How to Dance With a Duke

by Manda Collins

  “Cecily?” she heard Juliet call. “Are you sleeping?”

  “Of course she’s not sleeping,” Maddie retorted. “I just saw her twitch. She’s faking so that we’ll leave her alone.”

  “That’s not very sporting of you, dearest,” Juliet chided. “Especially when you’ve got such news as this to tell.”

  Knowing that resistance was futile, Cecily opened her eyes. “From the sound of it you already know the news, so there’s no need for me to tell it.”

  “But there’s every need,” Juliet argued, tucking a lock of red hair behind her ear. “We’ve only heard the bare bones of the story. You must tell us the rest, with the pertinent details added in.”

  “Then let us call for the tea tray first,” Cecily said briskly, leading them into the small sitting room adjacent to her bedchamber. “For it is quite a long story.”

  When they were all seated, with the tea tray and a generous number of ginger biscuits laid out before them, she told them about her visit to the Egyptian Club the night before with Winterson. With certain details omitted, of course.

  “But I don’t understand,” Juliet said with a frown. “If no one discovered you’d been there, then why is there any need for you to marry? It’s not as if you—”

  A pointed look from Cecily stopped her in mid-sentence.

  “Oh,” she said, her green eyes widening.

  “Oh, indeed,” Maddie said wryly. “I should never have thought you’d be the one to compromise yourself, Cecily. I am quite impressed.”

  Cecily rolled her eyes. “I hardly did it on my own, Maddie. Before you go leaping to the duke’s defense, he was quite a willing participant.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Maddie retorted. “He does not strike me as the timid sort.”

  “No, he’s certainly…” Cecily stopped, her face turning red, much to her cousin’s delight. “Oh, do be quiet, Maddie.”

  “But what was it like, Cecily?” Juliet demanded, her own face turning pink even as she asked the question. At the poke in the ribs Maddie gave her, she protested, “You know you wanted to ask the same thing, Maddie, so don’t look at me like that.”

  Affection for her cousins overwhelming her, Cecily couldn’t help grinning at them. “I am so lucky to have you two, no matter how unsettling your questions might be.”

  But Maddie and Juliet would have none of it.

  “Stop trying to change the subject and talk,” Maddie said, crossing her arms over her chest. “We want details.”

  “Not details so much,” Juliet said with a frown at Maddie. “But rather, confirmation of a few things. For instance, is it lovely? Or horrid, like we overheard Mama telling Lady Stepney?”

  “Lovely,” Cecily said with a blush, remembering just what it had been like to lie in Lucas’s arms, to feel all that strength pressed against her softness. “Definitely lovely.”

  “Oh, you were definitely compromised, then,” Maddie said with a brisk nod. “I had wondered if perhaps you hadn’t just kissed him, but now I know.”

  “How do you know?” Cecily asked, frowning. Was it really that clear just from her expression?

  “You’ve got that glow about you. Remember when Lavinia Parman was forced to marry Lord Langham after he compromised her at Vauxhall?” At Cecily’s nod, she continued, “Well, I saw her that evening just before her parents hustled her away. You’ve got that same dazed and knowing look.”

  Since Lavinia had been dangling after Langham for the entire season before they wed, Cecily rather thought their circumstances were different, but she didn’t argue the point. The sooner she turned Maddie’s and Juliet’s minds to another subject, the better.

  “Well, I think you look lovely,” Juliet said, reaching out to squeeze Cecily’s hand. “And I couldn’t be happier for you. Winterson is charming. And it’s obvious from the way his eyes follow you when you’re in the same room that he is besotted with you.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Cecily said with a wry smile. “But I think we will get along well enough together.”

  “But you love him, don’t you?” Juliet asked with a frown. “I mean, you wouldn’t have let him—”

  “I am fond of him, of course,” Cecily began, “but I don’t really—”

  “Of course she loves him,” Maddie interrupted before Cecily could finish her denial. Her eyes flashed a warning that made Cecily regret her words. She did think that Juliet had a little too much sensibility about such matters, but it would be cruel for her to dash her cousin’s hopes in such a cold fashion. “Now, tell us all about the wedding details, Cecily.”

