To Deceive a Duke. Amanda McCabe

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      ‘It will all do very well,’ he murmured, watching closely as the footmen carried in the last of the antiquities so carefully shipped from London. A statue of Artemis with her bow raised. The famous ‘Alabaster Goddess’. They placed her next to the fireplace, where she looked as if she was about to shoot down a row of simpering porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses on the mantel. Along her base, barely visible in the veined marble, was a scratch mark from a thief’s lever.

      Edward traced it lightly with his fingertip, the tiny groove that was the only reminder of that night in the gallery of his London house. Artemis’s cool fierceness always reminded him of Clio. The goddess of the moon, of the hunt—she never let any mortal man stand in the way of what she wanted, what she believed to be right. She never shied away from any danger.

      But Artemis was immortal, the favourite child of all-powerful Zeus, who would never let harm come to her. Clio, despite her daring, was all too human. One day her gallant recklessness would surely catch up with her, and she would tumble heedlessly into the danger. Foolish girl.

      Edward turned away from Artemis and her bow, and found himself facing a full-length mirror. What a strange vision he was, framed in the gilt flourishes and ribbons of that rented glass! The shoulder-length fall of reddish-blond hair his valet so often hinted he should cut, for the sake of fashion, was tied back. As stark as his black wool coat and white cravat, skewered with a stickpin carved with a cameo head of Medusa. As stark as the sharp cheekbones and square jaw that was the legacy of all the Radcliffes, handed down from some distant Viking ancestor.

      Yes, he looked like a true Radcliffe, the heir to the old dukedom, but he was flawed. His nose, thin and straight as a knife blade in the faces of his late father and older brother, was marred by a badly healed break across the bridge. The legacy of a boyish, long-ago brawl with the man who was now Clio’s brother-in-law.

      And, a gift from the Muse herself, a jagged scar on his forehead. Healed to a white line now, it was the exact shape of Artemis’s stone elbow.

      Edward laid his fingertips lightly on the mark, feeling its slight roughness. Feeling again the fire of her kiss.

      Yet he did not let her go then. He could not. It was as if there was a devil inside him, a dark demon that dwelled there, hidden, from the time he was a boy. A part of him that desired Clio Chase no matter what she did—now matter what he did. But he could not let her stand in the way of his work in Santa Lucia.

      Edward reached out and tilted the swinging mirror between its hinges until it faced the faded blue wallpaper, and he was hidden from himself. He took off his coat and tossed it over the foot of the bed, rolling up his shirtsleeves to reveal the glint of his ruby-and-emerald rings. His forearms were well muscled and sun-bronzed, the arms of a man who had been working on archeological sites under the southern sun for many of his years. The frilled sleeves hid those signs of un-ducal labour, just as the rings hid the white calluses at the base of his fingers.

      It would never do for anyone to see what he was really up to. What the famously reclusive, famously louche ‘Duke of Avarice’ was truly like.

      He unlocked the small, iron-bound box on the dressing table. Stacked in there were letters and papers, bags of coins, but beneath was a false bottom, which had stayed neatly in place ever since the box had left England. Edward levered it upwards and drew out two objects. A tiny silver bowl, Grecian to judge by its decorations, second century BC perhaps. It was exquisite, hammered with a pattern of acorns and beechnuts, etched with rough Greek letters spelling out ‘This belongs to the gods’. A warning, and a promise.

      Beside it was a scrap of green-and-gold silk, torn along a seam, edged with sparkling green glass beads.

      He laid them both carefully aside, the bowl and the silk. They were the symbols of all that brought him to this place. All that brought him again to Clio’s side—even as he fought against that desire.

      But fate, it seemed, always had other plans when it came to him and Clio Chase.

      Chapter Three

      ‘Ah, another invitation from Lady Riverton!’ Clio’s father announced over the breakfast table. He waved the embossed card in the air before depositing it with the rest of the post.

      ‘Again?’ Clio said, only half-listening as she buttered her toast. Her head was still full of the farmhouse, of her plans for the day. It looked as if it might rain, as it so often did here in the mornings. The sky outside the windows was ominously grey, and she had to cover up yesterday’s work before the house’s cellar filled up with water. ‘We were just at her palazzo last week. Weren’t we?’

      ‘But this is different,’ Sir Walter said. ‘An evening of amateur theatricals, it says. And her refreshments are usually quite good, you know. Those lobster tarts last time were lovely…’

      Clio laughed. ‘Father, I vow you begin to think only of your stomach! But we can attend, if you like.’

      ‘Perhaps she would let me participate in the theatricals,’ Thalia said, pouring herself more chocolate. ‘I would like to try out some of my Antigone lines on an audience. I am not sure my delivery is quite correct. It all sounds very well in the amphitheatre, but then anything would be terribly dramatic there! I do want it to be right.’

      ‘Have you yet found anyone for the role of Haemon?’ Clio asked.

      Thalia shook her head. ‘All the Sicilians speak so little English, and all the Englishmen lack passion! I don’t know what to do. Perform it all in Greek? Everyone seems to speak it around here.’

      ‘Lady Riverton will be able to help, I’m sure, Thalia dear,’ Sir Walter said. ‘She does appear to know absolutely everyone.’

      ‘And she’s a terrible busybody,’ Thalia answered. ‘I don’t want her taking over my play! But I will certainly call on her to ask about the theatricals. Will you come with me, Clio?’

      Clio glanced again out the window, where the sky seemed even darker. She hurriedly gulped the last of her tea and said, ‘If you go this afternoon, I can come with you. But I must run an errand this morning. If you will excuse me, Father?’

      Sir Walter nodded distractedly as he read another invitation. He was quite accustomed to Clio dashing away at all hours now, which was how she liked it. Even the time she had gone off with the Darbys to see the temple at Agrigento with only a day’s notice had not caused him to bat an eye.

      As Clio hurried from the breakfast room, she heard her sister Cory say plaintively, ‘May I go to Lady Riverton’s, too? Please? I have been to no parties at all since we came here, and I am nearly fifteen.’

      ‘That is because until October you are still only fourteen,’ Thalia answered. ‘You are not out yet, and you should feel lucky for that. You have no social obligations at all, and can do what you please!’

      Clio paused at the front door to change to her sturdy boots. If she ran, surely she could stay ahead of the rain and return in plenty of time to call on Lady Riverton. She dashed out the door and down the narrow lane that skirted past the cathedral and into the main square of Santa Lucia.

      The village was just stirring to life for the day, fruit, vegetable and fish sellers setting up their booths, the bakery and patisserie opening their doors in a flood of sweet-sugar smells. Maids were fetching water from the fountain, gossiping and laughing. The great carved doors of the cathedral were still closed for morning mass, but soon they would СКАЧАТЬ