To Deceive a Duke

by Amanda McCabe

  Thalia’s gaze darted around the room, but she saw no one else. Marco appeared to be alone.

  He came slowly to his feet, still holding the dagger. ‘Signorina Thalia?’ he said incredulously. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to find my sister,’ Thalia cried. ‘Where have you hidden her?’

  ‘Clio?’ he asked. He watched her closely, his lovely dark eyes full of wariness, suspicion, and—and laughter? ‘Is she not at your house?’

  ‘Of course she isn’t, or I wouldn’t be here looking for her, would I?’

  ‘I’m sure I could not say.’

  ‘I am not as big a fool as all that.’ But she was, Thalia realised with a horrible sinking sensation, something of a fool. Once again, she had dashed into things without pausing for thought. Without thinking of the consequences. Now she was alone in a silent house, with a man in possession of a dagger.

  ‘I thought she had eloped with you,’ she said weakly.

  He gave a startled laugh. ‘I do not believe so.’ He went to the wardrobe, opening the doors to show her the interior, empty of everything but clothes. ‘No ladies there, alas.’ He knelt to peer under the bed. ‘Nor there. Though I must speak to the maids about dusting.’

  Thalia watched him, more and more chagrined, as he stood up and smiled at her. It was a beautiful smile, of course, carving unearthly dimples into his whisker-roughened olive cheeks. But it was also careful, as if he humoured the crazy lady who had broken into his house.

  Thalia stepped back, pressing her hands to her burning cheeks. ‘Then you don’t know where she is at all?’

  ‘I fear I have not seen her since your dinner party,’ he said gently. ‘Has she really disappeared?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ Thalia groaned. She felt the most ridiculous, childish urge to stamp her feet and sob! But was this whole exercise not another way to make her family see she was grown up now, not a silly child? Not someone to protect? So, she kept her shoes firmly on the floor, determined to stop and think for once in her life. Now that it was too late.

  ‘Here, signorina, sit down,’ Marco said. He put down the dagger and moved slowly toward her, holding his hands out as one would to a skittish horse. Thalia let him take her arm and lead her to a chair. ‘Have some wine, and tell me what has happened.’

  ‘I really don’t know what has happened,’ she said, watching as he poured out a glass of wine and pressed it into her cold fingers. She sipped at it automatically, but it was indeed bracing. It helped her slow her racing thoughts.

  ‘You say your sister has vanished?’ he asked, sitting down beside her.

  ‘I thought she had. She sent us a message saying she had decided to go to Motya with the Darbys after all. But things have been so very odd lately…’

  ‘Odd?’ He spoke quietly, as if he feared to scare her, but she heard the concern in his voice.

  ‘Yes. Clio has been rather, I don’t know, moody. Quiet. Especially since you arrived. I thought perhaps you two had decided to elope, and I was angry she was keeping secrets from me. I decided to find out for myself.’ She took another fortifying sip. ‘I see now I was wrong.’

  He smiled wryly, as if amused she could think him a seducing eloper, even though he himself seemed to want to appear a heartless flirt. ‘Why would you think I would run off with your sister?’

  ‘I saw the two of you on the terrace at our party, talking together so intimately,’ she said. ‘And did you not know each other before?’

  ‘Before?’ The dimples vanished.

  ‘Before Santa Lucia. In England, even.’ Thalia laughed. ‘You needn’t look so surprised. There are some advantages to looking like a silly blonde bonbon, you know. I see things my sisters think I do not.’

  ‘I am surprised, Thalia,’ he said. ‘Yet I should not be. I knew you were dangerous the very first time I saw you.’

  ‘Not half as dangerous as you, I’m sure—Count.’ She put down the empty glass with a sigh. ‘But I am no closer to finding my sister.’

  ‘Is it possible she really did go to Motya?’

  ‘It is possible, of course. She has gone off on such excursions on short notice before, and my father doesn’t seem concerned. Yet…’

  ‘Yet you are concerned?’

  ‘Yes. It doesn’t feel right to me somehow.’

