How to Dance With a Duke

by Manda Collins

  Never mind that the curses said more about the people who inscribed them onto the tombs than about the people who found them. The newspapers and scandal sheets had told the tales and forever after every expedition member was doomed by a curse.

  Cecily had found it tiresome enough to be confronted by whispers every time she ventured out of the house, but she had hoped the breakfast room of Hurston House was safe.

  “I do not believe in curses any more than you do, my dear,” Lord Geoffrey said. “But I really do believe that something is going on with the members of that expedition. I was there, you know. And there were a good many incidents that happened while we were in Alexandria that in hindsight seem to indicate that there was something amiss with that trip.”

  This was the first Cecily had heard of anything going wrong during the actual expedition. With the exception of Will Dalton’s disappearance.

  “Tell me,” she said, willing to listen even if she suspected she’d be proved right.

  “Well, aside from that nasty business with Dalton,” Lord Geoffrey said, “there were many small things that gave us all a bit of unease. Items went missing between the dig site and the storage site at our encampment. A fall rendered one of our guides unable to continue on with us. And one day one of the native men your father hired to assist with the removal of some of the larger items was crushed to death beneath the weight of the sarcophagus he carried.”

  “Oh, dear,” Cecily said, horrified to hear of such an accident befalling the man. Still, this was no more than she had expected to hear. “Surely all of these things are typical of an expedition like that. It is dangerous work. Why attribute such things to a curse rather than simple misfortune?”

  Lord Geoffrey fiddled with the lace at his cuff, decidedly uncomfortable. “Because in this instance we were actually warned of a curse just before we opened the doorway into the tomb.”

  His eyes were troubled as he warmed to his story. “You are acquainted, I think, with our translator, Gilbert Gubar, who has been with us on several previous expeditions?”

  Cecily nodded. She and Herr Gubar had corresponded about some Greek texts once or twice. He was a good man, though she envied him his position with the expedition.

  “We had been working all day, and already three of the workers had been forced into rest by the heat. But your father was certain that we were close to the entrance. If only we pressed forward. I tried to argue with him, but you are not the only one in your family with a stubborn streak, my dear.

  “Finally, as we all looked on, we were there. Everyone crowded back around, ignoring the heat now in their determination to be there when we finally reached our goal.

  “Then your father was calling for Gubar to read the inscription on the door, and as he stepped forward we all fell silent. I cannot remember any other unveiling like it.

  “In his accented English, Gubar said the words as he sketched them into his notes, though we had no idea what they meant. We all waited there, impatient as the devil, for him to translate them into English. Finally, he read them out word by word.

  “‘Whosoever violates this tomb shall cease to exist, his years will diminish, and his house will belong to his enemy.’

  “I can tell you,” Lord Geoffrey said with feeling, “there was not one of us who went to bed that night with an easy heart.”

  “But that curse is nonsense,” Cecily said, trying to maintain her skeptical stance despite the chill Lord Geoffrey’s words sent up her spine. “How can one both cease to exist and have his years diminished? Curses are there to deter would-be thieves from taking away the valuables buried with the noble deceased. That is all.” Her laugh sounded nervous to her own ears. But her father’s friend wasn’t laughing with her.

  “I know that, Cecily. I have been in more tombs than you’ve been in ballrooms. And I tell you, this curse—it’s different. I have never felt such an air of … unease fall over an entire party of people like that. It was one of the most disturbing experiences of my life.”

  “But even if this curse is real,” she persisted, “there is nothing to be done about it. We cannot turn back time and re-seal the tomb.”

  “No,” Lord Geoffrey said, his serious gaze fixed on her. “But what we can do is practice caution. I know you wish to obtain your father’s journals from the club.”

  At Cecily’s gasp, he waved a dismissive hand at her. “I am still an active member of the club, you know. Word spreads quickly. And before you ask, I will not retrieve them for you myself. I think the sooner this expedition is forgotten the better. And I will do nothing that would endanger the daughter of my oldest friend. Certainly not anything that would assist you to defy your father’s wishes. No matter how altruistic you might think your motives.”

