An Unexpected Pleasure

by Candace Camp

  “Now, now,” she said, smiling archly and laying a hand on Theo’s arm. “I think that we know each other well enough for you to call me Helena.”

  Theo shifted uncomfortably and gave her a vague smile. He had never been good at dealing with rapacious females, and he found women like Lady Scarle even more unnerving than giggling young debutantes.

  When he had left London on his last expedition, Lady Helena Scarle had been married to doddering old Lord Scarle, and while she had flirted with Theo, she had been interested in nothing more than a light affair, which he had avoided with little problem.

  But when he’d returned a few months ago, he found that Lord Scarle had died, leaving the lady a widow. And the widow was interested in finding a new husband—as long as it meant moving up the social or economic scale. Unfortunately for Theo, he fit both requirements.

  Lady Scarle had been on the hunt for him ever since.

  “I was very disappointed not to see you at Lady Huntington’s musicale last night,” Lady Helena went on silkily.

  “Mmm. Not my sort of thing,” he replied, looking about, hoping to see some means of getting out of the situation without seeming rude. Lady Scarle, he had found out, was impervious to almost anything short of rudeness.

  “Nor mine,” she replied with a flirtatious glance. “But I had thought…well, when we talked last week, we discussed whether we might run into one another at the musicale.”

  “We did?” Theo blurted out, surprised. He did remember running into Lady Scarle when he was out riding in the Park one day last week. She had chattered on for some time before he could get away, but he had not really been listening to what she said. “I mean, well, I must have forgotten. I apologize.”

  Temper flashed in her blue eyes—she was not used to being forgotten by any man—but she hid it quickly, turning her eyes down and looking up at him beguilingly through her lashes. “Now you have wounded me, Raine. You must make amends by coming to my rout on Tuesday.”

  “I…um…I’m almost certain I have an engagement that day. My, uh…Kyria!” He spotted his sister walking across the room, and he waved to her.

  Kyria, taking in the situation in a glance, grinned and walked over to him. “Theo! What a pleasant surprise. And Lady Scarle.” Kyria’s gaze swept over the other woman’s overexposed chest. “My goodness, you must be chilled. Would you like to borrow my wrap?”

  Lady Scarle gave her a stiff smile. “Thank you, I am perfectly warm, Lady Kyria. Or should I say Mrs. McIntyre?”

  “Either is all right,” Kyria responded calmly. Tall, flame-haired and green-eyed, Kyria was easily the most beautiful woman in the house. She had reigned as the leading beauty of London society since her coming out, earning the appellation “The Goddess” for her beauty and cool confidence. Even now, approaching the age of thirty and a wife and mother, there was no one who could match her.

  Lady Scarle, several years older than Kyria, had been married by the time Kyria had made her debut, but it had put her nose out of joint to watch Kyria assume all the acclaim she had once held. The two women had never been friendly.

  “Theo.” Kyria turned to her brother and linked her hand possessively through his arm. “I had been wondering what had happened to you. I believe I promised my next dance to you.”

  “Yes.” Theo brightened. “Yes, you did.” He turned to the other woman and bowed. “Lady Scarle, if you will excuse us…”

  Lady Scarle had little choice but to smile and murmur, “Of course.”

  Quickly Theo swept Kyria away down the stairs. She leaned closer to him and murmured, “Now you owe me.”

  “I am well aware of that. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was trying to wriggle out of going to some rout of hers next week. I cannot think what possessed me to come here tonight,” he added feelingly.

  Kyria laughed. “It isn’t like you. I was very surprised to see you.”

  Theo shrugged. “I was bored, I think. I’m not sure what’s the matter with me lately. I’ve felt…restless, I suppose.”

  “Ready to go off on one of your adventures?” Kyria guessed.

  Theo, the eldest son of the Duke of Broughton, had spent most of his adult life exploring the globe. He had always been fascinated with new and exotic locales, and the physical work and even danger that his explorations entailed only added spice to his trips, as far as he was concerned.

