“I do not know,” he said. “For the very next day Mr. Dalton was discovered missing. And so was the cat statue.”
“Both of them went missing?” Lucas demanded. “It stands to reason that whoever wanted the statue was responsible for my brother’s disappearance. Why did Lord Hurston not act?”
“Well, I raised that same concern with him, Your Grace.” Lawrence’s expression was troubled. “But he assured me that the person who wanted the cat and the person who made Mr. Dalton disappear could not possibly be the same person.”
“How could he possibly know?” Cecily asked, surprised that her father would make such an assurance given the way he’d suspected members of his own party of stealing from him.
“He could not,” Lucas said, “unless he either knew what happened to Will, or he knew where the person who wanted the cat had been during the time that Will went missing.”
“But he disappeared in the night,” Cecily objected. “He cannot have known…”
A possibility hit her, and made her stomach leap with angst.
“Oh,” she said, unable to keep the disappointment from her voice.
Lucas took Cecily’s hand, but remained seated.
Looking uncomfortable, Lawrence cleared his throat. “It was Lady Entwhistle, of course. She had tried to buy the blue cat for her own collection. I have no idea if she succeeded in persuading Mr. Dalton or not. But Lord Hurston assured me that she had been with him on the night in question and so could not have had anything to do with Dalton’s disappearance.”
Cecily struggled with her feelings of betrayal. She had known Neddy since she was a small child and the idea of Neddy and her father together—well, it changed everything she had thought about both of them. She put her feelings about their relationship away, however, and concentrated on what that relationship meant in the investigation of Will’s disappearance.
“Will had a bag,” she said to her former fiancé. “Neddy claimed to have seen it in my father’s possession. Do you know anything about it?”
Lawrence shook his head. “I never even entered your father’s tent, so I would not know of such things. I wonder, however, if it was included in the items your father had shipped with the artifacts from the museum’s excavation.”
Cecily felt Lucas tighten his grip on her hand.
“What items? Why would Lord Hurston have items that were meant for the Egyptian Club shipped with the museum finds?” Lucas’s whole body had tensed beside her.
“Because…” Lawrence flushed. “If you must know, we had made an agreement between ourselves that certain items pertaining to the Dynasty of Ramses the Second would go to the museum, while items from the Dynasty of Seti the First would go to the club.”
“For a price.” Lucas’s words were a statement, not a question.
“It is not unheard of,” the other man said, his voice rising in defense of himself. “Deals such as ours are struck all the time among fellow collectors. The members of the Egyptian Club can well afford…”
“I don’t give a damn about your trade practices, Lawrence,” Lucas snapped. “I want to see these artifacts that came from the Hurston dig. Where are they?”
“We store newly acquired items in a warehouse near the East India docks,” Lawrence said. “We keep them there until we have devised a scheme for working them into the existing collection.”
“Will you take us there?”
“I’m afraid I cannot, Your Grace,” Lawrence demurred, “but I can have one of the clerks take you this afternoon. He knows the location and can accompany you.”
“That will be acceptable,” Lucas said, his expression grim.
They waited a few moments for the arrival of the clerk, a young bespectacled man named Mr. Hornby.
Within minutes they were on their way.
* * *
When Cecily and Lucas arrived at the warehouse, the sky had darkened with the threat of an approaching storm. The wind had just begun to swirl around them, stirring the smell of the river and the surrounding streets into the foul stench of an odiferous perfume. The first drops of rain had just begun to fall as Lucas handed Cecily down and Mr. Hornby went about unlocking the massive door of the ramshackle building.
The three of them hurried inside as the shower turned into a deluge, and Hornby set about lighting the lantern he’d found just inside the door.
“The goods from Mr. Lawrence’s last trip are there, Your Graces,” the young man said, his formerly erect shirt points wilting from the humidity. He pointed to several large crates stacked neatly against the far wall. “We try to keep some semblance of order here. Organizing the boxes by the dates of acquisition.”
Uninterested in the organizational schemes of the museum, Lucas pulled Cecily along with him to the boxes, and spotting a sturdy stick against the wall, he picked it up and got to work opening the first of the boxes.
“Your Grace, I beg you,” Hornby said, hurrying over to them. “I have a list here detailing what each box contains. If you will just let me know what you are—”
“We do not know what we are searching for, Mr. Hornby,” Cecily said, laying a placating hand on the young man’s arm. Lucas knew he should probably wait, but he was tired of waiting. Tired of holding back when the clues to his brother’s whereabouts might have been here all along.
He heard Cecily speaking to the clerk behind him as he fitted the bar into the seam between the box and its lid and began to work it free. “But would you be so kind as to see if there is any mention of a blue cat in your inventory?”
“Yes, Your Grace, of course.”
When he had wrenched the top from the box, Lucas asked for the lantern and held it up so that he could get a clearer view of the box’s contents.
“This is Box E-2,” Hornby said. “It should contain various small pieces from the tomb of Prince Al-Kameli.”
