How to Dance With a Duke (2 page)

I’ll just bet you have, darling.

Aloud, he said, “Yes, well, I am in a bit of a hurry, miss.” And without waiting to hear what she said, he stalked back the way they had come, aware that his limp was more pronounced when he hurried, but not really giving a hang.

“But wait.” She followed after him. “Your Grace, pray do not run away—”

He halted abruptly, and dammit if she did not grip his arm again.

“I am not running away,” he said between clenched teeth. “As I told you a moment ago, I have a previously forgotten appointment. And stop gripping me by the arm!”

“If you are not running away, then why will you not stop a moment and allow me to introduce myself?” she snapped, her cheeks flushing and her bosom heaving in a show of temper that was, if truth were told, quite becoming.

Perhaps her reasons for ignoring the proprieties were less about ignoring convention and more about where she stood on the social ladder. He took a moment to examine her attire, and noting her plain hat and the drab color of her gown, he decided that she might be an impoverished widow. His mood brightened considerably at the thought. An unmarried miss might want him for his title, but a widow might be willing to accept a less permanent arrangement.

Another few minutes to hear the lady out would hurt no one, he thought.

At his continued silence, however, the lady lost patience. Throwing up her hands in disgust, she began to walk away.

“I had thought perhaps you and I were after the same thing, but at this point it doesn’t matter. You may have your arm back, Your Grace. I will importune you no longer.”

Ah. So he was right. She had been importuning him. But not for marriage—that was the important thing.

Now he was the one rushing after her, and even with his injury, his stride was so much longer than hers that he was able to overtake her quite easily.

“I beg your pardon for my boorish behavior, Miss … or Mrs.…?” His voice rose with the question as he mentally crossed his fingers that she would fall into the latter group.

Stopping, she once more dropped into a curtsy, and extended her hand to him. “Miss Cecily Hurston.”

Dammit.

Lucas closed his eyes. When he opened them, she was still there.

“Of course you are,” he said wearily. “The daughter of Viscount Hurston, no doubt?” He had been trying to arrange a meeting with that gentleman for weeks now. The family claimed the viscount had lost the power of speech, but Lucas wouldn’t believe it until he saw the man for himself.

“Indeed,” she returned. “Now you see why I was so eager to stay you, Your Grace. We have much to discuss.”

Even as he considered using her to get to her father, he dismissed the idea. She would have no influence over the man. Look at the reception his friends at the Egyptian Club had given her.

“I am afraid, Miss Hurston,” he said calmly, “you are mistaken. What could I possibly have to discuss with the daughter of the man who will not even grant me the courtesy of a face-to-face meeting about the disappearance of my brother?”

His momentary flight of fancy over, for the first time in his adult life, Lucas Dalton, Duke of Winterson, dismissed common courtesy completely, turned on his heel, and walked away.

To his relief, Miss Cecily Hurston did not follow.

*   *   *

Cecily felt a dull ache in her temples as she returned to the carriage bearing the insignia of the Viscount Hurston. She’d asked the coachman to wait for her several blocks away from the Egyptian Club, and after the duke’s abrupt dismissal in Bruton Street she’d almost given in to the childish urge to run in order to get there. Letting the driver hand her into the carriage, she settled in and leaned her head back against the heavy cushion.

Though she had spent the majority of their encounter attempting to be rid of him, once she knew that her handsome interloper was the Duke of Winterson, Cecily had hoped the man might wish to discuss the circumstances of his brother’s disappearance from her father’s latest expedition to Egypt. Not only had her father taken ill on the voyage back, the rumormongers of the
ton
had begun circulating a rumor that he was responsible for William Dalton’s death. That he had become crazed as a result of some nonsensical curse that plagued those who tampered with the ancient dead.

The curse, Cecily knew, was merely a figment of the lurid imaginings of an ignorant populace who failed to understand the customs of any culture but their own. But the allegations that Lord Hurston had killed Will Dalton were unconscionable given that her father was unable to defend himself.