  Marco shook his head. ‘Nor to me. She would not go now. You are right to be concerned.’

  Reassured by the fact that he seemed to take her seriously, and did not just laugh her fears away as her family would, Thalia turned to him, reaching for his hand. ‘Tell me. What do you know of the Duke of Averton?’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Edward roused slowly from sleep, a deeper, sweeter rest than he had known in a very long time. A dreamless, healing slumber that seemed to wrap all around him like a soft velvet blanket, bringing such beautiful dreams.

  Only the dreams were real. He opened his eyes to find himself lying on a pile of cushions on the cottage floor. The air was warm, scented with woodsmoke, wine and lilies. As he gazed up at the dark rafters high overhead, he heard the splash of water. And a humming sound. Loud and distinctly off-key.

  ‘“It was a lover and his laaaaasss, with a hey and ho and a heeeyyy nonny no”,’ the voice sang, all warbling and wavering. And very, very happy. ‘“Nonny nonny no!”’

  Grinning, Edward sat up to find Clio in her bath, splashing her feet in the water in time to the song. Steam rose up in curling wreaths around her, dampening her pinned-up hair and flushed cheeks. She was truly the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  ‘Thomas Morley would roll over in his grave, if he could hear what you do to his song,’ he said.

  Clio smiled at him over her shoulder, giving one more great splash that sprayed water over his bare chest. ‘I confess I am not the musician Thalia is. But everyone is a great singer in the bath. I’m glad you’re awake. You can hand me that soap over there.’

  Edward pushed himself to his feet, stretching luxuriously in the heated air. When had he ever felt so very—free?

  Never. And surely he never would again. But he would always have this time with Clio. Even if he had had to resort to kidnapping to gain it!

  ‘It is no use trying to tempt me with your body, Edward Radcliffe,’ she said teasingly. ‘I am taking my bath, and that’s that. I can’t be distracted. Now, soap please.’

  Edward laughed, and scooped up the ball of white soap from the table. It, too, smelled of lilies, summer-sweet, just like Clio. He walked slowly toward her, the soap held out like an offering, to see if she could indeed be tempted.

  Her eyes widened, but she shook her head. ‘Would you be so kind as to wash my back?’

  ‘With pleasure, madame. I am yours to command.’

  ‘Well, that’s a first,’ she said, leaning forward in the tub. ‘Why do I suspect you are mine to command only in things you already wish to do?’

  ‘You know me too well.’ Edward rubbed the soap between his hands, working it into a frothy, scented foam. He studied in fascination the elegant arc of her bare back, the curve of the nape of her neck, the damp curls that escaped their pins to cling to her skin. So beautiful, yet so vulnerable.

  ‘On the contrary,’ she murmured, shivering as his fingertips touched her spine, ‘I don’t really know you at all.’

  She knew him, deep-down knew him, better than anyone ever had. ‘What do you want to know that you don’t already?’ he said, tracing a soapy pattern over her skin.

  Clio leaned back into his touch. ‘Everything, of course. Everything you love, everything you hate. All that has ever happened to you.’

  ‘That’s a great deal to know.’

  ‘Of course. So, start at the beginning.’

  He laughed. ‘From the day I was born? I fear I don’t remember it well.’ He kissed the nape of her neck, breathing deeply of her lily perfume.

  ‘Then tell me what you do remember,’ she whispered.

  He ran the flat of his palm o
ver her shoulder, the curve of her arm, the slickness of her wet skin. He felt the pulse beating in her wrist, strong and alive. ‘I grew up much like you, I suspect.’

  ‘Not with a passel of sisters!’

  ‘I fear not. Only with an older brother. A perfect older brother.’

  ‘Ah, so you were like me. For no one could be a more perfect older sibling than Calliope.’

  ‘William was.’ Edward gently urged her forward, slipping into the tub behind her. It was a tight fit, but he wrapped his legs around her, holding her close, and she curved her body back to fit against his, her head on his shoulder. The lily-scented water lapped against them.

