Читать книгу Mischief in Regency Society - Amanda McCabe - Страница 12

Calliope slipped into the empty chair next to Clio just as the musicians finished tuning their instruments. Her throat ached as she tried to draw in a calm, normal breath, tried to still the clamorous beating of her heart.

Clio gave her a sidelong glance as she slid a handwritten programme into Calliope’s hand. “Where were you, Cal?” she whispered.

“Just in the conservatory,” Calliope whispered back, resisting the urge to fan herself with the thin parchment. Why did Lady Russell insist on keeping her room so warm? “Looking at the Aphrodite statue.”

Clio’s expression was unreadable as she glanced at her own programme, her lips pursed. “Oh? Did you suspect she would be the next victim of the dreaded Lily Thief? Spirited away into the night for nefarious purposes?”

Calliope bit her tongue to keep from laughing aloud. “Certainly not. Aphrodite is solid marble and at least six feet tall. Unless the Lily Thief is the reincarnation of Hercules.”

“One never knows. He could then lift the statue up through the skylights and…” Her words trailed away as Lord Westwood appeared in the room, leaning carelessly against a pillar at the very periphery of the audience. His gaze met Calliope’s as she watched him warily, and then, slowly, audaciously, he winked at her.

Blast him! Calliope’s stare shot back to the front of the room, her face burning. Where was the cold marble of Aphrodite when it was truly needed?

“Were you quite alone in the conservatory, Cal?” Clio murmured.

“Lord Westwood might have wandered in just as I was leaving,” Calliope answered reluctantly.

“And did you two quarrel again?”

“I never quarrel with people!”

“Never? With anyone?”

“You and Thalia are different. You are my sisters; I’m allowed to quarrel with you in the privacy of our home. But not with people at parties. Lord Westwood and I merely discuss our artistic differences.”

“Hmm,” Clio said, very non-committally. “I do believe our hostess is about to say a few words.”

Calliope had seldom been more grateful to anyone than she was to Lady Russell for her timely interruption. Usually she felt she could tell Clio anything, and her sister’s quiet understanding could soothe any hurt or trouble. There was no use in trying to articulate what a meeting with Cameron de Vere made her feel, though. It was a tangle of temper that could never be unwound.

Calliope hated—hated—to be so discomposed! The solution would be never to see him again. Yet he always popped up wherever she was! If only he would go back to Greece, and carry on with his misguided, dangerous work far away from her…

Calliope folded her gloved hands tightly in her lap to still their trembling, staring straight ahead at Lady Russell’s multi-coloured plumes, now even more lopsided than before.

“Good evening, my dear friends,” Lady Russell said, holding up her hands so she did indeed seem to be a parrot about to be borne aloft. “I am so glad you could join me on this very special occasion. We will hear for the first time in centuries the strains of music last heard in ancient Greece. Using a fragment of measures copied from a work by Terence, fortunately preserved during the Renaissance and hidden away in an Italian monastery, we have reproduced a ‘Delphic Hymn to Apollo’. The instruments used tonight greatly resemble the lyres, aulos and citharas seen here.”

She waved her hands, and two servants appeared carrying a large blackwork krater. A gasp rose in the room. This was one of Lady Russell’s greatest treasures, borne out of Greece decades ago by her grandfather. She seldom displayed the vase; it was rumoured she kept it locked up in her own bedchamber where only she could view it. It was exquisitely lovely, completely intact except for some thin cracks and a missing handle. The decoration was a party scene, graceful dancers, musicians, reclining drinkers. The ancient instruments they held did indeed resemble the gleaming new ones held by the musicians seated now in Lady Russell’s drawing room.

That vase would make a prime target for the Lily Thief, Calliope thought, examining its gleaming elegance.

“Now, my dear guests,” Lady Russell said. “Close your eyes and imagine you are sitting in a Grecian amphitheatre thousands of years ago…”

“I’m surprised she didn’t make us all wear chitons and sandals tonight,” Clio muttered. “What a sight we’d make then. Especially old Lord Erring. The poor man must weigh three hundred pounds. I doubt there would be enough white muslin in London.”

Calliope laughed behind her programme. She could think of one man who could do a short chiton justice, and it wasn’t poor old Lord Erring. She peeked at Lord Westwood over the gilded edge of the parchment. He was also watching the krater, a small frown etched across his brow. An unhappy Apollo.

What could he be thinking of?

Cameron’s gaze followed the krater as it was carried from the room. How lovely it was, and how tragic it was so seldom seen. Seldom loved. Like Lady Tenbray’s Etruscan diadem, it had been snatched from its home and locked away for the selfish delectation of a tiny group, its true purpose long forgotten. Lost in time. That krater was made for parties and merriment.

Yet at this moment it was not the vase’s sad fate that preoccupied him. It was the carefully etched figure of a woman along one polished curve of the krater. Her slender body, draped in the fluid, graceful folds of her robe, was bent over her lyre. Dark curls, bound by a bandeau across her forehead, sprang free around her oval face. Her expression was serious, pensive, in contrast to the merrymaking dancers gambolling around her. She seemed to hear only her own music, lost in her own thoughts and feelings.

