How to Dance With a Duke

by Manda Collins

  And, perhaps most importantly, she had seen her husband’s cordial interactions with his mother and she understood in a way she had never done before that there was much to be gained from such a relationship. For all of Lord Hurston’s faults, she did love him, and for whatever time he had left on this earth she would do whatever she could to ensure that he knew it.

  She was handing her hat to the butler when she spied Violet descending the staircase, her eyes red-rimmed.

  “Violet, what is it?” Cecily rushed forward to grasp her stepmother’s hands. “Is Papa worse?”

  Lady Hurston struggled to regain her composure, and shook her head. “No, no, there is no change, my dear,” she said at last, having taken a deep breath to calm herself. “I was merely trying to come to a decision about something.”

  The two walked arm in arm into the little sitting room that Violet called her own. It was a cheery room, decorated in yellow chintz and bright patterns, which glowed in the afternoon sun.

  When they were seated, with a pot of tea on the table between them, Cecily asked, “Now, if it will help, please tell me what troubles you.”

  Her stepmama smiled. “Do you know, Cecily,” she said, her smile fond, but her eyes still shadowed, “I believe that marriage suits you. You have seemed a great deal more content with life since your match with Winterson.”

  Cecily felt a telltale flush creep into her cheeks. “I suppose you may be correct,” she said, attempting to appear blasé about the matter. “Winterson is a good husband, I believe.”

  “Oh, come now, dearest. It is there for anyone who really knows you to see written plainly on your face. You are glowing. Even if you refuse to admit to the man that you adore him as much as he adores you.”

  “How did you…?” Really, it was too trying to be read so easily. There had been a time when she fancied herself perfectly inscrutable. A time that had clearly passed.

  Violet gave a little tsk, then took a sip of her tea. “I have known you since you were four years old, Cecily. If I know one thing about you it is that you are stubborn.”

  At her stepdaughter’s protest, the viscountess merely shook her head. “I also know how devastated you were when David Lawrence broke your engagement all those years ago.”

  Before Cecily could ask, Violet raised a hand to forestall her question. “There was no way on earth that I would believe that you were the one to release him. I knew how desperately in love with him you were, and I also knew that Millie Pilkington came with four thousand a year. He might have been flattered by your attentions—enough to propose—but in the end, I knew that he would do what was best for him.”

  “I had no idea you knew,” Cecily said with shake of her head. “I thought I was so clever to make it seem as if I were the one who cried off. If I’d known you and Father—”

  “Oh, heavens, your father had no idea!” Violet told her with surprise. “If he’d known that Lawrence jilted you he would have called the fellow out the next morning. And I did not wish for you to bear the scandal of it. So I let him believe the story you wished him to believe.

  “That wasn’t wrong of me,” she asked, a frown line appearing between her brows, “was it?”

  Cecily was surprised, but not shocked, she supposed. It had been a long time ago. And she had been trying to keep the scandal to a minimum. As much for David as for herself. And if her father had discovered the truth, there was no doubt in her mind that it would have been pistols at dawn and damn the consequences.

  “No,” she said aloud. “It was exactly the right thing to do. Otherwise I’d have been forced to marry David, and though at the time I thought that was what I wished, I know now that it would have been a mistake.”

  “Well, there is another matter which I need to confess to you, Cecily,” Violet said, her expression remaining serious. “I fear that you will not be able to forgive this action of mine so easily. There is a small possibility that you may even decide to cut yourself off from me altogether.”

  “Do not be foolish, Violet,” she said with a laugh. “I doubt there is anything you could do or say that would cause me to break with you completely. Come now, confess and we will laugh about it together.”

  But Violet did not laugh; instead she looked down at her hands, as if unwilling to meet her stepdaughter’s eyes. Cecily felt a sense of foreboding ripple through her.

  “Cecily,” Lady Hurston began, “do you remember when you asked me about your father’s journals, and whether or not they’d been sent to the Egyptian Club?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well,” the older lady said, “I may have told a tiny bit of a lie about that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I could not help but recall how adamant your papa had always been about keeping you from entangling yourself in the world of scholarly things. And how he tried again and again to ensure that you would not harm yourself with too much knowledge. And it was this that I was thinking of—so soon after your father had returned from his trip, and so very ill—when I told you that small, little fib.”

  “And?”

  “And, I’m afraid your father’s journals have been here in this house the whole time.”

  Silence descended upon the little parlor. Broken only by the sound of the fire burning merrily in the grate.

  “Here?” Cecily finally asked. “The whole time?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I looked,” she said, aghast. “His study was the first place I searched for them.”

  “I moved them whenever I knew you were coming to search for them,” was Violet’s response.

  “When I was sneaking into the Egyptian Club with Winterson? When I was compromising my reputation?” Cecily felt her voice rise in volume and pitch. “All that while, Papa’s journals, which I wanted to translate for the perfectly altruistic purpose of presenting what might be his final voyage to the land he loved, all that time they were here in this house?”

  “Yes.”

