To Deceive a Duke

by Amanda McCabe

  ‘And where did you find this—muse?’

  ‘Where does one find anything important? At the British Museum, of course.’

  Clio gave a startled laugh. Of all places, she did not expect that. Gaming hells, brothels, taverns—those fit his story. Not the British Museum. ‘When did you find time to go there? Getting drunk and losing your allowance must have been very time-consuming.’

  ‘So it was. But after one particularly lurid night, some of my friends thought it would be amusing to go the British Museum, to scandalise all the high-in-the-instep scholars. I agreed, thinking news of my behaviour would surely reach my parents. But I got more than I bargained for.’

  Clio remembered that long-ago day now, surely the very day he talked about. She and her parents, along with Thalia, Cory and baby Urania had gone to the museum to look at a new black-figure vase just donated to the collections. As they went in, she stopped to peer into one of the sculpture galleries, drawn by the sound of raucous laughter.

  She had known who he was, of course. Everyone knew the Radcliffes, their great interest in antiquities and philanthropy—and the trouble they had with their younger, prodigal son. Her own parents commiserated about it, laughing about how fortunate they were to have only daughters. But Clio was only fifteen then, still practically in the schoolroom, and she had only seen Lord Edward Radcliffe from a distance, riding in the park or at a play or concert. From that distance, he was terribly handsome. Terribly intriguing.

  Up close, he was still handsome. But so very—careless. Looking at him she had felt so terribly angry. Here was someone who had things she, as a female, could only dream of—a university education, the chance to travel, to study, to do important things. And he did not seem to even care. Did not even see the beauty all around him at the museum.

  She had been angry that day—and sad.

  ‘You saw me,’ she said softly. ‘That day when I was fifteen.’

  ‘I saw you. And you were so very disdainful, so beautiful. I had lived with my family’s disappointment for years, yet I could not bear when I saw it in your eyes. I found I wanted to be worthy of someone like you.’

  ‘Someone like me?’ she said incredulously. ‘Someone angry and confused, always searching for something that can never be found?’

  ‘Someone sure of themselves,’ he contradicted. ‘Someone willing to fight for what they care about. That is what I admire in you. That’s what I wanted to be like then.’

  Clio felt that ache of tears behind her eyes, and she fought them back. Fought not to fall into his arms and sob like a lost child. All those lonely months and years of feeling no one understood, no one shared her burning desire for more. More than a privileged, civilised life. And here all along was someone who had shared her wandering spirit. Her quest for transcendence.

  ‘I, too, have done things I regret,’ she said. ‘But I have found that no one is really lost. Some of us are simply on a different path, a new, undiscovered trail. And redemption can surely be found there in the wilderness, if we seek it.’

  ‘Or if we are willing to accept it when it seeks us?’

  Clio kissed him, their hands still entwined. It was a slow, sweet kiss, a kiss that said what she could not. All her yearning, all the old pain and uncertainty, everything she longed for. She sought to take away his pain, too, to give him forgiveness that was not hers to bestow, to ease the ache of the past. She clung to him, to this moment that meant so much. Meant everything.

  She drew back, studying the elegant angles of his aristocratic face in the dying firelight. She traced the line of his mouth, the sweep of his jaw, his crooked nose. Memorising every inch of him so she would always, always remember. His eyes were closed, his jaw clenched as if pained, yet he did not move away. Not even when she softly kissed the corner of his mouth, the pulse that beat at the base of his throat.

  ‘I think,’ she whispered, resting her forehead on his chest, ‘that we should go to bed now. It’s late.’

  Without a word, he wrapped his arms around her, lifting her high in the air as he stood up. Clio held tightly to his neck as he carried her up the stairs into the darkness of the bedroom. Their bedroom.

  Once she had fought him, feared him. Now—now she trusted him to lead her anywhere. Even into the fearsome unknown of a game of Truth.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Edward lay propped on the pillows of Clio’s bed, their bed, among the tumbled blankets. Clio slept beside him, her arm flung over his chest as if to hold him there. She sighed in her dreams, burrowing deeper under the sheets. The whole chamber smelled of her lily soap, the sweet smell of her skin, the warm, dark presence of her.

