Cecily’s brows drew together at his discomfort, then crimson bloomed in her cheeks.
“Oh! No! That is to say…” She shook her head. “It is not that, um, time.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. Quite.”
“Just a headache, then?”
“Indeed.”
They both looked at the ground for a moment.
Dragging a hand through his hair, Lucas swallowed, then nodded. “All right, then. I bid you good night.”
And promptly shut the door.
Still smarting the next day over his embarrassment of the night before, Lucas stayed clear of Cecily until later in the evening. He had dinner at White’s and returned home to find her cozily tucked into the library, reading The Odyssey in the original Greek.
“How nice to find my own Penelope waiting patiently for me at the hearthside,” he drawled, leaning over the back of her chair to kiss her.
To his surprise and chagrin, she leaped almost to the ceiling in surprise.
“Good Lord, Lucas, you startled me!” He watched in appreciation as her bosom heaved with her quick breaths.
“I am sorry, my dear,” he said, stepping around the chair to lift her into a comforting embrace. “I did not mean to do so. I thought you had heard me come in.”
He felt her relax into his arms and rest her head on his shoulder. They stood together like this for a moment before either of them spoke.
“I must have dozed off,” she said into his neck. The soft tickle of her breath against him sent a frisson of lust straight to his groin.
As if sensing his reaction, she began to pull away from him.
“Stay,” he murmured into her hair. He had missed her these past two nights. He had grown accustomed to her soft body pressed against his—so accustomed that he had found himself unable to rest properly in his bed alone.
“I have missed…” he began, but stopped when she tried harder to remove herself from his grasp.
“Let me go,” she said, pressing her hands against his chest, shoving against his hold. “Lucas, let me go.”
“What the devil?” he demanded, opening his arms so that she could step back.
He watched in baffled amazement as she tore to the other side of the room as if he were a hunter and she the hind. Her breath came in gasps and she was clearly in distress.
“Cecily, what’s amiss?” he asked, his voice gentler now that he saw how upset she was. “Have I done something?”
She closed her eyes, and said in a clipped voice, “It’s not your fault.”
“What’s not my fault?” he asked, stepping closer to her. The side of the room to which she’d fled was shadowed and he could not see her expression. But everything about her posture spoke of determination.
“I apologize, Your Grace,” she said to him, her dark eyes luminous in the candlelight. “When I agreed to marry you I had thought that perhaps we would be able to rub along well enough together. But it has become increasingly clear to me that by allowing you certain liberties—”
“Liberties?” he asked, dumbfounded, stalking across the room to her like an angry jungle cat. “How can one take liberties with one’s own wife?”
She ignored his question, and when he came to stand before her she seemed unperturbed. The only clue to her nervousness was the flutter of her pulse in her soft neck.
“I have done both of us a disservice,” she started again, unable to meet his gaze, “by allowing our relationship to become more physical than I had originally intended. I see now that was a mistake. And I ask you now to please allow me to return to my chamber alone, so that—”
Understanding dawned like an arrow in the back.
“There were no headaches,” he said dully. “Damn me for a fool for not seeing it sooner.”
“Please do not swear…”
“If I’m to be denied my conjugal rights, I’ll swear as much as I bloody well please!” he said, his voice loud enough that even he was startled.
“Has this been your plan all along?” he asked, more softly now. “To fob me off with a few weeks of playing the dutiful wife, then cut me off completely?”
At this she blanched. “No! Nothing like that,” she cried. “I thought I might be able to risk … to have some affection without…”
When she made no move to finish her thought, he shook his head.
“Well, fear not, wife,” he said. “I won’t bother you with any more of my unwanted affections. Not until you ask. And maybe not even then.”
Turning on his heel, he left her looking as miserable as he felt.
* * *
Less than a week after their confrontation, Cecily dressed without any real enthusiasm for the meeting with David Lawrence. She chose one of her new, flattering gowns, and had her maid, Molly, arrange her hair into a fashionable twist. The result, when she examined herself in the long pier glass, was not breathtaking, but she knew she would not shame herself or her husband.
The thought of Lucas and their estrangement pulled sharply at her conscience. It was hardly her husband’s fault that her former fiancé had been such a knave. But the thought of letting Lucas back in, of allowing him close enough that he had the potential to hurt her, sent such fear lancing through her that she could barely breathe. Her sense of preservation was too strong. If her reaction to losing David had been overwhelming, how much more devastating would the damage to her heart be if she allowed herself to grow attached to Lucas—a man who outshone David in every possible way? It had taken years for her to recover from David Lawrence’s betrayal. But recover she had. Indeed, the only emotion she could call to mind when she thought about Mr. Lawrence as she dressed was embarrassment at her behavior when he’d broken things off. That she had broken down in tears before him filled her with shame even now. For Mr. Lawrence himself, however, she felt nothing aside from a natural curiosity to know how he went on, and to learn what he might be able to tell them about Mr. Dalton’s disappearance.
