How to Train Your Viscount

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3

The following day, Henry Greville made the short drive from his bachelor apartments to his parents’ town house on Hanover Square.

As he entered, he came within a hairsbreadth of bumping into the gigantic alabaster sarcophagus that dominated the foyer. You would think by now he would know better. The sarcophagus had been in its current location since he was six years old, after all. But he somehow always forgot how completely it filled the room.

He glanced at the sandstone bas-reliefs that lined the hallway leading to the library. It was jarring coming here. One minute you were driving along in your high-flyer, the wind in your cravat, past the queue of carriages waiting to get an ice at Gunter’s Tea Shop, the smells of coal smoke and manure competing for predominance as your pair trotted through the meticulously planned squares of Mayfair, with every sight and smell and sound proclaiming that you were in the most modern, most prosperous city in the world.

And then you stepped through the door to the Greville family town house and could be forgiven for fancying that you had travelled two thousand years back in time and were now inside the pyramid of Cheops.

A pair of columns carved with hieroglyphs announced the library. Most of the Egyptian items in the house were genuine antiquities his father had brought back from his grand tour. But the furnishings in the library were modern pieces in the Egyptian style. Other than that crumbling sphinx in the corner. And the canopic jars on the mantelpiece...

Henry noticed something new by his father’s desk and wandered over to investigate. It was a piece of black granite that had once been part of a much larger statue. This must be the recent acquisition his father had mentioned, which he had described as a torso fragment from a statue of Anubis.

Henry supposed the description was correct in the strictest sense. Yet how unfortunate that the only portion of the statue to survive the ravages of Father Time was Anubis’s impressively taut buttocks.

Henry settled into a chair to await his father. Last night he had thought Thomas Hope a bit cracked to keep a mummy in his drawing room. But glancing around his own family’s town house in the harsh light of day, it occurred to him that there was a famous saying about those in glass houses that probably applied to anyone who had the Arse of Anubis in their library.

And to think that the mummy had only been the second most surprising thing he had found in Thomas Hope’s Egyptian Room.

What in blazes had Caroline Astley been doing there? That had been the first thought to cross his mind. But coming right on its heels was the realization that he didn’t give a damn. The only thing that mattered was that she was there. She was there, he was there, and finally, finally, he would get his chance to apologize.

That he owed her an apology was beyond question. He would never forget the look on her face as she stood on that terrace, utterly crushed, struggling not to cry.

He didn’t manage to apologize last night, but he would find another chance. Now that he knew she was in Town, it would be simple enough. The first thing he did this morning was send his manservant round to Astley House, where he learned that the ladies were at home to callers on Monday mornings.

Tomorrow was Monday. And so tomorrow, at long last, he would make Lady Caroline a proper apology.