Free How to Dance With a Duke by Manda Collins Page B

gentle birth.
    Knowing that it would do no good to dredge up that ancient history, Cecily simply nodded. “It’s true. Violet did change everything.”
    They chatted for a bit about less upsetting subjects. Cecily’s new gowns, Lady Bewle’s ball. The latest news from the Royal Society.
    Something, however, was clearly bothering him. Cecily gave her honorary uncle a questioning look. It was not like him to mince words.
    “What is it?”
    Looking a bit sheepish, he said, “My dear, I do not like to bring it up, especially after your earlier comments, but I must. Your father’s reputation hangs in the balance.”
    “I thought we had dismissed the curse as ignorant superstition,” she said.
    Ever since news had emerged from Bonaparte’s explorations in Egypt, and even before, the reading public had been fascinated by the possibility that the ancient people who built the pyramids had sealed them with a curse for those who might disturb their tombs. Each time a worker died, each time an expedition member fell ill, each time a box of cargo was dropped as it was loaded onto the ship bound home from Egypt, it was blamed on a curse.
    Never mind that the curses said more about the people who inscribed them onto the tombs than about the people who found them. The newspapers and scandal sheets had told the tales and forever after every expedition member was doomed by a curse.
    Cecily had found it tiresome enough to be confronted by whispers every time she ventured out of the house, but she had hoped the breakfast room of Hurston House was safe.
    “I do not believe in curses any more than you do, my dear,” Lord Geoffrey said. “But I really do believe that something is going on with the members of that expedition. I was there, you know. And there were a good many incidents that happened while we were in Alexandria that in hindsight seem to indicate that there was something amiss with that trip.”
    This was the first Cecily had heard of anything going wrong during the actual expedition. With the exception of Will Dalton’s disappearance.
    “Tell me,” she said, willing to listen even if she suspected she’d be proved right.
    “Well, aside from that nasty business with Dalton,” Lord Geoffrey said, “there were many small things that gave us all a bit of unease. Items went missing between the dig site and the storage site at our encampment. A fall rendered one of our guides unable to continue on with us. And one day one of the native men your father hired to assist with the removal of some of the larger items was crushed to death beneath the weight of the sarcophagus he carried.”
    “Oh, dear,” Cecily said, horrified to hear of such an accident befalling the man. Still, this was no more than she had expected to hear. “Surely all of these things are typical of an expedition like that. It is dangerous work. Why attribute such things to a curse rather than simple misfortune?”
    Lord Geoffrey fiddled with the lace at his cuff, decidedly uncomfortable. “Because in this instance we were actually warned of a curse just before we opened the doorway into the tomb.”
    His eyes were troubled as he warmed to his story. “You are acquainted, I think, with our translator, Gilbert Gubar, who has been with us on several previous expeditions?”
    Cecily nodded. She and Herr Gubar had corresponded about some Greek texts once or twice. He was a good man, though she envied him his position with the expedition.
    “We had been working all day, and already three of the workers had been forced into rest by the heat. But your father was certain that we were close to the entrance. If only we pressed forward. I tried to argue with him, but you are not the only one in your family with a stubborn streak, my dear.
    “Finally, as we all looked on, we were there. Everyone crowded back around, ignoring the heat now in their determination to be there when we finally reached our goal.
    “Then your father was calling for Gubar to read the