The image was ancient, and yet the artist’s model could have been Calliope Chase. The slim, dark beauty, the seriousness, the single-minded purpose—it was all Calliope.

As the music, a strange, discordant, haunting tune, filled the room, he glanced from the disappearing krater to its living embodiment. Calliope had been giggling with her sister, but now she stared raptly at the musicians, her pink lips parted and dark eyes shining as if she, too, could see things that were long dead living again, bright and vibrant. When Cameron saw ancient temples and theatres on his journeys, he saw not just the broken, silent ruins they were now, but the centres of life they once were. Places where people gathered, where they talked and laughed and loved, where they created art and beauty that were the greatest heritage of flawed mortals.

Calliope Chase shared this ability to see the vibrancy of the past, the living arc of history. He could see that in her eyes as she gazed at a sculpture or vase—as she listened to lost music roused to life again. But he could never understand her despite what they shared. If she could sense what he did, sense the true value of the heritage left to them by their ancestors, how could she advocate that these objects be locked away, unseen, far from their homes?

She was beautiful, just like that ancient woman with her lyre. Beautiful and intelligent and spirited. But as stubborn as a wild horse in the valleys of Greece.

Seeming to sense his regard, she glanced towards him. For a fleeting moment, she lacked the protective veil she usually drew around herself. Her gaze was open, vulnerable, gleaming with unshed tears. The eerie beauty of the music had moved her, as it did him, and for an instant they were bound together by the enchantment of the past.

Then the veil fell again, and she turned away so that he saw only her black curls, the pale curve of her neck and bare shoulder. But the magic was still there, a shimmering web of connection that urged him to press his lips to that white hollow at the nape of her neck, to trail kisses along her spine, breathing in the warm scent of her. Feeling her tremble under his touch until she cried out and that maddening veil vanished for ever, and he could see her true self.

Yet what would that true self be? A beautiful muse in truth—or a gorgon of destruction? Only a madman would take on one of the Chase Muses, and Cameron wanted to hold on to his tenuous sanity for as long as he could.

Suddenly, the music, the overheated room, the strange allure of Calliope Chase were too much for that thread of sanity. The old wildness was rising up in him like a fever. He spun around and left the room, the strains of music trailing behind him. In the foyer, the servants were placing the krater on a high pedestal where it could be viewed in distant safety after the performance.

It was too high to be touched without the stepstool the servants took when they left, yet from his vantage point Cam could clearly see the lyre player. The jewels in her headband, the delicate sandal peeking from the hem of her robe. From here she was even more like Calliope Chase. Beautiful and untouchable.

“Are you trying to decide how to steal it?” Calliope asked.

Cameron glanced back to find her standing in the drawing-room doorway, watching him with those steady brown eyes. Her face was a smooth and unreadable piece of marble, yet he could feel her tense wariness.

He should not be surprised at her suspicion. They had been at odds ever since that reception at his house, when she found Hermes missing from his niche. Their arguments only grew with every meeting after that. Yet still it hurt, like the sharp pinpricks of a tiny but fatal poisoned arrow. As he listened to the ancient music, as those strange, intimate thoughts of her neck and skin bombarded his mind, he felt so bound to her. So close to discovering the mystery of her.

But she seemed to think him a thief. The connection was not there for her. Not a muse then, or a gorgon either. Just a cold judge. The cool Athena he had once thought her.

He buried that hurt, shoving it down deep and piling other emotions on top of it—carelessness, insouciance. A chill to match her own.

“Perhaps you would care to come closer, Miss Chase, and ascertain for yourself if I carry a fresh lily in my pocket,” he said lightly, as if he did not care one whit for her suspicions. He stepped forward, holding out the edges of his coat so she saw the smoothness of the silk lining.

She did not move away, but her shoulders stiffened. “I am not a fool, Lord Westwood.”

“Indeed not, Miss Chase. ‘Foolish’ is the last word anyone could use to describe you. ‘Misguided’, perhaps.”

Something flared deep in those unreadable eyes, a flash of some black fire. But still she did not rise to his bait. She seldom did. “I am not the one so misguided as to turn to crime in order to prove a point! I am not the one who holds the honour of my family or the claims of scholarship so cheap. Those of us with the advantages of education and travel have a duty—”

“And who are you, Calliope Chase, to lecture me on duty? Or honour?” His temper, tamped down so carefully for so long, burst out in a veritable Catherine wheel of sparks. His desire for her, her beauty and stubbornness, his frustration—it would all drive him mad, in truth!

He stalked closer to her, so close he could smell the summer scent of the roses in her hair, see the delicate blue tracery of veins under her ivory skin, the throb of her life pulse at the base of her throat. That wild urge to grab her and kiss her until her chilly frostiness thawed and flowed away, leaving only her, them, was nigh undeniable.

