Loe raamatut: «To Deceive a Duke»
‘Clio!’ he growled, his icy calm cracking at last. He dropped the reins, his hands curling into fists.
And Clio felt a stirring of some strange satisfaction.
‘You are the most obstinate woman I have ever seen,’ he muttered. ‘Why can you not just listen to me for once in your life?’
‘Just listen to you? Quietly do what you want, just as everyone does with the exalted Duke? Well, I’m sorry, Your Grace, but I am too busy to stand here arguing with you any longer.’ She strode past him, not sure where she was going, only knowing that she had to get away. Had to escape from those crackling bonds before she exploded!
She gave Averton a wide berth, yet not quite wide enough. Before she had even seen him move, he caught her by the wrists, pulling her close to him. Startled, she dropped her dagger. It landed mere inches from his booted foot, yet he did not glance at it at all. He only watched her.
Amanda McCabe wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen—a vast epic, starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class. She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA® Award, the Romantic Times BOOKreviews Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Holt Medallion. She lives in Oklahoma, with a menagerie of two cats, a pug and a bossy miniature poodle, and loves dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs, and watching the Food Network—even though she doesn’t cook. Visit her at http://ammandamccabe. tripod.com and http://www.riskyregencies.blogspot.com
A recent novel by the same author:
TO CATCH A ROGUE*
*Linked to TO DECEIVE A DUKE
TO DECEIVE A DUKE
Amanda McCabe
MILLS & BOON
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Author Note
When I was a child, my parents had a photo-filled book about ‘Ancient Places’. I loved that book, and it made me fascinated with archaeology! I even tore up freshly planted grass in the garden, looking for Viking treasure. It all seemed so adventurous and romantic.
The three Chase sisters share my fascination, and they are lucky enough to exist in the Regency period where interest in the ancient world is strong. They can spend their time studying artefacts, digging on archaeological sites—and finding love with gorgeous and dashing men!
When I first met Clio and her Duke, in TO CATCH A ROGUE, I didn’t see how they could overcome their many differences. The fact that Clio knocked him down with a marble statue seemed the least of their troubles! Yet they obviously belonged together; they shared a very powerful attraction, an unusual way of looking at the world. But would that be enough? I had a wonderful time ‘visiting’ Sicily with them, and finding the answer to that question. I hope you enjoy their tale, too!
Prologue
Queen of fragrant Eleusis,
Giver of earth’s good gifts,
Give me your grace, O Demeter.
You, too, Persephone, fairest,
Maiden of all lovely, I offer
Song for your favor.
Clio Chase glanced back over her shoulder as she tiptoed along the narrow corridor of Acropolis House, the labyrinthine London home of the Duke of Averton. No one followed her. Probably they did not even notice her absence from the ballroom, not in such a crush as the Duke’s Grecian masked ball.
Perfect.
It was silent here, unlike the roar of music and shallow conversation. So quiet it was almost like a cave, lit only by a few lamps built to resemble flickering torches. The shifting light touched the dark panelled walls, the low, carved ceiling and the gilt-framed paintings, making them glitter and waver as if alive.
She paused to slip off her heeled green satin shoes, hurrying on stocking feet to the end of the corridor where there was a small, winding staircase, a miniature of the grand one soaring up from the foyer. She held up the heavy green-and-gold silk skirts of her Medusa costume as she hurried up the steps. The Duke was being very cagey about the statue’s whereabouts tonight. But his servants were not all so secretive. Clio had been able to persuade a footman to tell her where Artemis, the Alabaster Goddess, waited.
At the top of the stairs ran a gallery, almost the entire length of the front of the house. Its bank of windows, uncovered, looked out at the front garden and the street beyond, the open gates that still admitted latecomers to the ball.
The gallery was dotted with more lamps, most of them unlit. No doubt waiting for the ‘grand reveal’ of the statue after supper, when they would spring to life as if by magic. Right now the light was dim, falling only in shimmering, narrow bars on some of the treasures displayed there, leaving others in darkness.
Clio found herself holding her breath as she crept along the gallery, peering right and left at all the wonders jumbled together. Her father and his friends were all great collectors and loved to show off their prizes, so she had grown up surrounded by beautiful antiquities. But this—this was something else entirely. A cabinet of curiosities such as she had never seen before.