  Juliet looked as if she wished to question Cecily further, but she followed along without demurral into the conversation about the wedding plans.

  When they were ready to leave, Cecily followed her cousins downstairs to see them out.

  “I do wish you happy,” Juliet said, giving her an impulsive hug. “Even if you don’t love one another.”

  At Cecily’s startled look, her cousin smiled. “I’m not quite so naïve as you and Maddie seem to think me,” she said. “I just wish for you to have a happy marriage. Happier than the other marriages of convenience I am familiar with.”

  Knowing she spoke about her own parents, Cecily felt a rush of affection for her cousin.

  “Thank you, dearest,” she said, with a squeeze of the other girl’s hand. “I wish that too.”

  More than she was willing to admit. Even to herself.

  Thirteen

  It was with a sense of unreality that Lucas stood before the bishop in St. George’s Hanover Square three days later, Cecily standing tall beside him.

  Though he had assumed planning so hasty a wedding would be at least a little trouble, once Cecily’s stepmother and aunts and cousins had become involved, the small ceremony he had in mind had transformed into a church full of friends, relatives, and curious onlookers.

  But when he saw Cecily enter from the rear of the church, he had been proud to stand before them all and claim her as his bride.

  A hush fell over the congregation as she walked up the aisle on Lord Geoffrey Brighton’s arm, looking lovelier than he’d ever seen her. Her gown was a pink satiny fabric under some sort of silver tissue material. He wasn’t sure what the style was called, but he loved the way it showcased her long-limbed beauty and her creamy white skin. When he took her gloved hand in his, he was startled to feel it tremble.

  Something about the vulnerability in her eyes as she looked up at him made him want to lift her into his arms and run away with her. But instead, he squeezed her hand in his before placing it firmly in the crook of his arm. Nothing, not even an uncommon bout of nerves from his bride, would convince him to delay the ceremony that would make her his.

  When the time came, however, she said her vows in a loud and clear voice, as did he. And when he slipped his grandmother’s sapphire that so reminded him of her eyes onto her finger, she gave a sigh that sounded very much like relief. That made two of them, he thought, grinning down at her. Not caring if the entire world knew how pleased he was to call her his at last.

  Once the ceremony was at an end, there was the registry to sign, and in a very short time he was handing her into his crested carriage, where they rode the short distance to the Hurston town house, where their wedding breakfast would take place.

  “The ring is lovely,” Cecily said, holding out her hand to admire the sapphire flanked by two diamonds set in a filigree band. “Was it your mother’s?”

  “Grandmother’s,” he replied, watching her turn her hand this way and that to see the stones sparkle. “I would not have imagined you to be impressed by jewels,” he teased.

  She blushed, and immediately dropped her hand into her lap. “I am not, particularly,” she said primly. “But anyone can have an appreciation for a thing of beauty.”

  “Indeed,” he said, looking his fill of the thing of beauty that sat before him in the person of his new wife.

  The carefully arranged curls th
at had been gathered in a knot at the back of her head, a rose pink silk ribbon threaded through them, gave her the look of a fairy princess or a wood nymph. Small eardrops dangled from her lobes, swaying against the soft spot of skin beneath her ear, a spot he himself had kissed not three nights earlier and knew from experience to be sweet with the mixture of rose water and a scent that was all Cecily.

  Her eyes were bright, though a hint of shadow lingered beneath them, as if she had not slept well the night before. Lucas could certainly understand that. He felt as if he hadn’t slept since their encounter in the Egyptian Club. All the days since had been spent getting his affairs in order and preparing Winterson House and his various family and servants for the arrival of a new mistress in their midst.

  “I have sent a footman to Hurston House to retrieve your things,” Lucas said, breaking the silence that had fallen between them.