  He smoothed her tangled hair back from her brow, wrapping the long, auburn strands over his chest and throat.

  It was possibly more than he deserved, yet he savoured it all the same. Beings like muses were mercurial indeed; she would fly away at any moment. But for now, she was his to hold.

  He studied the starlight blinking in the small window, growing ever fainter in a sign that night would soon end. But it was a night that had changed so very much. He had never talked of that tavern maid before, of the terrible thing he had done. He never talked of the drinking, the opium, the wild friends, all the things that had carried him so far from what he owed to his family. Carried him away from himself.

  It was all years in the past, the work of a heedless, angry boy. The man he was now, the Duke, worked every day for scholarship and antiquities, for charities and his estates, yet it had never been enough to erase the past. Not until tonight, when he had looked into Clio’s eyes and seen forgiveness. Seen understanding, and the first rays of hope.

  Like all muses, she looked on human folly and weakness and saw everything. Saw what drove people to the desperate things they did, and understood and pitied. Her kiss was an absolution, if he could just accept it.

  Clio stirred in his arms. She blinked her eyes open, staring out into nothingness as if still caught in dreams. Then she focused on him, and smiled.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course I am. Better than “all right”, as a matter of fact.’ He slid down among the sheets, still warm with her sleep, and wrapped both arms around her as she curled into his body. ‘I have never felt better.’

  ‘Neither have I. Who would ever have imagined it?’

  ‘Imagined what?’

  ‘That you and I would be here now, like this. And no one has even been knocked unconscious or pushed out of a window.’

  He laughed. ‘I think one would be hard pressed to push so much as cat out of such a tiny window. But I must say I’m grateful for the lack of bodily harm. It’s more than I deserve, I think.’

  ‘Indeed it is. Kidnapping is a capital offence, and I will certainly get you back for it one day.’

  ‘When I least expect it?’

  ‘Revenge is pointless when it’s looked for, isn’t it? But you are right about one thing.’

  ‘Just one? And here I’ve fancied I’m right about many things.’

  ‘So conceited, just like a duke. You’re right that this cottage is in need of a cat.’

  He gave a surprised laugh. Whatever he expected her to say—and really, Clio could be counted upon to say anything—it was not that. ‘A cat? So you can push it out of the window in lieu of me?’

  She slapped his shoulder indignantly. ‘Certainly not! I have always wanted a cat, but they make my father sneeze. When I was a child, we could only have fat ponies as pets. And a barn owl Cory took in once, fancying herself Athena. This cottage needs a cat, a fluffy grey one. To sleep beside the fire and purr cosily. That would make this place completely perfect.’

  ‘You like this funny cottage, then?’

  ‘I adore it. Can we stay here for ever and ever?’

  That was a most tempting prospect. To stay hidden here with Clio, to just be Edward and not a duke for the rest of his days. To forget. To be happy. ‘Do you not think we would be missed before “for ever�
��?’

  She frowned, her fingertips tracing light, enticing patterns over his shoulder. She lifted his amulet, studying it in the starlight. The scroll of Clio, Muse of History.

  ‘I suppose we might be missed,’ she said. ‘My father is absent-minded, but he still might notice if I never came back. So, we just have—how long?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ he answered.

  He was afraid she would ask questions about his task, about what drove him to bring her here in the first place. He had no answers for any of that yet. But she just let the amulet drop.

  ‘So, for ever might still be a possibility,’ she said.

  ‘What else did you want when you were a child?’ he asked. ‘Besides a cat.’

  ‘Many things. A library of my very own where I could work, without my sisters running in and out making noise and distracting me. A lake to go swimming in the summer and skating in the winter, though we actually did have that. Oh, and no music lessons. I could never do better than Thalia at the pianoforte and the harp, and I hated that!’

  ‘Ah-ha! One thing the muse can’t do.’

  ‘I also can’t dance well,’ she said, laughing. ‘But I can ride, and swim, and pick locks.’

