How to Dance With a Duke

by Manda Collins

  Finally, at the third entrance, they stopped, and when he tried the door handle, Lucas was not surprised to find it locked. Without a word, Cecily handed him the key she’d used to open the cellar door. Though she’d kept secret the means she’d used to obtain it, Lucas was grateful that she’d chosen to share the acquisition with him, rather than attempting to enter the building after hours herself. He dreaded to think what sort of mischief she might have gotten into on her own.

  “My lady,” he whispered, motioning her into the dark rooms.

  Once inside, he removed the candle and worked the flint until he was able to light the wick. The candlelight flickered over Cecily’s face, her dark eyes appearing even larger as she looked round the crowded rooms.

  She had seen countless Egyptian relics in her father’s house, of course. But the artifacts that had been so fascinating to her in the daylight now seemed to exude menace and foreboding. A death mask that had been recovered from the tomb of a minor prince hung on the wall, the jewels embedded in the eyes flickering eerily at her.

  “I believe the library is this way,” Lucas said, taking her hand in his. This time Cecily was glad to feel his strong clasp, though she would have preferred the strong clasp of her father’s dueling pistol instead.

  “How do you know where everything is?” she asked him, curious despite the flutters that ran down her spine. “I supposed you had never actually been here.”

  “I haven’t,” he returned. “But a friend gave me a diagram of how the rooms and artifacts are laid out.”

  “What friend?” Cecily demanded.

  “I will tell you if you tell me where you got the key,” he returned, with a smile in his voice. At her huff of annoyance, he nodded. “I thought not. Let us simply agree that there are some things best kept to ourselves.”

  “You are sneakier than I gave you credit for,” she said finally.

  “I am smarter than you gave me credit for too.”

  “I’ve never said you were unintelligent,” she said a bit defensively. “One of the first things that impressed me about you was your wit. And one must have a certain level of mental acumen to run a ducal estate. Or so I am told.”

  She disliked the idea that he thought she found him stupid. Though, in all truth, she had met a number of people in her lifetime who might be described thus, but he was not one of them. She was unable to consider the matter further, however, because he pulled her along behind him.

  “Come on,” he said, moving forward, then stopping before a doorway and opening it. “Here, I believe, is where we need to be.”

  Cecily stepped forward into the interior and waited for him to follow with the candle. When he stepped forward the light did come with him, but as he moved ahead, her heart stopped and she gave a little scream.

  For not three feet away, the light revealed the figure of a man.

  * * *

  Cecily’s yelp of fear turned into a groan as she realized what she’d seen was not a man, but a sarcophagus tilted against the far wall.

  “Fortunate that our friend there no longer has working ears,” he said dryly.

  “Sorry, I thought it was real.”

  “No matter,” Lucas said, shaking his head. Taking the candle with him, he moved to the first row of bookshelves just inside the door. “Better stay close to me, though. It’s not safe to wander through this room with no light to guide you. There are several displays of weaponry that could cause serious damage if you were to stumble into them.”

  Cecily fought a shiver. The enveloping darkness of the room, which was on the interior of the building and therefore had no windows to let the moonlight in, was disturbing to her on a primitive level. It wasn’t that she’d never been in a darkened room. Of course everyone had been at one time or another. But the pitch-blackness coupled with the knowledge that the artifacts and manuscripts housed in this room held the secrets of multitudes of long-dead pharaohs and slaves and scribes imbued the dark with a sinister, portentous air that played havoc with her rattled nerves.

  Moving closer to Lucas’s side, she gazed at the rows of bound manuscripts and attempted to determine the organization principle used to shelve them.

  “Alphabetical by author,” she said firmly, comforted by the familiar task.

  Lucas said nothing, obviously content to let her lead this task.

  “Which should put Papa’s journals—” Cecily stopped midway through the shelves to the left of the door. “Here,” she said triumphantly, running a finger down the shelves to follow the names.

  “Horner, Horton, Howington, Hulme, Hume, Hunter…” She stopped, puzzled. “Hussey?”

  “What’s wrong?” Lucas asked.

  “They aren’t here,” she said with a frown. “Perhaps they’ve just been shelved out of place.”

  But when they began again and looked at every shelf, every row, they came to the same conclusion. Lord Hurston’s journals were not on these shelves.

  “How long has it been since the journals were taken from Hurston House to the club, exactly?” Lucas asked, crouched near the floor as he placed a manuscript back on the last shelf.

  “Two months,” Cecily answered, holding the candle closer to the shelf where her father’s journals should have been. “Certainly more than enough time to add them to the collection. Though we really have no way of knowing what their process is for such things. Perhaps they are being examined by an expert of some sort?”

  “Perhaps,” said Lucas, coming to stand beside her. Together they looked at the shelf that should have housed the missing journals. As if staring at it long enough would conjure the books from thin air.

  “Cecily, what is different about this shelf?” he finally asked, gesturing to the offending bookshelf. “Look at the others and then back at this one. What do you see that’s out of place? Besides your father’s books, I mean.”

