To Catch a Rogue, Page 3

  Calliope did not much like having her plans upset.

  “Well,” she heard a voice say, deep and velvety, faintly amused “you must be the missing Miss Chase.”

  Calliope glanced over her shoulder to find a man standing a few feet away, a faint half-smile on his lips, as sensual as that of her lost Hermes. He was dressed most properly, in buff breeches, a dark blue coat, and a pale grey brocade waistcoat, his cravat simply tied and skewered with a cameo pin. Yet he seemed an alien creature dropped into the sumptuous foyer, a man of bronzed skin and too-long, glossy dark curls. Of flashing, familiar brown eyes.

  “The Greek god,” she remembered Lotty sighing. “Oh, Calliope, he is a veritable Greek god!”

  “And you must be Lord Westwood,” she answered coolly, disconcerted by her reaction to him, to that smile of his. This was not how she pictured their meeting!

  “I am indeed,” he said, moving closer, graceful as a cat. He stopped close to her side, so close she could smell the faint lemony scent of his cologne, feel the heat of his skin, reaching towards her enticingly. She stepped away, closer to the reassuring chill of the marble wall.

  “There used to be a bust of Hermes here,” she said, swallowing hard to still the sudden tremor of her voice. “A most beautiful piece.”

  “Most beautiful,” he answered, gazing not at the niche, but at her. Steadily. “I returned it to Greece. Where it belongs.”

  And that was when she knew they could never be friends…

  “Miss Chase? What do you think?”

  Calliope jumped a bit in her seat, startled out of her memories by the sudden sound of Mary’s voice. She glanced into the mirror, only to find that her cheeks were flushed, her eyes too bright. As if that scene in the de Vere foyer, weeks in the past now, had only just happened.

  But her hair was tidy, swept back in her usual braided knot and decorated with the remaining white roses, her curls perfectly smooth.

  “It’s lovely, Mary. As usual,” Calliope said breathlessly.

  Mary nodded, satisfied, and went about finding Calliope’s shawl and slippers. Calliope reached for her pearl drop earrings, trying to forget that past evening, to focus on the soirée ahead. Cameron de Vere did not matter in the least! He was merely a misguided individual. Albeit a handsome one.

  As she clasped on the earrings, there was a knock at her chamber door. “The carriage is waiting, Miss Chase,” the butler announced.

  “Thank you,” Calliope answered. She took a deep breath, and rose slowly from her seat. It was time for the show to begin.

  “If Lady Russell’s plumes were any higher, I fear she would launch up into the sky like some demented parrot and leave us quite without a hostess,” Clio whispered, leaning close to Calliope’s ear.

  Calliope pressed her gloved fingertips to her lips, trying not to laugh aloud. The hostess of the musicale did indeed look a bit like a bizarre parrot, with towering, multi-coloured feathers spraying forth from a purple-and-green satin turban. Clio always did this; she was so very quiet that everyone believed she had nothing to add to any conversation and thus ignored her. This was a great mistake, for her sharp green eyes observed everything, and she sometimes broke forth with startling—and acerbic—insights. Comparisons to jungle parrots were quite mild for her.

  “But what of Miss Pratt-Beckworth?” Calliope whispered back. “I’m afraid someone told the poor girl that orange stripes were all the rage this season and she believed them.”

  “Indeed. It is better than that chartreuse creation she wore to the opera last week. Perhaps the Ladies Society needs to take her under its wing?” Clio shook her head sadly.

  Calliope joined her in perusing the room, turning away from the mediocre painting of a stormy sea she and Clio had been pretending to admire. An evening of ancient Greek music would surely not sound too jolly to most of the ton, but Lady Russell was popular, turban or no, and tended to attract around her those of a more philosophical bent. So the room was quickly filling up, people milling about between the rows of gilt chairs, chatting and sipping lemonade—and stronger beverages—before the music began. It was not a “dreadful crush” by any means. There was no danger of overheating, or fainting, or having one’s train trodden on. But the colours were vivid against Lady Russell’s collection of bad paintings and very good antique statuary, a swirl of pastels, blues, greens, reds—and one orange—mingling with the hum of conversation. Talk of music and history were de rigeur tonight, exactly what Calliope usually loved.

  But she could not entirely concentrate on the classical world. She still felt so restless. Unfocused.

  Next to Calliope, Clio removed her spectacles, squinting out at the crowd as she rubbed the bridge of her nose. Unlike Calliope, who usually wore Grecian white muslin because it was the simplest choice, Clio was clad in emerald-green silk embroidered with a gold-key pattern, her auburn hair bound back by a gilded bandeau. A parrot of a far more subtle sort.

  “What do you think, Cal?” she asked quietly. “Is the Lily Thief among us tonight?”

  Calliope stiffened. The Lily Thief—how could she forget? Her gaze quickly scanned the gathering, jumping lightly from one young man to the next. There were so many there, tall, short, plain, handsome. Yet not the one she sought.