  ‘I have ample proof of that one. I’m surprised you didn’t pick the lock on this door and run away.’

  ‘I didn’t have time. And now—well, it’s rather nice here.’

  ‘Nice enough to stay for ever.’

  ‘Even if there is no cat. And that would be easy enough to obtain.’ She was quiet for a long moment, so quiet Edward thought she had fallen asleep. But then she said, ‘What happened after?’

  ‘After?’

  ‘After that day at the British Museum. Did you immediately reform? Swear off drink and courtesans?’

  ‘I had to. For when I left the museum I heard my brother had died, fallen from his horse and snapping his neck. My parents’ Hector was gone, and all they had left was poor, unsatisfactory Paris.’

  ‘With no Helen?’

  ‘Alas, no. My parents tried to get me to marry William’s fiancée, but I could not. I tried to make it up to them in other ways, by sobering up, resuming my studies. Going off on a Grand Tour to find antiquities to add to their collection.’

  ‘What did they think of your efforts?’

  ‘I don’t know. They died of a fever when I was in Rome. I’m sure they had their doubts, though. It must have troubled my father’s last hours to know I would soon be the Duke.’

  ‘But if they could see you now, surely they would be proud. They would see that their legacy is in safe hands.’

  ‘Perhaps not if they saw me right at this moment. In bed with one of the Chase daughters, so very scandalous,’ he said with a laugh.

  Clio laughed, too, pushing herself up against the pillows, the sheet drawn across her naked breasts. ‘Perhaps not right this moment, no. But if they saw your work with the Antiquities Society, the monographs you write on your travels and the history of the Punic Wars. The way you don’t drink and don’t—well, you know.’

  ‘Debauch women?’

  A dull pink flush spread across her cheeks, and he almost laughed aloud with the rare wonder of it. Clio Chase, blushing!

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ she muttered.

  ‘Of course you would. You are the only woman I have debauched in quite a while.’

  ‘Oh, Edward. You great, romantic fool,’ she said between kisses.

  ‘So, for all that, do I not deserve a reward?’

  In reply, she cast off the sheet and pushed him flat on his back to the mattress, climbing atop his naked body. She kissed him again, a hot, heady flurry of embraces that drove away all thoughts and doubts. Drove away everything but the knowledge that he was making love with Clio. That he was hers, and she was his.

  ‘Clio…’ he muttered.

  ‘Shh,’ she whispered, stopping his words with her kiss. ‘I’m giving you your reward.’

  He fell back on to the bed, his eyes closed as he lost himself in the feel of her lips, her hands. Her fingertips swept lightly, enticingly over his shoulders, his chest, the sharp plane of his hipbones. Her mouth followed, trailing a hot ribbon across his skin.

  Her teeth scraped over his flat nipples, and he sucked in his breath. His hands tangled in her hair, the tangled strands gliding through his fingers as her kisses moved ever lower.

  He felt the light touch of her tongue over his ribs, her lips on his taut abdomen. He dared not move, dared not breathe, for fear this dream would vanish. That Clio would be just a vision again, a fantasy.

  But Clio was very real, and ever surprising. Her hair tugged at his grip as she knelt between his legs. Her fingertips skimmed over his thighs before alighting, ever so delicately, on his erect penis. The merest brush, but it was like a bolt of lightning, flashing with sizzling heat all through his being. She traced its hard, straining length, her nails gently scraping over the tip.

  Edward arched up. ‘Clio!’ he cried hoarsely. Did he protest—or beg her not to stop? He hardly knew; he couldn’t think straight at all with her touch there.

  ‘Be quiet,’ she murmured. Her gaze was rapt on his body, her touch growing more sure. ‘I haven’t done this before, I have to concentrate.’

  He gave a strangled laugh. ‘Please, my dear. Concentrate all you like.’ He collapsed back onto the pillows, surrendering utterly to her caress.

  She lowered her head, her hair trailing over them both in a dark curtain as she kissed his hip, the top of his tense thigh. Her breath was warm on his skin. Slowly, tentatively, the tip of her tongue touched the veined length of his manhood.