  As her stepmama was confessing what she had done, Cecily examined her heart for outrage, for anger, for feelings of betrayal. But to her surprise she felt none of these things. Rather than feeling hard done by, she felt relief at knowing where her father’s journals were. At knowing they were within her reach at last. And suddenly, she realized what a gift Violet’s lie had given her. And she was grateful. Grateful that her stepmother had so respected her own husband’s wishes that she had lied to her stepdaughter. Grateful that she herself had taken matters into her own hands that day and gone to the Egyptian Club, hoping to get a glimpse of the journals. For without Violet’s lie, there would be no marriage between her and Lucas at all. “You are not angry?” Violet asked, obviously stunned to see her stepdaughter grinning at her from across the tea table.

  Cecily threw her arms around Lady Hurston and hugged her. “I am elated!” she said with a laugh. “Now, let us go get the journals at once.” Her expression grew serious. “If there is any mention at all in Papa’s journals about who might have been responsible for William’s death, then we must find it at once.”

  The two ladies rose and Cecily followed Violet upstairs to her father’s study.

  To her surprise, Lord Geoffrey was already there. He stood on the library ladder, his hand clasped around a red calfskin-bound volume, which Cecily recognized as the same sort of journal her father had been keeping for years.

  “Geoffrey,” Violet said, obviously startled to see her husband’s old friend making free of the library. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  “Cannot an old friend be allowed to borrow a book now and again?” the gentleman said, nimbly climbing down the ladder, careful not to drop the three volumes he had tucked beneath his other arm.

  “What are you doing with Papa’s journals, my lord?” Cecily asked, fear gathering in the pit of her stomach as she realized with a sinking heart that the man before her had as strong a motive as anyone to kill William Dalton. “I feel sure that if you would only ask Violet
, she would give you whatever you wish.”

  “Is that right, Cecily?” he asked, putting the books down on the desk, and reaching a hand into his greatcoat to remove a small pistol. “I fear that you much mistake the matter. Though I have asked again and again since our return from Egypt just where your father’s journals were hidden, Violet would only tell me that they were perfectly safe. Isn’t that unaccommodating of her? To force me to look for them on my own?”

  Though the hand that held the pistol was perfectly steady, Cecily noted that a faint tremor ran through his left arm.

  “There is no need to threaten us, my lord,” she said carefully, her mind racing as she tried to think of some means to draw the attention of the servants. “We will do whatever it is you wish.”

  “Will you indeed?” His expression turned nasty. “I highly doubt that you would so demean yourself as to do what I really wished of you, my dear.”

  His voice sent a chill racing down her spine as she realized she knew nothing about this man whom she had called uncle from the time she was a small child. His lascivious gaze chilled her, but she managed to control the rising bile in her throat. If both she and Violet were to get out of this situation alive and intact, she would need to keep her wits about her.

  “G-G-Geoffrey,” Violet stammered, her face paler than Cecily had ever seen it. “You mustn’t harm us. You know that Hurston would never forgive you.”

  He barked a laugh at Violet’s warning. “As if Hurston has any say in the matter now,” he said, sneering. “Surely you don’t think I’d allow him to live now that I’ve gotten what I wanted.”

  Thinking to distract him, Cecily said, “You must have been trying for quite some time to get Papa’s diaries. Since before you left Egypt.”

  His eyes narrowed in suspicion, but unable to pass up an opportunity for self-aggrandizement, he nodded. “I planted the blood-soaked bag in his tent after Dalton’s disappearance, thinking I might kill two birds with one stone, as it were. If Hurston found himself under suspicion, perhaps he’d give his journals to me for safekeeping. Of course no one believed that Saint Hurston could possibly kill a man he’d loved as a son.”

  The description of Will’s relationship with her father stung, but it was obvious that in this instance Brighton hadn’t purposely been trying to wound.

  “When that didn’t work,” he went on, “once we’d set sail for England, I thought there might be some way to coax him into telling me what he did with the journals, but after his unfortunate attack, that was impossible. My little elixir worked a bit too well, I’m afraid. He was writhing on the floor before I even got the chance to ask him. When I heard they’d been donated to the club, I was elated, of course. But it would seem that your bitch of a stepmama couldn’t part with them after all.”

  He meant to punish Violet for her transgression, Cecily was certain of it. She swallowed back bile at the thought.

  “Now you’ll never be able to reconcile with your dear papa, will you, Cecily?” Geoffrey’s expression held just the right note of empathy, but he was unable to keep a straight face for long. His mouth twisted with mirthful scorn. “What a pity.”

  “What have you done to him?” Cecily demanded. “What did you give him?”

  “Oh, do not pretend alarm, my dear.” He sneered. “The dutiful daughter role does not suit you. You are too independent-minded for such a thing. Too intelligent by half to be so trite. No, I know what you really think, and you would be wise to remember it.”

  “Just tell me what poison you used to subdue him.” Cecily’s voice was hard, unflinching. “I know that he would never have allowed you to subjugate him willingly.”

