To Catch a Rogue

by Amanda McCabe

  “…do you not agree, Miss Chase?” Herr Mueller suddenly said.

  Calliope glanced towards him, startled. Which Miss Chase did he mean? Hopefully not her, as she had not been attending the conversation at all! But he watched her expectantly. “Oh, yes, quite,” she said, hoping she had not agreed to something idiotic.

  “There you see, your Grace, the word of a Muse,” Herr Mueller said.

  The duke smiled. His sea-glass gaze went to Clio, who was busily cutting a piece of lamb into ridiculously tiny bites. “Muses are notoriously fickle, Herr Mueller, as you must know. They withdraw their favour in an instant, heartlessly leaving a man bereft.”

  “Not my Muses,” Sir Walter said stoutly. “Perfect ladies, just like their mother.”

  “Certainly, Sir Walter,” the duke answered. “I meant no disrespect to your daughters. They are a credit to their upbringing.”

  “Lady Chase and I certainly shared similar views on the education of daughters,” Lady Kenleigh said. “When my Emmeline was a child…”

  The rest of the meal passed in talk of education, of exposing children at a very young age to the glories of art and history. Calliope’s reverie was not disturbed again until the ladies returned to the drawing room, leaving the men to their brandy and tales of ancient battles. Clio excused herself to retrieve her shawl from the footman.

  “What a charming man the duke is,” Lady Kenleigh commented, as she settled again by the fireplace. A servant brought in the tea tray. “I always thought him rather cold before.”

  “Are not most dukes rather cold, Mama?” Emmeline asked. “It seems to be something they inherit along with the title—ineffable haughtiness.”

  The others laughed, but Lady Kenleigh said, “Not at all! Your father was great friends with the Duke of Rothheil, and he was not cold at all. Averton, though, is something different.”

  Once some time had passed and everyone was very distracted by the conversation, Calliope excused herself to find the ladies’ withdrawing room and wandered back to the hidden door, far at the other end of the room. It was still there; she had not imagined it. Slipping behind the tapestry, she groped along the stout wood until she found a handle. It shifted under her slight pressure, sliding inward.

  A rush of cold air brushed over her face, making her gasp and fall back a step into the heavy tapestry. Behind her were the muffled, reassuring voices of her friends. Ahead of her—she had no idea. Chilliness. Darkness, broken only by a faint gleam far ahead.

  Calliope was a sensible girl, or so she had always imagined. Surely the sensible thing would be to turn back, to shut the door and forget it existed. But had she not decided she was no longer the old Calliope? That she could not go back?

  She couldn’t burst into the dining room and insist Cameron come with her. If she wanted to see what was up there she had to go alone, while she had the chance.

  Just one quick look, she decided. Then she could tell Cameron what she found, in exchange for his own news. Now resolute, Calliope stepped on to the first stone stair, drawing the door closed behind her.

  The staircase was steep, leading up to that faint light she saw ahead. It was very cold. She drew her shawl close, hurrying upwards. She was beginning to have second thoughts, yet it was too late now. She had to go forward. She was a Muse, after all, and Muses might be fickle, but they were surely brave.

  The light was a lantern, hung at the mouth of a corridor. She must be deep in the castle, she thought, for there were no windows here, no arrow slits. Just bare stone walls. The corridor was narrow and disappointingly empty.

  Calliope sighed. What had she been expecting? Casks of jewels? A letter saying “I am really the Lily Thief, signed the Duke of Averton”? Feeling foolish, she started to turn back to the stairs, when a hollow clunking sound stopped her short.

  She spun around, her stomach tight. “Who is there?” she called.

  A figure emerged from the shadows at the entrance. “I should have known you would appear,” a familiar voice said wryly.

  “Cameron!” Calliope cried. She dashed back down the corridor, throwing her arms around his neck. He caught her close, lifting her from her feet. How warm he was, how solid and safe! “What are you doing here? Aren’t you meant to be in the dining room?”

  “I told them I had to, er, answer nature’s call,” he said. “What about you?”

  “The same, of course. I just had to see what that door was.”

