Calliope sighed as she studied her cards. What a dreadful Bow Street Runner she would make! She had no idea how to look beyond the obvious, how to see into people’s hearts. How to find the motives of the Lily Thief.
Cameron was her ally now, an ally of convenience. Could he also be the thief? And what of the duke and his strange list? Who were Charlemagne and the Grey Dove? The Purple Hyacinth and Cicero? It was all very vexing, turning her well-ordered world topsy-turvy. What would set it right again? Could anything?
“Well, now,” said Mr Smithson, who, with Emmeline, played against Calliope and Cameron. “Shall we play?”
“Have you discovered anything yet?” Calliope asked, as she and Emmeline lingered by the tea table during a lull in the play. They had a quiet moment, since Calliope’s father was holding forth on the Punic Wars, and a debate threatened to ensue as Lady Rushworth heartily disagreed with his point. There was really nothing these people loved more than a good argument over ancient wars. Unless it was speaking of imaginary “courtship” between Calliope and Westwood.
Emmeline shook her head. “I have been spending a great deal of time with Mr Smithson. He is most amiable, but I doubt he is our thief.”
Calliope glanced at Mr Smithson, his open, freckled face avid as he listened to her father. Obviously he did appreciate history. It would be so convenient if he was the thief, for she did not know him very well. “Why not?”
“Well, for one thing I doubt he would know a lock pick from a candlestick. He is not very mechanically inclined. He can scarce drive his own carriage. For another, he was at his estate in Devon when Lady Tenbray’s diadem was stolen. He spends a great deal of time there, cataloguing his collection of Hellenistic silver.”
“Oh…” Calliope sighed “…I’m sorry you wasted your time, Emmeline.”
“Not at all! I quite like him.” A delicate pink stain flooded Emmeline’s cheeks. “In fact…”
“Emmeline! Never say he has become a real suitor.”
“Perhaps. We’ll see.”
“But don’t your parents want you to marry poor Freddie Mountbank, who is so loudly in love with you?”
“They do, but surely they will change their minds when Mr Smithson comes up to scratch. His income is twice Mr Mountbank’s. Mr Smithson hasn’t said anything yet, though, so don’t breathe a word to the rest of the Ladies Society!”
“My lips are sealed,” Calliope vowed. Well, well—perhaps something good could come of this wild goose chase after all. If only everyone didn’t start thinking the Ladies Society was just a matchmaking operation!
“What of you, Calliope? Any progress?”
“Not yet. At least nothing I can decipher.” Calliope thought of that list hidden in the Alabaster Goddess’s base, of Clio, pale-faced, burning her blood-stained costume. Clio sat beside their father now, sipping her tea, her gaze very far away.
Calliope’s stare moved to Cameron, who played a lively game of Pope Joan with Thalia. He slumped back in his seat, ostentatiously defeated, as Thalia merrily clapped her hands. Calliope wondered what he would make of that list, if she showed it to him.
“It is all very puzzling,” Emmeline agreed. “The stolen items are all so very distinctive. If the thief sold them to a collector we know—and we all do seem to know each other—he could never display it. We would recognise it in an instant.”
“True. And I can’t imagine any of this lot keeping such a secret.” Calliope gestured towards the noisy debaters.
“Then where are they going?”
Calliope shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“Do you think it is Lord Westwood?”
“I don’t know that, either.” Calliope laughed bitterly. “I don’t know very much, do I? But it does seem that Lord Westwood is a bit too open to be the thief.”
“Wouldn’t one of the characteristics of the thief be good acting skills?”
“Very true.”
“Are there any new suspects on the horizon?”
Calliope remembered the duke’s jumbled house, Daphne, the lioness, the great piles of precious objects. Anything could be hidden in there. “The Duke of Averton seems quite greedy,” she whispered.
Emmeline’s eyes widened. “Greedy, to say the very least. And whatever could have happened to him at the ball? It’s all quite sinister.”
“Quite. I can’t help feeling that the Alabaster Goddess is somehow the key. Oh, Em! If only he wasn’t going to take her away…”
Emmeline smiled. “I think I may have a solution to that.”