*   *   *

Though she had hoped the Egyptian Club would help her prove that her father had no hand in Will Dalton’s disappearance, its members had been strangely distant since her father’s return. Not a single member had visited her father since news of his illness had spread through town. Thinking to ask for the club’s help directly, she and her stepmama, Violet, had called on Lord Fortenbury, the president now that her father was unable to perform his duties, but his welcome had been lukewarm. When they beseeched him to speak out against the rumors, Fortenbury had refused, saying he did not wish to involve the club in scandal. Directly addressing the rumors, he said, would merely give credence to them.

Never one to sit by and wait for things to happen, Cecily, who already wanted her father’s journals to transcribe them, suspected they also held clues that would clear her father’s name. But to her consternation, they were nowhere to be found. Not in his rooms and not in the library of Hurston House. Which left two options: the Egyptian Club, and the bags of his secretary, Will Dalton.

She and Violet and their other friends would do what they could to stifle the gossip, but for real proof that her father was innocent of causing harm to his secretary, she needed those journals. And to get the journals she needed to get into the Egyptian Club.

Having the Duke of Winterson attach blame to her for her father’s actions was hurtful, but having him accuse her father of murder was worse. If she had not been so overset by her ejection from the club, she might have been better prepared to deal with his accusations. She was used to being ridiculed for her bluestocking tendencies, which was a badge she wore proudly since it implied she had more on her mind than flounces and ruffles. But the whispers about her father were still a new enough occurrence to sting. Outright accusations were rare, but, as this morning’s encounter had proven, infinitely more cutting. Especially given her sometimes tumultuous relationship with her father.

*   *   *

From her earliest years, Cecily had pestered her father to teach her to read Latin and Greek as he did. But fearful that she would become obsessed with the subject he blamed for her mother’s death when Cecily was only a small child, Lord Hurston had attempted to dissuade her from her intellectual pursuits.

Though she had little recollection of the event herself, Cecily knew that her mother had been quite a gifted scholar in her own right when she’d been found dead on the moors surrounding the Hurston country house. Speaking about the incident had been discouraged, but from what Cecily gathered from the servants’ gossip, the first Lady Hurston had been struggling with her own translation of Homer’s
Odyssey
at the time, and it was speculated that she had developed a brain fever from the overstimulation.

The only reason she knew anything at all about Egyptology, or Latin and Greek for that matter, was thanks to her godmother, Lady Entwhistle, who had been a great friend of Cecily’s mother, and who had endowed the motherless girl with a thirst for knowledge equal to her own. Now Cecily was able to speak and read several languages with ease, and in addition had a remarkable facility for unraveling codes and ciphers.

It was odd, she supposed, given the number of times Lord Hurston had discouraged her interest in his travels, that she even considered ensuring that his accounts of his final voyage were included as part of his legacy as a scholar. But for all of their arguments and difficulties, Cecily loved the man. Their relationship, aside from his feelings about her scholarly activities, was a strong one. And, intellectually at least, she understood just why he did not want her to become involved in his work. His fears that her interests would turn into the kind of obsession that had precipitated her mother’s death were unfounded, but came from a place of love. And there was something about seeing him now, a shrunken shadow of his former self, which made her long for one last conversation to set things right between them. Because there was little hope of that, she would settle for ensuring that the account of his final expedition was told, truthfully and in his own words.

Then there was the matter of Will.

If she could get her hands on the journals themselves, she would prove that her father had nothing to do with his disappearance. She was sure of it. But how to get them? That the Egyptian Club did not allow female visitors to examine their library was a hurdle, one she had hoped to avoid this morning by explaining the situation. But clearly, as the guard’s actions had shown, the club was adhering to the rule her own father had imposed. If she could not break the rule, she would be forced to go around it.

As she had told Winterson that morning, there was one particular set of ladies who
were
allowed into the club: the wives of club members.

