And she found that she hated that worried feeling, that cold pit in her stomach. It gnawed at her, making her feel so tense she feared she might jump out of her skin at any sudden noise. At dinner, it had taken all of her willpower just to sit in her chair and listen to her father talk. To look at Cory’s new sketches, and pretend all was well. All was the same as it had ever been.
Was this love, then? This deep craving, this hollow feeling when he was out of her sight? Was this what her father and mother had felt all those years, what Calliope and Cameron felt? If so, how did they ever survive?
How would she survive?
‘Oh, Edward,’ she whispered. ‘What are you doing to me?’
As she stared out at the street beyond, she noticed a shift of movement, a ripple in the shadows. She straightened, reaching for the nearby table where she had left her dagger. That tension inside her grew and expanded, until she feared she would snap and go shooting off into the night.
She tucked the blade close to her, hidden in the folds of her silk skirt as she peered closer to the shadows. That movement slowly coalesced into a tall, cloaked figure. A thief? Or one of the cursed spirits?
‘Clio,’ she heard a voice call. A voice as familiar now as her own.
‘Edward!’ she answered. Her fingers loosened on the dagger’s hilt. She had to smile despite her fear, her taut apprehension. Surely all would be well, if they faced the unseen foe together. ‘What are you sneaking about like that for?’
He stepped closer to the wall beneath her window, shaking back his hood. The lamplight fell across the tumble of his bright hair, making it shimmer. ‘I thought your father might not appreciate me calling after midnight.’
Clio laughed. ‘Perhaps not. He does seem to like you, but he also likes his rest. Stay there, I will come down.’
She caught up a black shawl, wrapping it over her head and shoulders before she dashed down the stairs. The house was dark and quiet, except for the soft sound of the piano from behind the closed drawing-room door. Thalia was still awake, too, pouring out her own hidden emotions in Beethoven.
Clio slipped out of the front door, running around to the side of the house where she had seen Edward. He was not there, though, the garden seemingly empty.
Had she just imagined him, then? She spun around, scanning the darkness. Suddenly, a strong arm caught her around the waist, dragging her close to the wall. Her startled cry was buried in a hot, hard kiss. Edward’s kiss.
She seized him by the shoulders, holding on to him tightly as she returned that kiss with a desperation of her own. They clung to each other as if it had been a year and not just a day they had been parted for.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said roughly.
‘I missed you, too,’ she whispered. ‘And I miss our cottage. My bed here looks so big and cold…’
He groaned. ‘Don’t remind me! I should have kept you my captive even longer.’
‘But you couldn’t, I know. While we basked in our grotto for weeks and months, the villains would certainly escape.’ She pressed one more kiss, a soft, alluring caress, to his lips. ‘Once the silver is found, feel free to kidnap me any time you like.’
‘I will be sure to remind you of that offer later,’ he said, laughing. ‘Did you speak to your sister, then?’
‘Yes, and, just as I suspected, she is up for any mischief. She and Marco will help us. I’ll send out invitations to our own little theatrical evening tomorrow. Everyone will surely want to be there, as Thalia tells me Lady Riverton is not entertaining so much now.’
‘Everyone?’
‘The Elliotts, the Manning-Smythes. All the English visitors. Rosa and her vast family. And Lady Riverton and her faithful Mr Frobisher, of course. We will make it the event of the Season. With a fabulous finale, of course.’
‘Not as fabulous as this, I hope,’ he muttered, kissing her again.
‘Hmm,’ Clio moaned, arching into his body. ‘Nothing could be as wonderful as this.’
‘Then let’s go back to the cottage,’ he said, taking her by the hand and tugging her teasingly toward the gate. ‘Right now. We’ll hide in bed until this is all over.’
She laughed, shaking her head. ‘I would run back to our cottage in a moment, Edward. But none of this can be over without us. We have to finish it, find the silver.’
‘Oh, my dear, how sadly, sensibly right you are.’
‘I’m always right.’ Except when it came to him, of course. There she had been terribly, wonderfully wrong. ‘Almost always.’
