in the ribs, barely repressing a groan. For such an unconventional woman, Lady Entwhistle had a sad tendency for seeing possible romances for her dear friend’s daughter around every corner. She had explained it once to Cecily thus: “I do not have children of my own, you know, so I must look to you if I wish to have grandchildren. And because I know that beneath your bookish exterior there lurks a young lady who is, despite all outward appearances, a rather conventional sort, I must pray for you to marry sooner rather than later.”

Now, Cecily tried to dispel her godmother’s hopes for her and Winterson by telling her about his agreement to assist her in choosing a possible suitor from among the Egyptian Club, a plan which Lady Entwhistle found sadly lacking in verve.

“For I do know you, my dear. You will choose the dullest of the lot and won’t allow him to touch you above once a quarter at the most.”

“But it is not so different,” Cecily said with a blush, “from what you yourself did in marrying Lord Entwhistle. And it is also a means for me to assure that I need not depend on Cousin Rufus should the worst happen to Papa.”

“Yes, I know,” Lady Entwhistle said with a shake of her head. “But honestly, I do wish you would not condemn yourself to such a dismal life. Believe me, I know how tedious such a marriage can be. I wish I’d had someone to steer me away from such a match all those years ago.”

She took Cecily’s hand. “Simply because that foolish Lawrence boy broke your heart all those years ago is no reason for you to deny yourself all that a marriage of true minds—and yes, I will say it, bodies—has to offer.”

Cecily felt her spine stiffen at the mention of David. Though ever since meeting Lucas, she found herself thinking about David more and more. Not from any unrequited emotion she might feel for him—it was difficult to remember the man who had broken her heart by compromising another woman with any real fondness—but because the feelings Lucas evoked made it imperative that she not forget how dangerous it would be for her to give her heart away again. Ever.

As a reminder, she thought back to that day again. The day that David Lawrence, whom she’d thought was her very own knight in shining armor, had stood before her begging her pardon for betraying her. And then he was gone. Just as her mama had left her by dying. Just as her papa had left her by traipsing to Egypt without her. Just as everyone she’d ever loved had done eventually. And when the tears had begun to flow she couldn’t stop them. Not when her father found her on the floor. And not when Violet had chafed her wrists and called for a footman to carry her upstairs.

She had never seen David again, though they mixed with many of the same people because of their shared interest in antiquities. And when she emerged from her bedchamber three days later she had been calm and cool and detached. And she had remained that way ever since. Never again would she allow a man to bring her to her knees with grief. Not even her father, and most especially not her husband should she ever have one.

Aloud, to her godmother, she only said, “I do know you want what’s best for me, Lady Entwhistle, but in this case, give me leave to know what I want. I will make a comfortable marriage, you may be sure. The Duke of Winterson is a handsome man, I will admit it. But he is not for me. We will work together to discover what happened to his brother and then we will part friends.”

She could not help the laugh that escaped her before saying, “Indeed, I suspect that gentleman would prefer a much more comfortable wife than I should make him. He strikes me as the sort of fellow who wishes to be the dominant partner in his household. We cannot go three minutes without grousing over something or other. Imagine the indigestion the poor man would have to endure if he faced a quarrel over his breakfast every morning.”

Besides, she thought, she had agreed to let him investigate which bachelor members of the Egyptian Club would make her the best husband. Surely he wouldn’t have agreed to do so if he was interested in marrying her himself. The idea was absurd. No matter how her heart might beat faster when he entered a room. The subject passed, but having been reminded of her heartbreak over David, she made sure to remember the vow she’d made to herself all those years ago—to never let her heart become engaged by a gentleman again—and whenever Lucas’s face rose in her imagination she’d make sure to tuck the idea of him away, in a mental strongbox marked “Off Limits.”

Seven

After the uncomfortable trip back to Hurston House with Cecily, Lucas headed for White’s where he could think about what he’d learned from Neddy and avoid his mother’s questions about his progress in looking into Will’s disappearance. He knew she was anxious for news, but it was becoming more and more difficult to face her disappointment. And what he’d learned this afternoon had done nothing to raise his hopes.

The situation was further complicated by his alliance with Cecily. What if her father was the one responsible for Will’s disappearance? Would he be able to continue their acquaintance? He thought back to the way he’d walked away from her outside the Egyptian Club that day. At the time he had been more than ready to believe Lord Hurston capable of hurting Will. In his heart, he still did. In war he had seen men, good men, brought low by their baser instinct for survival. What if Lord Hurston and Will had been in the same sort of situation? He disliked the idea of seeing Cecily learn the truth about her father, but he disliked what the knowledge would do to his own family even more.

And what the hell had he been thinking when he agreed to be a matchmaker for her? Two minutes of seeing her being courted by that group of nodcocks in Lady Hurston’s drawing room was enough to let him know that he’d sooner eat his boots than see her wed to one of them. He’d have to come up with some way to divert her attention from husband-hunting. Or find some other way to get the journals for her. A way that did not involve seeing her wed to some other man who wasn’t …