  “That’s my Athena.” He pressed a kiss to her hair and let her go, keeping her hand in his. “I should have known you couldn’t stay away once you realised there was a hidden portal.”

  “It doesn’t seem to go anywhere, though, does it?”

  “There’s another door at the end. Come, I’ll show you.” He unhooked the lantern, using its glow to lead them to the far corner of the empty corridor. Calliope held tightly to his hand. With him, these strange, cold halls were more an adventure than a fright. She peered eagerly over his shoulder as he opened that second door.

  “More stairs?” she said.

  “These go down.”

  “Into the bowels of the earth?”

  “Just like those in the garden at Kenleigh Abbey. Do you want to turn back?”

  Calliope stared doubtfully down those stairs. It was even colder here, darker, even more narrow. Of course she wanted to go back! She was no fool. Not usually, anyway.

  But when would they have a chance to explore this place again? They would probably never even come back to Averton Castle. And she had vowed to finish this, no matter what it took.

  Be Athena, she told herself sternly. No fear. “I want to go on. We have to take this chance while we have it.”

  He grinned at her. “Then on we go. Just don’t step on any rats.”

  Rats! Calliope lifted the hem of her gown, tiptoeing down the steps behind Cameron. “Athena never faced rats,” she muttered.

  “Just Trojans,” he answered.

  “And Persians.”

  At the foot of the steps was yet another door. “We won’t get lost?” she asked.

  “And wander beneath the duke’s castle for ever? Never fear, we’ll remember the way back. See, another door.”

  This door led not to an empty corridor but to a small room. As Cameron lifted the lantern high, Calliope gasped. Surely this was what she had hoped for!

  The room was a jumble of treasures. Some, like the sarcophagus, she remembered from Acropolis House, but many she had never seen before. A bare-breasted snake goddess and inlaid bronze dagger from Knossos. Golden Laconian goblets. A headless marble Aphrodite, and a bodyless warrior’s head. A bronze, engraved mirror.

  And, at the far end, like a queen reigning over her disorganised kingdom, was the Alabaster Goddess. Her stand now repaired, she stood proudly, her bow ever poised in defence.

  She was not alone, though. Like worshipping acolytes, two people hovered at that base. They spun around, startled, when the light from Cameron’s lantern touched them. The rays glinted on a pair of spectacles.

  “Clio!” Calliope cried. “What are you doing here? And what…?” Her shocked gaze swept over the scene, over her sister and the man who was with her. He looked like a gypsy, with long, raven-black hair, a golden hoop glittering in one ear. He was tall and very lean, even slimmer without the greatcoat and hat he had worn in the garden. His black eyes watched Calliope warily, silently.

  An open box of tools lay at Clio’s feet, hammers and slender chisels. Clio held a long metal bar in her hands, wedged beneath the goddess’s repaired base.

  “No,” Calliope breathed. “It can’t be.”

  Clio dropped the bar with a clang, holding out her hands. “Cal, I’m so sorry! I never meant that this—”

  “Well, well. If it isn’t the Purple Hyacinth,” the Duke of Averton said from the doorway. “And let me guess. The Golden Falcon? At last we meet.” He smiled at them all, a cold, tight grin that made Calliope shiver. “And Westwood, too. I shouldn’t really be surprised.
My, my. Such a very cosy scene.”

  The only sound was the rush of wind down the steps, the steady drip of water from somewhere above. Until Clio picked up the bar, its metallic scrape against the floor abnormally loud.

  “Oh, no, my dear,” Averton said, his voice sad. “That is not a good idea.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  That bizarre dreamlike quality that had overlaid the whole evening intensified, closing in around Calliope like a fog. She pressed her fingers to her pounding temples, watching through the haze as Clio’s companion edged closer to her protectively, silent, glowering.

  Cameron took her arm gently, as if he feared she might crack like a piece of porcelain. She half-feared she might, for she felt as brittle and delicate as the framed papyrus hanging on the wall.

  Calliope stared at that scene, at the shifting blues and reds of the paint. Thoth watching as souls were weighed, carefully recording on his scroll whether they were saved or damned.

