Page 34 of Dukes for Dessert

Things did not improve over tea. Dr. Gaspar had recently returned from the Near East, where he’d been digging up Nineveh, and the ladies were full of eager questions.

Damn and blast that David had to admire intelligent women. Eleanor was the daughter of Britain’s foremost botanist, and she’d done the photographs and plates for all his published works. Now she was reading her way through the Mackenzies’s formidable library. David joked from time to time that she’d married Hart to get at his books, and Eleanor never corrected him.

Sophie’s Uncle Lucas was not only a vicar but a Cambridge fellow, who, it was clear, had taught his niece many things about archaeology and ancient history. Instead of inquiring where on earth Nineveh lay—David had only the vaguest idea himself—she asked Dr. Gaspar if he’d seen Ashurbanipal’s library and had the Babylonians left anything of it when they’d sacked the city?

Gaspar warmed under the ladies’ interest and began to hold forth without arrogance. He told delightful anecdotes about how the local men and the donkeys had always gotten the better of him, which made the company, David excepted, laugh in merriment.

Dr. Gaspar wasn’t much older than David, David decided, even if harsh climates had left lines on his skin. The beard made him look more elderly as well, though there wasn’t a gray hair in it. He must have been at university around the same time as David—it turned out that Pierson had been one of Gaspar’s tutors.

David had no memory of him. Either Gaspar had been finished by the time David arrived, or he’d existed in a world of reclusive scholars while David had sown his wild oats with Hart at his side. There had been times when David had barely remembered his own name, let alone those of his fellow undergraduates.

“Are you pleased to be home?” Sophie asked Gaspar when he paused for breath. “Or do you miss the excitement of the Arab lands?”

Gaspar considered the question. “There are benefits to England. Tea.” He lifted his cup. “And a comfortable, dry home with a jolly fire, good food, and fine company.” He raised the cup again. “But there is much to miss about the desert. Its weather suits me better than the damp air here. You would think we’d be isolated and know nothing of the wide world, but in fact, I learn news there almost quicker than in my lodgings in Cambridgeshire. Gossip abounds, and anyone who goes into town is bombarded when he returns to the dig. We learn of events not only in Britain—we have news from so many countries.”

Eleanor gave him a sage look. “I believe you are itching to be off again, Dr. Gaspar.”

“Perhaps. But when Dr. Pierson wrote me about this Roman villa, I had to come. I can coordinate the excavation here before I return to the Ottoman lands.”

Everyone but David smiled, pleased with him.

“In that case, I’ll run up to London,” David said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Now that you have a much better expert at digging in the dirt, Pierson.” He gave Gaspar what he hoped was a gracious nod.

“Nonsense,” Pierson answered in surprise. “I can always use another man with a shovel.”

“For which you can hire a villager. I have business to attend.”

Sophie glanced at him, but said nothing. Whether she gave a damn if David came or went, he couldn’t say.

On the other hand, Eleanor’s glare held volumes. “Business you have other people looking into for you. Or do you mean you need to look into other people’s business?”

Sophie quickly lifted her teacup, smothering her delicate cough.

“Very amusing, ol— I mean, dear friend,” David said. “I have much to do, as always. I’ve rusticated here far too long.”

“No, no, my good fellow,” Pierson said. “You came here for sanctuary, and I believe you need to remain for a time.”

True, both Fellows and Sinclair had counseled him to stay out of London as much as possible until his trial. Or, if he insisted on London, to remain home, under a voluntary house arrest.

Well, he couldn’t be in a much more remote spot in England than Pierson’s vicarage in Shropshire. David could walk outside whenever he wanted here, no locks or chains to keep him in, because there was nowhere to escape to.

“Perhaps not London,” David said after a swallow of tea. “I might return to the old family farm.”

“Oh, you are a farmer?” Gaspar asked with sudden interest. “Very like an archaeologist, is a farmer, except you dig to help living things and we dig to find dead things.”

The room found his wit outstanding.

“Not much for farming, me,” David said when they’d calmed themselves from the hilarity. “My pater left me an estate in Hertfordshire. Lovely country, though I’m apt to let the steward do as he pleases with the arable.”

Gaspar’s expression didn’t change. “Quite a responsibility, a large landholding. I am not surprised you don’t want to leave it for long.”

Now David felt Sophie’s eyes upon him, a hard stare as she sipped tea. Could he never please her?

“I don’t mind rushing out to help Dr. Pierson with his hobby when he needs me,” David said. “But we will be a bit crowded here. I should at least make way for a new guest.”

“Not at all,” Gaspar said quickly. “I am putting up in the village. And archaeology is not a hobby, my good sir. It is a science, revealing knowledge of the past—we learn many astonishing things we never understood even from the writings of the ancients. Pieces from a faraway age tell us much about day-to-day life of the ordinary person, as well as of kings.”

He did not speak with rancor but as a learned man instructing a simpleton.