  It was easier for him to talk about his family, to voice their long-unspoken names if she couldn’t see him.

  ‘William was always good at his lessons, and he never, ever got into trouble,’ he said.

  ‘As you did?’

  ‘Oh, always. I never could resist getting into mischief. William, though, was my parents’ fine classical son. Their Hector, they called him. He followed in their scholarly foot-steps, did well at school, at university, at everything. He joined the Antiquities Society, found a perfect lady to become his fiancée.’ Edward paused. ‘He would have made a fine duke.’

  ‘But you, too, must have learned your classical lessons well!’ Clio exclaimed. ‘Everyone admires your great scholarship, even my father.’

  ‘Oh, I learned eventually. One could hardly avoid it, with tutors and my parents ramming Plato and Aristotle and Herodotus down my throat every day. Yet I did not care. Not until much later. Only then, when it was too late for William and my poor parents, did I see the true value, the wonder of it all. They knew only my wild youth.’

  Clio was quiet for a long moment. Then she leaned over the edge of the tub and caught up their goblets from the remains of their supper. She held them up, hers empty of wine, his still full. ‘Does this have anything to do with it? I noticed your glass was full at our dinner party, too.’

  Edward plucked the cup from her hand, studying the ruby-red liquid as if it held vast secrets in its depths. He placed it gently back on the floor, and leaned his head on the edge of the tub. ‘You asked me once why your brother-in-law hates me.’

  Clio thought this seemed as if it might turn into a rather serious discussion. She stood up from the water, reaching for one of the fluffy towels and wrapping it tightly around her torso, as if the thick cloth could be an armour to ward off words. To keep the truth away from their idyll, even as she knew she had to hear it.

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Cameron is so very amiable, I don’t understand his fury with you.’

  ‘Amiable, yes. He always was, even with me. We were friends of a sort, when we first met.’

  Clio sat down on the couch, still wrapped in her towel. Edward leaned his arms on the tub, watching her. His hair was damp, slicked away from his handsome features. ‘You were friends?’ she said, surprised.

  He smiled humourlessly. ‘You are startled, I see, and who could blame you. People less observant than you, my dear, have noticed the strained manner of our recent meetings. But when we first met at university, he was like no one I had ever encountered before. He had spent his life travelling, seeing places, meeting people all my other friends had thus far only read about. He was serious, serious about his studies and his family, yet also—kind. Always ready for a jest.’

  ‘And you were not? Serious and kind, that is.’ She couldn’t picture him jesting, either.

  ‘I was not. I was spoiled, always seeking the next pleasure, the next novelty. My friends were the same way, a useless, debauched lot whose lives did no one any good. Least of all themselves.’ Edward rose from the bath and reached for the other towel. His breeches were soaked through, his amulet gleaming on his wet, naked chest. The stone floor around the tub was covered with soapy puddles, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was far away from her, deep in his own past.

  ‘A friendship with Lord Westwood might have been a good thing for me then,’ he continued. ‘After all, he has come out a worthy husband for a Chase Muse. Yet I was too caught up in drinking and whoring, gambling away any money I had, or didn’t have. Showing my parents how little I cared for their scholarly ways, for what was important to them.’

  ‘Did you truly not care?’

  He laughed harshly. ‘Of course I cared. But I was tumbling downhill too fast to stop myself. I was drunk all the time, living in a haze, in danger of being sent down and disgracing my parents even further. That was when it happened.’

  Clio felt a cold, clammy dread creeping over her, yet like Edward she felt she could not stop anything. There had to be truth between them if they were to move forwards. Even if the truth was like daggers. ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was this woman. Isn’t there always? But she was girl really, she couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen.’ He sat down on a bench by the fireplace, not close to her, not looking at her. He stared only into the past, to a place where she could not go. ‘She worked as maid in a tavern where my useless friends and I liked to go. She was pretty and sweet-natured, and she seemed to like me a great deal. Heaven only knows why.’

  Clio swallowed hard, her throat dry. ‘You had an affair with her?’

