To Kiss a Count

by Amanda McCabe

  ‘I don’t know what his feelings for Clio might have been then,’ Calliope said. ‘She is married now, and it seems he has transferred his affections to Lady Riverton. I wouldn’t trust appearances, though. Not with a man like that.’

  ‘A man who is a gypsy, a count, and a thief, all in one?’ Thalia said with a laugh. ‘Not to mention a ladies’ man. Please, Cal, do not worry about me. I won’t fall prey to his charms, great though they are. I haven’t the time or energy for deciphering such vast complexities as the Count di Fabrizzi.’

  ‘You are the most “energetic” person I know, Thalia,’ Calliope said. ‘And I am sure you could decipher anything you set your mind to. But I would never want to see you hurt by a man who was so entirely unworthy.’

  Thalia laughed again, as if she hadn’t a care in the world about ‘unworthy’ men. Yet she turned her face away so Cal could not see her eyes. ‘Not when there are so many worthy men beating down my door?’

  ‘You have far more suitors than any other young lady I know! Mr Bramsby, Lord Egreton, young Viscount Moreby—I know they have all made an offer, and they seem quite respectable. Not to mention utterly infatuated.’

  Thalia thought of those men, of the avid way they looked at her as they drove in the park, the way they lined up to dance with her at balls. The flowers they sent, the compliments they paid. The way they never even saw past her façade, her prettiness, her connections, into the real her.

  For a few moments in Santa Lucia, she had thought someone did see. Saw, and understood, and answered. But that was foolish.

  ‘They are respectable,’ she answered, pouring more tea. ‘And nice enough. I doubt any infatuation would last more than a few days, though, once they saw what I am really like.’

  Calliope sighed. ‘It is true that we Chase girls are not quite as other ladies. We were raised to actually use our brains, to speak our minds! But there are men who quite like that, I think.’

  Thalia gave her a teasing smile. ‘Men like Cameron?’

  Calliope laughed. ‘I have never held back from expressing my thoughts to him! We have very—lively conversations. And quarrels, from time to time.’

  ‘Cameron is a very fine man, to be sure. But there aren’t many like to him to be found in England.’

  ‘Perhaps that is because his mother was Greek. It is true that my husband is quite unique, but I am sure we can find someone just as special for you.’

  Thalia doubted that. Her sisters were very fortunate in their marriages. Lightning didn’t strike three times.

  ‘I am content as I am,’ Thalia said. ‘I will write my plays, and teach Psyche her music when she is older. I will be the perfect maiden aunt!’

  Calliope laughed, but Thalia could see she looked tired again. ‘I cannot be selfish enough to keep you with me, though I would dearly love it. Psyche is so very—vivid now, I cannot imagine what will happen when she is walking and talking.’

  ‘Or, heaven forefend, when she is old enough to have suitors of her own! She is a true Chase.’ Thalia went to tuck a blanket around Calliope’s legs. ‘I will leave you now, Cal dear, so you can rest. Please, don’t worry about me. I am entirely well and happy.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Thalia said firmly.

  ‘Very well. I will pretend I believe you. Just do one thing for me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Write to Clio and ask her about the Count. She will know more of him than I, and she can tell you things I have promised not to speak of.’

  Promised not to speak of? Thalia positively ached with curiosity. Ordinarily she would bombard Calliope with questions, but her sister’s pale face stopped her. Calliope was weary, and she would never tell her secrets anyway. She had her share of the Chase stubbornness.

  ‘Yes, I will write to Clio,’ Thalia said. She went to the pianoforte, running her fingertips over the cool ivory keys. This was no time for the storms of her beloved Beethoven, the one she always turned to when her thoughts were in turmoil. Instead, she played for Calliope a folksong she had learned in Italy, a light, trilling piece to raise the spirits.

  It raised hers, too, drawing her into the other world music always created for her. A place where nothing mattered but sound and creation, emotion and freedom. But as she moved into another song, she happened to glance up at the window.

  Passing along the curve of the Crescent were Marco and Lady Riverton with her little dog, arm in arm and laughing.