  “I do wish everyone would stop treating me like a child,” she said with pursed lips. “I am perfectly capable of using reason and determining what I should and should not do.”

  “Well, in this instance, my dear,” Lord Geoffrey said with an indulgent smile that made Cecily want to growl, “I beg you to adhere to the wishes of someone who loves you like a daughter. Please follow your father’s dictates in this matter and forget about his journals. Nothing good can come of reading them. And I do not think your family could endure it if something happened to you as well as your father.”

  When he left her a few minutes later, Cecily remained at the table, staring into her quickly cooling tea. It was kind of Lord Geoffrey to look out for her, she supposed. But she would do as she had always done and make up her own mind about what actions she should take. In this case, that meant continuing forward with her plans to retrieve her father’s journals.

  Rising from the table, she went to dress for her ride in the park with Mr. George Vinson, who had sent round an invitation and a posy of violets that morning. It seemed oddly out of tune to receive violets given her stepmama’s name, but she couldn’t really fault him for it. Perhaps he didn’t know.

  There had also been a bouquet of peonies from Winterson in a soft pink, which she tried very hard to ignore. The note had read simply, “These reminded me of you. Winterson.” It had doubtless been a lucky guess that prompted him to send her her favorite flowers. And because they were her favorites, she told herself, she had her maid put them on her dressing table. It had nothing to do with the butterflies they set to rioting in her stomach every time she looked at them.

  Which she vigorously ignored.

  She’d danced with Mr. Vinson the evening before and found him to be sweet if rather dim-witted. Still, as a member of the Egyptian Club he was on her mental list of marriage candidates.

  Unfortunately for him, Sir Geoffrey’s warning had done the opposite of what he wished—it had given her an even more compelling reason to pursue her father’s journals than a simple desire to see her father’s legacy endure.

  Now she had a curse to debunk.

  And perhaps Mr. Vinson would give her the means to do it.

  * * *

  After fifteen minutes in Mr. Vinson’s company, Cecily was seriously reconsidering his eligibility as a candidate for marriage.

  As his curricle crawled at the snail’s pace required for seeing and being seen at the fashionable hour in Hyde Park, Cecily tried to engage him in conversation about something other than the sporting pursuits he found so compelling. But that had proved difficult thus far.

  While he was just the sort of husband she sought—not overly intelligent, easily managed, and, for reasons she could not quite fathom, a member of the Egyptian Club—he was also a member of the Corinthian set. As such, he talked without ceasing of all manner of things that Cecily was quite sure were improper conversation topics for gently bred young ladies. Not that she was overly concerned with such things, but it made finding out details about his involvement with the club an almost impossible task.

  “Do tell me about your other interests, Mr. Vinson,” she said, making sure to follow Amelia’s directive to smile, blink, tilt. “The Egyptian Club,
for example. It must be horribly frightening to see a mummy in real life.”

  As she had hoped, Vinson’s chest puffed out a bit, a sure sign her flattery, and what she was coming to think of as SBT, had hit its mark.

  “Oh, I wasn’t frightened, Miss Hurston,” he said, in an abhorrent patronizing tone.

  Why must even cloth-heads like Vinson assume they were superior simply because of their sex?

  “A mummy’s nothing but some old rags and bandages and a bit of brown stuff underneath it all. Besides, the fellow’s dead, so there’s no way he’s going to jump out of the case thingummy and come after you.” Vinson winked.

  Good Lord. “Have you spent very much time there?” Cecily asked, fighting her frustration. “At the Egyptian Club, I mean. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a man like you—I mean, one who is so very skilled at other, more sporting types of activities—would be interested in.”

  “Oh, I’ve been there a bit,” he said, paying careful attention to a turn in the path, expertly maneuvering his horses around the dowager Lady Dalrymple’s carriage, which had stopped to allow her to harangue the Misses Henrietta and Eloise Standish, who looked very much as if they wished to sprint away. “It’s m’father’s doing, really,” Mr. Vinson continued. “The membership, I mean. He don’t approve of racing and whatnot. So he made me join the Egyptian Club—was hoping it would interest me in something more worldly.”