  The duke hovered in the doorway like a judgemental spirit himself, watching them with those flat green eyes, tense and unpredictable. Calliope was hardly aware of him, though, or of Cameron’s touch on her arm. She could only think of one thing.

  It was Clio all along. Clio, her sister, who was the Lily Thief, who snatched those antiquities away so they were never seen again. Clio, who had listened to Calliope’s worries and plans, who showed her that list. Clio, who she had loved and trusted above all others, ever since the day she was led into the nursery and shown her new baby sister, red-haired and solemn in her beribboned cradle.

  Clio, who had been scheming to steal the Alabaster Goddess all this time.

  “How could you?” Calliope said, hating herself for the hurt and tears so thick in her voice. She didn’t want to be hurt, to be vulnerable, ever again! “How could you do this, Clio?”

  “Cal, please,” Clio pleaded. She edged around her companion, her hand held out to Calliope, but she went still when Calliope gave her a freezing glance. “I never meant to hurt you, never wanted to lie to you. I would have told you everything, once it was all over.”

  “Once you had stolen every antiquity in England?”

  Clio shook her head, her eyes diamond-bright. “It’s not like that!”

  “Is it not, Miss Chase?” the duke asked conversationally, as if they were sipping tea in a drawing room and he inquired about the weather. “How interesting. We see you here, prying my Artemis from her base, the trapdoor to the secret passage open. Tell us, then—how is it? And do be thorough. I told the others I was going to show all of you some special artefacts. They won’t miss us for quite a while.”

  Clio swung towards him, her hands curled into tight fists. “I will tell you how it is, your Grace. Duke of Avarice. You took all these things from their rightful homes, the places where they belonged, and piled them up here to moulder away. To wither away to dust just to satisfy your pride and conceit. I know how you came by these items, how you yanked them from the dirt, from their altars. Or, no, you wouldn’t soil your bejewelled hands! You paid lowly tombaroli, men who would do anything to feed their families, to snatch them for you. That is how it is.”

  The duke suddenly lunged forward, quick as a snake, to seize Clio’s wrists and drag her close to him. Their gazes locked, and though only their hands touched, the air crackled with the tension of mortal combat. Combat Calliope was paralysed to stop.

  “You think you know everything, don’t you, Clio, the great Muse of History?” the duke said softly. “You think you are the champion of the ancient world, the storied heroine rescuing sacred treasures from the evil, rapacious dragon.”

  “I am not a heroine,” Clio answered, staring up at him. “I am just a mortal woman who is trying to do what’s right, to save what I can. You don’t deserve the Alabaster Goddess. She is meant to…”

  “To be yours?”

  “To go home. She cannot be possessed by anyone, let alone you. A man so full of greed…”

  “Careful, Clio.” He drew her an inch closer, her hands tense in his clasp as she strained away. “You don’t know everything.”

  “I know you! I know men like you. You think you can own things, own people, that you are entitled to imprison whatever you desire.”

  His gaze narrowed. “Is this because I kissed you in the gallery? Because you—”

  “Let me go!” Clio cried, suddenly lashing out, kicking him in the leg. But her silk evening slippers were thin, and he didn’t even wince.

  Cameron let go of Calliope, pushing her towards the goddess as he tackled the duke. Averton, distracted by Clio, had obviously forgotten the rest of them were even in the room. He fell to the hard floor with a surprised shout, quickly strangled when Cameron’s fists closed around his coat collar.

  “I will not let you abuse another woman,” Cameron growled, pinning the duke down.

  Averton laughed breathlessly. “Are you going to break my nose again, Westwood?”

  “No less than you deserve. I told you to stay far away from the Chases.”

  “True. And you are quite right—it’s no less than I deserve. I did kiss her. Old habits and all that. I think you’ll agree with me that the Chase Muses are quite irresistible. Why else would you follow Miss Calliope all over England on such a fruitless errand?”

