How to Dance With a Duke (3 page)

“It has been nearly three months since William’s disappearance,” she began, her gaze firm, no glimmer of sorrow in her eyes. “I believe it is time for us to conclude that he will not be coming back.”

He could hardly be surprised by her words, or her lack of emotion. There had been no indication, even from the first, that his sister-in-law felt anything at all about his brother’s disappearance.

Her arrival on the doorstep of Winterson House, her belongings in tow, had come hard on the heels of Lucas’s elevation to the dukedom. She had assumed, she told him, that he would not wish, as the duke, to see his brother’s wife living in squalor in a questionable area of London. The questionable area of London was actually a quite respectable street in Bloomsbury, but he had chosen not to point that out. As the head of the family, he did feel a responsibility to look after his mother and sister-in-law. And though he had never really warmed to Clarissa, he had promised Will to look out for her before his younger brother departed for what might turn out to be his final trip ever.

“We have had this discussion before,” he said, his voice even despite his anger. “And I do not believe I have indicated that my opinion on the matter has changed in the interim. My investigator has not yet reported back from Alexandria, and until I hear more from him, we will continue with the assumption that William is still living, but was separated from his party before they departed for England.”

His tone was harsh, but he was damned tired of Clarissa’s fight to declare dead the little brother he’d taught to fish and ride and flirt with pretty girls.

Either not noticing or not caring how he received her words, Clarissa pressed on.

“No one has heard from him,” she persisted. “He has not been in touch with anyone from the expedition. The British consulate have conducted their own search and come up with nothing. There is no reason for us to believe that William will come back. Ever.”

Lucas had requested help from the Foreign Office as soon as he learned of his brother’s disappearance, but they were just as flummoxed by the situation as everyone else was. He’d even applied to Lord Henry Shelby, who, coincidentally, was both Lord Hurston’s brother-in-law, and a top official in the Foreign Office. He had no reason to expect the truth from Shelby, but he was the next in line to the foreign secretary, and had to be consulted—if for no other reason than to gauge his sincerity. But upon meeting the diplomat he was confident the man was telling the truth when he claimed to have no further information. He’d learned to read people in the army and was seldom wrong. Which left Will’s loved ones with exactly nothing.

Even so, Lucas was not prepared to simply give up. He knew from his own experience that there were times when you had no choice, when the odds were simply too great to overcome. But he did not yet think this was one of those times.

No matter what this brother’s not-so-grieving wife said.

Clarissa’s expression was hard, her cheeks flushed with anger, as she defied him to contradict her assertions regarding Will’s death.

“Why are you so determined to stop the search for your husband, Clarissa? Are you so eager to be a widow that you would abandon the fight prematurely? Perhaps to leave him, if he is injured or ill, to die before we have an opportunity to save him?”

She flinched at his accusation. It would appear that even she was not immune to all emotion. Good, he thought, let her feel what the rest of us do.

“Pray tell me, madam,” he continued, “because I have endured your constant pessimism these past weeks with the understanding that your dire predictions stemmed from a fear that they might come true. Now, however, I begin to suspect you are indeed wishful of seeing William return to England in a wooden box.”

If eyes could fling knives, Lucas would be sporting several holes in his chest.

“How dare you!” Clarissa hissed, her back ramrod straight with anger. “I am merely being levelheaded in the face of hardship. I would welcome his return. But I do know that he loved that godless, lawless foreign land and all its heathen trinkets far more than he ever loved me. If he died in a mistress’s arms it could not be more shameful to me than knowing he chose to abandon me time and time again for that fiendish place.”

Lucas had known Clarissa bore some resentment for William’s dedication to Lord Hurston’s work, but he’d never known how deeply she despised and even disapproved of it. Like the Dalton brothers, she’d been raised in a country vicarage, but now Lucas had some idea of how different their respective fathers’ sermons must have been. Despite her appreciation for material wealth—he had the modiste bills to prove it—she harbored an almost puritanical disgust for anything that might smack of idolatry.

