How to Dance With a Duke (41 page)

Though the hand that held the pistol was perfectly steady, Cecily noted that a faint tremor ran through his left arm.

“There is no need to threaten us, my lord,” she said carefully, her mind racing as she tried to think of some means to draw the attention of the servants. “We will do whatever it is you wish.”

“Will you indeed?” His expression turned nasty. “I highly doubt that you would so demean yourself as to do what I really wished of you, my dear.”

His voice sent a chill racing down her spine as she realized she knew nothing about this man whom she had called uncle from the time she was a small child. His lascivious gaze chilled her, but she managed to control the rising bile in her throat. If both she and Violet were to get out of this situation alive and intact, she would need to keep her wits about her.

“G-G-Geoffrey,” Violet stammered, her face paler than Cecily had ever seen it. “You mustn’t harm us. You know that Hurston would never forgive you.”

He barked a laugh at Violet’s warning. “As if Hurston has any say in the matter now,” he said, sneering. “Surely you don’t think I’d allow him to live now that I’ve gotten what I wanted.”

Thinking to distract him, Cecily said, “You must have been trying for quite some time to get Papa’s diaries. Since before you left Egypt.”

His eyes narrowed in suspicion, but unable to pass up an opportunity for self-aggrandizement, he nodded. “I planted the blood-soaked bag in his tent after Dalton’s disappearance, thinking I might kill two birds with one stone, as it were. If Hurston found himself under suspicion, perhaps he’d give his journals to me for safekeeping. Of course no one believed that Saint Hurston could possibly kill a man he’d loved as a son.”

The description of Will’s relationship with her father stung, but it was obvious that in this instance Brighton hadn’t purposely been trying to wound.

“When that didn’t work,” he went on, “once we’d set sail for England, I thought there might be some way to coax him into telling me what he did with the journals, but after his unfortunate attack, that was impossible. My little elixir worked a bit too well, I’m afraid. He was writhing on the floor before I even got the chance to ask him. When I heard they’d been donated to the club, I was elated, of course. But it would seem that your bitch of a stepmama couldn’t part with them after all.”

He meant to punish Violet for her transgression, Cecily was certain of it. She swallowed back bile at the thought.

“Now you’ll never be able to reconcile with your dear papa, will you, Cecily?” Geoffrey’s expression held just the right note of empathy, but he was unable to keep a straight face for long. His mouth twisted with mirthful scorn. “What a pity.”

“What have you done to him?” Cecily demanded. “What did you give him?”

“Oh, do not pretend alarm, my dear.” He sneered. “The dutiful daughter role does not suit you. You are too independent-minded for such a thing. Too intelligent by half to be so trite. No, I know what you really think, and you would be wise to remember it.”

“Just tell me what poison you used to subdue him.” Cecily’s voice was hard, unflinching. “I know that he would never have allowed you to subjugate him willingly.”

“Well, it would appear that you hold him in some affection after all,” Lord Geoffrey said, laughing. “I must admit that it was always difficult for me to understand just the right words to use to keep the two of you apart. Thank goodness that you, Cecily, are so quick to take offense. And that your papa is so easily led. It took little enough persuasion on my part to convince him that your mother’s death was the result of overstimulation of her poor little brain. Hah! If you could have seen the look on his face when I told him that. Convincing him that following in your parents’ footsteps would do you grave injury could not have been easier. It was just the thing to ensure he never allowed you to travel abroad as you wanted to. I couldn’t have you traveling with us to Egypt and ruining my little side business, now could I?”

Oh, God, Cecily thought. He had been there all along. All her life she’d known this man. He’d dandled her on his knee, for pity’s sake. And now, layer by layer, he peeled back the veil to reveal the illusions that her entire existence had been built upon.

“Winterson will find us,” Cecily said with a conviction she wished she felt. “He is on his way to me this minute.”

“Now, you should know better than to tell a lie, Cecily,” Geoffrey said with an unsettling grin. “Your husband is just where I left him, holed up in his study waiting for the Bow Street runners he sent for. Unfortunate for him that they will never come. I took very great care to ensure that his little summons was, shall we say, misdirected … By the time he realizes they are not coming you will be long gone from Hurston House, and England.”