  Cecily rather thought he had misunderstood what the term worldly meant, but did not tell him so.

  “Now I ask you, Miss Hurston, do I seem like the kind of fellow who would spend his time looking at moldy bones and books filled with queer writing?”

  He laughed at the notion, and Cecily was hard-pressed to disagree with him. Aloud she said, “Well, you do seem a bit more active than the Egyptian Club would require.”

  George beamed. “Exactly what I told the pater! And besides, he’s the one who likes all that Egyptian rot. If I’m to be my own man, it stands to reason that I’d need a different hobby horse, don’t it?”

  “Indeed,” Cecily replied. There was no denying George would make the perfect sort of husband to fit her needs. He would never appreciate her scholarly bent, but he would also never feel jealousy over her academic accomplishments as David had.

  She decided to keep him on the list.

  “Mr. Vinson,” she began, in preparation to ask how he felt about lady scholars who had their own hobby horses. But before she could speak, the curricle drew to a halt.

  “Hullo, Winterson,” Mr. Vinson said, welcoming the duke, who had skillfully pulled his own phaeton alongside them. “Tip-top rig you’ve got there. Are those the bays I saw at Tatt’s last week?”

  “Miss Hurston.” Winterson raised his hat in greeting, his arrival annoying her as much because of its effect on her as because she did not care to be interrupted in her pursuit of Vinson. It really was unfair of him to parade around looking like a Greek god in riding dress. His laughing eyes did not help his cause one whit.

  “Yes, these are Knighton’s bays,” the god told Vinson. “I was in the market and they were really too sweet to pass up.”

  The two talked horseflesh for a seeming eternity while Cecily seethed inwardly. What had brought Winterson to the park at this hour anyway? According to her sources—i.e., Maddie and Juliet—he was rarely seen engaging in the social whirl. And his stint at the Bewle ball looming at the side of the ballroom floor had proven he had no interest in idle chatter. No, he was clearly here to put a spoke in the wheels of her marriage plans. He’d made his objections clear during their little chat at the Bewle ball the other evening, but she had not thought he’d actually do anything about it.

  She suddenly realized Winterston had directed a question her way while she was woolgathering. Unwilling to admit to her lapse of attention, Cecily simply nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  The broad grin that split Winterson’s face stunned her for a moment. If he was handsome when he didn’t smile, he was even more so when he did. And it made him seem more approachable. Less … dukish. A little shiver of awareness danced down her spine.

  Which she promptly tamped down.

  “I’ll just hand you down then, Miss Hurston,” Mr. Vinson said, tossing his reins to the tiger on the seat behind them and leaping to the ground beside the curricle. “I’ll expect a full report on the bays,” he said with a lopsided grin.

  When Cecily realized what she’d just agreed to, she mentally cursed Winterson in six languages.

  But for now, she knew that causing a scene might frighten off Vinson, who, while unfrightened by mummies, appeared to be very skittish when it came to marriageable females, so she held her tongue until she was safely in the seat beside Winterson.

  The blistering set-down she’d deliver as soon as they were away from the crowd would teach the man not to get between a woman and her goals. After he’d steered the phaeton back onto the path and raised his whip to the brim of his hat in a parting gesture to Vinson, Lucas spoke, keeping his gaze on his cattle. “You’re wasting your time there, you know,” he said companionably. “Vinson is not, as they say, in the petticoat line. Besides, he’s far too young to be thinking about marriage. You’d do much better with Hollingsworth or Pilkingham. At least they’re on the hunt for wives.”

  “And they are also both old enough to be my grandfather. Pilkingham has already buried two wives—I have no desire to be the third, thank you very much.”

  He felt her glare as surely as if she’d beaten him over the head with it.

  “I’ll stick with Vinson, if you don’t mind terribly.” Her tone implied that she did mind.

  Terribly.

