To Kiss a Count

‘Marco—why are you here today?’

‘To bring you this.’ He reached down to the floor beside the settee, bringing up the umbrella she had lost in Sydney Gardens. ‘I thought you might need it in such a rainy place as Bath.’

‘That is kind of you,’ she said slowly. ‘But surely you could have sent a servant?’

‘I could not entrust a servant with the rest of my errand.’

‘The rest of your errand?’

‘This.’ Marco reached out to gently cup her cheek in his palm, cradling it softly like the most delicate porcelain. Slowly, as if to give her time to draw away, he lowered his lips to hers.

But Thalia had absolutely no desire to turn away. Indeed, she could think of nothing at all—nothing but the feel of his mouth on hers, the slide of his caress along her cheek.

Amanda McCabe wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen—a vast epic, starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class. She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA®, Romantic Times BOOKreviews Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Holt Medallion. She lives in Oklahoma, with a menagerie of two cats, a pug and a bossy miniature poodle, and loves dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs, and watching the Food Network—even though she doesn’t cook. Visit her at http://ammandamccabe.tripod.com and http://www.riskyregencies.blogspot.com

Previous novels by the same author:

TO CATCH A ROGUE*

TO DECEIVE A DUKE*

*Linked to TO KISS A COUNT

TO KISS A COUNT

Amanda McCabe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Prologue

Sicily

‘Oh, Miss Thalia! We’ll never be able to leave tomorrow, there’s still ever so much to do.’

Thalia looked up from the books and papers she was packing away to see her maid Mary dashing around the chamber, her arms filled with gowns. Open trunks dotted the floor, half-full. Clothes and shoes spilled from the armoire and drawers.

‘Really, Mary,’ Thalia said with a laugh, ‘we have been moving about so much of late, I’m surprised you don’t have the packing down to an exact science.’

‘Well, we’ve never left in such a hurry before, either. There is no time to do things properly!’

Thalia agreed with her there. Her father, Sir Walter Chase, was not usually one to rush his travels. They had moved leisurely through Italy, seeing all the sites and meeting all Sir Walter’s scholarly correspondents before coming to rest in Sicily. But now his work here was nearly done. His ancient town site was thoroughly excavated, studied, and turned over to local antiquarians. Thalia’s older sister Clio was married to her true love, the Duke of Averton, and off on her honeymoon to lands east.

Sir Walter himself was now married again, to his longtime companion Lady Rushworth, and ready to see new places. They were headed to Geneva for the summer, along with Thalia’s younger sister Terpsichore, called Cory. It had been assumed that Thalia, too, would go with them. But after all that had happened in the last weeks, all that she had seen and felt and done, she was weary of new places. So, she was for home. England.

Her eldest sister, Calliope, Lady Westwood, was expecting her first child, and her recent letters were uncharacteristically plaintive. She asked when they would return home, when she would see them again. Thalia suspected Calliope would prefer Clio’s company. As the two oldest of the Chase Muses, they were very close. And no one was stronger, more capable than Clio.

But Clio was gone, and Calliope would have to make do with Thalia. Thalia, the one they all thought of as so flighty and dramatic. Perfectly adequate for visits to the modiste or amateur theatricals, but not for delivering babies.

Not for catching villainous thieves.

Thalia caught sight of herself in the dressing-table mirror. The Sicilian sunlight poured from the windows, turning her loose hair to the buttery shade of summer jonquils. Her heart-shaped face and wide blue eyes, her roses-and-cream skin, were pretty enough, she supposed. They certainly gained her admirers, silly, brainless suitors who wrote her bad poetry. Who compared her to porcelain shepherdesses and springtime days.

Her own family seemed to share that view. They praised her prettiness, smiled at her, indulged her, yet they seemed to think there was nothing behind her blue eyes. Nothing but ribbons and novels. Cal and Clio were the scholars, the heirs to their father’s work; Cory was a budding great artist, a serious painter. Thalia was an amusement, the one their mother used to call her ‘belle fleur’.