She thought about her cousin Rufus and his vile wife, who were even now encamped in Hurston House in hopes that Rufus would soon be the new Lord Hurston. She thought of what her life would be like if her father died, and she was forced to live on the crumbs of their charity. And how much worse it would be should he die without being exonerated of William Dalton’s murder.

It was a sobering notion.

Being whispered about because of one’s intellectual pursuits was an entirely different thing from being blackballed because one’s father was a killer.

Cecily had hoped she would be able to avoid marriage. The one time she had considered it, it had ended badly. Very badly.

But she was older now. And, she hoped, stronger. And perhaps marriage would not be so very difficult. Though her brief engagement had never afforded her more than a few kisses, she had read enough ancient texts to know that the marriage bed could offer pleasure.

Unbidden, the image of the Duke of Winterson locking eyes with her when she stepped out of the club rose in Cecily’s mind. Her stomach gave a little flip as she recalled how exhilarated she’d been for that one glorious moment.

Focus, she told herself. The duke wasn’t even a member of the club. And even though marriage to him might give her access to Mr. Dalton’s papers, the thought of seducing his brother to get them was more mercenary than she would consider. Much better to arrange a marriage of convenience to a club member. She had skills and connections to bring to such a match that would make it—on the surface at least—equitable. She doubted the Duke of Winterson had a pressing need for Greek or Latin translations, and he certainly could do better on the marriage mart than a viscount’s daughter with bluestocking tendencies.

Closing her mind to the tantalizing duke, she gave a brief knock on the ceiling of the carriage, alerting the coachman that she needed to speak with him. Enticing a member of the Egyptian Club to marry her would take serious planning with the fashionable equivalent of Wellington. Her stepmother fit that description, but before she could approach Violet, she needed to sound out her scheme with someone who knew the workings of the
ton
from the edges of the dance floor, where she spent most of her time.

She needed her cousins Madeline and Juliet.

The Ugly Ducklings.

Two

Lucas returned to Winterson House in a foul mood, still berating himself over his flight from Miss Hurston in front of the Egyptian Club.

He was a bloody soldier, for pity’s sake. And he’d tucked tail and run from her like a damned raw recruit in his first battle. It was galling.

His temper was not improved when he found his sister-in-law waiting for him in his study. Uncomfortable with the opulence of the Winterson town house, Lucas had been relieved to find that the study, at least, had escaped the interfering hand of whoever had furnished the rest of the house. It was still richly appointed, true, but its polished wood paneling and darker tones were a relief to a man who had spent the better part of ten years living in a military encampment.

Mrs. William Dalton’s presence in the room could have been no more jarring if Prinny had popped over in the night and had had the place remodeled in the image of his pavilion in Brighton.

“Clarissa,” he said, noting the teapot at her elbow that indicated she’d been seated here for quite some time. “I take it you wish to speak to me.” It had never been clear to Lucas why his brother had married Miss Clarissa Livingston. She was passably pretty but of a cool disposition that brought to mind icebergs and snowdrifts. Certainly she was not the sort of woman who inspired passion. He’d sooner embrace one of Elgin’s marbles. But Will had ever danced to his own piper, and by the time he’d introduced Miss Livingston to the family, they were already betrothed.

Clarissa stood and curtsied as he entered the room, her cherry-colored morning gown striking a festive note, out of keeping with the household’s somber tone since Will’s disappearance. She might follow the rules of etiquette, but always to the rule rather than the spirit.

If anyone could make a curtsy insolent, Clarissa could. “Yes, I do have a matter to discuss with you, Your Grace,” she said, her thin lips pursed so tightly they all but disappeared.

Lucas stepped behind the massive mahogany desk, and waited for her to be seated before he sank into his chair, thankful that she hadn’t insisted upon standing. His leg hurt like the devil after this morning’s brisk walk.

“So, what is it you wish to say?” he asked her, knowing it was not something he wished to hear. Clarissa always manipulated situations to suit her need for control. And bearding the lion in his den was a classic maneuver.