The gallery almost resembled a warehouse, it was so thick with objects. Ancient stone kouros, stiff and precise, their empty eyes staring back at her. Bronze warriors, marble gods; cases full of Etruscan gold jewellery, lapis scarabs, jewelled perfume bottles. Steles propped against the walls. Shelves of vases, kraters and amphorae. All jumbled together, just to serve one man’s vanity, his lust for collecting.
Clio frowned as she thought of Averton. So handsome that half the women in town were in love with him—but so mysterious. That strange light in his green eyes when he looked at her…
She shook her head, the satin snakes of her headdress trembling. She couldn’t think about him now. She had a task to do.
At the end of the gallery, alone in a pool of candlelight, was an object covered in a sheet of black satin. Only a bit of the separate coral-coloured marble base was visible. Clio approached it carefully, half-expecting some sort of trap, some alarm. All was silent, except for the whining hum of the wind past the windows. She reached out and carefully lifted the sheet, peering beneath.
‘Oh.’ She sighed. It was really her. The Alabaster Goddess. Artemis in all her solitary glory.
The statue was not large. It was easily dwarfed by many of the more elaborate creations in the gallery. But she was so perfectly beautiful, so graceful and elegant, that Clio could understand why she had become such a sensation. Why ladies wanted ‘Artemis’ coiffures and ‘Artemis’ sandals.
Why the Duke hid her away.
Carved of an alabaster so white it seemed to glisten, almost silver, like a first snowfall, she stood poised with her bow raised, a lost arrow set to fly. Her pleated tunic flowed over the curves of her slender body as if caught in a breeze, ending at mid-thigh to reveal strong legs, tensed to run. Her sandals, those ribbon-laced shoes every lady copied this Season, still bore bits of gold leaf, as did the bandeau that held back her curled hair. A crescent moon was attached to the band, proclaiming her to be truly the Goddess of the Moon. Her gaze was focused intently on her prey; she cared nothing for mortal adulation.
Clio stared up at her, enthralled, as she imagined the Delian temple where this goddess once resided, where she once received her worship from true acolytes. Not just ton ladies and their ‘Artemis’ shoes.
‘How beautiful you are,’ she whispered. ‘And how sad.’
Much like the Duke himself.
She reached out to gently touch Artemis’s foot in a gesture of silent sympathy. As she did, she noticed that the goddess stood on a wooden base, a thick block with a thin crack running along its centre. She leaned closer, trying to see if that crack was a fault or deliberate. It seemed such a strange perch for a beautiful goddess.
‘Ah, Miss Chase. Clio. I see you have discovered the whereabouts of my treasure,’ a voice said quietly.
Clio ducked away from Artemis, spinning around to find the Duke himself standing halfway along the gallery. Watching her intently.
Even in the dim light, his eyes gleamed like the snakes in her headdress. He smiled at her gently, deceptively, shrugging the leopard pelt of his Dionysus costume back from his shoulders. He moved closer, light and silent, as if he was a leopard himself.
‘She is beautiful, is she not?’ he said, still so quiet. ‘I knew you would be drawn to her, as I was. She is quite—irresistible, in her mystery and solitude.’
Clio edged back against the goddess. She had indeed found Artemis irresistible. So much so that she had let her guard down, and that was not like her. As the Duke came closer, she reached behind her, her fingers just touching Artemis’s cold sandal. She slid her touch down, finding that crack in the wooden base. She curled her hand around it, as if Artemis could protect her from Averton, from the dark confusion she always felt when he was near.
Just as it was now. He drew ever closer, slow but inescapable, like a leopard in the jungle. He watched her carefully, as if he expected her to bolt like a frightened gazelle. As if he could see all the secrets of her heart.
Clio stiffened her shoulders, tightening her fingers around the base. Suddenly, that silence she had craved in the crowded ballroom seemed oppressive. All the jumbled treasures of the room loomed higher, narrowing on just Artemis and her white glow.
It was like this whenever they met, she and Averton. He impeded her work as the Lily Thief, her mission. Yet they were bound together by invisible, unbreakable cords. They could not stay away from each other.
She would not give him the satisfaction of running now. Not yet.
He finally reached her side, and Clio held her breath. He touched the hem of Artemis’s tunic, his jewelled fingers just inches from Clio’s green silk sleeve. She could feel the warmth of his skin, the bright light of his gaze on her.