Oh, they never said that to her, of course. They applauded her theatricals, indulged her writing. But she saw it there when they looked at her, heard it in the tone of their words.

She was different. She was not quite a Chase.

Thalia turned away from the mirror, tugging her shawl closer around her shoulders, as if the thin cashmere offered some armour. Some protection against disappointment.

She had hoped that the strange events of the last weeks would change their minds. Would show them her true strength, what she was really capable of. When Clio had come to her and asked for her help in catching Lady Riverton, who had stolen a rare and sacred cache of Hellenistic temple silver, Thalia was overjoyed. Here at last was something useful she could do!

Something that would prove she was a Chase.

Her play had seemed to work, drawing out Lady Riverton’s accomplice, but then it had all gone wrong. Lady Riverton had escaped, presumably with the silver, and now Clio and her husband had to try to find her. A pursuit in which Thalia had no part. She had not helped her sister, or her father.

Or the one person she found she most wanted to impress. Count Marco di Fabrizzi. Her partner in the theatricals—and in quarrelling. The Italian antiquarian and aristocrat. The most handsome man she had ever met. The man she was certain must be hopelessly in love with Clio.

Her sisters teased her for rejecting all her suitors. But none of them had ever been at all like Marco. It was entirely her luck that when she did find a passionate, attractive man, he would love her sister!

Thalia took up the books and papers again, going back to packing them in her trunk. One manuscript slipped from her hands, fluttering pages onto the carpet. As she knelt to retrieve them, the title page caught her eyes. The Dark Castle of Count Orlando—An Italian Romance in Three Acts.

Her play, the one she had started writing when she met Marco and the adventure of the silver unfolded. A great story of Renaissance Italy, full of love found and lost, vile villains, ghosts and curses. Passion that transcended all else. She had been so excited about it. Now, it seemed rather pointless.

She straightened the pages and bound them up with string, tucking them into the trunk. Perhaps one day she would take it out again and laugh at it, at her silly fantasies of adventure and true love. Right now, she needed to help Mary finish the packing. England, real life, waited.

The breeze outside the window was turning brisker, rustling the leaves of the lemon tree. Thalia went to pull the window shut, and stopped to gaze down at the garden, and the cobblestone street beyond the gate. It was truly beautiful, the dusty, sun-soaked old town of Santa Lucia. Beautiful, and full of secrets. Would she miss its sleepy heat, its blasted-blue sky and rocky hills, when she was in cool, green England?

As the church bells tolled, marking the hour, their servants went on carrying out trunks and cases, piling them up by the garden fountain. She leaned out over the windowsill, watching as the hillocks of luggage grew higher and her time here grew ever shorter.

The breeze caught at her hair, tugging the golden strands over her brow. As she impatiently brushed them back, she saw him—Marco. Walking slowly past their gate.

She had heard he had left Santa Lucia after Clio’s wedding, but here he was now. He leaned on the locked gate, watching the commotion around their house with no expression on his dark, gorgeous face. The sun gleamed on his wavy, blue-black hair, turning it as glossy and fathomless as midnight.

Before she could think, Thalia whirled around and dashed from the room, running down the stairs and out the front door. She dodged around footmen carrying out more trunks, and at last came to rest before Marco. The low, wrought-iron gate was between them, just narrow-spaced bars their hands could touch between. But it might as well have been an ocean.

Marco straightened, smiling down at her. He was so very handsome, she thought as she stared at him. His bronzed skin over his high, sharp-edged cheekbones, his Italian nose and gleaming dark brown eyes, rich as fine chocolate. The classical beauty only slightly roughened by the dark whiskers along his jaw. Like a Greek god in his temple, a Roman emperor on a coin. Like her own Count Orlando in his dark castle.

But Thalia had met many handsome men in her life. Her sisters’ husbands, many of her own suitors. There was more to Marco than his fine looks. There was a fiery passion, only thinly veiled by flirtatious good manners. A fierce intelligence. And secrets. Many secrets, which Thalia longed to uncover.