  He had returned only a few months ago from his last trip, which had been to India and Burma. Usually he rested and recuperated, spending time with his much-loved family, for a while, before he began to itch to travel again.

  “I don’t know.” He frowned. “Edward Horn is setting up a trip to the Congo. He wants me to go.”

  “But it doesn’t sound as if you want to.”

  “Not really,” Theo replied, puzzlement settling on his features. “I told Horn not to count on me. It’s very strange. I’ve been feeling so restless, yet I don’t really have the urge to travel anywhere, either. Perhaps I am getting too old for it.”

  “Oh, yes…the grand old age of thirty-four,” Kyria teased. “You are quite decrepit, really.”

  “You know what I mean. Everyone has always told me that someday I would grow up and tire of travel. Maybe I have.” He gave her a crooked smile. “All I know is that every time I think of leaving, something holds me back.”

  Kyria studied her brother’s face, her puzzlement turning to concern. “Theo…are you all right? You sound almost…unhappy.”

  It was not an adjective she was accustomed to using to describe her brother, who had always entered into everything he did with great zest.

  Theo looked at her, his expression serious. “You know me, Kyria. I’m not the sort to examine my life. I don’t sit about thinking about what I’m doing, or whether or not I’m enjoying myself. I don’t brood.”

  “No. You are more one to charge into things. You generally know what you want and go after it.”

  He nodded. “Which is why I think I’m so at loose ends. I feel as if there is something missing. But I don’t know what it is. Something I should be doing? Some place I should go? I only know I want something else, something more.”

  Kyria thought for a moment, then began hesitantly. “Well, perhaps, have you thought that you are at an age where you want to settle down? Mayhap what you are missing is a wife—a home and family.”

  Theo let out a low groan. “That is certainly what they would all like to convince me of,” he said, jerking his head toward the mothers and chaperones massed along the wall, watching their charges dance. “I think I have been introduced to every mother of an eligible girl tonight. I can’t tell you how many have hinted that it’s time for me to settle down. It’s enough to make me run for cover. Are they always this voracious?”

  Kyria chuckled, nodding. “Yes. There is nothing more dangerous than a mother out to make a good match for her daughter.”

  “Aren’t these the very same women who have long complained that I am lacking in a proper sense of duty and consequence—always off gallivanting about the globe instead of staying here and preparing to take over the title? The ones who call us the ‘mad Morelands’?”

  “Yes. But surely you must know that it does not matter how mad one is if one is going to be a duke someday. A title makes up for a great number of sins, and the higher the title, the more sins it obviates. And if you possess a great deal of wealth in addition, well, you could have two heads, and it wouldn’t matter.”

  “What a cynic you are.”

  “Only truthful.”

  “It isn’t that I am against marriage,” Theo mused. “It is simply…well, I cannot envision tying myself to any of these girls, even one as lovely as Estelle Hopewell.”

  “Estelle Hopewell! Good heavens, I should hope not. The girl hasn’t a thought in her head.”

  “Do any of them? Perhaps it is just being under the watchful eye of their mamas, but every girl I spoke to tonight could do nothing but smile and agree with whatever I said
. None of them seemed to have the slightest opinion of her own or the least interest in the world. And then there are eager widows like Lady Scarle, who frankly frightens me. Can you imagine any of them as part of our family?”

  Kyria laughed. “Good Lord, no. Perhaps you need to find a country girl, as Reed did.”

  He smiled. “I think Anna is rare, even in the country.”

  “Yes. You are right. But I still hold hope for you,” Kyria told him. “I have seen one brother find a wonderful woman for a wife. I have the utmost confidence that you will be able to, as well. Just think, four of us ‘mad Morelands’ have managed to find our loves. Your day will come.”

  “Will it?” A faint smile crossed Theo’s lips. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps what I am waiting for is the perfect woman. But for now, I’ll just have to settle for a dance with the most beautiful woman in London.”