  Thalia’s fingers fumbled, clashing on a discordant note. She looked hastily to see if Calliope had noticed, but her sister was asleep. And when Thalia turned back to the window, Marco was gone.

  Chapter Six

  The assembly rooms were lit up like a Chinese lantern, Thalia saw as their carriage rolled to a halt. They could not get too close, as the crowds waiting to go in were so thick, but even from that distance she saw the golden glow spilling from the windows, the ribbons of light curling out of the open doors, around the pillars of the Doric-style portico, and over the ladies’ pastel gowns and fine jewels.

  Thalia thought she could even hear the faint strains of music, and it made her feet tap in their pink kid slippers.

  ‘Such a great crush,’ Calliope murmured, peering past Thalia’s shoulder. ‘We shall never get inside until midnight.’

  ‘Perhaps we should leave, then,’ her husband suggested. ‘Come back on a less crowded evening.’

  Calliope laughed. ‘Are there any less crowded evenings? I doubt it. We shall just have to press forwards.’

  ‘I don’t want you to tire yourself,’ Cameron protested.

  ‘I had a nap this afternoon, just like Psyche,’ Calliope said. ‘Now I want some company! I can’t be shut up like an invalid old lady, and poor Thalia should not be shut up with me.’

  Thalia gave her a smile. ‘It’s true that I would love a dance. But not if you feel unwell, Cal. Cameron is right, we can come back—’

  Calliope suddenly cracked her fan against the door. ‘I have told you two a hundred times to stop fussing over me! We will all dance tonight, and that is that.’

  With that outburst, she reached for the handle and swung the door open, climbing down before anyone could stop her.

  ‘Hurry up, then,’ she called from the pavement, smoothing her white-and-silver silk gown and diamond necklace. ‘Or we shall miss all the fine music.’

  Thalia and Cameron exchanged a resigned glance. ‘Well, she told us what is what,’ he said.

  ‘Indeed,’ Thalia answered. ‘She is not an invalid.’

  Cameron followed his wife, reaching back to help Thalia alight in a more conventional manner before they made their way to the front doors. Thalia held on to her brother-in-law’s left arm as Calliope took his right. She gazed around at the swirl of faces.

  Not that she was looking for Marco, of course not. She was merely interested in who might be newly arrived in Bath, that was all.

  She even nearly had herself convinced of that as they made their way past the marble columns of the central vestibule. Until she glimpsed the back of a tall, dark-haired man, and her breath caught on a gasp.

  But then he turned around, and she saw he was not Marco at all.

  ‘Are you quite well, Thalia?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘Hmm?’ Pushing down those annoying pangs of disappointment, Thalia gave him a quick smile. ‘Yes, of course. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Your cheeks went pink all of a sudden.’

  ‘It’s probably the crowd,’ Calliope said, elbowing aside two gawking young dandies blocking the way. ‘Everyone thinks they can just stand right here, preventing anyone from getting into the ballroom!’

  Yet Cameron was quite tall, and he soon had them at the crossroads where they could go left to the ballroom, right to the tearoom, or straight ahead into the octagon and card room.

  ‘Could you possibly procure us some punch from the tearoom, my love?’ Calliope said. ‘Thalia and I will find her a suitable dance partner in the bal
lroom.’

  Cameron frowned doubtfully, causing Calliope to laugh. ‘Go on, now,’ she said, giving him a playful little shove. ‘I promise I will sit down at the first opportunity.’

  She took Thalia’s arm and drew her into the ballroom. It was just as crowded in there, but the high ceilings and pale-green walls gave an airy feeling. White pillars soared up past a balcony where the musicians played, to an array of sparkling crystal chandeliers high overhead.

  Dancers swirled and twirled along the centre of the parquet floor, a kaleidoscope of silks, muslins and superfine, of shining pearls and shimmering diamonds that made Thalia think of the Murano glass she had seen in Venice.

  And thinking of Venice made her think of Marco—again.

  ‘Blast it all,’ she muttered, wishing she could dash her fan against something, as Calliope had. Why, why, had he come into her life again? Reminding her of things she could never have.