“What? Are you going to kidnap Artemis yourself?”
“If only we could! I don’t think even the whole Ladies Society could manage that. We are simply not quiet enough. No, I have a slightly more legitimate plan.”
“Do tell me! We need all the help we can get right now.”
“You know my father has an estate in Yorkshire, near the duke’s mouldy old fortress? We seldom go there; too rustic for Mama.”
“So, you’re going to Yorkshire to watch the duke’s house? In the middle of the Season?”
Emmeline laughed. “Better! We will all go. We’ll take the Season with us, the part that matters, anyway. My father has a great scholar coming to visit from the university at Cologne, his name is Herr Mueller and he is an expert on all things Greek. Papa is going to invite us all to a house party in Yorkshire, to meet this scholar and wander about the moors discussing history and such.”
“All of us?”
“The Ladies Society and their families, of course. And Mr Smithson, Lady Rushworth, Lord Westwood, everyone. And most of the other suspects, if I ask him to. So, we can watch them and the duke. Or the outside of his castle, anyway.”
Calliope grinned. “We could pretend to be bird watching. Oh, Emmeline, it’s a brilliant idea! It will be so much easier to observe everyone in the country than here in town.”
Emmeline laughed. “Easier to get Mr Smithson to pop the question, too! The invitations go out tomorrow.”
“Calliope!” Thalia called. “What are you and Emmeline talking of so secretly? Come here for a moment, see how much I won from Lord Westwood.”
Calliope gave Emmeline a nod, and hurried over to Thalia’s side. “You did indeed triumph, Thalia. What a poor gamester Lord Westwood must be.”
“Ha!” Cameron said, all mock-contempt. “Did we not win at whist, Miss Chase? Thanks to my clever strategy.”
“We did win,” Calliope agreed. “But I think it was mostly due to the fact that Mr Smithson kept losing track of his cards.”
“Staring all moon-eyed at Emmeline, no doubt,” Thalia said. “But Lord Westwood here tells me that there is to be a most interesting lecture at the Antiquities Society tomorrow, Calliope. A discussion of the Panathenic Games with Herr Mueller, all the way from the university at Cologne.”
“You enjoy hearing about Athena, do you not, Miss Chase?” Cameron asked quietly. “Is she not your patroness?”
Calliope stared at him, their gazes meeting, clinging. For a moment, it was as if all the rest of the room vanished, became a mere muted blur, and they were all alone. Just as they had been in the darkness of the duke’s house, bound in some ancient spell. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t turn away.
“I fear Athena’s wisdom is not often mine,” she murmured. “But I enjoy learning whatever I can from her.”
“It is settled, then!” Thalia said, her voice the last, strongest tether to drag Calliope back down to earth. “We will ask Father to take us to the lecture. Perhaps it will lift Clio from whatever doldrums she has fallen into.”
“I hope to see you there, then,” Cameron said. He was shuffling the cards, the pasteboard squares flashing through his long fingers. Calliope shivered, certain she could feel that touch on her own skin.
“Oh, yes,” she murmured. “I hope so, Lord Westwood. There is something I would like to ask your opinion about…”
Chapter Twelve
“We might just as well have stayed
at home,” Clio muttered.
“Hmm?” Calliope said, distracted. They stood in the foyer of the Antiquities Society, waiting to go into the lecture hall, and she occupied her time by observing the people around her. The chattering, laughing groups, all so polite and civilised. How could ideas of theft possibly lurk behind one of those smiling faces? “What do you mean, Clio?”
“I mean we always seem to encounter the same people, just like at Father’s card party. The same people having the same conversations,” Clio said, her tone so quiet, so impatient. “We should just have one continuous party, instead of always changing our clothes and moving about. If nothing different is ever to happen…”
Calliope peered closer at her sister, puzzled. Ever since the—occurrence in the duke’s gallery, she had been so quiet. So serious. Calliope could not blame her, of course, but Clio always seemed so resilient. So strong. The strongest of all the Muses.
