“That was very handily done,” Cecily said dryly, following along at Winterson’s side until they reached a brightly lit bench.
It was the first time she’d ventured out onto a balcony with a gentleman since her ill-fated engagement to David, and she was more grateful than ever that they’d kept that engagement a secret. If anyone in the ballroom had known of it, they would have taken far greater interest in her than they currently did. A bluestocking taking the air with a duke was newsworthy, of course, but a bluestocking who had been thrown over once before taking the air with a duke was infinitely more interesting. She could see the lines in the gossip sheets now: “At the B_____ ball the Duke of W_____ was seen taking the air with that bluest of stockings, Miss H_____, who was very happy indeed to be seen in the company of a gentleman for the first time since Mr. D_____ L_____ broke their engagement. One hopes she holds on to this gander more tightly than the last!”
Their bench was far enough away from the other couples taking the air that they might speak freely. Even so, Cecily felt a bit of a thrill to be on the arm of such a handsome man. And the sound of her gown brushing against his breeches mixed with the warmth of his arm beneath her gloved fingers was intoxicating. It would be so easy to imagine that they were here together because they liked one another. Not because he thought her father had murdered his brother.
That thought stifling any illusions she might have about their relationship, she spoke first. “To what does the daughter of the man responsible for your brother’s disappearance owe this great honor?”
Cecily turned to gauge his reaction and was pleased to see Winterson wince. Let him hear his own words thrown back at him and know how foolish they sound, she thought.
Even so, he continued, his voice as calm as she was agitated. “I have heard that you are frequently at loggerheads with your father over your scholarly pursuits. Surely it comes as no surprise to you that others might share your ill opinion of him.”
Cecily removed her arm from his, and turned to face him, her temper lending her a measure of coolness she did not feel.
“I do not deny that my relationship with my father has often been a difficult one, Your Grace,” she said. “But that relationship is my business. Not yours. If you have brought me here to continue your treatise on the manner in which my father has wronged you, then you will simply have to find a more suitable audience.
“On the other hand,” she continued, turning away, grateful not to be facing him so that she might finish her speech without looking him in the eyes. “You wish to know whether I know anything about your brother’s disappearance, and I will tell you plainly that I do not. As you have stated, my relationship with my father is not always an easy one. I have certainly never been his confidante on matters relating to his expeditions, given the fact that he has refused to take me with him, but his recent illness has meant that we are unable to speak of even innocuous topics. William’s disappearance has been as much a mystery to me as I suppose it is for you.”
At the mention of his brother, she saw him tense up. At her denial of having any more information, however, he sighed in frustration. A pang of sympathy ran through her as she thought of how difficult it must be not to know what had happened to his brother. At least she and Violet had Papa here in their care. Having him go missing would have been unimaginable.
Winterson stepped back and handed her down to sit on the bench, then used his walking stick to lower himself to the one opposite.
“I thank you for your candidness, Miss Hurston,” he said, his blue eyes meeting hers. She noticed for the first time a tiny network of lines in the skin around them, and more bracketing his mouth. Both, she suspected, remembering his attempts to charm her this morning, were from laughing. Though she had doubts that he’d spent much time in that activity since his brother’s disappearance.
“I don’t suppose you have access to any of your father’s papers from that trip, either?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said, hating to dash his hopes again. “Those are what I was looking for this morning at the Egyptian Club.”
“Ah,” he said, infusing the word with more emotion than should be possible.
“I didn’t arrive in time to hear your reason for trying to get in.” He grinned. “I was, however, able to see you kick the door in frustration.”
Cecily felt her cheeks redden. “Not one of my finer moments,” she said, looking at her hands. Then, her sense of humor intervening, she continued, “In my defense it was a most impertinent door.”
Their eyes met and held for a moment. Cecily felt the breath rush from her under the intensity of his blue gaze.
“I suspected as much,” he said gravely, one dark brow curving upward. “It had that look about it.”
Cecily couldn’t help herself, giving in to a surprised laugh that punctured the veil of seriousness that had held them. Winterson laughed too, and for a moment, Lord Hurston’s illness and Will’s disappearance were forgotten in that flash of shared mirth.
Their laughter spent, they sat together smiling until Winterson spoke up.
“Why the transformation this evening?” he asked, waving a hand toward her hair and gown.
It was the last question she’d expected from him. She’d spent so long preparing her set-down for him, it hadn’t occurred to her that he would even notice her new gown and new hairstyle.
Well, that was not strictly true, because in a moment of weakness she had imagined how he might see her newer, prettier self and proclaim his undying love while she stepped on his beseeching hands as he knelt before her. But that hardly counted.
Deciding not to make a fuss, she said primly, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Just for good measure, she smiled, batted, and tilted.
“Have you got something in your eye?” he asked, frowning in concern.
Cecily’d bet anything that Amelia Snowe was never asked if she had a crick in her neck or a piece of lint in her eye.