  “Excellent,” Cecily returned with more enthusiasm than the announcement warranted. Lucas stifled a smile at her forced cheerfulness. It was unusual to see Cecily made nervous by anything, he thought, remembering that trembling hand at the altar. He found some strange comfort in the notion that she was just as nervous about their new marriage as he was.

  “I have a bit of other news as well,” he told her, watching as she twisted her handkerchief into a knot and then unwound it again. “Lord Peter Naughton is one of the nation’s foremost collectors of Egyptian artifacts, and I have it on good authority that he has been boasting of late about a particularly important find that gives the whereabouts of quite an important bit of pottery from the tomb of Ramses the Second.”

  Cecily’s eyes lit up. “Father’s journals! There was a rumor that he’d found the tomb of Ramses, though since he was unable to verify the story himself I wasn’t quite sure how true it could be.”

  “Yes,” Lucas said. “If Naughton knows where the journals are, then we might be able to persuade him that telling us would be infinitely safer than divulging the information to the other members of the society. At least with you and me he will not need to worry that we would steal the information and go in search of the treasure ourselves.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Cecily said with a grimace. “If I were able to do so I would embark tomorrow on the first ship bound for Cairo in order to follow in my father’s footsteps.”

  Seeing the mulish set to her new husband’s jaw, she continued, “Not that I have any intention of doing so anytime soon. I was merely expressing a dream, not one upon which I plan to act.”

  Lucas hummphed, and continued, “With any luck we will have found your father’s journals by this time tomorrow. And you will be able to start the translation of them as soon as possible.”

  But Cecily was not so optimistic. Ever since they’d been unable to find the journals in the Egyptian Club, she had begun to wonder if there were not some more powerful forces at work in this instance.

  But, not wishing to press Lucas, on this morning of all mornings, she held her tongue and decided to ask him for more information later. When they were alone. The very idea of which sent a thrill of anticipation through her and a blush to her cheeks. Which was noted, doubtlessly, by the well-wishers who greeted them as they alighted from the carriage in Grosvenor Square.

  “My dear,” Violet said as Cecily stepped into the dining room, “I have never seen you look lovelier.”

  “Your mama would be so proud,” Lady Entwhistle added, kissing Cecily on the cheek before she linked her arm in Lucas’s and led him away to greet the other guests.

  He glanced over his shoulder and winked at his new bride before he disappeared into the crowd.

  The room was already filling up with both those who had attended the wedding and the dozens more who were invited to the breakfast only. Though Cecily and Lucas had thought to keep the celebration small, Violet had insisted that in order to appease the gossipmongers they must invite as many prominent members of the ton as possible. “Thank you, Violet,” Cecily returned, giving her stepmother an affectionate hug. “And thank you so much for your help in planning the event itself. I would not have known where to begin.”

  Violet was saved a reply by the appearance of Cecily’s new mother-in-law, Lady Michael Dalton, and William Dalton’s wife, Mrs. Clarissa Dalton.

  “Congratulations, my dear,” Winifred said warmly, kissing Cecily on the cheek.

  They had only met a few days before the wedding, but Cecily had found Lucas’s mother to be a practical, good-natured sort of woman, who, while pleased about her son’s inheritance of the dukedom, was not the least bit interested in using it to elevate her own standing with the ton.

  “For all that my husband was the son of a duke,” she confided in Cecily over tea in Violet’s drawing room, “he never put on the sort of airs one would expect of one of such high birth. He was a clergyman first and foremost. And I knew that when I married him.

  “Not,” she added, her eyes intent upon Cecily, “that I would expect you or Lucas to deny yourselves the comforts that the dukedom affords, of course.”

  Her expression seemed to imply otherwise, as if she were testing Cecily to see just what her reaction to such a proposal might be. She might have objected to such a test if she had been the mercenary sort of woman Lady Michael must have suspected her to be. But since she was marrying him out of necessity rather than a desire to become a duchess, she was comfortable in dispelling his mother’s fears.

  “To be honest, Lady Michael,” she said, “I haven’t actually considered just what Lucas’s status might entitle me to.”