  Winterson cut his eyes to the side, hoping he didn’t get turned into a pillar of salt. Or stone. She seemed angry. But pretty. Definitely no snake-hair like Medusa. His reflection upon the ways in which Cecily, thankfully, did not resemble characters from classical literature was interrupted by the lady herself.

  “Are you going to tell me why you interfered with my perfectly lovely outing with Vinson?” Cecily asked, irritation taking her voice up a note. “You cannot mean to mix with the fashionable crowd since you’ve passed three carriages without sparing them a second glance.”

  “I am attempting to persuade you that your plan to marry the first member of the club you can wrap around your finger is flawed.” He’d said that louder than he’d intended to, Lucas thought. Feeling harassed, he thrust a hand through his hair. Damn her for being so troublesome anyway.

  “My ‘plan’ as you call it,” she said with a feminine sort of growl, obviously unconcerned with his irritation, “is most certainly not to marry the first club member I can manipulate into doing so.” If they’d been standing she would have stamped her foot to emphasize her point.

  “Mr. Vinson is a kind and generous young man,” she continued, “who asked me to go for a ride in the park with him. I accepted as is often the custom. He would make a most excellent husband for whomever he chooses to marry. And just because he happens to be a bit less … clever than you, it does not make it acceptable for you to look down at him over your enormous nose!”

  As her voice had risen in both volume and pitch over the course of this tirade, by the time the word nose had left her mouth, Cecily had clapped a gloved hand over her mouth.

  By then Lucas had steered the phaeton off the path into a wooded area at the edge of the park, so no one was around to hear her but him. Which was a lucky thing, because he intended them to have a serious talk about her “plan” and just what dangers lay in that direction. He expected that would cause some further raised voices.

  But, first there was another small matter.

  “My nose is not enormous,” he said, struggling not to laugh. “And even if it were, there is no need for personal attacks.

  “Though,” he reflected gravely, “you know what they say. ‘The bigger the nose…’”

  He raised his brows for emphasis.

  She stared at him blankly. �
��Aren’t you going to finish the quotation?” she asked.

  He’d stopped the phaeton, and was free to look his fill of her without worrying about running down some stray pedestrian. Cecily’s expression of puzzlement was utterly charming and Lucas was struck all at once by her proximity. The scent of rose water coaxed him to lean closer. Her teeth caught her full lower lip as she looked up at him from beneath her lashes.

  “Oh,” she said, though whether it was because she realized the rest of the quotation, or it was due to something else, he couldn’t say. But that one syllable was as eloquent as all the plays of Shakespeare put together.

  Their eyes locked, and of its own volition, Lucas’s hand slipped firmly behind her neck and pulled her closer. So close that he could see the tiny freckles dotting her nose and cheeks, and the way her eyes widened just before her lashes drifted down. Muttering a curse at his own lack of self-control, he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers.

  The kiss was gentle. Exploratory. He simply touched his mouth to hers and reveled in the softness, the sweet feel of skin against skin. It wasn’t nearly all he wanted, but it was enough for now.

  Then slowly, carefully, he opened his mouth for a taste, sliding his tongue along the seam of her lips. It was a silent question, and he was pleased when she answered by letting him inside, her hand stealing up to grab hold of his shoulder, as if she needed him to keep her from sliding to the ground.

  A surge of pure male triumph ran through him at her hold, even as he felt her tentatively touch her tongue to his.

  The park, the trees, the soft breeze, everything around them receded as he lost himself in the feel of her soft body pressed against his.

  Then Knighton’s bays, like a pair of equine duennas, tried to bolt.

  And all hell broke loose.

  * * *

  When all hell broke loose, Cecily was, to her shame, simply feeling the exquisite pleasure of Winterson’s mouth moving over her own.

  It had been years since she’d allowed herself the freedom to simply let go. And since she’d been kissed. The heady sensation of his strong arms holding her, coupled with the pressure of his lips against hers, was both a passport to a new world and a homecoming sweeter than any she had ever known. And when he opened his mouth, what was there to do but surrender to the seduction of the heat of him? To respond to the question his lips seemed to ask?