She doubted she ever could excavate his hidden soul, even given the famed Chase tenacity. He was too skilled at disguises, too consummate an actor. Being good at masquerades herself, she could spot a fellow thespian. No, she could not read his true self, even if she had ten years for the deciphering. And she did not have ten years now; she doubted she even had ten minutes.

Yet she recalled the hours they had spent together in the ancient amphitheatre. Arguing, laughing—feigning love as they rehearsed their play. They were golden hours indeed, and she knew she would never forget them.

Never forget him.

‘I thought you left Santa Lucia,’ she said.

‘I thought you had, Signorina Thalia,’ he answered, giving her a smile. That heartbreaking smile of his, with the one perfect dimple.

Her Renaissance prince. Who just happened to love her sister.

Thalia glanced away, calling on all her well-honed acting skills, everything she had learned in the last few topsy-turvy weeks, to hide her true feelings from him. She remembered the solemn, sad look on his face at Clio’s wedding, and it gave her the strength to give a careless laugh.

It would be too, too mortifying for him to know how she really felt. To be yet again in her sister’s shadow.

‘We had far too much packing to do to make a hasty departure, as you see,’she said, gesturing to the trunks. ‘My sister Cory’s sketchbooks, my father’s copious notes on his work…’

‘Your Antigone costumes?’

‘And those.’ She finally looked at him again, turning to find Marco watching her closely with his vast dark eyes. She could read nothing there, not a flicker of the strange friendship they had formed on that ancient stage. No past, no future. Just this one moment to be together again.

‘I am sorry we never got to perform Sophocles’s play,’ he said.

‘So am I. But we had a dramatic scene of a different sort, did we not?’

Marco laughed, a wondrously warm, sunny sound that made her want to laugh, too. Made her want to throw her arms around his neck, and never, ever let go. Once he was gone, once this time was gone, her life would go back to grey, mundane reality again. She would be pretty, useless, flighty Thalia, and her adventures here would be a dream. A warm memory for cold nights.

‘You are surely the most fearsome ghost Sicily has ever beheld,’ he said.

‘A compliment indeed! I think I have never seen such a haunted place as this. Perhaps…’ Her voice faded, and she glanced away again.

‘Perhaps what?’

‘It will sound odd, but I wonder if I will become a ghost here,’she said, all in a rush. Her heart teetered on a precipice with him; she should just push it over and be done with it.

After all, she was known in her family as headstrong. Fearless.Yet something, some hidden kernel of caution, held her back just a bit. Even as she watched little pebbles skitter into the emotional void below her.

‘I wonder if I will leave my true self here,’ she murmured, ‘wandering around the old agora, all lost.’

Marco gently touched her hand. His caress was feather-light, the brush of his fingertips on her skin, yet the contact felt like a quick flash of fire. A heat she craved, even as she knew it would consume her and leave her that pale ghost she feared.

‘What is your true self, Thalia?’ he said, all his sunny Italian humour turned to frightening intensity. She wondered if he could indeed see inside her. ‘You are a fine actress indeed, yet I think I see—’

‘Thalia!’ she heard her father call from the doorway. ‘Who are you talking to there?’

Thalia was deeply grateful for the interruption, even as her heart sank at the tearing of their solitary moment. The abyss still waited, but she would not tumble over just yet. ‘It is Count di Fabrizzi, Father,’ she called, still staring at Marco’s hand on hers.

But he drew it away, and that shimmering instant was truly gone.

‘Invite him in!’ her father said. ‘I want to ask his opinion on something to do with those coins Clio found.’

‘Of course.’ Thalia gave Marco a quick smile. ‘You see all there is to see,’ she whispered to him. ‘I am an open book.’

‘I have heard many falsehoods in my life, signorina,’ he said. ‘But few, I think, as great as that. Your sister Clio, now she is an open book. You are like the Sicilian skies—stormy one moment, shining the next, but never, ever predictable.’