“What do you mean?” She tried to keep him talking. The more time they spent in conversation the more likely Lucas would be to come for her.

“I rather fancy,” he went on, rubbing his chin in thought, “sending you on that Egyptian holiday you’ve been wishing for all these years. What say you?”

“I say that you are liar and a thief, Lord Brighton,” Cecily said coldly. “And my husband will be most unhappy to hear that you’ve been holding his wife, the Duchess of Winterson, hostage in her own father’s home.”

“Tsk, tsk, Cecily,” he said. “Have you no understanding of men? The Duke of Winterson might well be unhappy, but it will be because of the note you left for him telling him that you cannot go on with your sham of a marriage any longer, and are running away with your one true love, David Lawrence.”

“What?”

“Well, you did not think that I could simply sit by and watch when you marched purposefully to your father’s house with the information you’d learned from the inventories hidden in the cat mummies. Really, it would have been foolish of me indeed to sit by while you told your stepmama all about the plot to manufacture fake antiquities and sell them on the black market. I worked for decades to set up the relationship with the manufacturer in Cairo. It would have wrecked years of careful work on my part if I’d let you tell the world about my little artistic pastime.”

“I believe you’re mistaken, Lord Brighton. Winterson knows me well enough to discount any lies you tell him about my feelings for him.”

His expression hardened. “You’re the one who is mistaken, Cecily,” he said with a growl. “I know everything you and your husband discuss in that house.” He raised one lip in a sneer. “Everything.

“Did you think I’d let you marry that man,” he asked, “and not have one of my people looking out for you at all times?”

“George!” Cecily said before she could stop herself.

Now she understood why the footman had hovered in the background so many times, why he seemed so clumsy. Her stomach knotted as she thought back to some of the more personal words she and her husband had exchanged in Winterson House. Had George been listening to them the whole time? Even their most intimate exchanges?

Not wishing to let Lord Brighton know how much the knowledge revolted her, Cecily kept her back straight.

“So, you’ve had George in our home. Spying for you.”

“Yes, indeed.” He smiled at her like an indulgent schoolmaster. “The boy has always been ready to do whatever his father asks of him. A pity I couldn’t marry his mother, the poor penniless slut. I could hardly saddle myself to her for the rest of my days. And once your father stole your dear mother from me, I couldn’t marry anyone, could I? It would be disloyal.”

“What do you mean ‘stole her’?” Cecily asked, hoping that if she distracted him for long enough there might be time for the servants to intervene.

“I saw her first, you see.” Brighton’s mouth was white with rage. “I saw her first but Hurston got there before me. Damn him. So I had to step aside. But I waited. Hoping she would realize her mistake in marrying him. But after four years, I couldn’t hold my tongue anymore. But he had already poisoned her against me.

“He made me kill her.” Brighton’s tone was conversational. “You see that, don’t you? You are so like her, you know. So very much like her.”

The change in his gaze, as if he were caressing her with his eyes, sickened Cecily.

“Stop it, Geoffrey,” Violet said harshly, stepping closer to her stepdaughter. “Stop it this instant.”

Before Cecily could prevent him, Lord Brighton reached out and hit Violet across the jaw with his closed fist. “Silence!”

With a cry at the impact of his hand against her face, Violet slumped to the ground.

“You are vile,” Cecily said coldly, dropping to her knees beside her stepmother. “My mother was right to reject you.”

“Yes, well, that doesn’t matter now,” Brighton said with equal coldness. “You’ll be quite dead before the night ends. But I plan to have a bit of fun with your adoring husband first.”

Twenty-two

Lucas stood staring out the study window into the back garden, waiting for the arrival of the Bow Street runners. He was feeling restless and was unable to concentrate upon any of the numerous tasks his private secretary had stacked neatly on the corner of his desk. Until this business about Will’s death was settled, he feared that his attention would be difficult to engage. His years in the army had accustomed him to taking action when the need arose, and his inability to determine just who was responsible for Will’s murder and punish the perpetrator left him with a feeling of helplessness that he did not like at all.

A brisk knock on the study door broke through his reverie and he turned to find Christian and Lord Alec Deveril stepping into the room.