  And with those words, he swept his sister out onto the floor.

  * * *

  MEGAN MULCAHEY STOOD at the window of the bedroom she shared with her sister Deirdre in the house her family had rented in London. With a sigh, she leaned her head against the cool pane of glass. It had taken her a month to get here, but now she wasn’t sure what to do.

  No matter how hard she had tried, she had been unable to dissuade her father and sister from accompanying her to England. She would have preferred to investigate this matter by herself, without having to worry about them.

  However, Frank Mulcahey had had an answering argument for every objection she raised. Her younger brothers, Sean and Robert, were quite capable of taking over the store, so his presence was not needed there. And she would need his help. Women rarely traveled alone, he pointed out; the entire journey would go more smoothly if she had a male escort. Moreover, there might be places where a woman could not even enter. Both those things were true, Megan knew, much as she hated to admit it. And she had no argument against his major point, which was that he had a right to be involved in bringing his son’s killer to justice.

  Deirdre, despite her usually biddable nature and her general air of fragility that made everyone want to take care of her, had been just as stubborn. She had every bit as much reason as Megan to see their brother’s killer brought to justice, she reminded her sister, and she was, after all, the one to whom Dennis had come in a vision.

  “Besides,” Deirdre had concluded, “if I don’t go with you, who’ll do the cooking and cleaning for you and Da?”

  That had been a telling argument. Megan had never been one who liked doing domestic chores, and she had been quite content with their family arrangement for the last few years, in which she had gone out and worked each day as their father did, and Deirdre had taken over the household chores for the three of them.

  Megan had expected her oldest sister, Mary Margaret, to agree with her that Frank and Deirdre should not go. The eldest of the Mulcahey children, Mary Margaret had helped their father raise all the younger children from the time she was twelve, and had always been the most responsible and levelheaded member of the family. Now married to a prosperous attorney and with three children of her own, Mary Margaret was the very picture of a conservative matron.

  Much to Megan’s shock, Mary Margaret had agreed that Deirdre and their father should accompany Megan—or, as she put it, “go along to keep Megan out of trouble”—and had even offered to help pay for the trip.

  So, finally, Megan had boarded the steamship to Southhampton with her father and Deirdre, and the three of them had arrived in London a few days ago. They had spent the first two days there finding a house and settling in. It had taken Megan another day to obtain Theo Moreland’s address—something that would have taken less time if they had known his father’s titled name.

  This afternoon she had gone out to take a look at the house, just to get a sense of what she was facing. It was an imposing edifice, taking up all of a small city block, visible proof of the wealth and importance of the duke’s family, as well as of their longevity. They had been dukes since long before Europeans settled the New World, and they had been earls for a couple of hundred years before that. The house itself looked as if it might have been standing there since New York had been New Amsterdam.

  However, far from being overwhelmed by the imposing house, Megan was perversely roused to an even greater determination to take down the duke’s son. She had taken on New York slumlords and powerful factory owners; she wasn’t about to retreat just because this family had a longer history than the others she had gone up against.

  However, it did cause her to wonder how in the world she was going to get inside the mansion to investigate Theo Moreland.

  Megan turned away from the window and walked over to the small dresser. Opening the top drawer, she reached inside it and pulled out a small pink case. It was her box of treasures, a childish pink music box with a rose on top and a little ballerina rising out of the middle of the rose. Once the ballerina had danced when the top was opened, but the mechanism that propelled her had long since died. Still, Megan had kept the box, treasuring it as a link to her mother, who had died when Megan was only seven years old.

  She reached inside the box and pulled out a small piece of smooth glass. Although cylindrical in shape, it was not perfectly round, but had several flat, smooth sides.