Did he really think that of her? If so, no one had ever paid her a finer compliment. Yet it made clear that he still did not really see, did not understand. Not entirely. ‘You have only known me in highly unusual circumstances, Marco. At home, in my real life, I am as predictable as the moon.’

Marco laughed. ‘Yet another falsehood, I suspect. Perhaps one day I will see you in this “real life”, and judge the true Thalia Chase for myself.’

Thalia smiled at him wistfully. If only that could be so! If only they could meet again, and she could show him that Clio could never be the one for him. Show him how she really felt, and what knowing him had meant to her.

Yet that was just one more hopeless dream. When she left Sicily, when she set sail for England and he went back to his home in Florence, they would surely never meet again.

And she would live on her memories of him for years to come.

Chapter One

Bath

Is it possible that only months ago I was in Sicily? Thalia wrote in her journal, balancing the leatherbound book carefully on her lap desk as the carriage jolted along. It must have been a dream indeed, for when I look out of the window now I know I have truly woken up.

The gently rolling lane, surrounded on all sides by the lush, fresh green of hedgerows, the expanse of fields and villages, could not have been more different than the sun-blasted Sicilian plains. Thalia closed her eyes, and for an instant she could swear she smelled the hot scent of lemons on the air. Could feel the warm breeze brush her sleeve against her arm, like the most fleeting caress.

But then the carriage bounced over another rut in the English road, pushing her out of her memories.

She opened her eyes, and smiled at her sister Calliope de Vere, Lady Westwood, who sat across from her. Calliope smiled back, but Thalia could see that it was an effort. Despite the cushions and blankets piled around her, despite the quantities of tea and calves’ foot jelly Thalia kept pressing on her, Calliope was still pale. Her brown eyes seemed enormous in her white face.

That pallor was one of the reasons for this journey to Bath. Calliope had not yet recovered from baby Psyche’s long and difficult birth, had indeed just become thinner and more tired as the days went on. Her appetite was not good, and she had no energy for her usual organising and taking care of everyone.

Thalia knew it was time to worry when her eldest sister had no interest in ordering her around. She hoped that her brother-in-law Cameron’s idea, that Calliope should take the waters and rest for a few weeks, would do the trick. He had gone ahead to find a suitable house, and Thalia had organised the journey.

In the flurry of engaging nurses and maids, packing and closing up the London house, she had almost forgotten Sicily and Marco. Almost.

‘What are you writing?’ Calliope asked, checking the basket where Psyche slept amid satin blankets. The baby had blessedly fallen asleep after miles spent wailing. ‘A new play?’

‘Just a few notes in my journal,’ Thalia answered. She tucked the little volume away. ‘I haven’t yet begun a new play.’

Calliope sighed. ‘I fear that is my fault. I have kept you so very busy you’ve scarcely had time to breathe since you returned from Italy!’

‘I don’t mind in the least. What are sisters for, if not to help in times of need?’

‘Then we are fortunate indeed to be so peculiarly rich in sisters!’ Calliope said with a laugh. ‘And now nieces and stepmothers.’

‘We are a family of females to be sure.’ Thalia peered down at Psyche, so deceptively angelic in her pink satin and lace, black hair like her mother’s curling softly on her pretty head. Her little nose wrinkled as Thalia smoothed back a strand. ‘Psyche has proved herself to be a Chase through and through already.’

Calliope gave her sleeping daughter a soft smile. ‘She does have a will of iron.’

‘And lungs to match.’

‘She will never refrain from expressing herself, I fear.’

‘Will she turn out like her Aunt Clio?’

