Look out for Amanda McCabe’s sumptuous Renaissance trilogy coming soon from Mills & Boon®

A NOTORIOUS WOMAN

‘Court intrigue, poison and murders fill this Renaissance romance. The setting is beautiful…’

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

A SINFUL ALLIANCE

‘Scandal, seduction, spies, counter-spies, murder, love and loyalty are skilfully woven into the tapestry of the Tudor court. Richly detailed and brimming with historical events and personages, McCabe’s tale weaves together history and passion perfectly.’

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

HIGH SEAS STOWAWAY

‘Smell the salt spray, feel the deck beneath your feet and hoist the Jolly Roger as McCabe takes you on an entertaining, romantic ride.’

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

‘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

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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.

At this distance, the dirt and noise all towns produced could not yet be seen or heard. It seemed a doll’s city, built for pleasure. Built for gentle strolls and polite conversations, for good health and conviviality. For new dreams—if she could only find them.

As Psyche cried on, they rolled off the bridge into the city, the carriage jolting along the stone streets with the endless flow of traffic. Thalia studied the well-dressed families in their barouches, the dashing couples perched high on their phaeton seats. The pedestrians on the walkways, showing off their fashionable clothes as maids scurried behind them laden with packages.

The shop windows displayed a variety of fine wares—lengths of muslins and silks, bonnets, books and prints, china, glistening pyramids of sweets. Thalia remembered dusty little Santa Lucia, its ancient markets and little shops.

She lowered the window and inhaled deeply of the mingled scents of dirt and horses, sugary cinnamon from a bakery, the faint metallic tang of the waters that hung over everything. She was far from Sicily indeed. And none of the men they passed were in the least like Marco di Fabrizzi.

Calliope peered over her shoulder, rocking Psyche in her arms. Even the baby seemed fascinated by the town, as she ceased to scream and gazed about with wide brown eyes.

‘You see, Thalia,’ Calliope said. ‘Bath is not so very bad, even Psyche thinks so. Look, there is a sign for the Theatre Royal, they’re performing Romeo and Juliet next week! We must go. A little bit of Italy right here.’

Thalia smiled at her sister, and at Psyche, who had popped her tiny fingers into her mouth as she watched the sunlight gleam on the mellow Bath stone. ‘I always do enjoy the theatre, of course. But you must not tire yourself, Cal. We can always go later.’

‘Pah! Sitting in the theatre is hardly likely to do me harm, unless someone chucks an orange at my head. I don’t want to be a poor invalid,’ Calliope said stubbornly.

They quickly left the more crowded lanes behind, making their way to the comforts and quiet of the Royal Crescent.

The neighbourhood Cameron had chosen for their holiday was an elegant sweep of thirty houses, built in deceptively simple Palladian style for Bath’s most exclusive occupants. How very perturbed those snobby builders would be, Thalia thought, to see the arrival of two bluestockings and a squalling infant! Even if Cal was a countess. The Chase girls had never been much for stuffiness. It was too time consuming.

But she had to admit it was very pretty, and suited to their classical studies. The carriage swayed slowly along the gentle curve of the crescent, past immaculately scrubbed front steps and austere columns. The houses exuded a quiet, prosperous serenity, the perfect place for Calliope to rest.

‘We can take walks here in the mornings,’ Calliope said, pointing toward the walkway around a large, open, grassy space across from the curve of houses. ‘There in Crescent Fields.’

‘Only if it is early enough! We would not want to be run over by fashionable promenaders.’ Thalia watched a couple stroll past, the lady in an embroidered yellow spencer and large feathered bonnet, the lead of a prancing pug dog in her hand. The wide brim of her hat hid her face, and even half-obscured her tall escort.

Yet even in a fleeting glimpse there seemed something so strangely familiar in that male figure. Those lean shoulders in dark blue superfine. Was he someone she knew?

But she had little time to speculate on the man’s identity, as their carriage at last jolted to a halt before a house near the end of the crescent curve. A footman hurried down the front stoop to open the carriage door, and right behind him was Calliope’s husband.

Cameron de Vere, the Earl of Westwood, was a very good match for her sister, Thalia always thought. They were both darkly beautiful, kind-hearted, and devoted to the study of ancient history.Yet he was full of humour and light, where Calliope could be intense, and they balanced each other. No two people had surely ever made a happier life together than they.