‘I shall have to remember that.’ He took her other hand, gazing at her with that steady stare that always seemed to see everything. ‘What about after?’
‘After we find the silver? I don’t…’
‘Will you come to the cottage then?’ His voice was suddenly serious, deeply so. Clio tensed, yet did not pull away. She couldn’t run, not any more. No matter how much she wanted to.
She tried to laugh. ‘Why, your Grace. Are you propositioning me? Shocking.’
‘I’m asking you to marry me.’
Clio didn’t know what she had expected him to say, but it was surely not that. She shouldn’t be surprised; all he had told her in the last few days, all she had discovered, made her know he was a changed man. A man with his own sort of honour. They had made love, she was supposed to be a well-born lady, therefore he thought he should marry her.
As she stared at him in the moonlight, at his beautiful, solemn, scarred face, she felt a deep yearning unlike any she had ever known before. A longing to be permanently joined with this man, her other half.
But—but she did not want him like this, she found. Obligated and honourable.
‘I would make a terrible duchess,’ she said, trying to be light despite the tightness of her throat.
‘You couldn’t possibly be a worse duchess than I am a duke,’ he answered. He held to her hands, not letting her run from him and the inescapable behemoth of the future. ‘Yet I have found that dukes are given great indulgence for their eccentricities.’
‘Like swimming naked?’
‘Like doing whatever we—you and I—like.’
‘Edward, I just—I can’t think about that now. My mind is too full of the silver, the play, everything.’
He nodded. ‘I understand, my dear. I’ll give you time. But after this is over, I will come back and ask you again. And I will keep asking, until we are both old and grey, if need be.’ He kissed her hands, and let her go to melt back into the night. ‘Think about it, Clio. That is all I ask.’
‘Yes. I will think about it.’ As if she could think about anything else now! She stood there for a long time after he left, leaning against the wall with her shawl drawn up against the wind. Yet she did not feel the chill, or even see the darkness that wrapped around her. She heard only his words, echoing over and over in her mind. Marry me.
Yet how could she? How could the magic of their time here, the ancient enchantment of Sicily, ever translate to England? To the reality of their lives there, especially Edward’s with his vast myriad of responsibilities.
She would surely end by disappointing him. And that she could not bear.
Clio shook her head, pressing her hands to her aching temples. ‘Don’t think of that now,’ she ordered herself sternly. ‘Think of your work here. That is all that matters right now.’
The rest of it—well, it would surely be waiting for her later. Unless Edward changed his mind.
‘Clio? Is that you talking to yourself out here?’ she heard Thalia say.
Clio quickly wiped at her damp eyes, pasting a smile on her lips before she turned. Thalia was leaning out of an open drawing-room window, still dressed in her pale blue muslin dinner gown, an Indian shawl tossed over her shoulders. Her gaze was curious, and very concerned.
‘Are you quite well, Clio?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ Clio answered. She sounded far too cheerful, even to her own ears. ‘I just needed some fresh air.’
Thalia didn’t look convinced. She climbed straight out of the window, tugging her skirts impatiently behind her, and hurried over to Clio’s side. She didn’t say anything, just leaned against the wall next to her. But Clio was suddenly glad of her presence, her silent sympathy.
‘You are up late, too,’ Clio said.
‘I couldn’t stop thinking about our scheme. Playing the piano helps me sort out my thoughts, work out the play in my head. I thought I heard voices out here.’
Clio smiled. ‘So, of course you had to investigate yourself. No time for summoning the footmen or anything like that.’
‘The servants have already retired! Why should I disturb them just because my sister takes it into her head to wander about the garden talking to herself?’
‘I suppose we are neither of us behaving as we ought.’
‘Do we ever?’
‘No. Especially since Calliope left.’ Clio paused. ‘You have been spending a great deal of time with the Count lately?’
Thalia shrugged, not quite meeting Clio’s gaze. ‘Not a great deal. We have met once or twice, and he kindly offered to help me with Antigone. You were gone, so he had to make do with the second-best Chase.’ She added in a soft, barely audible voice, ‘As usual.’