She was certainly as pretty as ever tonight, in her turquoise-coloured gown, her auburn hair pinned up in a loose, classical knot bound with gold ribbons. Yet her eyes behind the spectacles were dull, her skin pale.
“Are you ill?” Calliope asked, concerned. “Do you want to go home?”
Clio made an impatient noise, fiddling with her fan. “No, I’m not ill. I’m just—oh, I don’t know!” With that most uninformative outburst she stomped off, moving across the room to examine one of the plaster statues of gods and dying Gauls that lined the red-papered walls.
The statues had been there for ever, ever since their parents started bringing them here when they were girls. One of the “unchanging” things Clio complained of tonight. Calliope could look around this room, this building, and remember her first visits here, listening to tales of ancient wars, politics, heroic deeds, doomed romances. Most of the people she remembered from then, too, though perhaps they were a bit greyer now.
When she was an old lady, would she be here, too, surrounded by her children and grandchildren? By Emmeline and Lotty and their children? She had never thought of such a thing before. This was just how the world was.
Calliope frowned, feeling a prickle of some strange unease. Was Clio right? Did nothing ever change?
She thought of Cameron de Vere, of how he seemed to trail the intriguing allure of exotic lands behind him wherever he went. Even in stuffy drawing rooms, dull assemblies, he emanated adventure, intrigue. Danger.
Intrigue and danger were the last things she needed. She liked her well-ordered world, her old friends and familiar patterns. Or at least she thought she did.
“You seem very thoughtful tonight, Miss Chase,” she heard a voice say. A deep, rough-edged voice that made her shiver. She knew who it was even before she turned. She always knew.
Cameron. How was it she had only to think of him and he appeared?
She pasted a bright smile to her lips before she faced him. He looked so handsome tonight, of course. Yet also rather sombre, in a dark burgundy coat, his hair smoothed back.
“One should be thoughtful before a lecture,” she answered.
“Thoughtful of questions you can pepper the speaker with, eh?” he said, with a glimmer of his old smile. “I would wager you know far more than this—what’s his name?”
“Herr Mueller, from the university at Cologne. Lady Emmeline Saunders and her parents have invited him to their house party, you know,” Calliope said. “And I hope he knows a great deal, since we will have to listen to him for several days.”
“Ah, yes. The house party. Strange, isn’t it, how their estate just happens to be so near that of Averton?”
Calliope shrugged. “It is a lovely, rural spot for some academic contemplation.”
“And a bit of spying, maybe?”
Calliope laughed, smothering the sound behind her gloved hand. The Antiquities Society was always such a hushed, serious place, not one for loud laughter. “I understand there is some interesting bird watching in the area, too. That would require the use of opera glasses, I think.”
He laughed, too, but not behind his hand. The joyful sound caused several heads to swivel in their direction. Oh, dear, Calliope thought. Yet more gossip. Somehow, though, his warm chuckles made her feel too giddy to even particularly care. At the moment.
“So, you are planning your rustic intrigues already?” he said.
“Not really. I am finding I don’t truly have a gift for sleuthing. We must hope that events provide us with an opportunity once we are there.” Calliope glanced at Clio, who stood across the foyer with their father, his friend Lady Rushworth, and the head of the Antiquities Society, Lord Knowleton. She was still so quiet and watchful. “My sister tells me our lives are dull and full of sameness, anyway. That nothing unusual can ever happen to us. So perhaps I should not hope for much in Yorkshire.”
“What do you think? Do you find life to be dull, Miss Chase?”
Not when you are near, Calliope thought. Ever since he had come into her life she wasn’t sure of anything. “How can it be, with a thief among us, and dukes being coshed on the head in their own homes? I fear perhaps the excitement may prove to be too much.”
“Perhaps a spot of bird watching might be just what you need, then.”
Before Calliope could answer, the doors to the lecture hall opened and everyone began to file inside, discreetly vying for the best seats. Her father, Clio and Lady Rushworth vanished in the crowd. “I should find my father,” she said.
“Let us look for him together,” Cameron suggested, offering his arm. “I would be honoured to sit with the Chases and benefit from their wisdom in historical matters.”