  Cameron’s face went white with inexpressible anger, and he lifted the duke’s head as if to bash it to the floor. Calliope, cold with fear, cried out, “No!” But she tripped and fell against the Alabaster Goddess, helpless to run to him—just like in a nightmare. Clio’s gypsy companion helped her to her feet, saying, “Steady, signorina,” as he held her upright. Perhaps, then, he was not a gypsy after all, for his accent was pure patrician Venetian.

  “Oh, let him go,” Clio said, burying her face in her hands. “Much as I would like to see his pretty nose bashed in, it would solve nothing. We’re already caught. No doubt his exalted Grace will see Marco and me hanged.”

  Hanged? The vision of her sister mounting the scaffold was more than Calliope could bear. She pulled away from the patrician gypsy—Marco?—and stumbled to Clio’s side, catching her sister’s arm in a tight clasp.

  Clio said nothing, but leaned into Calliope, boneless and exhausted.

  “You see, Miss Chase, that is yet another thing you don’t know,” the duke said affably. Cameron had reluctantly stepped away at Clio’s words, and now Averton rose stiffly to his feet, brushing the dust from his coat. “It’s true that you must cease your Lily Thief activities at once, but I think means less than a rope would be sufficient.”

  “And you think you could be those means?” Clio said.

  “Oh, I doubt that I personally—or any mere mortal man—could stop you from doing anything. But perhaps you could be persuaded.” The duke reached inside his coat and withdrew a folded sheet of parchment.

  “What is that?” Clio asked. “Some sort of arrest warrant?”

  “Clio,” Calliope murmured. She glanced towards the trapdoor Averton had mentioned earlier, a shadow of beckoning freedom in the dark corner. Could they run fast enough?

  “Hardly a warrant. It is a letter from the director of the Antiquities Society, Lord Knowleton. I believe he is a friend of your father?”

  “What could Lord Knowleton have to say in this matter?” Calliope asked, puzzled.

  “A great deal, as it happens. He and the other members of the Society, including Sir Walter, are deeply concerned about the theft of such precious objects as that sarcophagus over there. Or Artemis, who everyone seems so interested in right now. They knew of the tales of my rather reckless youth.” The duke glanced at Cameron, who stood silently glowering next to Calliope, whip-tense and ready to pounce again at an instant’s notice. “I sometimes consorted then with elements less than worthy of a duke’s heir, and have a few connections still. They also knew I am rather interested in collecting.”

  Clio snorted. “Rather? Half of Greece and Egypt sits rotting in your house.”

  “You forget A
ssyria, my dear. I do have some rather fine lion figures, plus one or two steles.”

  “But what does this have to do with the Antiquities Society?” Clio interrupted. Clearly her shock was wearing off. Calliope held her hand tightly so she could not fly at the duke and scratch his eyes out.

  “So impatient. But I will tell you. Knowing all this, Lord Knowleton and the Society came to me and asked me to use some of my old connections to discover who was carrying out these thefts. Those of the Lily Thief, and many others, less publicised. Not just here, you see, but in Italy and France. I track them down by whatever means possible, and eventually I see to it that the items return to their owners.” Averton laid a gentle hand on the goddess’s alabaster sandal. “So, you see, though these objects are exquisite, and I have loved having them for a time, they are not mine.”

  Clio drew away from Calliope, standing stiff and pale. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Of course you don’t.” The duke handed her the letter. “Perhaps you recognise the signatures? Or the Antiquities Society seal? The document lays out my task. I insisted on such a thing in case an occasion for explanation arose, which of course it has.”

  Clio read the letter, her lips pressed together. Calliope peered over her shoulder, searching the neatly penned words until she came to the signatures at the bottom. “It appears to be legitimate,” she said slowly.

  “How did you find out it was me?” Clio asked, neatly refolding the paper.

  “You should be very proud of yourself,” the duke said. “You were quite evasive. It wasn’t until luck sent me in the direction of your list of contacts that I was able to make the last connections. I knew the Alabaster Goddess was just the bait I needed to draw you out of hiding. She is exactly the sort of antiquity that you like, is she not? Beautiful, special, taken from a temple or sacred site.”