Apparently taking her clipped “No” at face value, he pressed on with his questions about her attire. “Come now, Miss Hurston. I may not be able to translate texts in half a dozen languages, but I’m no simpleton. I can tell the difference between a gown that is made for comfort and one meant to entice. And tonight’s gown is definitely the latter.”
Entice?
“If you are suggesting that our meeting this morning sent me rushing home in search of a new hairstyle and a new gown…”
“Pax, Miss Hurston!” He threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “That is not what I meant at all.”
She eyed him with suspicion, not quite sure what to do with a conciliatory Winterson. She was much more comfortable dealing with the accusatory one. When he behaved himself it was much too easy to notice how very blue his eyes were, and how very good he smelled—like sandalwood and soap.
Perhaps sensing her unease, he added, “Truly, not what I meant at all.” Then he smiled in what she supposed was meant to be a reassuring expression, but which merely emphasized his handsomeness and put her back on her guard.
Still, she could hardly fault the man for something so far out of his control as his good looks. “Good,” she said finally, “because the change in my appearance has nothing to do with you.”
His eyes widened for a fraction of a second. Surely he wasn’t disappointed, Cecily thought. Then remembering who she was thinking of, she chided herself. He probably had indigestion from the Duchess of Bewle’s crab patties. Still, for all her distrust of him, they did share the common goal of wishing to gain access to the Egyptian Club. And though she disliked admitting it, they both wished to learn whether or not Lord Hurston was involved in Mr. Dalton’s disappearance. Albeit for radically different reasons.
Also, he was a gentleman and might have some suggestions for how she might go about persuading one of the club members to see her as a potential fiancée. And perhaps she could do something for him. Perhaps frighten away the matchmaking mamas—weren’t all the marriagea
ble gentlemen forever bemoaning the young ladies who schemed to trap them into marriage?
The more she thought of it, the more she recognized the soundness of the plan.
Looking over her shoulder, and around the rest of the terrace to ensure that no one was near enough to hear her, she leaned forward.
“I will tell you my reasons,” she whispered conspiratorially, “but you must keep this between the two of us.”
The duke leaned forward as well, eyebrows raised in expectation.
“I did it…” she hissed, “because I mean to marry a member of the Egyptian Club.”
Four
“The devil you will,” Lucas said, resisting the urge to take Miss Hurston by the shoulders and shake some sense into her.
The idea of her marrying some prosy scholar with more hair than wit was ridiculous. Not only because she deserved better, but because there had to be a better way for her to get her hands on her father’s journals. It had nothing at all to do with the way she looked in the moonlight and the way his eyes kept straying to her mouth.
Unfortunately, Miss Hurston was currently scowling in the moonlight, her delectable mouth pursed in annoyance.
“I’m sure I never asked for your permission, Your Grace,” she said, drawing back from him, her arms folding across her chest in the universal posture of affronted females everywhere. “I was simply sharing my plans with you. If you do not agree with them…”
Of course he didn’t bloody agree with them, he thought, grateful for the military training that had taught him to keep his mouth shut when needed.
“It isn’t that I disagree with your plan,” he began, though he did disagree with her plan. “It simply seems unnecessary to go to such an extreme to achieve your goal.”
But the damage was done. Whatever rapport they’d achieved earlier had vanished in the time it took him to utter an oath.
“Thank you very much for your advice, Your Grace,” she said, rising from the bench. “I’m afraid I have to get back to my cousins now.”
Her curtsy was perfectly executed. Her expression was serene. But he knew he’d seriously harmed his cause. If he were to convince her to help him search for clues to Will’s disappearance, he would need to woo her back to his side.
Odd choice of word, that.
He rose carefully from the bench, the muscles in his leg throbbing, momentarily erasing his thoughts of anything but the red-hot sting of pain. When he could breathe again, his thoughts returned to Miss Hurston.
Cecily.
Surely there was no harm in thinking of her by her given name.
He would have to find some means of dissuading Cecily from her ridiculous plan. Marriages of convenience might be de rigueur for the ton, but he knew from his brother’s marriage that being leg-shackled to someone for whom you felt no affection was soul-crushing. Certainly nothing like the true partnership and genuine love he’d witnessed between his parents.
She might be well versed in Latin and Greek and probably a whole host of other languages, but in this matter, Cecily was woefully ignorant.
He’d simply have to teach her the error of her ways.
It was, he thought, relying on his walking stick the whole way to the French doors, a lesson he was very much looking forward to.
* * *
Cecily was finishing up a cup of tea in the breakfast room the next morning when she felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle. Turning, she saw a dark figure looming in the doorway.
She couldn’t help it.
She jumped.
Then felt foolish when the dark shadow resolved itself into a very ordinary-looking man of middle years.
“I did not mean to startle you, my dear,” Lord Geoffrey Brighton, her father’s oldest friend, said, his eyebrows raised. “Never say you’ve started believing that curse nonsense. I thought you were too sensible for that.”
