To Deceive a Duke

by Amanda McCabe

  ‘The entire world is treacherous, to those who are unwary,’ she said hoarsely. She disentangled herself from his arms, pressing close to the rock-cut hillside. She could not leave him entirely, though. He held on to her hand, their bare fingers a lonely connection in that treacherous world. ‘Thank you for catching me.’

  ‘Oh, Clio,’ he answered, an undertone of sadness in his voice, ‘don’t you know that I will always catch you?’

  Before she could reply, he slipped past her on the narrow path, holding her hand as they finished the climb to the castle. They didn’t speak as they walked through the broken archway into the old keep itself. It was not much of a castle any longer; a year-long siege in the twelve hundreds had broken down the sturdy grey stone walls, reducing the twenty towers to ten, then three, and now only one.

  But Clio loved the tumbling piles of stones, overgrown with vines and twisted almond trees, the cracked floors and ruined arches, more than she could have loved any intact fortress. There were stories here, thousands of them, tales of heroism and death and passion that whole walls could never hold. The wind whipped through the fissures, bending the overgrown tree limbs, and bright green lizards skittered over the chipped rocks.

  The rest of the island seemed so far away, insignificant. And even the Duke seemed to belong here. In London, he was bigger than life, an awe-inspiring figure of brilliant light among the drabness of the grey city. A person of gossip and speculation, of envy for his title, his money, his fine looks. Here, among old scenes of battles and tragedy, of power won and lost, he was no less impressive or unique. But he belonged. Belonged in a way he never really did in England.

  Which was exactly how Clio herself often felt. Calliope was so good at playing the lady, at being respectable and admirable. Whereas Clio always seemed to find herself floundering, fighting. Endlessly seeking for something, some beacon of meaning that would never be found.

  Here, in the silence and the ancient memories, she only had to be. Even the Duke—Edward—could not mar that. Indeed, he, too, seemed to find a rare stillness. He played no role of extravagant overlord. He merely stood there, holding her hand, and just was in this moment.

  If only all time could be like this! But Clio knew well it never could. He would always be a duke. She would always be a thief. And the world would always be waiting, besieging these walls as surely as it had hundreds of years ago.

  She gently disentangled her fingers from his, hurrying through the three interconnected courtyards that had once held together the castle towers. She raised the hem of her skirt, stepping carefully over rocks and birds’ nests. ‘It was built in 1082,’ she said, her voice echoing off the walls. ‘The Bourbons once used it as a prison, since those stairs on the hillside were the only access and were easily blocked. There used to be twenty towers; now there is only this one still intact.’

  ‘And is it always so deserted?’ he asked. ‘So—haunted.’

  ‘Not at all. My family haven’t been here yet because it always seems so crowded with English tourists. And too many Sicilian guides trying to part them from their coins. They are very good at that!’ She threw him a wry smile over her shoulder. ‘Everyone must have heard you were coming and obligingly cleared the way.’

  ‘You see, there are advantages to a lofty title,’ he said. ‘Even an unwanted one.’

  ‘I have never heard of a ducal title being unwanted.’

  ‘Well, my dear, there is much about me—and about being a duke—you don’t know. Fortunately for us both.’ With those puzzling words, he strolled past her to the base of the tower, entering its tall, empty doorway.

  The tower, constructed of weathered local grey stone like all the castle and most of the village, rose up three stories in clean, flat straight lines, covered in ropes of emerald-green ivy. A narrow, winding staircase gave the only access to the top, lit by old arrow slits.

  Edward waited for her at the foot of the stairs. Without a word, without even looking at her, he held out his hand. I will always catch you. Clio slid her fingers into his, and they climbed upwards into the sky itself.

  The steep stairs were covered not just with loose pebbles and windblown dirt, but by the detritus of the tourists: torn, trodden handkerchiefs; empty wine bottles; an abandoned phrasebook. Edward nudged all those out of her path with his boot, holding her steady as they moved through the pale, chalky light. She could hear only the scuff of their boots, the distant cooing of birds hidden high in the old beams. The rush of breath, the pounding of her own heart in her ears.