‘Thalia,’ Clio said warningly. ‘I’m not certain the Count is someone you ought to—’
‘Oh, Clio!’ Thalia waved away all warnings with a laugh. ‘I am not like Susan Darby, I won’t lose all signs of intelligence at the sight of a handsome man. I know what Marco di Fabrizzi is. He’s fun to flirt with, of course, and an excellent co-conspirator in our little scheme. But I won’t take him seriously. I probably won’t even see him again when we leave here.’
Clio had seen the way Marco looked at Thalia, and she was not so sure of that ‘never see him again’ business. But she knew when Thalia was set against discussing something, and her sister had that mulish look in her eyes now. So, Clio merely nodded.
‘I am more worried about you and the Duke of Averton,’ Thalia said.
‘The Duke? Whatever do you mean?’ Clio said. But she was not quite as good an actress as Thalia, and she found her bright, innocent tone fooled no one.
‘I mean he is working on finding this lost silver, too, is he not? You must have met him recently, become friends even, if he has taken to confiding in you. Asking for your help.’
Clio tugged her shawl closer around her. ‘He knows how much the Chases care about antiquities.’
‘Hmm, yes. He could hardly miss that little fact, I think. But you two have always quarrelled in the past! And he is so—so strange.’
Clio could hardly argue with that. Edward was strange. He was like no one else she had ever known. ‘Sometimes we have to put aside past differences for the good of the future,’ she said weakly.
‘That is very good, Clio. You should write it down,’ Thalia said. ‘Speaking of writing, I must go begin work on our new play. It will be ready to start rehearsal day after tomorrow, I promise.’
‘It will be suitably Gothic, I hope.’
‘Of course. Thunder, lightning, quite horrid. Our friend Lotty would love it.’ Thalia turned back to her window, eschewing doors. Before she climbed back inside, she glanced back over her shoulder and said, ‘Don’t stay out talking to yourself all night. It’s turning cold.’
‘I won’t.’ As Clio gazed up at the hazy stars, she reflected that even when she felt alone, she never truly was. Someone, somewhere, was always watching. Knowing.
Once, that feeling would have frightened her, made her angry. Now—well, now it was strangely comforting. She was no longer alone in her work, but then neither was she alone in the danger of it. There was Edward, and Thalia and Marco. And that knowledge made her shiver more than any cold night wind ever could.
Edward lingered in the shadows just beyond Clio’s gates, watching as she talked to her sister. Making certain she went safely back inside.
For was that not what he must do now? Make sure Clio was always safe. That she came to no harm, both here in Sicily and…
And always.
When he had come to Santa Lucia at the request of the Antiquities Society, come to find the elusive altar silver, that was his one goal. All he could see, think about. The presence of Clio Chase was a distraction, a danger. But then, slowly but certainly, it became something else entirely. Something deeper, richer—stranger. She became a partner in his task.
A partner in his life. She said she would make a terrible duchess. But she was wrong.
He watched Clio follow her sister into the house, the windows and doors closed firmly behind them and the lights flickering out one by one. Only then did he turn towards his own house, towards the work that waited for him.
When he had kidnapped Clio, he had wanted only to keep her out of the way, safe, until everything here was finished. He should have known better, of course. Clio was like no other woman he had ever met. Her fierce intelligence, her steadfast independence—the determination that led to the Lily Thief—would always be there. She could not stay quietly at home when action was needed over a cause she believed in, no more than he could. And that was why he had come to love her so very much.
Edward stopped just outside his house, suddenly astonished. Not that he loved Clio, but that it had taken him so long, so many turns, to admit it. He loved her! Loved everything about her, even the stubbornness that drove him to madness. She was his other half. His helpmeet. His duchess, whether she believed it or not.
There was just nothing else for it. She would have to marry him, even if she continued to protest. Honour demanded it, after what had happened between them in the cottage. And love…
Love demanded it, too. She would surely come to see that, just as he had.
They would be wed, the moment danger was past. And he would keep her safe.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Clio peered out from behind a screen, hastily erected at the back of the amphitheatre stage to provide effects for their play. The theatricals hadn’t begun yet; the audience was just arriving, trickling to their places on cushions scattered about on the stone benches. The sun was setting over the valley, illuminating their fine clothes, the silken gowns of the English ladies, Rosa and her Santa Lucia friends in their best black dresses. They all seemed to be talking and laughing as if it was a normal evening out. No one suspected anything.