  ‘An affair? I swived her in the alley behind the tavern, if that’s what you mean. Several times, if I remember correctly. My—relationships back then were always of that sort.’

  ‘Then what was special about that one girl?’

  ‘Your brother-in-law liked her. Not in the debauched way I did. I think he saw her true vulnerability, in a way I could not. He warned me to leave her alone, but I just laughed at him. Told him who knew the Greeks were really such priggish puritans, insulted his mother in a way I’m ashamed to remember. He was right in the end.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She came to me one night. I was drunk, as usual, and had just lost my entire quarterly allowance on the turn of a card. I was in a foul mood. And she said she was pregnant.’

  ‘With your child?’

  ‘Yes. I did not believe her. I disavowed that the brat could be mine, declared I was sure the father could be any one of a dozen men.’ His voice was low, expressionless, but tight with an emotion long suppressed. ‘She fled in tears. Two days later she was discovered hanged in her room. And it was Cameron who found her.’

  ‘Oh.’ Clio felt she had had the air punched out of her. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, closing her eyes against the rush of tears. That poor, poor girl.

  ‘Once you told me I could not possibly have been worse than any other young nobleman, gadding about in my misspent youth,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I was not. I’m sure my so-called friends got plenty of tavern wenches and house maids with child. But I have been haunted for years by that girl. I murdered her, and my own child, and I was too drunk and callous to care. Cameron broke my nose the day he found her body, and he should have done worse.’

  Clio shook her head. ‘What could he do that is worse than what you have done to yourself? It was a terrible thing, true, but you don’t drink now. You don’t debauch serving maids.’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Only young ladies of good family. After kidnapping them, of course.’

  ‘This young lady practically forced you to debauch her! As for kidnapping—I am still not happy about that. But I know you did it because you believed you had to, to protect me somehow. You work for the Antiquities Society; I have heard you are exceedingly generous to charities. You are trying to make amends. And your old friends are probably just as useless as ever.’

  ‘Better late than never, eh?’

  ‘Of course. None of us is a lost cause until we’re dead.’

  He laughed, no longer the harsh, humourless sound she so hated, but a real laugh. ‘Clio, who knew you were such an optimist?’

  ‘Well, I am not a lost cause, either. At least I hope I am not. We all have lessons to learn; yours was harsher than most. It made you see you had to
abandon your old ways. Turn your life around.’

  ‘Not just that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Clio wondered if he had yet more terrible secrets in his past, and she shivered. But she, too, had made a choice when she made love with Edward. She had made the choice to let him into her life, for good or ill.

  ‘You remember Lady Riverton’s game of Truth?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is my truth, Clio. After that girl died, I spiralled even further into trouble. More drink, gaming in ever-rougher establishments, even experiments with opium. I told myself it was because of the pain of my broken nose, but that was not so. I loathed myself; I wanted to destroy myself, end what I was doing. Not even my parents could stop me, though they tried.’

  ‘What did stop you?’ she asked softly.

  He came to sit beside her on the settee, reaching for her hand. His fingers entwined with hers. ‘A muse. For are they not figures of great inspiration?’

  ‘So I’ve heard,’ she whispered. She touched his bare arm with her other hand, tracing a sinuous line along his tense muscles. ‘What did this muse inspire in you?’

  ‘She inspired me to change, once and for all. To seek to alter my course before it was too late.’

  ‘An extraordinary muse indeed. Don’t they usually just inspire a sonnet or a play?’

  He smiled at her. ‘This was a more far-reaching muse. An ambitious one, you might say.’ He pressed a kiss to her temple, lingering there as if to savour her taste, her feel. ‘That game at Lady Riverton’s…’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Clio said, remembering his words that night. ‘You said you lost your one true love.’ She had been intrigued then by his hinted-at secret. Had even been jealous of that unknown woman.

  Could it have been that poor, lost tavern maid? Was that part of his torment? Or…

  ‘I did not lose her so much as she was never mine in the first place. Muses can’t truly belong to anyone at all, I am coming to realise.’