“She was merely bait to you?”
“Not merely, my dear. Such a rare object could never be merely anything. My father bought her many years ago, but the selfish old monster never wanted to share her. I didn’t even know she existed until I inherited the title.”
Clio stared at Artemis. “So she…”
“Is the only thing in this room that is entirely mine.” The duke’s gaze lingered on the curve of Clio’s cheek for a long moment before he turned away. “We should return to the party, I think. We have given them quite enough time to gossip about us.”
“No hanging, then?” Clio said, her tone suspicious and tense.
The duke did not look back, as if he couldn’t bear to see Clio’s face again. “I think we’ve had quite enough drama for one night, don’t you? It should be enough for the Lily Thief to vanish from the scene. And be sure to take your tools when you leave. This place is cluttered enough as it is.”
He departed, his footsteps echoing away up the stone steps. The silence in the room was thick, as muffling as wool batting. Calliope hardly knew what to say, what to do. For one of the few times in her life, her practicality, her precious good sense, was of absolutely no use. All she had believed she was working towards was gone.
“Do you hate me, Cal?” Clio said quietly.
Calliope shook her head, closing her eyes as if she could blot out the whole night. “Why would you steal those things, Clio? We don’t need money! And we hardly need to add to our collection.”
“Cal, surely you know me better than to think I could do this for money?”
“I thought I knew you. But how could I? You hid this from me. You knew how I hated the Lily Thief, how I hated the disappearance of these antiquities and how they were lost to scholars for ever. Yet you said nothing. You let me play the fool!”
“How could I say anything? For those very reasons I had to hide it all from you. But every moment of secrecy was agony. You’re my sister, I longed to tell you! To confess everything.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because the work was too important. I couldn’t let my personal feelings get in the way.” Clio’s sharp, tear-filled gaze shifted over Calliope’s shoulder, to Cameron. “You understand, don’t you, Lord Westwood? After all, you sent your own father’s collection back to Greece.”
“I did,” he said. “But they were mine to send.”
Clio lifted her chin. “The people who held those objects were not their true owners. They stole them from their real homes.”
“Clio, did you not think of—of us, of Father and the girls when you did this?” Calliope asked, suddenly so deeply sad and tired. Exhausted to her very bones. “What if you had been caught?”
“Caught by someone other than the enigmatic duke, you mean? Of course I thought about it. I left letters for you hidden in my room, explaining everything. But I was good at what I did, and I have—had—an excellent network of associates.” She smiled at her gypsy aristocrat. “Is that not so, Marco?”
He grinned, and for the first time Calliope saw how very beautiful he was, her sister’s silent accomplice. “Sì, signorina. Your sister, Signorina Calliope, she is the best smuggler in all England.”
“Such a thing to boast of at Almack’s,” Calliope muttered.
“I am truly sorry I hurt you, Cal,” Clio said. “Please, please believe me. But it had to be done.” She turned away, going to help Marco pack up their tools.
“Come with me, Calliope,” Cameron said gently, taking her arm. “It’s cold here, and you look as if you could use a warm cup of strong tea.”
“My mother always believed tea could cure anything,” Calliope said, letting him lead her towards the door.
“Perhaps she was right, if the tea happens to have a measure of brandy stirred in.”
They retraced their steps, climbing up the steps and turning back down the empty corridor. When they first traversed this path half an hour—or was it a hundred years?—ago, she had been full of tense, cold anticipation. Now she was just tired. Stunned.
“It was my own sister all along,” she said. “How could I not have seen it? How could I have been so blind?”
“You probably did see it, but denied it. Even to yourself. It’s hard to admit the faults of the ones we love. Almost as hard as admitting our own.”
Calliope remembered her sister burning her Medusa costume, showing her the list of names. So quiet, so serious, so deeply wary of the duke. Had she seen? Had she simply refused to acknowledge the fact that the thief was right in front of her? “I don’t know. I just don’t understand. And I don’t want to see her hurt.”