  Fortunately, Calliope was too preoccupied to hear Thalia’s little outburst. ‘Ah, here is a chair,’ she exclaimed, drawing Thalia with her as she claimed the last open seat along the wall just ahead of one of those dandies.

  ‘Now I have kept my promise to Cameron to sit down,’ Calliope said, snapping open that fan. ‘Now I must keep mine to you, Thalia dear.’

  Thalia laughed. ‘I don’t recall any promises.’

  ‘The one where I vowed to find you a dancing partner. Do you see anyone who strikes your fancy?’

  Thalia scanned the dancers, the people chattering on the side of the room, the strollers. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘There must be someone! Look closer. I refuse to allow you to stay by me all evening, not when I know how you love to dance.’

  It was true, Thalia did love to dance. Even now her feet itched to skip and spin in time to the music. She had not had a dance since…

  Since the masquerade ball in Santa Lucia. When she and Marco had danced tarantellas and waltzes beneath Demeter’s harvest moon. The Bath ballroom before her faded, shifting into a warm Sicilian night, a blur of masks and dreams.

  She remembered how it had felt when Marco had held her in his arms and she had leaned into his shoulder. How warm and strong his lean body had been through the thin cloth of his shirt, how he had smelled of citrus and ginger. She had just wanted to stay there for ever, wrapped up in him, inhaling that essence of him into herself until they were as one.

  In that moment, she had forgotten so much. Forgotten who she was, who he was. Forgotten he loved her sister, that he was involved in mysterious schemes she could have no part of. Being in his arms felt right. It felt like what she had been waiting for.

  Someone bumped into her, jolting her out of her Italian dreams and back into Bath. Into the cold reality of her dull, English-lady, useless life. Sicily, and the new sense of energised purpose she had once felt there—it was gone. Dancing in Marco’s arms was gone.

  ‘No, Cal,’ she said. ‘I don’t see anyone I would want to dance with.’

  Calliope gazed up at her intently, searching for something behind this refusal. Thalia gave her a bright smile. She was getting good at that lately, yet it did not seem to fool her sister at all.

  ‘It is early yet,’ Calliope said, waving her fan until her black hair stirred. ‘Perhaps more of the gentlemen can be coaxed from the card room later.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Thalia said. But she was equally sure there was no one in there she wanted to dance with, either.

  Cameron soon found them, giving his wife her punch, and Thalia excused herself. She claimed she sought the ladies’ withdrawing room, but in truth she just wanted a moment alone. A moment to suppress those memories again.

  In Santa Lucia, for those few days when Clio had asked for help, Thalia had felt useful. Needed. Her talents for the theatre could be used to bring about justice for a thief, to retrieve a treasure of Italian history! No one had ever needed her help before, or found her useful. She was always just the little sister, to be protected and petted. She wanted to help, wanted a mission.

  Those days, working with Clio, Averton and Marco, had filled her with energy, a purpose, a passion she had never known before. She was part of a common cause, and that felt wonderful.

  The surprised admiration in Marco’s eyes wasn’t bad, either.

  Coming back to England, to her old role of cosseted, useless beauty, had frozen all of that. It was just a crystalline memory now.

  As was the Marco she had known then. She could hardly think what to make of this new Marco, Lady Riverton’s flirtatious companion.

  Thalia found her way down a flight of stairs behind a cluster of giggling young ladies. As they disappeared through a doorway, she stayed back, halted before a looking glass on the wall.

  For an instant, she thought she faced a stranger. Then she realised that the lady standing there in pale pink muslin, blonde curls bound with a pearl diadem, was still her. Memories of Italy had not changed her at all. Outwardly, anyway. She still looked like a blasted porcelain shepherdess.

  She stepped close to the glass, reaching up to tuck an errant lock back into her coiffure. Her gloved fingertips trailed over her cheekbone, just beneath one blue eye. If she looked more like Clio, tall, auburn-haired, sun-browned as an Amazon warrior, and not so much as if she belonged in a swing in a Versailles garden, would people take her seriously?

  Would Marco love her then, as he loved Clio? Or would she just be a distraction, an affair, like Lady Riverton?