As for Lucas, his behavior to her since their fight had been scrupulously polite. He was courteous, kind, and every bit as solicitous as he had been since their marriage. The only difference was that he no longer made any effort to come to her bedchamber. If she was disappointed at his lack of interest, she reminded herself that it saved her heart the risk of being broken again. That must outweigh any temporary hurt feelings his diffidence might cause.
Thus it was that when Cecily and Lucas were shown into Mr. Lawrence’s office at the museum, she was in complete control of herself. Mr. Lawrence, however, appeared to be overset by her appearance on his figurative doorstep.
“Miss Hurston!” he exclaimed, stepping around an enormous desk to greet them, and immediately taking her gloved hands between his own. “What a surprise this is!”
“She is the Duchess of Winterson now, Lawrence,” her husband said, the sharp edge to his voice revealing just how much contempt he held for the other man.
Recalling himself, Lawrence flushed and turned to the taller man and gave a slight bow.
“Yes, of course,” he said with a forced smile. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Your Grace.”
He looked from Cecily to Lucas and then back at Cecily again, as if trying to figure out how the two of them could possibly have ended up married to one another.
“My apologies. I was caught up in the moment and forgot my manners.” He spoke to Lucas, but his eyes were all for Cecily. So much so that she felt herself blush under his gaze. “It is good to see you, Your Grace,” he said to her. “It has been too long.”
Cecily pulled her hand back and gave him a cynical smile. “Yes, well, you have known my direction these past three years, Mr. Lawrence,” she said tartly.
Rebuffed, but not particularly repentant, Lawrence gave a brisk nod and directed them to take seats before the fire. His office was small, but exquisitely furnished. Cecily had only been here once or twice in the past, but since then it would seem that he had grown plumper in the pocketbook. Probably as a res
ult of his marriage, she thought darkly.
“What brings you to the museum, Your Graces?” he asked, once they were all seated. “An endowment, perhaps? Or can it be that you will finally be able to travel to Egypt, Cecily, now that you are married and out from under your father’s thumb? Perhaps you wish to travel along with the museum’s next expedition?”
As a trip to Egypt had been the intended destination of her wedding trip with him, despite her fear of tight spaces, she was not overly surprised to hear David ask if she and her new husband intended to travel with the museum. What did surprise her, however, was the ease with which he spoke of such a topic. Especially considering that he’d met his wife on such a trip. Still, he had never been the most considerate of men. And he had always said that men like him made their own luck. He would see her marriage to Lucas not as it related to her, but insofar as he might make use of it himself.
“Her Grace,” Lucas said through clenched teeth, before Cecily could formulate a response, “and her travels are not of concern to you, Lawrence. We are here to discuss your last trip to Egypt and to learn what you can tell us about the theft of several items from both your own group’s finds, and from those in Lord Hurston’s camp.”
He didn’t seem particularly worried by the duke’s disdain, but at the mention of the theft, Lawrence blanched. “I do not know what you are talking about, Your Grace; someone has obviously been trying to—”
“Do cut line, David,” Cecily said, tiring of his lies. “We know there were thefts on the trip. That is not in question. What is in question is whether you were working with my father and Mr. Dalton, who also happens to be Winterson’s brother, to discover who the culprit was.”
Lucas gave her an inscrutable look, not revealing whether he was annoyed at her taking over the questioning, or pleased at her lack of deference to her former fiancé. Whatever the case, he seemed willing enough to let her lead now.
“Before I say anything,” Lawrence began, “I want your assurance that my colleagues here will not learn about my role in your father’s little scheme. If it were known that a member of the museum staff was working together with a member of the Egyptian Club there might be serious repercussions.”
“Go on,” Lucas said curtly.
Cecily watched as her former suitor prepared to tell his story. It was the first time she’d been given an unobstructed view of the man since their engagement had been dissolved three years ago so that he could marry another. There was no comparison between his looks and Lucas’s. That hadn’t been his appeal. It had been David’s mind that made her heart beat faster. He had a clever way with words, and a keen mind that he used to work himself up through the ranks of the museum. And, she suspected now, he’d used her own facility for learning ancient languages to assist him in his climb to the top. What she had seen as their mutual interest in ancient culture, he had seen as nothing more than a tool to help him achieve success. And when he was finished with her, he’d broken their engagement and married another woman whose wealth could take him higher still.
Rather than sorrow or upset, she felt as if a heavy burden had been removed from her heart. She would never again need to feel the guilt of having done the wrong thing, or reacted in the wrong way in response to his easy dismissal of her. Instead, she knew that short of possessing a dowry of eight hundred pounds a year, there had been nothing she could have done to keep him by her side.
“Your father and I had begun speaking again shortly after his party arrived in Cairo,” Lawrence explained. “His anger over what happened between us…”
Cecily fought her annoyance at his terminology for what had been, in essence, his jilting of her.
“… had dissipated, and though we were not on the same intimate footing as before, Lord Hurston and I were able to discuss matters pertaining to his expedition and mine that would be of use to both of us.”
Lawrence looked at some faraway point over both Cecily and Lucas’s heads, his voice warming to the story.