  She stepped back, surveyed row after row of oddly sized bindings. Some were leather-bound, some simply sheaves of paper fastened together between thin boards and tied with string. But what made her father’s shelf different was not the items on the shelf, but the missing items. Or rather the place where the missing items should have been. Every other row was filled from one side to the other with books, manuscripts, and so on. Only her father’s row had a gap between the last book and the right side.

  “The gap,” she said finally. “At the end, where Papa’s journals should have been.”

  “Exactly,” Lucas said grimly. “So we know that your father’s books were there at one time. Which means we know they were here, in this room. But there’s something else about this shelf. Notice this bit of ornamental woodwork,” he said, pointing to a decorative cornice at the corner of the shelf.

  Every corner was decorated with an intricately crafted scarab beetle. All but one. Because there at the top edge of the Hurston shelf was carved, just as intricately crafted, an alligator, its snout and tail protruding from the cornice like tiny handholds.

  Cecily stood on her toes to touch the alligator tail, but before Lucas could caution or catch her, she lost her balance and instinctively grabbed hold of the thing, pulling it down with an audible click. And to their great surprise, the shelf at the end of the row swung silently open, like a very wide, very heavy door.

  “How did you know?” Cecily asked, looking from the darkened doorway to her partner in crime.

  “I didn’t know precisely what the alligator signified, of course, but we’ve got a priest’s hole at Winterhaven with a lock triggered in a similar fashion. It’s much more subtle than this one, however,” Lucas replied. “If we were to see this room in daylight I feel sure the alligator would catch our attention at once. And if you are really aiming to hide something, the cleverest method is to place it in plain sight.”

  “So you don’t think Father’s journals are in here?” Cecily asked, peering into the darkened passage beyond the door.

  “Oh, I didn’t say that,” Lucas said, gesturing her behind him as he began to des
cend the narrow stairway behind the shelves. “In fact,” he said, his voice echoing to reach her as she followed behind him, “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we found the journals and many other valuable items down here. Whoever built this room had a distinctive flair for the dramatic. And what could be more theatrical than hiding one’s most precious possessions in a secret room?”

  Ten

  What they found at the foot of the stairs was a long hallway that echoed the one on the floor above. There were three doors to the right and three doors to the left, and between each of the doors was placed a wall sconce holding an unlit torch.

  Cecily asked if they shouldn’t light the sconces so that they could see their surroundings more fully, but Lucas was not convinced that they would remain undiscovered, so in the end, the torches remained unlit.

  “This is just a storage room, I think,” said Lucas as he peered into the first door on the left, Cecily standing close behind him. He raised the candle to illuminate the interior, but all it revealed were neat rows of wooden crates, which upon further inspection contained nothing more noteworthy than unglazed pottery that Cecily pronounced of recent origin, and various other imported goods, none of them particularly valuable.

  “I suppose someone brought these back from an expedition. It’s typical for a traveler to purchase cheap goods to bring back as gifts for friends and relatives. Or to sell to London merchants. Especially with the current craze for all things Egyptian,” Cecily noted. “Which is rather frustrating for actual scholars, of course, because it allows charlatans to pass off cheaply made modern goods as ancient artifacts.”

  “One would hope the members of the Egyptian Club would be above such schemes,” Lucas said wryly.

  “Indeed,” she returned. “Though even true scholars are prone to exaggeration from time to time. Papa once complained about an acquaintance who attempted to pass off a shard of pottery from a broken bowl he’d purchased from a costermonger as the remains of an Egyptian water jug from the time of Ramses the Second. I believe in this case the fraud was caught out, but it’s difficult for people who haven’t spent their formative years engrossed in all things Egyptian.”

  “Like you?” he asked, with a raised brow.

  “Precisely like me,” she said with a frown “Though I suppose I did spend some of my formative years engaged in other pastimes. Such as learning to paint watercolors badly and to stitch a very uneven row indeed.”

  “I can’t stitch worth a damn either.” Lucas shrugged.

  Cecily couldn’t help herself. She laughed. There was something about his deadpan drollery that brought out her appreciation of the absurd. “Then I shan’t ask you to show me your watercolors anytime soon,” she said wryly.

  “Too bad,” Lucas said with mock sadness.“I do have some etchings you might be interested in, however.” They continued on from room to room in companionable silence after that, finding nothing more incriminating than a scandalous sketch of an ancient couple engaged in a very naughty act.

  “I don’t understand it,” she said finally, having stared down at the image for several minutes.

  “I suspect that’s because you’re holding it upside down,” Lucas said wryly, his voice pitched low to prevent them from being heard.

  “Oh, you,” she said, dropping the paper onto a table as if it were made of fire. “I didn’t mean the drawing. I don’t understand why they would bother with all these hidden rooms and not put anything of real value in them. What’s the point? We’ve already decided this person has a flair for the dramatic; why then no hidden treasure?”

  “It’s a good question,” Lucas said, closing the door of the fourth room behind them. “We haven’t checked all of them, but the ones so far have been underwhelming to say the least. No treasure, no manuscripts, no books of any kind.”