It was ironic to Lucas that the gem-encrusted masks and ornaments in the box could be described as simply “various small pieces.” But he supposed that calling them what they were—a priceless fortune in emeralds—would be an invitation to thievery.
He moved on to the next box, reveling in the strain of his muscles as he worked to get the lid off. For so long he had been using only his mind to puzzle out what had happened to Will. It was a relief to be expending physical energy in the search for a change.
Three boxes later, they still had seen no sign of the blue cat. Cecily had glanced through the inventory pages and found no mention of cats of any kind. And the sixth box, which Lucas had managed to move slightly out from behind another, smaller one, was described as having only a sarcophagus and a small statue inside. Despite the pain in his leg, which had begun to weaken under the strain of his physical labors, he pressed on, needing to do whatever it took to find his brother.
“Winterson,” his wife chided, “I can see that you are beginning to tire. Perhaps we should come back—”
“We will not come back,” he almost growled, knowing he was being unreasonable, but unable to stop himself. “If you two would render your assistance, we might be able to get to this one.”
Shaking her head at his stubbornness, Cecily nevertheless followed Mr. Hornby through the maze of crates toward the large one that Lucas had already slightly edged out from behind another one.
Cecily moved alongside Lucas, gestured for Hornby to step onto her other side, and then the three of them used their collective weight to slide the crate over so that its end was facing the empty row between two towers of crates.
Beads of perspiration had broken out on Lucas’s forehead, and the stench, which they had all become accustomed to after several minutes in the warehouse, grew fouler.
“Goodness,” Cecily said with a moue of distaste as she watched her husband wield the lever to remove the crate’s lid. “This is worse than the mummy room at the club.”
“The odor usually subsides after a while,” Hornby said apologetically, as if he were responsible for the sins of the decomposing
flesh in the crate. “I suspect that it has simply built up over time after being trapped for so long in the box.”
Lucas said nothing, for the smell had reminded him suddenly of the stench of the battlefield after Waterloo, and it took every ounce of concentration on his part to keep from fleeing the warehouse altogether. Instead, he wrenched the lid off and gestured for Cecily to bring the lantern. Later he would castigate himself for exposing her to this ugliness, but for now, he had to keep his thoughts on the task at hand or risk succumbing to his own disgust.
“Lucas, look!” she said as the lantern illuminated the contents of the box. “There is a blue cat.”
He squinted into the light, and saw that she was correct. They were looking at the bottom of a sarcophagus that had been placed lengthwise in the oblong crate. And there, carved into the foot of the piece, was an ornately detailed blue cat.
“Help me,” he said to Hornby, who had stepped forward to see what they were speaking about. Together, the two of them managed to grab hold of the foot of the decorated casket and pull it from the box.
For a few minutes, there was only the sound of the men’s gasps of air, both of them panting from exertion.
“It should not be…” Hornby gasped, “so heavy.”
He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.
“There must be quite a bit of statuary or jewelry buried with this one,” he said. “Or perhaps the blue cat is larger than we thought.”
Cecily had already moved to the side of the sarcophagus and was feeling along it for a mechanism that would unlock the lid. At last, she found it. “There,” she said. And with an audible click, she worked it free and, with her husband’s help, raised the ornately carved front of the casket.
She looked over her shoulder to gesture that Mr. Hornby should come closer. “After all…” she said to him, turning to look down into the sarcophagus.
But whatever she might was said was cut short by her scream.
They had found the blue cat.
But they had also found Mr. William Dalton.
Seventeen
By the time they arrived home that evening it was well past midnight. Lucas had revealed the news to his mother and sister-in-law in a calm, soothing tone, offering each of them in turn a shoulder to cry on and assurances that it seemed likely that death had been swift and merciful.
Only Cecily could know, having seen the body for herself, that such matters were impossible to determine. It may well have been that Will did not suffer, but it was just as likely, as the Bow Street runner had told them baldly, that he may well have spent his last moments clawing for air in a darkened tomb.
Still, she said nothing to contradict her husband, and when they were finally alone in the quiet of their own chamber, she watched him go through the motions of undressing and washing with a mechanical stoicism that broke her heart.
It had been years since her mother’s death, but the misery she had felt on hearing the news still lingered in her memory, and she knew now with the wisdom of adulthood that though her grief had been real, it was oh so much more painful to feel the loss of a loved one without the shielding barrier of childhood innocence to protect one. Children, she knew now, were remarkably selfish beings. They did not experience the same sort of empathy that now prompted her to wonder just what those final moments had been like for Will. And if she, who had only been slightly acquainted with the man, were prompted to wonder, she could only imagine what sort of wrenching emotion must now be pressing upon her husband.
While Lucas undressed, she hurried through the connecting door into her own room, allowing her maid to assist her to undress. In a haste born of concern, she allowed the woman to drop the filmy nightgown over her head and dismissed her.
She noticed that someone had shut the door while she was in her own chamber, and for a moment she wondered if Lucas might wish to be alone tonight. Never having been in a position to offer comfort to a husband, she wondered if perhaps she ought to allow him his privacy. Yet, the memory of his expression as he held his mother earlier that evening, the bleakness that had suffused his face while he offered her comfort, made Cecily turn the knob and step inside.