  Even during her Lily Thief exploits, she had never been as anxious as she was in his presence. To be alone with him was a dangerous, unpredictable thing. She never knew what he would do; what she would do! Kiss him, hit him. Their meetings always ended in one disaster or another.

  They emerged into the daylight at the very top of the old battlements. The wind was quick and chilly there, whistling past in swift currents that pulled at her hair and skirts. But the view between the crenellations was glorious. Rolling waves of Sicilian hills, glowing gold and purple all the way to Etna. And, in the other direction, the silvery expanse of Lake Pergusa, where Hades had snatched away Persephone as she gathered flowers.

  Yet another unwary female, Clio thought. She herself should learn from Persephone’s example. Never take your gaze from the horizon.

  Edward leaned his elbows on the wall, his gaze narrowed on the lake. He had taken off his hat, and the wind tangled his hair, tossing it over his shoulders as the sun caught on those beautiful red-gold strands. He looked so alone.

  Clio knew what it was to be alone. But even as she felt drawn to his side, she could not give in to sympathy or understanding. When she was weak, that was when she fell. She leaned against the wall beside him, staring out over the rugged landscape.

  ‘I have never seen anything so beautiful,’ he said.

  ‘Nor have I,’ Clio answered. ‘But surely you have seen far more of the world than I have! Are you not a member of the Travellers’ Club?’

  He gave a half-smile, not looking at her but at the lake, as if he thought to see Persephone herself strolling its banks, flowers falling around her. ‘I am.’

  ‘Which means you have travelled to at least four countries. Seen all the loveliest, most exotic parts of the world. Places far more sophisticated and elegant than this rustic place.’

  ‘For sophistication and elegance, Clio, one need not leave London. For real truth and beauty, though, I think a person must come here. Why would so many—the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Saracens—fight to possess it?’

  ‘And why do we come here, struggling to find our own corner of it?’

  ‘Because we, too, belong here, of course.’ He turned to her suddenly, his gaze so steady and piercing. As if he could see right to her heart, her most secret desires.

  Clio slowly nodded. ‘Edward,’ she said. The sound of his name was so strange, so delicious, on her tongue. His eyes widened at her word—Edward. ‘Why do you and my brother-in-law hate each other?’

  His half-smile faded, until it was only a bitter little quirk at the corner of his lips. ‘Ah, yes, the esteemed Lord Westwood. I dare say you have noticed something of our old—mistrust.’

  ‘I dare say I have. Especially when it came to fisticuffs in Yorkshire.’ Clio remembered all too well Cameron’s anger that night.

  Edward rubbed at his crooked nose, the only flaw in his handsome, Celtic-god face. ‘When I first knew your brother-in-law, we were both young and foolish. Though I admit I was far more foolish than he ever was. He cannot forget what I was in those days.’

  Clio studied him carefully in silence. His expression, that mocking smile, did not alter. But it was as if an opaque veil had fallen over his eyes, shielding his deepest thoughts and feelings from her. It was always thus with him, a dark core of truth hidden away. Obscured by the glitter of his position, the sheer strangeness and charisma of his personality.

  ‘How very quizzical you look,’ he s
aid.

  ‘I merely try to make out your character,’ she answered.

  He laughed. ‘Such a useless occupation for such an intelligent mind as yours. And how do you make out in such an endeavour?’

  ‘Not well at all. I have never been able to understand you. Even when I think I am close, you change on me.’

  ‘How ironic that I puzzle you. For you, my dear Miss Chase, are as ungraspable as the sea itself.’

  Clio smiled to think of the Mediterranean waves breaking endlessly on the rugged Sicilian shore, blue, green, grey, white, never tamed. There were storms and tides that could kill, hidden glories under the surface, a dangerously beautiful place. One that most people feared, but for a few hardy mariners it was home.

  She was not like the sea. She was shore-bound by her family, by expectations. Yet he—he was like the waves. Unpredictable, irresistible. She could not resist moving nearer and nearer, that dangerous undertow catching her skirts and drawing her down for ever.

