all her steady pace and dispassionate voice, her hand trembled when it returned to his arm.
“You want my honesty?” he surmised.
“Yes.”
Charles hesitated. These words would be important, ultimately forming her decision to return to Lottie’s and setting the foundation for a friendship which might allow him access to those damned journals.
“May I begin first by saying that while Lady Alice is indeed lovely, so too are you.”
Lady Eleanor looked up at him sharply, her eyes wide and the fullness of her pink lips slightly parted. After all her careful hiding behind an emotionless mask, the shock on her face was a surprise.
“I do not find your hair ‘awful,’ as you say.”
In truth, its color was vibrant and beautiful. Any distaste stemmed from the reminder of her relationship to a man whom Charles so bitterly detested.
Lady Eleanor turned her head away and regarded the path once more. Several more people had filled the area around them, and he kept his voice intentionally lowered to ensure their privacy.
“It is your demeanor which is unwelcome.”
Lady Eleanor did not react.
“Are you sure you wish me to continue?” he asked.
She exhaled and nodded. “Yes. I believe I need you to.”
And in truth she was right. She did need to hear what he had to say. For her own good, and to increase her desire to return to Lottie’s for lessons.
He went on as bade. “You are cold, as they say. Polite? Yes. But you have no joie de vivre...your delivery is without feeling. You have no...passion.”
“Passion is vulgar.”
“Passion is necessary,” he countered. “It’s what colors our world, what provides change and excitement. A woman like you, so without passion, is like a painting without depth. You will go through life in an endless routine of changing gowns and attending luncheons and soirees until they all blur together. You will meet every encounter with bored uninterest, to the point of teetering on disdain, as if nothing will ever be enough to please you. And one day, when death comes knocking at your door, you will look back on the nothing of your existence and realize that you never once lived a day in your life.”
It wasn’t until the entire, ugly and honest truth was out that he realized the depth of the cut in his words.
Lady Eleanor had stopped. The shade of trees had thinned out and her bonnet was dappled with splashes of gold. She turned toward him, pulled her arm from his, and slowly lifted her face. Her eyes gleamed in the light, glowing like gemstones with the gloss of what appeared to be carefully restrained tears.
The realization struck Charles in the chest.
He had gone too far.
He opened his mouth to apologize, but Lady Eleanor spoke first.
“My mother and her friends are waiting for me.”
She nodded to the women on the riverbank. The entire group looked their way—and immediately snapped their heads in the opposite direction once they realized they’d been caught.
Lady Eleanor gently cleared her throat. “Thank you for your candor. Good day, Lord Charles.”
She ducked her head down, hiding her face with the rim of her bonnet, and slipped away. Her gait was stiff, her back ramrod-straight and her shoulders squared. The maid hurried along after her.
Charles watched Lady Eleanor walk away, feeling very much the cad. He’d assumed such a speech would render him victorious, and yet his joy had been marred by something rather unexpected—the stab of guilt.
Later that evening Charles sat among a collection of his father’s greatest acquisitions. If Charles hadn’t thought it possible to feel any lower than he had after his honest assessment of Lady Eleanor, he’d underestimated what coming home to Somersville House would do. Especially as he surveyed the unboxed treasures.
There was a sarcophagus containing an intact mummy, found in a sealed-off tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The paint stood vivid blue against un-flecked gold, as if it had been created only weeks ago rather than centuries before. Its discovery had earned his father a private audience with the King. Then there was a gold scarab encrusted with priceless jewels, of which the ton had talked for three months.
Charles hefted an ancient tome into his grasp. The pages within the leather binding were unevenly cut and yellow with age. They crackled when handled. But the drawings and words within were still dark with ink. The discovery of this particular book had left scholars in a state of frenzy.
Every item found by his father in a foreign world and brought to London had been met with praise and acclaim. And Charles had been witness to it all his life—first as a young boy, peering from the stairs, later from the corner where his governess had grudgingly allowed him to sit, and later by his father’s side, as an honored son. That was, until the Duke had begun to suffer from gout and declared himself too old for travel.
Charles set the tome down gently on the desk and regarded the key, studying its flat, cool metal surface.
It had indeed been a sad day when the Duke of Somersville had had to put away the old floppy hat he’d worn during his Adventure Club days.
At the time of its dissolution, the club had still been obsessed with locating the Coeur de Feu. Each man had gone about his own adventure, following leads on its location and documenting his journey. It had been when they returned home that everything had dissolved around them, their trust ripped apart by perfidy and speculation.
The Duke and the Earl of Westix had been the wealthiest of the men in the club, but they had not been the brightest. Only one man, whose name was never mentioned, had been cleverer than the rest, and had put his findings in code. And, while the previous Duke of Somersville had somehow obtained the key, and had known of its purpose, he had not known which of the journals was needed.
Charles had already been through all the journals at Somersville House, of course. He’d found nothing but descriptions of places the members of the club had gone, and accounts of treasures acquired. Until his father’s effects were returned from their country estate there was nothing more to look through.
Regardless, Charles was certain the one he needed lay in the Earl of Westix’s home.
He let the key slip from his grip and the metal sheet fell silently against the thick Turkish carpet. There was a story behind that carpet as well, only he couldn’t recall it at the moment.
Every item in the house had a story—had come from a different homeland, after a new adventure. He put his face in his hands and let the coolness of his fingers press into the heat of his skin. They all had far better stories than his own—the son who had watched with adoration the father whose magnificence he would never measure up to...the sole heir who had cast aside his promises in search of his own adventures.
His father had been larger than life, experiencing every day