  ‘Blast it, Clio!’ he groaned. It was almost unbearable.

  ‘Did I do it wrong?’ she said worriedly. ‘The fresco at Pompeii…’

  ‘On the contrary. You did it far too correctly.’

  She laughed and kissed him again, her tongue sweeping down the length of him as she balanced him lightly in her hand. Finally, he could bear it no more. He clasped her shoulders, pushing her away from him as he rolled her to the bed.

  ‘Clio, you are killing me,’ he said. ‘No more trips to Pompeii, I beg you.’ She parted her legs, welcoming his desperate lunge into her body. She arched up to meet him, thrust for thrust, her arms and thighs wrapped around him until they were as one being, one person. Everything else vanished.

  ‘Then we’ll die together,’ she gasped.

  ‘Is that not what romantic fools do?’

  ‘Oh, yes. And I’m the most foolish of all.’

  He found his climax, a hot, bright flash of light that obliterated all before it. Nothing mattered but the heat and scent of her.

  ‘Clio!’ he shouted out. ‘Clio.’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, her own body tensed with the rush of her orgasm. ‘I’m here, my darling. Yes.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘Where are we going?’ Clio asked, laughing. Edward held one of her hands; with the other she touched the edge of the silk scarf covering her eyes. The darkness made her very sensitive to the rough ground under her feet, the scratching noise of leaves and pebbles. To the smell of fresh air, warm and tinged with the earth and green, growing things. It was a whole new world.

  Edward laughed, too, his hand tightening on hers as he led her onwards. He also seemed new-made after their late-night revelations. Younger, freer somehow.

  She did not know how she felt. Not shocked or surprised by his old mistakes. Surely she had heard of worse. But sad that he had been buried with the guilt of it for so long, unable to forgive himself. To put the past behind, and move into a future full of possibilities.

  She, too, had not let the past go. It was always with her. But it seemed there was something magical about this hidden place, their fairy-tale cottage. Something that lifted a blinding veil and allowed her to see new truths at last.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked again. ‘Are you trying to kidnap me all over?’

  ‘I should have kidnapped you lo
ng ago, if I had but known what delights my latest crime would lead to,’ he said. ‘But I won’t tell you where we’re going. You just have to find out for yourself.’

  ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘You’re taking me to the underworld!’

  He laughed. ‘And here I thought I was finally emerging from the darkness! Like Orpheus and Eurydice.’

  ‘That didn’t turn out well at all.’

  ‘Ah, but in my version of the story, it is Eurydice who does the leading, and they emerge safely into the light.’

  ‘Just like a woman,’ Clio said. ‘We are far too sensible to look back when told not to.’

  ‘My dear, there are many words I could think of to describe you,’ he said. ‘But “sensible” is not one of them.’

  ‘Ha! I tell you, I can be quite sensible indeed when needed. Have I not resigned myself to being your prisoner when there was no hope of escape?’

  ‘Only because I bribed you with books, and cakes, and baths.’

  ‘And other things, too.’

  ‘Other things?’

  ‘Come now, your Grace. You must not underestimate your own attractions.’ She stumbled over a tree root, and his arm came swiftly around her waist, keeping her from falling.

  Clio held on to him, the darkness heightening even her awareness of his nearness, the heat and clean scent of him. The way his muscle-corded arms, clad only in the thin linen of his shirtsleeves, felt under her avid touch.

  ‘So, you think I’m attractive,’ he murmured in her ear.

  She shivered, despite the warm spring day. Her body knew his well now, craved its pleasures and intimacy. Craved the closeness. ‘You know you are.’

  ‘I know no such thing. But I’m glad to know one lady—the most important lady—finds me so.’

  Suddenly, he swept her up in his arms. The world tilted dizzily as her feet left the ground, and she clutched at him, laughing giddily. ‘Edward!’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t drop you,’ he said. ‘We’re almost there, and then you can satisfy your curiosity. Both about our destination and my “attractive” body. If you are so inclined.’