  Megan had never known exactly what it was. She had found it one day years ago—it had been, in fact, not long after Dennis had died, when she had been filled with sorrow. While cleaning her room, she had stumbled across this piece of glass in the dusty area beneath her bed. Pulling it out, she had held it up to the light. It was clear glass, a prism, she thought, with the flat sides, and shot through the middle were tiny strands of silver. She had no idea how it had gotten there; she had never seen it before, and Deirdre, who had slept in the same bedroom with her at that time, had denied all knowledge of it.

  Megan had stuck it in her pocket, and had carried it with her, changing it from dress to dress. It had become something of a lucky charm for her. She had found it soothing to rub the flat sides as she thought or worried about something, as she had been in the habit of doing before with the religious medal she had worn much of her life.

  That, an oval silver medallion with the raised portrait of the Virgin on it, had been a present from her mother on the occasion of Megan’s first communion, and it was all the more precious to her because her mother had died not long afterward. Megan had worn it always, putting it onto a longer chain as she grew older.

  But a few weeks before she found the glass cylinder, she had lost the medallion. She was not sure what had happened to it. She had searched high and low, all over the house and even outside on the sidewalk and in her father’s grocery, but she had finally given up. The chain, she thought, must have broken, and it had slipped off without her even noticing. The odd piece of glass had seemed, somehow, a replacement.

  Though Megan no longer carried the good luck charm with her, she had not wanted to leave it behind, despite the limited space in their trunks. In facing Theo Moreland, she thought, she would need all the luck she could get.

  Absently, she rubbed the piece of glass for a moment, then shook off her thoughts, and put it away. She left the room and ran lightly down the stairs to find her sister.

  Deirdre was sitting at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes for their supper that evening, and she smiled at Megan’s entrance. Megan sat down, and took up a knife and a potato to help her sister.

  “Did you go to see Broughton House this afternoon?” Deirdre asked.

  “Aye, I did, and it’s as grand as you might imagine.”

  “Have you ever wondered about him?” Deirdre asked. “Theo Moreland, I mean.”

  “Wondered? Wondered what?”

  “You know, what he’s like. How he looks.”

  “Oh, I can imagine that perfectly,” Megan responded. “He has English coloring, of course—blond hair and pale, lifeless skin—and doubtless a weak chin. He’ll have that supercilious expression, as if he look
s down on the rest of the world with all the arrogance and contempt of a man who’s going to be the Duke of Broughton someday. His eyes are probably a cold blue.”

  “Do you think he feels guilty over what he did to Dennis?”

  Megan shrugged. “I don’t know. All I care about is that I make sure he pays for it till his dying day.”

  “What are you going to do? I mean, how are you going to find out what happened? How are you going to prove it?” Deirdre asked.

  “Well, it’s essential that I interview the other Englishmen who were there. Mr. Barchester, of course, and the other one. Julian Coffey.”

  Their brother had set sail ten years ago on an expedition to the Amazon led by an American explorer named Griswold Eberhart. In the only letter they had received from Dennis after he left, he had told them that all the other men on the expedition had either fallen ill or given up by the time they had started up the Amazon, leaving only him and Captain Eberhart. Dennis had been exuberant, however, about their good fortune in coming upon a group from England, similarly depleted, with whom they had decided to join forces.

  The English party had consisted of three men: Andrew Barchester, Julian Coffey and Theo Moreland. All of them were “excellent men,” he had written, especially Theo Moreland, who was only four years older than he and, according to Dennis, “great good fun.”

  Some months later, Frank Mulcahey had received a short, formal note from Theo Moreland informing him of his son’s death and extending his sympathies. But it had been Andrew Barchester who had written to give them a longer account of Dennis’s death, revealing the unexpected news that Dennis had died at the hands of Theo Moreland himself.

  “What he told Da wasn’t very specific,” Megan said now.

  Deirdre nodded. “It’s been ten years, too. Da’s bound to have forgotten some things.”

  “Unfortunately, I imagine Mr. Barchester probably has, too. Still, I have to talk to him.”

  “What about Moreland?” Deirdre asked. “Are you going to question him?”