  ‘Never say you have found something to displease you there,’ a softly accented voice said behind her. ‘For truly your face is nothing less than perfection.’

  Thalia’s heart suddenly pounded in her breast at the sound of that voice. Her gaze shifted in the glass, finding Marco’s reflection just over her shoulder. He watched her, and for once he did not smile, there was no teasing gleam in his eyes. He seemed a part of the shadows.

  Her hand fell to her side. ‘One could say the same about you. All the ladies are just as in love with you here in Bath as they were in Sicily.’

  A whisper of a smile just touched the corner of his lips. ‘All of them, Thalia cara?’

  ‘Most of them.’ She turned away from the mirror, facing him. Perhaps that was a mistake, though. Looking into his eyes reminded her too much of that masked ball, of dancing under the dusty-black Sicilian sky. ‘And yet you seem to have eyes now for only one.’

  Marco gave a low, deep chuckle, that maddening dimple flashing in his cheek. ‘Indeed I do.’ He took a step towards her, then another and another, until he leaned his palm on the wall just beyond her head, his touch brushing her hair. He leaned in close, so close she could see the shadow of dark whiskers along his sculpted jaw, the flecks of gold in his brown eyes.

  That light citrus-ginger smell, blended with clean starch and the dark essence of him, reached out to her like a beckoning caress. Tempting her to lean into him, to curl her hands into the soft linen of his shirt and hold him against her. When he gazed at her like that, so solemn and intent, she forgot her name, where she was, everything. Everything but him and the way he made her feel like the only woman in all the world.

  She even reached up to graze her fingertips along the satin lapel of his coat, but that last faint thought stopped her touch. He made every female feel like the only one. He caught them within the snare of his beautiful eyes, and they became giggling, silly creatures, just like Lady Riverton.

  Feeling that sudden cold tinge of disappointment, of hurt, Thalia turned her head to the side so she could no longer see him. Her hand fell to her skirt. She did not want to be like all the others! She didn’t want to lose herself in some silly infatuation. To go helplessly following Marco around Bath with all his other fawning acolytes. She wanted purpose in her life, and that was not it!

  Yet he still stood there, his arm inches away from her cheek, gazing down at her as if he could discern all her secrets.

  ‘What would Lady Riverton say if she could see you here with me?’ Thalia murmured, peering at him f
rom beneath her lashes.

  Marco frowned. ‘Lady Riverton?’

  ‘Yes. Are you not here in Bath as her devoted swain? I suppose she was in need of a replacement for poor Mr Frobisher, after they parted so precipitously in Santa Lucia! Though I must say you are far more handsome than he ever was.’

  And surely he was in need of a replacement for Clio, for his hopeless feelings for her. But Thalia found she could not say that aloud. Once, for a few blissful days in Sicily, she had felt free of all constraints. Free to say and express whatever she liked. Here, everything was different.

  He was different, too. No matter how close he was physically, there was a vast gulf between them.

  Marco’s fingers curled into a fist against the wall. ‘Lady Riverton and I are merely, how you say—friends,’ he said tightly.

  ‘Friends as you and I were?’ Thalia said. ‘Or like you and Clio?’

  ‘No one can ever be quite like the Chases, I think. Lady Riverton merely offered to be my tour guide here in Bath, to show me the sites. How could I say no, after my old friendship with her late husband?’

  A sudden flare of angry temper made Thalia grow hot again. ‘How can you be so casual, Marco?’ she muttered. ‘After what happened in Santa Lucia? She is not—’

  The door to the ladies’ withdrawing room suddenly opened, a crowd of laughing females emerging in a cloud of pale muslins and flowery perfumes. They saw Marco, and commenced to giggling behind their fans.

  Thalia feared she knew well how they felt. She slid deeper into the shadows, certain they could not see her there. They would take no notice even if they did. Every iota of attention was on Marco.

  He straightened away from the wall, giving them a polite bow and smile. The giggles and fan flutterings increased exponentially, and the ladies hurried up the stairs.

  ‘Thalia,’ Marco muttered, spinning back to her when they were again alone. The dimpled smile was gone, vanished into a strange, dark urgency. ‘I can see we must talk.’