Megan felt as if she might choke on her fury. It was all she could do to stand there and keep silent, not to turn on him and vent all her hatred. She ached to reveal to his family what kind of villain he was and what he had done ten years ago.
But she would wait. When she revealed his wickedness, she would have the proof to back it up.
Whirling around, Megan followed the duke down the hall, carefully keeping Anna and Reed between her and Theo. She refused to look at him again. She would not give him the satisfaction of letting him see that he had upset her.
Broughton unlocked the door that lay just beyond the library and stepped into the room, turning up the gas lights. Anna and Megan followed him, the other two men bringing up the rear.
“Oh, my!” Megan said, looking around the room in some astonishment.
She knew that the duke was an avid collector, but she had not expected this museumlike room. Small tables and pedestals of varying height were scattered throughout, and on them stood statues and vases and other pottery. The walls were all lined with shelves, about half of them open, the rest closed with glass doors and locked. She did not know much about any of the periods of Greek art, but even she could tell that the duke’s collection was impressive.
“I had no idea….” Anna said, echoing Megan’s own thoughts.
The duke beamed, his pleasant face alight with joy. “It is only part of my collection. The rest is back at the Park. I have a much larger storage area there, of course.”
Megan trailed around the room, looking at the various artifacts carefully. The duke obligingly opened the locked cabinets for them, showing the smaller and more valuable pieces that lay within. Megan poked her head into each one, looking for something that might have come not from Greece or Macedonia or Italy, but from South America.
Of course, she admitted, she knew even less about South American art and culture than she did about Greek. But it seemed to her that something from South America should stand out among the classical Greek jewelry and bowls and beads.
But nothing did. Everything fit with the duke’s obsession with classical antiquities.
Megan had more or less expected that, given the way Theo had engineered their tour. He would hardly urge her into a room where there was something that would incriminate him.
Megan took a last, careful look at a collection of jewelry—necklaces made of glass beads or chunky, semiprecious stones, carved broaches, wide metal bracelets for wrists and upper arms. She turned away, swallowing her disappointment, and found herself looking straight at Theo.
He had obviously been watching her. She wondered what he had hoped to see. Surely he could not know who she was. It made her wonder what he had thought she was up to when he caught her with the key. Did he think her a thief? That she wanted to steal what lay in the collection room?
Indignation spurted up in her at the idea. She had to admit that that would the logical thing to assume, but, still, the thought stung.
Megan turned to the duke, who was watching her and Anna like a proud father showing off his offspring.
“This is so amazing, sir,” she told him honestly. “I have never seen a private collection like this.”
Broughton beamed. “Thank you, my dear. I have spent a number of years building it.”
“It’s wonderful,” Anna agreed. She looked over at Megan, and the faintest of shadows touched Anna’s eyes.
Megan felt the same shivery sensation along her nerves as she had the first time she had met Anna. There was something about the way the woman looked at her—not always, but every once in a while, like now, or the moment they met—that made Megan feel nervous and unsettled. Anna was a perfectly nice woman; indeed, she had been quite friendly with Megan, and Megan liked her. But she could not help but feel that Anna knew more about her than she should.
“Do you ever collect anything else?” Megan asked, as much to distract Anna as anything else. “Other than things from Greco-Roman culture, I mean?”
The duke looked faintly surprised. “More modern things?” He shook his head. “I am afraid not. No interest, you see. The Middle Ages, the Renaissance—there were lovely things, of course, but they just haven’t the same appeal.”
“Nothing from other parts of the world?” Megan asked lightly. “China, say, or India?”
“Oh, no. Theo here is more likely to have that kind of thing. He has been all over the world.” The duke said the words with the faint astonishment of a man who had rarely seen any reason to stir from his home.
“You have a collection, too?” Anna asked Theo, and Megan was grateful for the words, which saved her from having to ask.
Theo shrugged. “No. Only a few things in my room. I don’t usually bring a great deal home. My primary interest is in seeing the places.”
His room. Megan knew that was where she would have to look next. She didn’t want to. Even the thought of being in his room did strange things to her insides. It wasn’t fear, she knew…or, at least, not exactly. It was a combination of emotions that roiled in her in a way she did not even want to contemplate.
She would have to go there eventually, she knew. She would wait until some evening when she knew he was gone for several hours, and then she would sneak in and search the place. But if she didn’t find anything there, she was not sure what she would do.
There was the Morelands’ house in the country, of course. The evidence she needed was just as likely to be there. But she knew that the family would not be retiring there until after the season was over. She could not wait that long—and she was certain she would be unable to carry off her pretense of being a teacher for that long, anyway.
The twins were bound to realize that she hadn’t the slightest idea what they were doing in their Greek lessons, and she wasn’t a whole lot better when it came to Latin and higher mathematics. There had even been a few times when she had looked at Con or Alex and wondered if they already knew that she was floundering, completely over her head, in those subjects. The boys seemed to like her and her teaching style; it was quite possible, she thought, that they had guessed she was not competent as a tutor and were simply keeping quiet about it.
But some other family member would be bound to notice, sooner or later. And, indeed, she felt a trifle guilty, knowing that because of her, the boys might very well lag behind their peers in certain subjects.
She needed to discover something, and soon. Megan wished that her father and Deirdre could go to Broughton Park and search the place. She didn’t know how it might be accomplished, but next Sunday, when she had the day off, she would visit them and discuss the matter of the second house.
In the meantime, she would have to do something else to further her case.
The group, having finished their tour, was beginning to drift out the door, and Megan moved along with the others, her mind worrying at her problem.