‘Is everyone here?’ Thalia asked.
Clio glanced back, and smiled at her sister. Thalia wore her costume, a fanciful creation of cheesecloth and white muslin. The ragged hem and the ends of the draped sleeves were tinted pale silver, a colour that would catch the flickering lamplight and glow with an otherworldly illumination. She did not yet wear her headdress, and her golden hair fell loose over her shoulders.
Thalia didn’t seem nervous at all, Clio thought. In fact, she seemed far calmer than usual, her blue eyes serene as she mouthed her lines one last time.
Clio, on the other hand, felt all alight with nerves. The anticipation, the calm before the theatrical storm, vibrated all through her. They had had to prepare everything so hastily, she wasn’t sure any of it would work. What would become of the silver, of all of them, then?
And what, oh, what, would she say to Edward’s proposal? That was the greatest uncertainty of all.
She pressed her hand tight to her fluttering, aching stomach. ‘No, not everyone is here yet,’ she answered Thalia. ‘Mr Frobisher and Lady Riverton are nowhere to be seen.’
She peered again past the screen, and saw that Giacomo was not yet there, either. There were a few men from the village she had heard might be involved in a bit of recreational pottery hunting. But Rosa sat with just Paolo, a couple of their daughters and some grandchildren, and a few of her friends. The children scampered up and down the tiered stone steps, scandalising the English guests with their playful shouts. Sir Walter sat with Cory and Lady Rushworth in the front row, where Clio could keep an eye on them.
‘Never mind. We still ha
ve lots of time before curtain. I’m sure they’ll arrive at any moment,’ Thalia said. ‘Come and help me finish getting ready?’
‘Of course.’
Thalia had set up a small mirror in the corner, with a table scattered with an array of brushes, hairpins and theatrical maquillage. Clio had no idea where Thalia had procured those strange little pots and bottles. Probably she had broken in backstage at Drury Lane one night and insisted some hapless actress sell them to her.
‘Here,’ Thalia said, handing Clio a pot of what appeared to be chalk and a little brush. ‘Sweep this over my forehead and cheeks, like so. It will give me a wonderful pallor. I’ll look quite dead.’
Clio shuddered, spilling some of the white stuff on the table. ‘Don’t say such things, Thalia.’
‘Clio! Never say you have become superstitious, too.’
‘No sense in taking chances.’
‘Well, let’s hope your tombaroli are of the same opinion. No one wants to anger the spirits.’ Thalia turned her face up to the fading light, holding still as Clio dusted a thick wash over her skin. The roses-and-cream complexion quickly turned to ashes.
‘What is this stuff, anyway?’ Clio asked. ‘It’s quite good.’
‘Isn’t it? I heard Mrs Thompson uses it at Covent Garden whenever she plays a spectre. I have some lip salve, too.’ Thalia reached for a tiny bottle, rubbing a bit of grey over her lips. ‘Do I look frightening?’
‘Terribly,’ Clio said truthfully. She longed to scrub away every bit of the grey and white from her sister’s pretty face, to make her alive again, but Thalia spun away from her. She stood before the mirror, fitting on her headdress of more cheesecloth and white feathers.
‘Don’t worry, Clio,’ she said. ‘Everything will go perfectly. You won’t be sorry you asked for my help.’
‘Of course I won’t. If anyone could scare the truth out of Lady Riverton and her thieves, it’s you. Just promise me you’ll be careful.’
‘Certainly she will be careful,’ Marco interrupted. ‘She will be with me, won’t she?’
Clio turned to find him emerging from his own ‘dressing room’ behind yet more screens. He wore the costume of a peasant shepherd, rough russet-coloured wool breeches and waistcoat, a cap on his raven hair. He carried the ‘cursed object’ his character stole from a tomb, a fake Etruscan vase painted with the large letters ‘Belonging To The Gods’. Just like the inscription on the silver.
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