“Of course not. She’s your sister. She certainly went about things the wrong way.”
“I should say so!”
“But she had reasons for what she did. She told you, she thought she was doing what was right.”
Calliope paused, studying Cameron in the faint light. He gazed back steadily, his cognac-coloured eyes full of concern, and—and pity. He pitied her, and thought Clio was right.
Suddenly, his very calmness, his compassion, infuriated her. She resisted the strange, primitive urge to hit him, to lash out and knock him down as he had the duke. “You don’t seem very surprised by what has happened tonight,” she said. “By Clio’s confession.”
His gaze turned wary. “Calliope, listen to me. I meant to tell you, later. Remember?”
“You did know, then? You knew about Clio?”
“Not for long. It was that name, the Purple Hyacinth.”
“And that was what you said you had to tell me earlier?”
“Yes.”
“So, why didn’t you tell me then? You let me flounder around in my ignorance, until we were faced with that awful room, with Clio and her gypsy. You let me…” Let her have sex with him. Suddenly it was all far too much. The whole evening crashed down on her, and she wanted to cry, to wail, to beat her fists against the stone wall. To match childish actions to wild, childish emotions.
Everyone she loved the most, relied on the most, had lied to her. Hidden things from her for her own good.
“I want to go home,” she said, spinning away from Cameron. “I’m tired. Tired of everything, everyone.”
“Calliope, please, listen to me!” Cameron said urgently. But she hurried away from him, racing towards the light and noise of the party. If she could just be among people again, back in the real world, escape from cold caves full of antiquities and lies, she could be herself again. Find her way.
But she knew, even as she ran, that nothing could be the same again.
Cameron watched Calliope flee, her white dress fading away like a ghost in the shadows. Every fibre of his being urged him to run after her, to catch her in his arms and hold her until she listened to him, until she heard him and understood. To make her understand.
But he knew Calliope well by now, too well to think that such tactics could ever work on her. He remembered the duke holding Clio, his stare burning into her as she resisted hearing him. The Chases were stubborn and wilful, set on their own course, and force would never change them. Only gentle, rational persuasion had even a chance. Something Averton couldn’t understand, but Cameron was beginning to.
It was that very stubbornness, that strong will, that made him love Calliope so very much. That certainty, that passion for a cause, for right—even when her “right” wasn’t his own. She had a fire she thought well hidden behind her cool good manners, her stylish white gowns, but which she could never extinguish from her eyes. Her laughter. He craved the blazing heat of that fire. He had been wandering in the cold world alone for too long.
He needed Calliope by his side for the rest of his life, to quarrel with, be exasperated by, to kiss and love. If only he could earn her love in return, to set that flame free once and for all!
But, blast it, that stubbornness! Cameron kicked at the wall, barely feeling the impact of the stone. She just wouldn’t listen.
“Where is Calli
ope?” he heard Clio say. He glanced up to find her coming down the corridor towards him, holding a lantern. One would never guess she had just spent the evening trying to dislodge an alabaster statue from its base. Every auburn hair was in place, her amber-coloured gown impeccable. Cool and elegant.
And her very composure, oddly, gave him hope. For another quality Muses possessed was changeability. Perhaps Calliope would not stay angry for long.
“She has returned to the party,” he said.
“Without you?”
“She insisted rather, ah, forcefully that she wanted to be alone.”
“Threw a bit of a tantrum, did she? That is not much like Cal. But then, who could blame her? It has been a trying evening, and all my fault.”
“So it was, Purple Hyacinth. Lily Thief. Whoever you are tonight.”
“Clio will do, since I am sure you will soon be my brother.”
“If your sister can forgive me.”
“Forgive you, Lord Westwood? Whatever for? You didn’t try to steal the Alabaster Goddess. Is it because you defended my motives?”
“That, and the fact that I discovered your identity earlier and had not yet told her.”