“As long as you don’t whisper satirical comments, trying to make us laugh,” she said, accepting his arm. It had become almost a natural gesture.
“Would I do such a thing?” he said, all wounded innocence.
“I am just warning you…”
“…as you see here, the young ladies of the procession carry the vessels for pouring offerings to the gods, in this case Athena. The oinochoai and the phialai, and here is the incense burner, the thymiaterion. The purpose of the maidens on this side, however, is less clear. Perhaps they carried the peplos, newly woven for the goddess, or perhaps they were even the famed Arrephoroi…”
Calliope tried to listen to the learned Herr Mueller, to study the large sketches of the Parthenon friezes set up behind the podium. She watched as the small, bespectacled scholar pointed out each figure in the carved procession she knew so well from days at the British Museum. But she could not seem to focus her thoughts where they should be, on the worship of the gods. Couldn’t seem to sit still. And it was all due to Cameron, sitting beside her.
He, too, stared straight ahead, yet every time Calliope glanced at him from the corner of her eye his lips quirked with a barely suppressed smile. Finally, he caught her looking at him and raised his brows.
Calliope snapped forward again. Ridiculous man! Herr Mueller’s speech was not so comical as all that, merely a bit—dry. Nothing to laugh about. Why, then, did she want to burst into giggles all over again?
Clio, seated on her other side, whispered, “Must I play Miss Rogers now, Calliope?”
Miss Rogers had been a particularly stern governess of their childhood, prone to furious frowns and threats of the rod. She hadn’t lasted long with the young Muses. Thalia quickly dispatched her with the aid of a bag of frogs. “Of course not.”
“Then tell me what you are laughing at, before I perish of boredom!”
“I don’t know what I’m laughing at,” Calliope admitted.
“…and here we see the nine Archons of Athens, or so they are assumed to be,” Herr Mueller went on.
“I sense you are getting restless, fräulein,” Cameron whispered. “You are not paying attention to the lessons. However will you pass the examinations?”
“Be quiet, or I’ll have to pinch you,” Calliope hissed. Were they really to be trapped in Yorkshire with endless lectures? For the first time, the intrigues of the Lily T
hief, the mystery surrounding his exploits, seemed truly exciting to her. A most welcome distraction.
If she could survive the days in Cameron’s company without completely losing her senses.
Calliope folded her hands in her lap, facing sternly forward again. But her calm attention was not to last. As Herr Mueller turned to the figures of the gods watching the procession, the doors to the lecture hall swung open. Everyone swivelled around to see who dared intrude on the sacred hush of the Antiquities Society, and slowly, gathering speed like an approaching thunderstorm, a chorus of whispers swept over the crowd. Even Herr Mueller sputtered away into nothingness.
“Oh! It’s an avenging spirit!” Lotty, who sat behind Calliope, moaned.
If only it was something so mundane, Calliope thought, but they were not so fortunate. It was the Duke of Averton. He stood there for a moment, perfectly still, framed by the open doors.
His brow was bound by a stark white bandage, the skin of his face nearly as pale, yet he stood there unaided, unwavering, wrapped in a black, fur-trimmed cloak. His burning gaze swept over the assembly, as if it was his own private domain. His little kingdom. The demon emperor.
Oh, dear, Calliope thought. She was turning into Lotty.
Beside her, Clio stiffened. Calliope laid a gentle hand on her arm, but it was as if her sister took no notice. She just stared straight ahead, listening to a lecture gone silent.
“So, he didn’t die,” Cameron muttered.
“Are you sure?” Calliope answered. “Lotty says he’s a spirit, and I half imagine she might be right.”
As they all watched, as mesmerised as if they observed Hamlet’s ghost at Drury Lane, the duke made his slow, stately way down the aisle to an empty seat near the front. Like Clio, he looked neither right nor left. Once it became apparent he was not going to do anything fascinating, the whispers abated and Herr Mueller began again.
“Though the gods are shown seated, the proportions are quite unusual, as their heads are parallel to those of the approaching humans…”
To Catch a Rogue Page 12