She did not turn away, just stared up at him, still and wide-eyed, that pulse beating until he swore he could hear it. Hear her heartbeat. He even reached for her, his fingers aching to clasp the smooth, bare inch of skin above her kid gloves, but some last flicker of sanity made him drop his hands, back away from her.

“How can you know me so little, Miss Chase?” he said hoarsely.

Her lips parted, yet she said nothing. For a second, a whisper of doubt floated across her face. A hint of puzzlement. Then it was gone, hidden again.

“What else am I to think?” she said. “How can I know you at all?”

Cameron could bear it no longer. He spun away from her and left the house, storming past the startled footman who appeared at the front door. The night air was chilly and clammy as he strode along the quiet street, leaving the lights and music of Lady Russell’s house behind him. He could not quite leave Calliope Chase behind, though. Her quiet, accusing ghost seemed to follow him as he turned the corner.

“Infernal woman,” he muttered. There was only one place he could exorcise her—the most raucous, most disreputable gaming hell he knew, far from these genteel squares and solemn prosperity. The Devil’s Dice. There not even Calliope Chase’s ghost could survive.

As Lady Russell’s front door slammed behind Lord Westwood, Calliope sagged against the base of the krater’s pillar. Every ounce of willpower that held her upright, that kept her from fleeing, flooded away in a cold rush, leaving her weak and trembling. Why did she feel this way every time she saw him? Why did they always quarrel so?

Behind her, she heard the click of the drawing room door opening and closing, the rise and fall of music, the patter of slippers against the parquet floor.

“Cal?” Clio whispered. Her steady arm went around Calliope’s waist, and Calliope turned into her gratefully. “What is wrong? Are you ill?”

“No, no. I just—needed some air,” Calliope answered.

“So you came out here alone?”

“I was not quite alone. But then I said something wrong, as I always do with him, and he left. Just ran out the front door into the street rather than be here with me!” Calliope realised she was not making any sense. She hardly understood herself! Why did she care at all if Cameron de Vere, a reckless probable-thief, ran away from her? She didn’t want to be with him, either.

Did she?

Clio glanced towards the door, frowning. “Who ran out into the street?”

“Lord Westwood, of course.”

“You mean you were speaking with Lord Westwood out here, and he became so angry he just ran off…” Clio’s stare shifted to the krater above their heads, and her green eyes hardened, turning oddly intent. “Oh, no, Cal. You surely did not accuse Lord Westwood of being the Lily Thief!”

Calliope covered her hot cheeks with her gloved hands, trying to blot out the memory of his anger. Of her own impulsive ridiculousness. “I—may have.”

“Cal…” Clio groaned “…whatever has come over you? I could see Thalia doing such a thing. She would challenge the devil himself to a duel! Not you. Are you ill? Do you have a fever?”

“I wish I did, then I would have some excuse.”

Clio shook her head. “Poor Cal. I am sure he will not speak of it to anyone, since his father and ours were such friends.”

“No, he won’t speak of it. Except maybe to the governors of Bedlam.”

Clio laughed. “There, you see! You made a joke. All is not lost. Perhaps next time you see him you can say you were simply overcome by the power of the music.”

“Or drunk on the wine,” Calliope muttered. She smoothed her hair and shook out her skirts, feeling herself slowly coming back to her usual calm presence. “I wish we never had to see him again at all.”

“That’s not likely, is it? Our world is so very small.” Clio looked again to the krater. “But tell me, Cal, what made you suspect Lord Westwood of being the Lily Thief?”

Calliope shrugged. “It seems the sort of hot-headed thing he would do, does it not? He sent his own antiquities back to Greece; perhaps he thinks others should do the same, willy-nilly. I don’t know. It was just a—a feeling.”

“Now I know you have a fever! Calliope Chase, going by a mere feeling? Never.”

Calliope laughed. “Tease all you like, Clio. I know that I usually have to carefully study a thing before I make my point…”

“Study it to death,” Clio muttered.

Calliope ignored her. “I like to be certain of things. But don’t the exploits of the Lily Thief just seem like something he would do? A person must be clever to get in and out of such fine houses undetected. They must be knowledgeable about art and antiquities, for only the finest and most historically important pieces are taken. They have to be sure of their cause, as Lord Westwood is. And they must be very misguided. As Lord Westwood also is.”

“Why, Cal,” Clio said softly. “It sounds as if you admire the Lily Thief.”

Calliope considered this. Admire the Lily Thief? The most dangerous of criminals, for he stole not only objects but history itself? Absurd! “I admire his taste, perhaps, but certainly not his goals. I abhor the disappearance of such treasures. You know that.”

Clio nodded. “I do know how passionate you are in your own cause, sister. But pray do not let it overcome you again when it comes to Lord Westwood! We have no proof he is the thief.”

“No proof yet.” Behind the closed drawing room door, the strains of music faded, replaced by the ring of applause. “It seems the concert is ending. Shall we fetch Thalia and go home? It grows late.”