“Since our two expeditions would be only some twenty miles or so from one another, we made an agreement to trade information should the need arise. Both our groups had been at it for only a week or so when we noticed items, mostly smaller, easily transportable relics, were disappearing from our collection of finds. We wondered at first if the guards we had hired in Cairo to accompany our groups were responsible. They were, after all, the only people at our dig sites whom we had not handpicked for the digs.”
“But you discovered you were wrong.” It was a statement from Lucas, not a question.
“Yes.” Lawrence nodded. “It turned out that my guard was the brother of Lord Hurston’s guard. And they were both called away for one evening because of a family illness. While they were gone, I went to store that day’s finds—in this case several pieces of lapis-lazuli-and-sapphire-encrusted jewelry that had been buried along with the pharaoh’s wife—in the artifact tent that morning. By the evening, before either man had returned from Cairo, one of the smaller pieces was missing. Whoever had stolen it had perhaps chosen that particular piece because he hoped its absence would not be missed. Especially given that it had been stored near a larger, and much more precious and valuable, piece.”
“And had you any idea who might have gone into the tent during the day while the rest of your party worked?” Lucas asked. “I assume you’ve accounted in some way for the whereabouts of the rest of your party during the hours in which the piece might have been taken.”
“Of course,” Lawrence affirmed. “And none was out of sight of the rest of the party during any point in time. I asked my valet to watch the tent while the rest of us were at the tomb, but there was a short period of time when he came to inform me of the note he’d received from the guards, telling us that they were on their way. He went back to the tent with all possible haste, but I suspect that that was the time during which the piece was stolen.”
“But surely a stolen artifact would not be enough to convince a man such as yourself to risk his employment by joining forces with a member of the club that has made public threats against the museum? No man with any sense of self-preservation would do so.”
The notion that Mr. Lawrence was not exempt from that group hung in the air like the smell of day-old fish. Lucas clearly had no use for Lawrence and men like him who ruthlessly cut down anyone who stepped in the way of their rise to power. But for all that there was an air of combativeness between the two men, Cecily was relieved to see that they would use only words as their weapons of choice today. She did not like the idea of her husband engaging in any violent acts, regardless of how satisfying she herself might consider the notion of seeing Mr. Lawrence’s smug expression forcibly removed from his face.
“Of course not,” Lawrence agreed. “But when I discovered that Hurston’s party was also experiencing losses from some unknown thief, it occurred to me that for us to quibble over our own personal institutional affiliations could put our very empire at risk. For all that we pursued our separate goals, both Lord Hurston and myself explored these ancient wonders for the good of king and country.”
“Quite.” If there was any irony in that one word from her husband, Cecily could not detect it.
“So, we began to plan. Lord Hurston, Mr. Dalton, and myself. The three of us decided that we would not let word of our alliance reach the other members of our party. And since there was no indication that outsiders had been sneaking into our encampments and stealing from us, we came to the rather upsetting conclusion that the thief must be a member of one or both of our parties.”
“Could not the thief have simply paid off your guards or sneaked into the tents holding your finds while the rest of your party was sleeping or away?” Cecily asked. She had always assumed that her father’s expeditions had traveled with trunks with sturdy locks to prevent theft, but instead she learned that they were kept in open and vulnerable tents with nothing more than a flap and an all-too-human guard to keep the treasure hunters out. It was most disconce
rting to imagine the temptation such a situation must have presented to a thief.
“It is possible, I suppose,” Lawrence acknowledged. “God knows the native people of Egypt are without the sort of ethical code or morality that we English hold ourselves to.”
Cecily forbore from pointing out that he himself had not held to any sort of moral code when he decided to jilt her and marry someone else.
“But,” he went on, “it seems unlikely given that we were already paying the guards exorbitantly to stay on duty with us, and though there was no way of locking the tents, we did rig up a crude means of alerting us should some unannounced visitor enter the storage areas. And no one was ever heard coming or going from the storage tents.”
“What sort of plan did you, Lord Hurston, and my brother devise to smoke out the thief?” Lucas asked. He sat up straight in his chair and his eyes did not leave the other man’s face.
“Mr. Dalton and Lord Hurston would stage a very public falling-out. Mr. Dalton would break away from Lord Hurston’s group, but he would continue to work alongside them. Lord Hurston would explain that while he and Dalton could no longer be employer and employee, he had come too far to do without Mr. Dalton’s expertise when it came to languages and excavation. Mr. Dalton would be allowed to keep a certain percentage of his finds, but agreed to pay Lord Hurston a sum for his permission to continue his exploration of the site.”
“And what happened?”
“Well, at first it all worked as we had planned. Hurston and Dalton fought in front of the rest of their party about the proper way to read a hieroglyph, and soon enough Dalton was striking out on his own. His every find was cataloged with the others, but he let it be known to the rest of the party that he would not be averse to selling those items he found in order to pay for his passage back to England. Almost immediately he was approached by a member of the party—neither he nor Hurston would tell me who—who wished to purchase one piece in particular. A lovely lapis lazuli sculpture of a cat.”
“And did he sell it to them?” Cecily asked, careful not to let on that his mention of the lapis cat had caught her attention.
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