“Ah, I see,” Clio said. “How did you guess?”
“I should have known even earlier, considering that we all live in such a classical world. I saw a painting of the Muses in Lord Kenleigh’s library. Clio, the mother of Hyacinth.”
“It was a mistake. I should have chosen a less obvious moniker. They’re meant to be somewhat recognisable, though, at least by the people in the network.”
“Like your friend Marco?”
“Marco. The Golden Falcon.” She smiled. “He is so very dramatic. Most Venetians are, you know.”
“Dramatic and gone, I hope.”
“Of course. He left by the tunnel. It eventually comes out near Kenleigh Abbey.”
“The steps in the garden.”
“This house party was a godsend. Yorkshire is riddled with hidden tunnels and passages. Left over from smuggling days, of course.”
“And the goddess?”
“Still here. I am not such a fool as to take her when I’m caught. I know when to admit defeat. For now.”
As Cameron studied the hard glint in her green eyes, he could almost, almost, pity the duke. Desiring a Muse was never an easy thing.
“Come, Lord Westwood, you can escort me back to the party,” Clio said, taking his arm. “And don’t worry about Calliope. It is me she is truly angry with, not you. Her storms never last long.” She paused. “Not usually, anyway.”
It was that “not usually” that concerned him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Soon it will be time to return to town,” Emmeline said, digging along the river’s edge, looking for water flowers.
“Oh, yes,” Calliope answered, distracted. Her sketchbook was open on her lap, but only a few rough lines began to denote the nearby bridge. “For your betrothal ball.”
“Yes. At least one good thing came of this holiday, even if we didn’t end up catching the Lily Thief. My parents quite gave up the idea of Freddie Mountbank as a good match!”
“Shall you be happy with Mr Smithson?”
“Oh, yes, I think so. He is very kind-hearted, you know, so I am sure of always getting my own way.” Emmeline laid out her plants in a basket, brushing off her hands as she peered closely at Calliope. “Will we soon have news of your own engagement?”
“Mine?” Calliope ducked her head over her sketchbook, her face warm despite the cool, overcast day. “What would make you think that?”
Emmeline shrugged. “You were absent from the duke’s party for quite a while last night.”
“The duke was showing off his collection. Lord Westwood and I were with him and Clio, quite well chaperoned.”
“I just thought you looked a bit pale and surprised when you came back to the drawing room. As if something had happened.”
Pale and surprised? Calliope sighed. That was the very least of it. Those few moments in Averton’s hidden room were the most surreal, the most difficult she had ever known. Even now, after a night of fitful sleep, she hardly knew what to think. What to feel. She had loathed the Lily Thief for so long, but she loved her sister.
She looked over at where Clio sat on a large, flat rock below the bridge with Thalia, the two of them dangling their booted feet above the rushing water. Clio was quiet today, and she had tried to catch Calliope’s eye over breakfast and on the walk here. She wouldn’t press, though, Calliope knew that. She would let Calliope talk to her in her own time.
If only Calliope knew what to say.
“I just think one person has no need of so many riches,” Calliope said. “So selfishly hidden away.”
Emmeline laughed. “What he puts on open display is quite astonishing enough. I can’t imagine what he might hide.”
Calliope hadn’t imagined, either. “Averton is rather—surprising.”
“To say the least.” Mr Smithson called Emmeline’s name and she turned towards him, leaving Calliope alone with her sketches.
She drew in a deep breath, closing her eyes. Despite everything that had happened here, she would miss this place. Its solitude, its quiet, silvery magic. Something about it had surely changed her, unlocked something deep inside so that, for a while at least, she felt lighter. Free.
Was it really this place? Or was it someone? Someone who had made her see things differently. See a new way.
Calliope saw a vision of Cameron’s handsome face, his laughing eyes, as he held her close in the moonlight. As he kissed her until the whole world spun dizzily around them and she could hardly remember even her own name. She knew only him, wanted only him!