  ‘What foolish things did you get up to when you were young, then?’ she asked.

  He shook his head, turning away from her to stare out over the landscape again. The wind tossed his hair over his brow, hiding his face from her. ‘You don’t really want to know. Young noblemen are a terrible breed.’

  ‘Hmm. It is true that I have no brothers, but I am not entirely a sheltered, delicate miss. I know the sort of japes young men get into at university, or on their Grand Tours. You were probably no worse than dozens of others.’

  ‘I was more spoiled than most,’ he said. ‘And more angry, too.’

  ‘Angry?’ Clio well knew that emotion. The burning helplessness of it. She stepped closer to him, then closer still. They did not touch, not even the brush of his sleeve on her hand, but she felt the heat of his skin, the clean, spicy scent of him, reach out to wrap all around her. Binding them together.

  ‘What were you angry about?’ she whispered, longing to know, to understand.

  ‘You are thinking that I, a rich duke’s son, had nothing to be angry about?’ he said lightly. He gazed down at her with those veiled, jewel-like eyes. ‘And you would be right.’

  ‘Everyone has something to be angry about. Something to fight against.’

  ‘Well, I fought against myself. Or, I suppose, against expectations of myself. Until my older brother died, of course.’

  Clio stared at him, startled by his words, by the hint of pain that lay under them. Like sharks circling under the blue sea surface. Before she could answer, a party of tourists appeared in the courtyard far below them, their laughter echoing off the old walls. Their prosaic reality seemed to pierce the quiet, tense web around her and the Duke, tearing their isolation.

  She moved away from him, pressing her back to the wall.

  ‘I beg you, Clio, do not try to make out my character,’ he muttered. ‘I could not bear for you, of all people, to discover the truth of what I hide there.’

  ‘Discover what?’ Clio asked, her throat dry. She felt as if she were teetering on a crumbling precipice, staring down at the rocky shoals of truth. One sharp push would send her tumbling down and down, falling into that whirlpool that was him. She was surely closer to discovering the essence of him than ever. Yet did she really, truly want that?

  Maybe she was one of those eccentric souls who were drawn to the mysteries of the dangerous sea.

  ‘I am many things, Edward, but coward is not one of them,’ she said. ‘I am not afraid of you, even if your soul is as fearsomely black as this castle’s dungeon. There must be a reason we keep meeting. Why our lives keep colliding. Perhaps I am meant to discover it now.’

  He studied her for a moment, the air tense between them as the visitors’ voices grew closer, louder. Finally, he nodded. ‘I know very well you are no coward, Clio. But consider that you are warned. I am no fit company for a young lady.’

  ‘Perhaps you are not. But Muses are contrary beings, are they not? Seldom sensible, and never wanting what is good for them. And I have told you before, I can’t bear a mystery.’

  ‘So, I am like one of your antiquary sites, am I?’ he said, a thread of shimmering amusement in his voice. ‘Just like your farmhouse.’

  ‘Oh, no. You are beyond my poor excavation skills.’

  He did not answer, but he held out his hand to her as they turned back towards the stairs. She took it, letting him lead her down the steep, dim tower as if he led her into the puzzles and perils of Hades itself.

  Something had changed between them there on that windswept tower; she felt the crack and shift of it deep in her heart. What that change could be—if it would destroy her in the end, keep her as captive as poor Persephone—she did not know. But she realised there was no turning back now.

  Edward followed Clio as she led him back down the winding path to the valley where her family waited. Here, in the shadow cast by the castle, the wind ceased its cold moan, sunlight lay in warm, golden ribbons on the dusty earth. Here the world was solid again, they were firmly linked to the elements of growing, living things, of the present and future. Yet the silence was just as profound, just as rich, as it was high up in their fairy-tale tower.

  Clio’s tall figure moved lightly through the glow of the sun, her skirts catching on the scrubby clusters of lavender and goldenrod. The wind had loosened her hair, long auburn tendrils that escaped their pins and lay against her long neck like silk. She carelessly brushed them back, leaving one dusty smudge on her cheekbone. She did not even seem to notice; her gaze, shielded behind her restored spectacles, was far away, full of inward thought. She didn’t even seem to notice his close regard.