  Could that possibly be the cause of her strange restlessness?

  Certainly not! Calliope shrugged that away. The doings of Cameron de Vere were none of her concern. Just because she had been certain a Greek evening would appeal to him…

  “I don’t believe so,” she said.

  “Then you do suspect his identity?” Clio asked. “You know?”

  “I don’t know,” Calliope answered impatiently. “How could I? I simply have an idea.”

  “Yet he is not here, your suspect?”

  Calliope shook her head.

  “But then how…?” Clio could not say more, though. Thalia called to her from across the room, where she was closely examining the musicians’ instruments—much to their chagrin. Clio wandered away, leaving Calliope alone.

  There were several friends she could join—indeed, a few people she really ought to speak to. She feared she would not be good company at the moment, not with such wild thoughts of de Vere and the Lily Thief whirling through her mind. She placed her half-empty glass on the nearest table and drifted away from the crowd towards the doors of Lady Russell’s conservatory.

  The glassed-in space was invitingly warm, scented with the rich, green fragrance of geraniums, lavender, mint, the earthiness of the damp soil. The room was empty now, though softly lit and furnished with scattered wrought-iron settees for visitors. Calliope welcomed the silence, the moment to collect her thoughts and become her usual calm self again.

  At the far end of the conservatory was a cluster of antique statues, a stone Aphrodite and her scantily clad acolytes. They watched all the horticulture with expressions of impassive, scornful beauty. They were quite stunning, and their cold perfection drew Calliope closer.

  “If only I could be like you,” she whispered to the disdainful Aphrodite. “So very—certain. So unchanging. No doubts or fears.”

  “How very dull that would be,” Westwood said.

  “Did you follow me in here?’ she asked, not surprised, glancing over at him.

  “On the contrary, Miss Chase,” he said, giving her one of his too-charming smiles. “I was in here enjoying a quiet moment to finish my wine…” He displayed a half-empty glass. “And here you came, talking to yourself. One couldn’t help but overhear.”

  Calliope reached behind her to plant her palms on the cold stone base, trying to hold herself upright, to maintain some dignity. His cognac-coloured eyes, so deep and opaque, seemed to see far too much. She didn’t know where to look, where to turn.

  “I, too, was looking for a quiet moment,” she said finally. “Before the music begins.”

  He nodded understandingly. “Sometimes people ask for too much. The only recourse is solitude.” He took a step closer, then
another. Calliope shivered in her thin gown, yet he no longer watched her. He gazed up at the statue.

  “You chose a fine confidante,” he said. “She looks so very—knowing. As if she has seen everything in the long years of her life.”

  Calliope, too, glanced up at Aphrodite, her pointed, cracked white chin, the clusters of her rippling hair. She did seem knowing, mocking even. Just as Westwood himself was. “I wonder what she makes of Lady Russell’s routs? How they compare to the revels of Greece.”

  He laughed, that rich, rough sound that touched her to her very core. “I am sure she thinks them very tame affairs indeed! For did she not come from the inner sanctum of a temple to Aphrodite, where there were, er…”

  “Orgies?”

  He glanced towards her, his brow arched in sudden amusement. “Miss Chase. How very shocking.”

  Calliope could feel her cheeks heat under his regard, but she forced the horrid blush away. A scholar did not always have time for niceties. “My father possesses an extensive library on the ancient world. I have read much of it, including John Galt’s Letters from the Levant. And Lady Mary Wortley Montague’s narratives of her travels.”

  “Of course. Well, after the orgies, she must find musical evenings a bit tedious. I’m sure she was most happy you chose to converse with her.”

  Calliope reached out to touch Aphrodite’s sandaled foot, the stone cold through the thin kid of her glove. This was the best sort of confidante—the mute sort. “If it was up to you, she would surely be sent back to moulder in the ruins of her erstwhile temple, with no one to talk to at all.”

  “Ah, Miss Chase.” He leaned even closer to murmur in her ear, his warm breath lightly stirring the curls at her temple. “Who says all the orgies have ended?”

  Calliope stared up at him, captured by his voice, his breath, his gaze—everything. It was as if she was suddenly paralysed and could not move, could not turn away. All time was suspended, and there was only him.

  He, too, seemed startled by whatever this moment was. He watched her, his lips parted, the glass in his hand perfectly still.

  “Miss Chase,” he murmured. “I…”

  Outside their green sanctuary, the sound of music tuning up began, and it was as if the prosaic noise burst some enchantment, some spell. He shifted back, and she turned her head away, sucking in a deep breath. She felt as though she had just run a long distance, all achy and airless.

  “Shall we go in?” he said, his voice taut, even deeper.

  “Of course,” Calliope whispered. She spun around and marched back along the flagstone walkway, smoothing her palms over her warm cheeks. He was behind her. She could hear his steps, the soft rustle of his superfine coat, but mercifully he did not offer his arm or touch her.

  She wasn’t sure what she would do if he did.

  Chapter Three

  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.