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 to the fullest. Charles couldn’t believe he was gone, leaving him with no more chances to fulfill his promise and finally gain what he had always wanted—his father’s respect and pride in his accomplishments rather than always standing in his father’s shadow.
A knot formed stubbornly in Charles’s throat.
“Your Grace?”
A man’s voice nudged gently into Charles’s awareness. He looked up and met the dark gaze of his valet.
“Your Grace, you asked to be reminded when it was near time for you to depart for Miss Lottie’s.”
Charles nodded. “Thank you, Thomas. I’ll be down in a moment.”
Thomas glanced at the treasures surrounding Charles. “Several doors down there is another room filled with the items you discovered on your own travels.”
The trouble with good valets was the way they oftentimes were far too perceptive.
“They aren’t the same.” Charles looked at a jade pendant of an elephant with gilt tusks.
“You are a good man, Your Grace. He would be proud of what you’ve accomplished in such a short period of time.”
Charles nodded absently. His father wouldn’t be proud. Not after his failing to locate the Coeur de Feu. No, his father would be disappointed.
The thought sliced into him as he recalled his father’s last words, hastily scrawled with the desperation of a man with only moments left to live. And once again he felt the crushing weight of disappointment, because they’d been about the damned ruby.
Thomas bent in front of Charles and lifted the key from the floor. “When you’re ready, Your Grace?” He carefully set it on the desk beside the massive tome and departed.
Charles sighed, but the weight in his heart did not lighten. He had committed many wrongs in his life, and all the treasures of the world wouldn’t make it right. Getting those journals from Eleanor would be a start.
In truth, she had wormed her way into his thoughts several times since their discussion. Her forthright demand for what she might do to improve herself had taken him aback. And yet it had been refreshing. It was a rare thing indeed for a member of the ton to request an opportunity to better oneself. Not in dance or watercolor or singing, but in the general composition of their personality.
Charles got to his feet and strode out the door. He stopped at the top of the stairs and gazed down to the entrance hall below, where polished marble gleamed in the candlelight. He’d stood there so very many times before, watching his father prepare to leave for another trip.
When he was a boy he’d held onto the ornate railing, his small fingers curled around the cool wood, as if clutching it would keep his father from leaving again. When he was an adolescent he’d propped his elbow on its bannister and let his imagination carry him to the places his father would go, where Charles knew with the whole of his heart he would also venture someday.
And this was where Charles had seen his father for the last time...
The bustle of servants began to calm and Charles found himself alone in the foyer. His blood danced in his veins at the thought of the impending adventure awaiting him—the foreign lands, the excitement of experiencing everything he’d ever heard about from his father and had spent a lifetime dreaming of.
The back of his neck prickled with the awareness of being observed. He turned and looked up the curving stairs to where his father leaned heavily on a carved ivory cane just