  But that yearning, that burning desire he felt for her, became ever larger, a palpable, pulsating thing that overcame all else when she was near, when they were together. The touch and taste of her were intoxicating, all-drowning, far more than the alcohol he had craved when he had been young and wild. Clio wrapped around all his senses until she was all he knew, all he wanted. He forgot everything else, and that was dangerous. He needed to be alert here in Sicily, at all times.

  She glanced back at him as they made their slow progress down the narrow hillside, her expression serious. ‘I have heard many tales of this island since we came here,’ she said.

  ‘Magical tales, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘For Sicily is surely a land of rare enchantment.’

  ‘Indeed it is. I’ve never been anywhere I loved more.’ She paused in her steps, gesturing to the distant mountains, the sea beyond. ‘Do you know the story of Erice?’

  ‘Tell me,’ he answered, captured by the soft intensity of her voice. The wild timelessness of the land that matched the woman.

  ‘Mount Erice, which guards the port of Trapani, belonged to the Elymians, and is one of the most sacred spots in all the Mediterranean,’ she said. ‘Its founding stretches back to the very beginning of creation, when the Titans revolted against their father, Uranus. Kronos castrated his father with a great sickle, and threw his, er, organs into the sea off Trapani. And then, to mark the spot where her ancestor had died, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, rose from the sea on her shell and created Erice, making it her home.’

  ‘And it was there she lured Butes, the Argonaut, with the sirens’ song. She gave him a son, Eryx…’

  ‘Who gave the mountain its name.’ Clio smiled at him. ‘You do know the tale.’

  ‘I’m always keenly interested in the doings of Aphrodite.’

  ‘So I’ve heard. You should know, then, that her feast day is coming soon, according to our cook, Rosa. She says they used to release a flock of white doves from the slopes of Erice, but she doesn’t think they do it any longer.’

  ‘And can one steal Daedalus’s golden honeycomb there?’

  Clio laughed. ‘I don’t know. It’s one of the many mysteries of the island I have yet to discover.’

  ‘Ah, yes. So many mysteries…’ And surely the greatest of all was standing before him.

  Her laughter faded. ‘Indeed. But Demeter’
s feast day comes before Aphrodite’s, far more useful, I think. We should get back to the villa now. My father will be looking for us.’

  ‘Of course.’ They continued on their way, the path still too narrow for them to walk side by side. Edward followed her, not holding hands as they had at the castle, yet still bound in some unseen way.

  ‘You are to attend Lady Riverton’s theatrical evening?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘She was the first to send me an invitation here. I must go where I’m invited, or I would be too desolate.’

  She laughed. ‘I can’t imagine you, a rich, handsome duke, would ever be left desolate. I would think rather you would have an excess of invitations, and would have to turn most of them down. Not that there is much grand society in Santa Lucia.’

  ‘You think me handsome, then?’ he asked lightly.

  She looked back at him, one brow raised. ‘You know you are.’

  ‘I know no such thing,’ he said. ‘My mother used to call me her “barbarian”, her marauding Viking.’

  ‘Truly? My own mother sometimes said I was an Amazon, taller and wilder than my sisters, and I should have been named Hippolyta. But, of course, after Calliope my father was set on his Muses theme. And my mother obliged by giving him so many daughters.’

  ‘Then perhaps we should forsake Sicily for a colder shore, where our warrior tendencies will be properly appreciated.’

  ‘Is there such a place?’ They came around a bend in the path, into sight of the valley. Sir Walter and his younger daughter were seated under the canvas pavilion where they had lunched earlier, their heads bent over a pile of books. Lady Rushworth supervised the servants in packing the used plates and platters.

  Clio paused, her head tilted to one side as she watched them. ‘I sometimes think I would love to travel for the rest of my life, finding what is beyond each new horizon. Discovering different lives, new stories. Yet even when I do sail seas and climb mountains, it is always the same.’ She gave him a sad smile. ‘I always just find myself there, going to parties and sipping tea.’