That tension between them grew, stretched taut until Clio thought she would scream with it.
‘I cannot let you take her, Clio,’ he said. So gentle. So implacable.
Clio tried to laugh. ‘Oh? Do you think I could just tuck her under my skirt and spirit her out of here? Past all your guards?’
His gaze flickered almost imperceptibly over her green silk skirts. ‘I would not be surprised at anything you did.’
‘I would like to give her a finer home than this,’ Clio said. ‘But I am not such a fool as to try such a thing.’
‘Not tonight, anyway.’
‘As you say.’
His touch slid from Artemis’s stone tunic to Clio’s draped sleeve. Their skin did not even brush, but Clio felt the spark of his caress none the less. She swayed towards him as if spellbound. The crowded ball, the vast city outside—it all vanished. There was only him. Them, together.
And that scared her as nothing else ever had.
‘I know what you’re up to, Clio Chase,’ he murmured, deep and seductive as a lover. ‘And I cannot let you continue. For your own sake.’
Clio reared back from his sorcerer’s caress, the lure of his voice. ‘My sake? Oh, no, your Grace. Everything you do is surely for yourself alone.’
His hand tightened on her arm, not letting her go. ‘There are things you do not know.’
‘About you?’
‘Me—and what is happening here. With the Alabaster Goddess.’
‘I fear I know more about you than I wish to!’ Clio cried. ‘About your greed, your—’
‘Clio!’ He gave her a little shake, pulling her closer to him. So close there was not even a whisper between them.
He played the indolent, careless duke so well, but Clio could feel the iron strength of him next to her. The shift of his muscles. She wanted closer, ever closer.
And that frightened her even more.
‘Why do you never listen to me?’ he growled, his eyes like emerald embers burning into her.
‘Because you never talk to me,’ she whispered. ‘Not really.’
‘How can I talk to someone who so mistrusts me?’ His touch convulsed on her arms, crushing the silk. ‘Oh, Clio. What are you doing to me?’
His lips touched hers, a kiss that was utterly irresistible, like a summer thunderstorm. She tasted her own anger, her own frustration in that kiss, the desperate need of an impossible attraction.
Suddenly, the kiss, the nearness of him, her own heightened emotions—it was all too much. Something snapped inside her, and she had to escape. She pushed the Alabaster Goddess towards him, intending only to put a barrier between them. To remind them who, what, they really were.
Instead, Artemis’s marble elbow connected sharply with his head. Both he and the statue crashed to the floor in a tangle of marble, leopard skin and drops of blood.
Clio gasped to see the red gash on his brow, his closed eyes. ‘Edward!’ she cried, dropping to her knees beside him.
She reached for his wrist, feeling the pulse beating there with a surge of absurd relief. She had not killed him.
Not yet.
‘Stay here,’ she whispered. ‘I must fetch help!’
With that, she dashed away, past all the antiquities, the shadows, not sure what she ran toward—or away from.
She did not even notice the scrap of green silk caught in his hand…
Chapter One
Enna Province, Sicily—six months later
‘“Thou grave, my bridal chamber! Dwelling-place hollowed in earth, the everlasting prison whither I bend my steps, to join the band of kindred, whose more numerous host already Persephone hath counted with the dead…”’
Clio Chase turned her spyglass toward the ruined amphitheatre, where her sister Thalia rehearsed the lines of Antigone. The crumbling stage was far from Clio’s perch atop a rocky hill, yet she could glimpse Thalia’s golden hair glinting in the morning sunlight, could hear the despairing words of Sophocles’ princess as she was led to her death.
That eternal struggle of life and death, beauty and fate, seemed to belong to this bright day, this land. Ancient Sicily, where so many conquerors had overrun the rocky hills and dusty plains, yet none had ever fully possessed it. It belonged to old gods, far older than even the Greeks and Romans could have imagined. A wild place, slave to no master.
Clio turned her glass, purchased from their ship’s captain on the voyage here from Naples, past her sister to the landscape beyond. No London stage director could have imagined such a glorious backdrop! Beyond the steps and stage of the amphitheatre were only mountains, a vast swathe of blue sky. The hills rolled on like a hazy sea, green and brown and purple, until they reached the flat, snow-dusted peak of Etna, cloaked in clouds.
Off in the other direction, just barely seen, were the calm, silvery waters of Lake Pergusa, where Hades had snatched Persephone away to his underworld kingdom.