  “Well, it would appear that you hold him in some affection after all,” Lord Geoffrey said, laughing. “I must admit that it was always difficult for me to understand just the right words to use to keep the two of you apart. Thank goodness that you, Cecily, are so quick to take offense. And that your papa is so easily led. It took little enough persuasion on my part to convince him that your mother’s death was the result of overstimulation of her poor little brain. Hah! If you could have seen the look on his face when I told him that. Convincing him that following in your parents’ footsteps would do you grave injury could not have been easier. It was just the thing to ensure he never allowed you to travel abroad as you wanted to. I couldn’t have you traveling with us to Egypt and ruining my little side business, now could I?”

  Oh, God, Cecily thought. He had been there all along. All her life she’d known this man. He’d dandled her on his knee, for pity’s sake. And now, layer by layer, he peeled back the veil to reveal the illusions that her entire existence had been built upon.

  “Winterson will find us,” Cecily said with a conviction she wished she felt. “He is on his way to me this minute.”

  “Now, you should know better than to tell a lie, Cecily,” Geoffrey said with an unsettling grin. “Your husband is just where I left him, holed up in his study waiting for the Bow Street runners he sent for. Unfortunate for him that they will never come. I took very great care to ensure that his little summons was, shall we say, misdirected … By the time he realizes they are not coming you will be long gone from Hurston House, and England.”

  “What do you mean?” She tried to keep him talking. The more time they spent in conversation the more likely Lucas would be to come for her.

  “I rather fancy,” he went on, rubbing his chin in thought, “sending you on that Egyptian holiday you’ve been wishing for all these years. What say you?”

  “I say that you are liar and a thief, Lord Brighton,” Cecily said coldly. “And my husband will be most unhappy to hear that you’ve been holding his wife, the Duchess of Winterson, hostage in her own father’s home.”

  “Tsk, tsk, Cecily,” he said. “Have you no understanding of men? The Duke of Winterson might well be unhappy, but it will be because of the note you left for him telling him that you cannot go on with your sham of a marriage any longer, and are running away with your one true love, David Lawrence.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you did not think that I could simply sit by and watch when you marched purposefully to your father’s house with the information you’d learned from the inventories hidden in the cat mummies. Really, it would have been foolish of me indeed to sit by while you told your stepmama all about the plot to manufacture fake antiquities and sell them on the black market. I worked for decades to set up the relationship with the manufacturer in Cairo. It would have wrecked years of careful work on my part if I’d let you tell the world about my little artistic pastime.”

  “I believe you’re mistaken, Lord Brighton. Winterson knows me well enough to discount any lies you tell him about my feelings for him.”

  His expression hardened. “You’re the one who is mistaken, Cecily,” he said with a growl. “I know everything you and your husband discuss in that house.” He raised one lip in a sneer. “Everything.

  “Did you think I’d let you marry that man,” he asked, “and not have one of my people looking out for you at all times?”

  “George!” Cecily said before she could stop herself.

  Now she understood why the footman had hovered in the background so many times, why he seemed so clumsy. Her stomach knotted as she thought back to some of the more personal words she and her husband had exchanged in Winterson House. Had George been listening to them the whole time? Even their most intimate exchanges?

  Not wishing to let Lord Brighton know how much the knowledge revolted her, Cecily kept her back straight.

  “So, you’ve had George in our home. Spying for you.”

  “Yes, indeed.” He smiled at her like an indulgent schoolmaster. “The boy has always been ready to do whatever his father asks of him. A pity I couldn’t marry his mother, the poor penniless slut. I could hardly saddle myself to her for the rest of my days. And once your father stole your dear mother from me, I couldn’t marry anyone, could I? It would be disloyal.”

&n
bsp; “What do you mean ‘stole her’?” Cecily asked, hoping that if she distracted him for long enough there might be time for the servants to intervene.

  “I saw her first, you see.” Brighton’s mouth was white with rage. “I saw her first but Hurston got there before me. Damn him. So I had to step aside. But I waited. Hoping she would realize her mistake in marrying him. But after four years, I couldn’t hold my tongue anymore. But he had already poisoned her against me.

  “He made me kill her.” Brighton’s tone was conversational. “You see that, don’t you? You are so like her, you know. So very much like her.”

  The change in his gaze, as if he were caressing her with his eyes, sickened Cecily.

  “Stop it, Geoffrey,” Violet said harshly, stepping closer to her stepdaughter. “Stop it this instant.”

  Before Cecily could prevent him, Lord Brighton reached out and hit Violet across the jaw with his closed fist. “Silence!”

  With a cry at the impact of his hand against her face, Violet slumped to the ground.

  “You are vile,” Cecily said coldly, dropping to her knees beside her stepmother. “My mother was right to reject you.”

  “Yes, well, that doesn’t matter now,” Brighton said with equal coldness. “You’ll be quite dead before the night ends. But I plan to have a bit of fun with your adoring husband first.”

  Twenty-two

  Lucas stood staring out the study window into the back garden, waiting for the arrival of the Bow Street runners. He was feeling restless and was unable to concentrate upon any of the numerous tasks his private secretary had stacked neatly on the corner of his desk. Until this business about Will’s death was settled, he feared that his attention would be difficult to engage. His years in the army had accustomed him to taking action when the need arose, and his inability to determine just who was responsible for Will’s murder and punish the perpetrator left him with a feeling of helplessness that he did not like at all.