Lanora shrugged. “That’s your right, of course.” She headed upstairs to don her disguise. Grace would follow soon.
Today, once she finished handing out bread, Lanora intended to track down Mr. Finch and have words with him. Mr. Finch was the foreman in charge of building a newly begun home for displaced women, including those with children but no father for them. Last time she spoke with him, he’d assured her that work was about to resume, but it still had not. Lanora was particularly invested in the structure, for she’d begged her father to fund it. Her time in London told her a home for women was the area of greatest need, the way to help the most people.
Her father hadn’t put up the money. He’d given some nonsensical excuse about being a peer, and the politics of the land being resistant to change. Instead, to appease her, he talked his fellow archaeologist, Mr. Darington, into funding the project.
Lanora had never met Mr. Darington, something of a mythical figure to theton. Every month came word of daring deeds, exotic queens and foreign dangers. On top of that, precious, rare and beautiful artifacts. He was the reverse of her father, who kept quarters in Cairo, while directing excavations, analyzing finds and writing scholarly works.
Not that her father didn’t make excellent contributions to the study of Egypt. He’d located several key sites. It was inevitably Mr. Darington, who’d been working in obscurity for years before her father arrived in Egypt, who excavated them. Her father waited in the relative safety of Cairo for the artifacts to reach him. He was the intelligence behind their years of success, Mr. Darington the dashing figurehead.
One of the reasons Lanora consented to a season was the chance to meet Mr. Darington’s protégé, Lord William Greydrake, only son of the Marquess of Westlock. Lord William had spent his formative years living in the desert with Mr. Darington, before her father arrived. Though he was eight years her senior, Lanora had expected to find a kindred spirit in Lord William.
Lanora’s mother passed away when she was six. Her father, unable to cope with the loss of his wife, ran off to Egypt. Lanora spent a few years with her grandfather, before he too passed. When Lord William’s family suffered their tragedy in his youth, his father sent him to Egypt, to Mr. Darington. Though opposite, Lanora’s and Lord William’s lives were strangely parallel.
Lanora shook her head as she entered her room. She began undressing, able to do most of it herself. Mrs. Smith wore the same undergarments as Lanora did, since no one would ever see them to know they were too fine for a widow who spent all her extra funds feeding the poor.
She still hadn’t met Lord William, and no longer cared to. One look at him across a ballroom had convinced Lanora the years with Mr. Darington hadn’t done him any good. Lord William exuded rakishness. Tousled brown hair, flecked with gold by candlelight. A long, lean frame clad somehow both impeccably and carelessly. His crooked smile, always touched with indolence. Glinting hazel eyes that changed color with his mood.
Grace’s footsteps sounded in the hall. Lanora shook her head to dispel visions of Lord William and resumed undressing. Handsome though he was, it had taken only one look for her to be sure she had no care for Lord William’s hazel eyes, or his moods. On top of his discernable rakishness, his name appeared in the scandal sheets with the consistency of the sunrise. Lanora wasn’t in London on the hunt for a husband, or even friends. If she ever did want either, Lord William Greydrake was the last man in England she’d choose.