“However you might dislike my brother’s occupation, Mrs. Dalton,” he ground out, “as the head of this family I will choose when we give up the search for William. So I will thank you not to come to me again with this request.”

Clarissa’s chin came up in defiance. “I see now that you are just as stubborn as your brother. Rest assured that I will trouble you no further in this regard.”

Not even bothering to bow, much less curtsy, she bid him good day, and left the room, closing the door with a resounding thud.

With a sigh of frustration, he rose gingerly on his wounded leg and poured himself a glass of claret from the decanter on the sideboard. He’d just returned to his chair when a brisk knock sounded on the door. Steeling himself for another round with his sister-in-law, he bade the visitor enter, and was relieved to see not Clarissa but his mother.

He stood, careful to hide his fatigue. “Come in, Mama, but I warn you that I am not in the best of tempers, so do so at your own risk.”

“Never let it be said, my dear,” his mother said, closing the door behind her, “that I am such a wilting flower that I cannot endure a temper tantrum from one of my boys.”

Still handsome in her mid-fifties, Lady Michael Dalton had managed the vicarage on the Winterson estate with the same determination and good humor that infused all of her endeavors. When her husband, the Reverend Lord Michael Dalton, had succumbed to a putrid fever while Lucas was still up at Oxford, she had overseen their removal from the home where she had spent the whole of her married life to a cottage on the Winterson estate. She had made no complaints about their reduced circumstances, but had answered all of her brother-in-law’s, the duke’s, little slights with a quiet dignity that put her husband’s family to shame. His admiration of her notwithstanding, Lucas found her tendency to make him feel like a lad in the schoolroom more than a little disconcerting.

“A grown man of my advanced years does not indulge in tantrums, Mama,” he reminded her, gesturing for her to take the chair recently vacated by Clarissa. “Though it is dashed difficult to remember that when you are forever making me feel like I’m still in short coats.”

“I am sorry, Your Grace,” she said, a rare twinkle in her blue eyes so like his own. “But it is difficult to remember that you are a war hero and a peer of the realm when I can still remember your dear little baby voice asking for another sweet.”

“Pray, do not say that outside this room. If word of
that
gets out, no amount of bravery will save me from the scandal sheets.”

Their shared laugh faded when she turned her attention back to her reasons for seeking him out.

“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with Clarissa,” Lady Michael said neutrally. “You are very hard on her.”

Lucas heaved a sigh and thrust a hand through his hair in frustration. “She wishes to call off the search for him. Which is something I am not yet willing to do. It’s as if she’s already decided he’ll never come back and just wishes to begin her life without him.”

His mother smiled sadly, the wrinkles around her eyes more prominent now. “Lucas, I know it is difficult for you to understand, but you must remember that Clarissa and William, though they have been married for five years, have spent more time apart than they have spent together. She never shared your brother’s enthusiasm for Egypt, and the idea that he might have done the unthinkable and chosen Egypt over her is a worse fate for her to contemplate than the notion that he might have died there.

“It is a hard thing for a woman to compete with an abstraction, another culture, another land.”

“You speak as if you’ve done so as well,” he said, trying to imagine his parents’ marriage as something other than the idyll he’d always fancied it to be. “Surely you never had to compete for Father’s affections with an ‘abstract idea,’ as you call it.”

She bit back a laugh. “What do you suppose the Church of England might be called?” Lady Michael stared off into the distance as if seeing another place, another time. “There were days when I would cheerfully have marched to London and challenged the Archbishop of Canterbury to a duel, I was so fed up with the demands he made on your papa. There was always some other family, some other mother, some other child who seemed to need him more than we did.”

“But you were always so busy yourself, so dedicated to the needs of the parish.”

“That was later,” she said, smiling ruefully. “After the first few years I realized that I was not only making your father miserable, but myself as well. So I began to do what I could to assist him when he helped those needy families in the parish, and before long we were happy again and I was surprised to realize that I had found my own calling as well. But the difference between your father and I and William and Clarissa is that William’s work takes him farther away than just the next village. And even if she were to take an interest in Egyptology, it would do her no good. He would still be gone more often than he is home.”