His valet was gone, and Lucas stood alone, his naked back to her as he stared down into the fire. He had one arm braced against the mantel, and his broad shoulders tapered in a graceful line down to his waist, where his lower half was still covered by his buff breeches.
She stared a moment at the glorious specimen before her, grateful for the rare opportunity to look upon him without fear of being observed. The crackle of the fire and her own breathing were the only sounds as they stood there. Together, but apart. Unsure of whether to announce herself, Cecily was about to speak up when she saw a shudder run through him, and a soft, low sound rent the air.
He was weeping, she realized, a sob rising in her own throat at the notion of this strong, gentle man, who earlier tonight had held his mother and sister-in-law as they cried out their own grief, now giving vent to his own feelings in his chamber alone. The notion nearly brought her to her knees for him, but rather than succumbing herself, she strode across the room, careful not to startle him.
She touched him gingerly on his back, and though he jumped a little, he did not immediately turn and order her from the room. Instead, he kept his back to her, and said, “Cecily, if you will forgive me, I should like to be alone tonight.”
“Would you?” she asked softly. “Would you really, or do you think to spare me witnessing you in your grief? For I can assure you, Your Grace, nothing you can say or do tonight will make me think less of you.”
He seemed to take in a deep breath. “Please,” he said, his voice strained. “Please just leave me in peace.”
“Lucas,” she said, “please don’t shut me out. I want to help.”
At this he turned, his eyes blazing. “You have the temerity to ask me not to shut you out? You who hold yourself at a distance even as we are joined in the most intimate way possible? You who refuse to give me one fraction of affection more than is absolutely necessary for fear that you’ll find yourself in love with the man who just so happens to be your husband? You will pardon me, madam, if I do not leap with joy at your kind offer. But I would just as soon endure my grief alone as share it with you only to have you draw back into your cocoon again in the morning.”
She was startled by the vehemence of his outburst, but the substance of what he said was nothing more than the truth. She had been keeping herself removed from him in an effort to protect her heart. But she could no more have left him alone tonight to grieve than she could have ignored an injured animal left for dead on the side of a carriageway. Like it or not, some inexorable force had drawn them together, and even as she listened to his angry words, she found herself moving closer to him.
“I am sorry,” she said simply, for it was what she felt, and it was the truth. She was sorry for having let him down. Sorry for having led him to believe they might have a real marriage, then pulling away from him night after night. And most of all she was sorry that he had lost his brother. “So sorry,” she said, wrapping her arms around him, offering him the comfort of her body even as he trembled against her.
“There will be no going back tonight, Cecily,” he said harshly. “If you stay with me tonight, then that is how we will continue to go on. No more retreating to your own chamber when you do not wish to discuss something. No more running away.”
She looked into his intense blue eyes, at the residual moisture that glittered in his lashes, and knew she had no choice. He had given her so much since their marriage and she was compelled tonight to return the favor.
“Yes,” she said, her decision making her bold. “I promise.”
He gave a brisk nod, and as he had done on their wedding night, he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed. But unlike that night, there was no time for talk, only pleasure.
With a hunger born of grief, he took her mouth with a ferocious intent that left
her breathless, lowering her to the bed and unfastening his breeches at the same time. Not even taking the time to remove her gown, he pulled her to the edge of the bed, and lifted the sheer fabric to her hips.
Cecily was overwhelmed by the strength of his ardor, and when he flipped her over so that her bottom and legs dangled over the side of the bed, she felt a jolt of fear along with the excitement that his mastery inspired.
“No going back,” he whispered into her ear as he covered her back with his body, curving his front into her back and gripping both of her hands together over her head with one hand while with his other he guided his erection to that part of her weeping for him to fill it.
With one sharp plunge he drove himself fully into her, the slide of their bodies together making both of them cry out in pleasure. Again and again, Lucas flexed his cock into the warmth of her, and again and again her body gripped his as he slid back out. He lost himself in the rhythm of their coupling, the drive to find his release making him forget anything but the bliss of feeling Cecily’s softness devouring his cock.
The noises she made, something between a moan and a sigh, only added to the intensity of his pleasure, and before long he felt himself nearing his peak. Thrusting once, twice, he reached a hand around and touched her just above where their bodies merged, and he was rewarded with a sharp cry from Cecily as she plummeted over, her pulsing center drawing him to his own fulfillment. Like a stallion covering a mare, he bit her lightly on the neck, his hands gripping her hips as he pistoned into her.
* * *
Much later, when Cecily was curved into the warmth of his body, both of them drowsy from spent passion, she asked, “Would you like to talk about him?”
She felt the sigh of weariness run through him. He was silent for some moments, while he traced circles on her back with his fingers.
“He was my younger brother,” he said simply. “I can still remember his baby voice, begging me to take him up with me on my pony. I must have been seven or so, and he was four. He was always begging me to take him along.”
How to Dance With a Duke Page 27