  While Lady Michael seemed to believe her, William Dalton’s wife, Clarissa, scoffed. “You’ll forgive me if I doubt you, Miss Hurston, but I find the notion of such selflessness to be implausible at best.”

  “And at worst?” Cecily asked, feeling an intense dislike for the other woman. She did understand how difficult her lot must be with Will missing, but it gave her no right to be rude to Cecily.

  “At worst,” she replied with a frown, “it is a bald untruth meant to win over the goodwill of Winterson’s mama so that she will leave you to your own devices once you are the duchess.”

  “Clarissa,” Lady Michael said with a sharpness Cecily doubted was usual with her. “You are here at my request. And I now request that you wait for me in the carriage.”

  A mutinous set to Mrs. Dalton’s mouth told Cecily that she did not particularly wish to adhere to her mother-in-law’s request, but perhaps seeing that she risked alienating her further, Clarissa muttered some inane good-bye and left the room.

  “I do apologize for my daughter-in-law, my dear,” Lady Michael said with a sigh. “She has never been the most pleasant person, but my son William’s disappearance has brought out the worst in Clarissa, I fear.”

  “Think nothing of it, my lady,” Cecily reassured her. “I know it must be difficult for both of you dealing with Mr. Dalton’s absence.”

  “If we knew something,” Lady Michael said, her pain evident in her voice, “anything at all, I think we would all feel a great deal better. Not knowing is…”

  Knowing from her own experience with her father that there was nothing she could say that would alleviate the other woman’s pain, Cecily reached out and took the older lady’s hand in hers and squeezed it.

  “But what am I thinking?” Lady Michael said with a shake of her head. “We are here because of a happy occasion.”

  “But the sad occasions make the happy ones that much more satisfying, do they not?” Cecily asked with a smile.

  “They do indeed, Miss Hurston,” Winterson’s mother said with a smile of her own. “I do wish my Michael were still here to meet you. He’d like you very much, I think.”

  Pleased by the compliment, Cecily allowed her to steer the conversation toward wedding details and less serious matters. She found she liked Lady Michael very much, and when the older woman rose to take her leave it was with a real sense of fondness that Cecily wished her good-bye.

  Now, standing before
Lady Michael and Clarissa, her vows to Winterson having been solemnized, Cecily reached out her hands to both women. “Congratulations, Your Grace,” Clarissa said with what looked more like a grimace than a smile. “I can only hope that your marriage will be a happy one, like mine to my dearest William has been.”

  Since Cecily knew now that Clarissa and William had been far from happily wed, she realized that the woman’s good wishes were worth little; still she thanked the woman prettily, and offered her hope that William Dalton might be found alive very soon.

  “For your husband was always a great favorite of my father’s,” Cecily assured her. “Indeed, he was a favorite with me as well. Mr. Dalton was unfailingly cheerful in the face of my father’s temper and they worked quite well together.”

  “Yes.” Clarissa frowned. “William worked quite well with everyone except for his family.” Then, perhaps realizing she had said too much, Clarissa excused herself to adjourn to the ladies’ retiring room.

  Lucas’s mother shook her head sadly as she, Violet, and Cecily watched her walk from the room. “She was always a difficult young woman, but since William’s disappearance she has become positively unpleasant.”

  “Have no fear, Lady Michael,” Cecily assured her. “I know it has been a trying time for her.”

  Lady Michael gave a sad smile. “Well, she and I will be taking ourselves away to Bath for the next few weeks in order to give you and my eldest some privacy in these first few days of your marriage.”

  When Cecily protested, the older lady raised her hand in a forestalling motion. “Pray, my dear, do not speak of it any further. Marriage is difficult enough without having one’s dour sister-in-law and a busybody mother-in-law meddling in one’s business.”

  “I must admit,” Violet said on a laugh, “I was quite fortunate that when I married Hurston his mother had already passed away. Not that I don’t believe she was a delightful lady, of course.”