‘A duchess? She just might.’ Calliope eased the coverlets around Psyche’s shoulders, and settled herself carefully back on her seat. ‘I do confess I was utterly astonished to hear of Clio’s marriage. She and Averton despised each other! After what happened in Yorkshire…’

Thalia remembered Clio’s wedding in the Protestant chapel in Santa Lucia, how very radiant she was as she had taken her Duke’s hand and repeated her vows. How he had raised the veil on her bonnet and kissed her, the two of them seemingly bound in their own little sunlit world. ‘Magical things can happen in Italy.’

‘So I understand.’ Calliope peered closely at Thalia from beneath the narrow brim of her hat, making Thalia squirm just a bit. When they were children, Calliope always knew when Thalia had done something naughty, and she could elicit guilty confessions in no time. It was no different now.

‘What of you, then, Thalia dear?’ Calliope said. ‘Did magical things happen to you there?’

Thalia shook her head, memories of Clio’s wedding shifting into a starlit night. A masked ball, a dance. ‘Not at all, I’m afraid. I’m exactly the same as I was before I went.’

Thalia could see that Calliope did not believe her, but she seemed too tired to pry. Yet. ‘Poor Thalia. You must play nurse to me after such a grand holiday! And now I am dragging you off to fusty old Bath. I fear the Upper Rooms can hold no charms like ancient ruins. Or Italian men and their dark eyes!’

Thalia glanced sharply at Calliope, trying to see if there was anything behind that ‘dark eyes’remark. If she knew, and was teasing about it. Calliope just gave her an innocent smile.

‘Oh, I have hopes of Bath, never fear,’ Thalia said lightly. ‘The theatre, the parks, the old Roman sites. The wealthy men seeking cures for their gout and young wives to wheel their chairs about. Perhaps there will be some overfed German prince there, and I will outrank even Clio! Princess Thalia. Sounds nice, don’t you think, Cal?’

Calliope laughed, her pale cheeks taking on a hint of pink at last. ‘It will sound nice until you find yourself in some drafty Hessian castle! I suspect that would not suit you at all.’

‘I dare say you are right. I haven’t the temperament for cold winters or draughty castles.’

‘Not after Italy?’

‘Exactly so. But Bath will have its charms, not the least of which will be seeing you well and strong again. The waters will do you good.’

‘I hope so. I am so tired of being tired,’ Calliope said wearily, the first hint of any complaint Thalia had heard from her.

Thalia leaned forwards in concern, tucking a blanket closer around Calliope’s knees. ‘Are you in pain, Cal? Should we stop for a rest? This infernal jostling…’

‘No, no.’ Calliope caught Thalia’s hand, stilling her fussing. ‘Bath is not far, I’m sure. I want to try to make it before nightfall. I long to see Cameron.’

‘As I’m sure he longs to see you.’ Calliope and her husband had hardly been parted since their marriage. Thalia didn’t know how they could stand it, they were so very devoted.

‘He says he has found a fine house right on the Royal Crescent, where we can be near everything,’ Calliope said. ‘I do want you to have some fun while we’re there, not spend all your time at my sickbed.’

Thalia laughed, even more worried now and trying to hide it. ‘What sickbed? You will be too busy promenading around the Pump Room for that! And I am happy just to be with you and little Psyche. We have been too long parted.’

‘Yes. If only Clio were here!’ Calliope squeezed Thalia’s hand. ‘Our little trio would be complete again.’

Psyche chose that moment to wake up, letting out a lusty shout that shook the carriage to its silk-lined walls.

‘It appears we would be a quartet now,’ Calliope said, lifting her daughter from the basket.

Thalia gazed out the window again. The rolling lanes, the hedgerows, had at last given way, and the carriage turned onto one of the bridges leading over the Avon into Bath itself. Five elegant arches rose over the bridge, forming a new view of the town and the hills beyond.

Even after the dramatic landscapes of Italy, Thalia had to admit Bath was quite pretty. It looked like the rising layers of a fancy wedding cake fashioned in pale gold stone, sweeping up along the hill slopes. As a Chase, the daughter and granddaughter of classical scholars, Thalia approved of the city’s classical lines, all neat rows of columns and clean-cut corners.