“I still don’t understand why they married in the first place,” Lucas said.

“You were away with the army,” Lady Michael said, “but at the time, William had just taken his post with Lord Hurston. I don’t think he realized that his position would require as much travel it did. And, like most men, William has been known on occasion to lose his senses in the presence of a pretty face.”

He shook his head. “No matter what she says, I won’t give up the search, Mama.”

“I don’t believe she really expects you to, my dear.” She leaned forward to squeeze his hand. The touch was brief but comforting. “But she desperately needs someone to rail at and as head of the family you are a convenient target.

“Now.” Lady Michael’s tone was brisk. “Let’s speak of happier matters. What measures have you taken to find a bride for yourself?”

“Good Lord, I’m hardly eager to marry with my brother’s example to warn me away from it.”

“What of the example your father and I set for you?”

“I’d always supposed that you were the model of a happy marriage, but your revelation today makes me doubt myself.”

“Oh,” she said chidingly. “Those were the early years. It takes a little time after the novelty wears off for a couple to hit their stride. And your papa and I were gloriously happy. Make no mistake.” Her eyes softened. “There is not a day that passes when I do not wish to share some bit of news or some observation with him, and then I am heartbroken all over again to find him gone.”

Lucas wished there were something more substantial than words to comfort her with. “I miss him too.”

“He would be so proud of you, my love. Never doubt that.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, both lost in their own thoughts.

“Now, about this bride of yours,” she began again. “We are to attend the Duchess of Bewle’s ball this evening. I do hope you will not spend the whole evening in the card room. Though your leg prevents you from dancing, you are permitted to stroll about the room with young ladies, you know.”

Will’s disappearance, though it cast a pall on their entertainments, did not prevent the family from attending the various
ton
social functions. And Lucas had made a habit of late to go to those events where he expected to see members of the Egyptian Club in attendance. His leg did ache, but he needed to attend, if only to apologize to Miss Hurston. It was a meeting he looked forward to with anticipation.

Unbidden, an image of Miss Hurston, her cheeks flushed in agitation, her curves accentuated by a revealing evening gown, rose in his mind. Perhaps seeing her again wouldn’t be so unpleasant after all.

“I will stroll with at least one young lady this evening,” he said, careful not to let his thoughts show on his face lest his mother jump to unfounded conclusions and start planning a wedding. “I promise you, Mama.” Perhaps his leg was feeling a bit better after all.

*   *   *

“You met the Duke of Winterson?” Lady Madeline Essex, a pretty, petite blonde, nearly dropped her teacup in her excitement. “Is he as handsome as everyone says? Does he appear rakish? I have heard that he exudes a delicious air of danger wherever he goes. Does he, do you think?”

“She can hardly tell you if you keep peppering her with questions, Maddie.” Miss Juliet Shelby, eminently sensible despite her flame-red hair, leaned forward to move a stack of sheet music from the nearest chair.

It was hard to remain indifferent to news about the only unwed duke in England who still had all of his own teeth accosting her cousin in the street.

Before approaching her stepmama about her newfound need to become fashionable, Cecily had directed the coachman to the Grosvenor Square address of Lord Shelby, where she found her cousins, Madeline and Juliet, tucked into Juliet’s little sitting room bickering over which musician to invite to the next meeting of their Salon for the Edification of Ladies. All discussion of which was dropped as soon as Cecily informed them of her encounter with the Duke of Winterson that morning. They might be scholarly, but they were not dead, after all.

“I will tell you everything if you will pour me a cup of tea, Maddie.” Cecily had skipped breakfast and she reached eagerly for a ginger biscuit before collapsing into the chair opposite her cousins.

They interacted with the ease of friendship and long acquaintance, each seated in her own place at what they’d dubbed the Talking Table, in honor of their usual activity when they were all three seated around it. Theirs was the sort of affection that can only be forged through shared hardship.