Between were olive groves, orchards of lemons, limes and oranges, stands of wild fennel, the large prickly pears brought in by the Saracens. Carpets of flowers, yellow, white and dark purple, spread like bright blankets over the meadows, announcing that spring had truly arrived.
‘“Enna—where Nature decks herself in all her varied hues, where the ground is beauteous, carpeted with flowers of many tints,”’ Clio murmured, an Ovid quote she now truly understood. Enna had once been considered the heart of Sicily, the crossroads of the Trinacria, the three provinces, a sacred spot. The home of Demeter and her daughter.
And now it had been invaded by the Chase family, or part of the family anyway. Clio had come here with her father and two of her sisters, Thalia and Terpsichore, after they had seen their eldest sister Calliope off on her honeymoon. Sir Walter Chase had long heard of the archeological wonders to be found in Enna, just waiting to be discovered by a dedicated scholar like himself. His friend Lady Rushworth had followed, having equally heard of the excellent English society to be found in the town of Santa Lucia, high in the dramatic hills. Society of a most intellectual and stimulating sort, escapees from the endless shallow parties in Naples.
Clio lowered her glass, her eyes narrowed as she thought of Santa Lucia. It was certainly a pretty enough town, with its baroque cathedral and old palazzos, with the ruined medieval castle guarding its town walls. But so often when she was there, except for their Sicilian servants and the shopkeepers of the town, it felt as if she had never left England at all. Receiving callers at their rented house, going to card parties at Lady Rushworth’s or dances at Viscountess Riverton’s and the Elliotts’—it was all so London-like.
And she did not want to think about England. About what had happened there, what she had left behind.
Clio drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them close, her old brown muslin work dress like a protective tent around her. The warm breeze, scented with scrubby pine trees and fading almond blossoms, ruffled the auburn hair pinned loosely atop her head. She heard the echo of Thalia’s voice as she went down to her lingering death, felt the hot sun against her skin.
This was where she belonged, in this wild, ancient spot, alone. Not really in Santa Lucia, definitely not in London. Not the Duke of Averton’s castle, so full of its dark, twisting corridors, where secrets and dangers lurked in every corner. Just like the unhappy shades of Hades’ kingdom…
Averton. Clio hugged her legs tighter, pressing her forehead to her knees. Could there ever be one day when she did not think of that blasted man? Did not remember what it felt like when he touched her? When he looked at her with those golden-green eyes and whispered her name. Clio…
‘He is miles away,’ she muttered. ‘Eons! You will probably never see him again.’
Yet even as she tried to reassure herself, she knew, deep down inside, that was not true. He might be far away, hidden in his castle, the famously reclusive yet always much sought-after Duke of ‘Avarice’, but he was never entirely apart from her. The way he looked at her, as if she was yet another Greek vase or marble statue he wanted, needed, to possess.
Well, he still had the Alabaster Goddess, that glorious figure of Artemis stolen from Delos, locked away in his castle. He would never do the same to her! Not even if she had to hide here in the wilds of Sicily for the rest of her days. The Duke was gone, he was past. Just like the Lily Thief.
For yes, once even she, Clio, had held her secrets. Had been the notorious Lily Thief for a few glorious months.
Clio unfolded her legs and stood up, stretching her limbs in the sunlight. How lovely it was to be alone, to be herself with no one to watch her, judge her. To just be Clio, not one of the ‘Chase Muses’. Now that Calliope was wed, everyone looked to her to be next. To marry as well as her sister had—an earl!—and to start her own family, her own conventional life as chatelaine of a household, as a society hostess; to take her place in her family’s scholarly, aristocratic world.
But Calliope loved her new husband, was happy in the life she had chosen. Clio had certainly never found anyone she could esteem as Cal did her earl. Clio did not belong in such a life. Maybe she didn’t belong anywhere at all. Except here.
She lifted her spyglass again, training it on the valley below her rocky perch, the stretch of land between her and Thalia’s theatre. It was really this valley that had brought them to Enna in the first place, an ancient Graeco-Roman site buried in a twelfth-century mudslide and only recently uncovered. Much of the site was still hidden beneath hazelnut orchards, but her father and his friends were working hard at exploring what was revealed: the theatre; part of the agora, or market place; some crumbling walls delineating shops and small houses; a great villa with almost intact mosaic floors in the atrium, which was Sir Walter’s pet project; and a small, roofless temple, probably devoted to Demeter, with its bothros, or well-altar, still ready to accept sacrifices even if the grand silver altar set was long gone.