“We thought you might care for some company,” Christian explained, lowering his tall form into a low wing chair.

Deveril nodded, carefully ensuring that he did not wrinkle his splendid velvet coat as he took a seat across from Monteith. “And we have news.”

This caught Lucas’s attention. “What news?”

“It would seem,” Christian drawled, stretching his long legs out before him, “that you have a traitor in your midst.”

“A traitor to the crown?”

“Oh, fear not.” Deveril raised a placating hand. “You will not be guillotined by the teeming masses. This traitor is far more mundane than that. He is, instead, someone planted in your household for the purpose of gathering information about you and your wife. And your search for her father’s journals in particular.”

“Who the hell is it?” Lucas demanded, his blood running cold at the idea of someone in his own household carrying tales. “And who is he reporting to?”

“Whom he reports to, I do not know,” Deveril said, “but as to who has been carrying tales, I fear it is your new footman, the fresh-faced young George.”

Lucas stalked to the door and threw it open, intending to summon the butler, but he was forestalled by the sight of the footman being held between two hulking fellows he recognized to be from Bow Street.

The taller of the two runners, his lank hair pressed down into his head by a porkpie hat, tugged what bit of his forelock he could grip, like a country lad meeting the squire. “Your Grace,” he said, his voice raspy, “Mr. Winehouse sent us to apprehend this here lad. Colonel Lord Monteith swore out a warrant.”

Deveril and Monteith stood.

“Bring him in here for a moment, Harker,” Deveril instructed the man. Clearly he and Christian were on friendly terms with the fellows.

“Something didn’t sit right with me the day Cecily was shot,” Christian explained, as if reading Lucas’s thoughts. “I was speaking of it with Deveril at White’s, and we decided to do a bit of digging.”

The three men stepped back as the two men from Bow Street half dragged, half led the scowling footman into the room.

“What bothered me,” Monteith explained, “was that when I arrived at Winterson House in response to Cecily’s note, that footman seemed a bit too interested in her comings and goings. He rather … hovered … as if he were listening for information.”

“Go on.” Lucas glanced at the man they spoke of and noted that his expression now was as impassive as a statute. His gawking attitude must have been part of the ruse, he decided.

“Well, when we got out of the hack at the footbridge, I could have sworn I saw the same fellow ducking behind the magazine. But then when the shots were fired from the other direction I decided I’d been seeing things.” Christian shook his head ruefully. “But I couldn’t let it go. When I talked to Deveril about it, we decided to do a bit of checking on the fellow.”

Before Lucas could ask, Deveril added, “We knew you had other things on your mind. And besides, there’re only so many
ton
activities a man can stomach before he begins to think that all tea must be weak and all biscuits stale.”

“And,” Christian went on, “with the help of our own servants—who really do have the best understanding of what goes on upstairs and downstairs—we discovered that before he decided to become a footman, young George Grimly worked as a clerk for—”

“The Egyptian Club,” Deveril finished.

Lucas shook his head in disbelief. “I cannot thank you enough,” he told his friends. The thought of the sour-faced man before him in the same house with Cecily, watching over her, for God’s sake, chilled him to the bone.

“Your Grace,” the shorter, stouter runner said, “we should be taking this fellow in to the magistrate.”

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” Lucas told the two men. “But I would like to question this man before you take him in. He may have valuable information about who ordered the shooting of my wife.”

Attempted murder of a peeress was no joking matter, so when the duke suggested they retire to the kitchens for a bit of ale and one of cook’s famous blueberry tarts, they were quick to abandon their charge to the three gentlemen and retire below.

“Now, George,” Lucas said, his voice deadly soft. “Why don’t you tell me how a young man goes from clerking at the Egyptian Club to taking a position as a lowly footman in a ducal household.”

It was not a question but an order, but the young man slumped in the chair before them only tightened his jaw, refusing to answer.

“Why don’t I give it a try,” Christian said, leaning back against Lucas’s massive desk. “It seems to me that a young man such as yourself, growing up at the edge of poverty, might be tempted, should he find himself working in a place like the Egyptian Club, to help himself to one or two of the baubles that come across his desk.”