A confirmed bachelor, Lord Geoffrey had run tame in their house for as long as Cecily could remember. And though his hair was turning a bit silvery at the temples, he still looked just as he always had. Comfortable, mussed. He had been a steadfast supporter of Lord Hurston’s expeditions to Egypt from the beginning, investing his own fortune heavily in the acquisition and transport of various antiquities back to England. And he had made a tidy profit selling those goods that the Egyptian Club did not always find to be of particularly significant historical value.
And unlike the other members of the club, who had not even bothered to call on her father after that first awful week, Lord Geoffrey was a constant presence in Hurston House. He had even been on hand to calm Lord Hurston a time or two after he had suffered one of the terrible convulsions that still seemed to strike out of nowhere. It had brought Cecily to tears to see her father’s oldest friend at his side, speaking to him in a low, patient voice that was surprising in such a robust man.
“Please don’t you bring up the curse too,” Cecily said with disgust. “Even the Times has written of it today. It’s like something out of Walpole.”
“We are a superstitious people,” he said with a shrug, helping himself to bacon from the sideboard and taking his usual seat to the left of her. “It helps to explain things that have no explanation.”
Not wishing to dwell on the matter, Cecily changed the subject. “I take it you have been up to see Father? How is he this morning?”
“Well enough,” Lord Geoffrey said, taking a sip of tea. “I believe he must have recognized me today. At least, I hope he did. When I spoke to him he squeezed my hand in a manner that up until now he has only done with you or Violet.”
His eyes darkened with grief. “I cannot tell you how disheartening it is for me, Cecily, to see your father in such a state. I almost think it would have been better if the apoplexy had carried him off that first day.”
An invisible hand gripped Cecily’s heart. Though she and Violet had spoken of just such a possibility in the early days of her father’s illness, it was jarring to hear her father’s dearest friend in the world voice it. Perhaps the public were not the only superstitious ones.
“I do not say that I wish for it to have happened,” Brighton went on. “Indeed, I would not wish such a fate on him for anything. But I do know that your father values his mental acuity above all else. And I cannot think that he would ever have imagined himself living in such a condition. Alive, but unable to do any of those things that make life worth living.”
“I do understand you,” Cecily said, thinking of how vibrant and full of life her father had been before his attack. “I don’t know that he would have wished for such a thing, but surely the fact that he still lives gives us hope that one day he will be able to live his life with the same passion he did before.”
“You are right, my dear, as always.” He reached out to grasp her hand. “I do know this. He would be unspeakably proud to see you now, finally allowing yourself to cast off your cocoon and flap your wings like the glorious butterfly you are.”
“Butterfly, indeed.” Cecily laughed. “And you know very well that Papa would be heartily displeased at my continued academic pursuits. Though I do believe he would be pleased to see that I’ve finally accepted Violet’s assistance with my wardrobe.”
“Oh, I think you do yourself and your father a disservice, Cecily. Your father has always been proud of you. Even when he was railing about your stubbornness. He’s terribly proud of you. Just as proud of you as he was of your mother, God rest her soul.”
The mention of her mother made Cecily’s smile fade. “Yes, I suppose he was proud of her. Though I wish he hadn’t taken her death as a sign of why ladies should never pursue any sort of academic activities. It wasn’t her translation work that drove her to her death, but a stubborn refusal to rest properly when she was taken ill with the lung infection. Knowing my own restlessness, I suspect that having her books around her would have helped her survive the tedium of the sickbed.”
“He took your mother’s death hard, my dear,” Lord Geoffrey said. “Ind
eed, there was a time when I feared that he would do the unthinkable … but he resisted. For your sake, I think. And eventually he married Violet and all was right again.”
But Cecily knew that was only a partial truth. All might have seemed right, but she knew that Lord Hurston had never been the same after her mother’s death. And when she had shown the same skill for languages that her mother had possessed, Lord Hurston had tried every means at his disposal to ensure that his daughter would not become as enthralled with her studies as his wife had been.
But Cecily had persisted, and over his objections, with the help of her godmother, she had become a well-regarded scholar in her own right. Or, as much as was possible for a lady of gentle birth.
Knowing that it would do no good to dredge up that ancient history, Cecily simply nodded. “It’s true. Violet did change everything.”
They chatted for a bit about less upsetting subjects. Cecily’s new gowns, Lady Bewle’s ball. The latest news from the Royal Society.
Something, however, was clearly bothering him. Cecily gave her honorary uncle a questioning look. It was not like him to mince words.
“What is it?”
Looking a bit sheepish, he said, “My dear, I do not like to bring it up, especially after your earlier comments, but I must. Your father’s reputation hangs in the balance.”
“I thought we had dismissed the curse as ignorant superstition,” she said.
Ever since news had emerged from Bonaparte’s explorations in Egypt, and even before, the reading public had been fascinated by the possibility that the ancient people who built the pyramids had sealed them with a curse for those who might disturb their tombs. Each time a worker died, each time an expedition member fell ill, each time a box of cargo was dropped as it was loaded onto the ship bound home from Egypt, it was blamed on a curse.
How to Dance With a Duke Page 6