She also saw him as he had been last night, his face set in hard, angry stone, so white-hot with fury as he knocked the duke to the ground. All to protect Clio, to protect them. Yet he had known even then that she was the thief. Had known, and hadn’t told Calliope.
Calliope pressed her hands to her aching temples. Nothing was what she had thought, nothing and no one—Cameron, Averton, Clio. She had built her whole life on a foundation of certainty as strong as granite. On beliefs she thought unshakeable. As fierce and permanent as the Alabaster Goddess herself, with her bow and her crescent moon.
That foundation proved to be ephemeral as sand. What would now replace it?
What could she be sure of?
“May I sit with you for a while?” she heard Clio say softly. She opened her eyes to find her sister standing next to her. Clio was as lovely as ever, every hair in place, her spectacles on her nose. But she looked worried, lightly poised as if to dash away at a sign of rebuff.
She had always been thus, Calliope thought, remembering when they were children running round the gardens. Calliope always the organiser of their games, Clio following, but as self-contained as a cat. As a goddess. Her thoughts and motives always her own.
“Of course,” Calliope said. She slid over on her fallen log, making room for her sister.
Clio settled next to her, wrapped tightly in her cloak. They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the splash of the water, the distant laughter of their friends. Finally, Clio said, “I truly am sorry for deceiving you, Cal. I never wanted to hurt you.”
Calliope bit her lip. “What if you had been caught? Did you think of that?”
Clio gave a humourless laugh. “Every day. I was quite terrified. Especially of you.”
“Me?”
“You were so very determined to find the Lily Thief. I knew it was only a matter of time.”
“You had nothing to fear. I wasn’t clever enough to see what was right in front of me.”
“You didn’t want to see. And neither did I.”
“What do you mean?”
“The duke, of course.” Clio shook her head. “There was always something not right about that man. I thought he was just insane. And obsessed. Instead, he had a purpose I never even suspected. I was a fool.”<
br />
Calliope remembered the duke’s eyes as he watched Clio. “We were all fools.”
“I had to do what I thought was right, Cal. To protect something precious and irreplaceable. I see I never should have concealed it from you, for we both want the same thing.”
Calliope laughed. “I could never be brave enough to take up smuggling, like you! Or consort with people like that Marco. He seemed rather fearsome.”
Clio laughed, too, a faint blush touching her pale cheeks. “Marco is all right. He has a soft heart under that impenetrable Venetian hide, and he loves art as we do. I don’t mean that you would ever lose your good sense, as it appears I have. I mean we both wanted to protect the Alabaster Goddess and all she stands for.”
“True.” A silence fell over them again, but it was lighter, easier, touched with their old sisterly comfort. Eventually, Calliope held out her hand and Clio took it, holding it tightly. “You can tell me anything from now on, Clio. I have learned not to judge, not to make pronouncements. At least not until I’ve heard all explanations! Just promise me something.”
“What?”
“That you will not take such risks in the future. We Muses have to stay together, all of us.”
Clio didn’t reply. Instead, her gaze narrowed as a large, glossy black carriage rolled into view. It dashed up over the bridge, and for one instant the window lowered to a glimpse of bright hair, a hand laden with emerald and ruby rings. Then it was gone, followed by a wagon filled with trunks and cases. In the centre, covered in heavy canvas and bound by thick ropes, was Artemis, her bow tightly swathed.
Clio watched the procession until even its dust was no longer seen. “I promise no more Lily Thief,” she said quietly, reaching inside her cloak. She withdrew a white lily, wilted, brown at the edges of its satiny petals. No doubt it had been meant to be left in place of the goddess last night. She tossed it into the river.
Calliope had certainly noticed Clio hadn’t promised to take no more chances. But the end of the Lily Thief was a place to start.
“What about Lord Westwood?” Clio said.
“I don’t think he’ll turn you in.”
To Catch a Rogue Page 22