  He gripped her hand in his and led her to the other side of the hallway so that they could search the remaining rooms. As they had stepped from room to room, Lucas became more and more aware of the fact that they were utterly and completely alone. How easy it would be to simply pull her against him and kiss her as he had wanted to do since their encounter in the park.

  He wondered if she had thought at all about that kiss or if he was alone in thinking that there was something between them.

  As he opened the second but last door, the scent of decay filled his nostrils, and as he lifted the candle higher he saw why.

  “Mummies,” Cecily said matter-of-factly as they stepped into the room and surveyed the shriveled, wrapped figure laid out on the table that dominated the room. “I wondered if they housed any. Especially given the sarcophagus upstairs.”

  She moved forward until she reached the other side of the table and saw an empty sarcophagus on the floor. She clasped her hands against her, rubbing her arms as if to ward off the chill of seeing the dead bodies.

  “They are dead, Cecily,” Lucas said, putting a comforting arm around her shoulder. “They can’t hurt you.”

  “Oh, it’s not that,” she assured him. “I’ve been around artifacts and even a few mummies before. I was just imagining how awful it would be to get locked in a sarcophagus. I am not altogether comfortable with small spaces,” she admitted. “Though the dark isn’t among my favorite experiences, either.”

  “I should have known,” he said with mock despair. “I am in a room full of mummies with the only lady in the world without any fear of them. I suppose I shall have to find some other small room to lure you into so that I may take advantage of your fear for my own licentious machinations.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth, however, than they heard a decisive snick as the door to the crowded room swung shut and the resulting breeze snuffed out the candle.

  “Very funny,” Cecily said with a wry tone. “I suppose you tied the door to a string or some other nonsense to shut the door from over here? There is no hope for you, my lord. I have a veritable army of male cousins who enjoyed nothing better than trying to frighten me out of my wits when I was a child. Though I will admit that this trick is particularly impressive. Tell me how you managed it.”

  “Cecily,” Lucas said as he fumbled in his pocket for the flint, his voice impressively steady as he realized what must have just happened. “I’m afraid I have some very bad news.”

  As he stepped away from her and reached for the doorknob, the tiny flicker of light he’d conjured with the flint grew stronger as it burned down the wick.

  “Do not try to gammon me, Lucas,” she said with an air of confidence in him that he wished were not so very misplaced. “I know you did it, now tell me how.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” he said emphatically as he turned the doorknob and met with only resistance. “And I am very much afraid that not only did I not shut the door, but it is now locked from the outside.”

  At her gasp, he stepped back to let her try the door herself. When she also was unable to open it, he bit back an oath.

  “Now, you may scream all you like.”

  Eleven

  But Cecily did not scream. That would have taken too much air, and from the moment she’d realized the door was shut she’d begun to feel a distinct loss of breath.

  “I am not fond of enclosed spaces,” she said carefully, trying in vain to resist the urge to raise her hand to her throat in a gesture of panic. Why was the simply tied cravat she’d donned as part of her boy’s disguise suddenly so unbearably tight?

  “Do not worry,” Lucas said from his kneeling position before the door, “I only heard the click of the lock sliding into place, without the sound of the key being removed. If we are lucky, he left it in the lock.”

  “I’m not worried,” Cecily said, hearing her voice as if it came from some other person in the room with them. The floor shifted beneath her feet and she grabbed onto the table, not wanting to jostle the mummy, but not really capable of controlling her movements, either.

  Lucas must have heard her for he was suddenly at her back, easing her gen
tly down into a sitting position on the floor.

  “Easy,” she heard him say. “I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall.”

  And he didn’t.

  His strong arms supporting her, taking over for her, were at once comforting and stifling. Unable to stand under her own strength, however, she let herself go, and gave in to the shamefully comforting feeling of knowing that, for just this moment, someone else would be in charge. For just this whisper of a second, she would not have to carry the burden of self-sufficiency alone.

  “There now,” he said, easing to the carpeted floor next to her. “Just breathe. Maybe you’d better put your head down between your knees.” His tones were soothing, as if he spoke to a skittish colt or a frightened child. But instead of being insulted by his condescension, she simply fought to do as he asked. She ignored the indignity of the position he suggested and followed his suggestion, drawing her knees up before her and leaning forward to place her head between them, feeling his surprisingly gentle hand move in even strokes over her back.

  “Would you like to talk about it?” he asked, finally allowing her to raise her head and lean back against the pedestal of the long table. “I assume there is a reason why you turn pale at the thought of being locked in a small room with such a handsome fellow?”

  Still ill at ease, though thankfully not as panicked as she had been, Cecily scoffed. “You hold as high an opinion of yourself as ever, I see?”

  “I was speaking of him,” Lucas returned, gesturing up at the mummy. Cecily could barely see his expression, but she knew his raised brow meant he was joking.

  “Of course you were,” she returned, rolling her eyes, though the jest had produced the desired effect, breaking the air of seriousness that had invaded the room at her collapse.

  She was quiet, thinking back over the shadowy memories of her childhood.