She could see them through the oval of her glass, her father sweeping off more of the mosaic floor as her fourteen-year-old sister Terpsichore—Cory—sketched the tile scenes of tritons and mermaids. Lady Rushworth, shielded by a giant straw hat, examined some newly found pottery fragments, sorting them into baskets. Other friends and servants scurried around like busy ants. They would not miss her when she crept away. They never did.
Clio snapped the glass shut and tucked it inside her knapsack. Slipping the strap over her shoulder, she turned and made her way up the steep stairs cut into the stony hillside.
When she reached a fork in the steps, with one way leading to Santa Lucia, she glanced up, raising her hand to shield her spectacles from the glare of the sun. The crumbling crenellations of the medieval castle’s tower stood starkly against the bright sky, eternally vigilant as it stared out over the valley. She was again reminded of the Duke, of his Yorkshire castle that matched his strangely archaic, handsome appearance, his long red-gold hair, his strong hands that gripped her own so tightly, holding her prisoner to that intense light in his beautiful green eyes.
Clio frowned at the memory, unconsciously flexing her wrists. He could so easily have been one of the crusaders who had built that tower, standing between the crenellations, surveying his conquered land while his banners whipped in the wind behind him. Secure in the knowledge that his money, his exalted title, his fine looks would always gain him anything he wanted. The world was his.
But not her. Never her.
Clio turned away from the castle, from the safety of Santa Lucia and its old walls, and hurried up a second, even steeper set of stairs. They wound up and around the hill, and she soon left the noise and bustle of the valley behind. Even the sun grew dimmer here, the shadows longer, deeper, colder.
On the other side of the hill, the stairs suddenly switched back, taking her downwards again. Unlike the sunny valley where her family worked, this place still slumbered. It was a meadow, covered with a blanket of white clover, seemingly undisturbed except for the hum of bees, the distant tinkle of goats’ bells in the hills.
She knew people must come here. There was rich fodder for those herds of goats, and wild fennel and oregano for the cooking pots. But she never saw anyone at all. The cook at their hired house, Rosa, had told her this was a sacred spot, a spot where once there had been an altar to Demeter. A crude sheaf of wheat carved into the trunk of a towering hawthorn tree, where offerings of flowers and fruit were often left at its base, seemed to confirm that. As did mysterious holes she found in the ground when she had first arrived, which seemed to indicate previous, illegal excavations.
Demeter never disturbed Clio when she was there. Nor did Persephone and her dark husband. They seemed to know Clio was one of them, that she did their work to bring them back to life.
She passed the tree, giving it a respectful nod. There were fresh lemons piled in a basket in its shade. There was a wide road nearby, a way for horses to get to the village, but she ignored it. Along another path, barely marked in the clover, she hurried her steps until she found what she sought. Her own perfect place.
While her father worked on the villa, once the dwelling place of rich men, and Thalia revived Antigone in the theatre, Clio looked for less exalted remains. Her explorations had brought her here, to this quiet little meadow, where she had found her farmhouse.
She paused at the edge of the site, as she always did when she arrived, drinking in the peaceful, quiet vision. It was not the ancient holiday house of a wealthy family, as the villa was. The people here had been prosperous, but they also worked for their coin. Lived off the fruit of their labour and their land. Once, this clover-covered valley had been fields of wheat and barley, with fruit orchards and groves of olives.
Until it all came to an end, one violent day in the second century BC. Now there were just some waist-high walls of small, uneven pieces of tan-coloured limestone, weatherbeaten and crumbling, to mark where their house once stood. But Clio intended to find more. Much more.
She hurried to the walls, pulling out her stash of tools wrapped in oilcloth and tucked into a sheltered niche. The wooden handle of the small spade fit perfectly into her hand, as a soldier’s sword hilt would in battle. Maybe she did not belong in London, not really, but she did belong here. When she worked, she forgot the world outside. She even forgot Averton—for a time.
All the passion she had once poured into the Lily Thief was now given to her farmhouse. To finding the voices of the people who once lived here.
She went to work.
Tasuta katkend on lõppenud.