Cam’s face, usually so smiling and handsome, looked worried today as he took his wife’s hand and gently helped her down from the carriage.

Thalia took Psyche, cradling her close as they watched Calliope and Cameron embrace in full view of the Crescent’s passers-by. Cam held her so very close, as if she was a precious piece of ancient alabaster, and Calliope arched into him as if she was home at last, her head on his shoulder.

Thalia felt a wistful pang as she observed them together, a quick flash of loneliness. How very right they were together! Like two halves of a Roman coin.

And how solitary she was.

Yet there was not time for self-pity. It was not Thalia’s way, either, to waste time wishing for what she did not have! Not when there was so much she did have, so much she needed to do.

The footman helped her to the pavement, and she handed Psyche to the waiting nurse, who had followed in a second carriage with the other servants. She carried the baby into the house just as a great squall went up.

‘Thalia!’ Cameron said, kissing her cheek. ‘How well and pretty you look, sister. The Bath air agrees with you already.’

Thalia laughed as Calliope playfully slapped her husband’s arm. ‘She is blooming and pretty, while I, your poor wife, am a pale invalid?’

‘I never said you were poor…’ Cameron protested teasingly.

‘Just pale, then?’

‘Never! You are my Grecian rose, always. And now, fair rose, let me show you to your new bower.’

He swept Calliope into his arms, carrying her up the shallow steps, beneath the classical pediment into the house. Cal protested, yet Thalia could see she was tired and glad of the help. Thalia scooped up a bandbox a footman had left on the pavement and hurried after them.

The entrance hall was cool and dim after the sunny day, smelling of fresh flowers and lemon polish, with a flagstone floor and pale marbled wallpaper. Cameron led them through an archway to the tall inner hall, where a staircase curved to the upper floors. Psyche was already up there somewhere, shouting her protests at the new surroundings.

Cameron carried his wife into a drawing room off the hall, a fine room with gold damask walls and draperies. Coral-coloured silk couches and chairs were grouped around a tea table, already set with refreshments.

Next to the windows were a pianoforte and a harp. As Cameron settled Calliope on the couch, Thalia wandered over to examine the instruments.

‘These are very fine,’ she said, picking out a little tune on the keys. ‘I can play for you in the evenings, Cal! I learned lots of new songs in Italy.’

‘I always love to hear you play, Thalia dear,’ Calliope answered. She accepted a cup of tea from her husband, but swatted him away as he tried to tuck a blanket around her. ‘But you deserve a much larger audience for your talents! This is a very pretty room. We must have a card party or a musicale, as soon as we find new acquaintances here in Bath.’

‘Cal, you must rest!’ Thalia and Cameron said at the same time. They all laughed, and Cam went on, ‘Remember what the doctors said. Plenty of rest and quiet, and taking the waters every day.’

Calliope waved her hand impatiently. ‘By Jove, but you two fuss as if I had just announced I meant to cross the Channel in a rowboat! A small card party will be as nothing. Thalia must have some fun, or she will surely desert us for Italy again.’

‘I will not desert you, Calliope. I am here to help make sure you get completely well again.’ Thalia took off her bonnet, gazing out of the window at the fields beyond. More people strolled past, but not the tall man in the blue coat. The man with that dashing air of familiarity.

He must have been yet another figment of her imagination.

Chapter Two

Marco tossed his hat onto the nearest table and fell back into the room’s one chair, scowling as he watched the shadows lengthen on the polished floor. The White Hart Inn was quiet at this hour; everyone was tucked away in their own rooms, readying themselves for that night’s concerts and assemblies. Even the corridors and sitting rooms were free of the usual coming-and-going clatter.

But Marco’s thoughts were far from quiet. They whirled around in a scarlet-and-black maelstrom, caught in a labyrinth from which there seemed no escape. It had been thus ever since he arrived in Bath. Bath, the white, hilly town everyone said was so very respectable and dull! It was nothing of the sort. Philosophical lectures and Pump Room promenades hid dark depths.

Or rather, they hid dark people, people with secrets and hidden agendas. He had been here over a week, trying to befriend Lady Riverton, to gain her trust—or at least gain access to her papers and safe, so carefully guarded in her villa on the outskirts of town. Trying to discover where she had hidden the temple silver hoard from Santa Lucia. All he had got for his troubles thus far was a headache from her pug’s squealing.

And the silver, those ancient, invaluable relics, were farther away than ever.

‘Maledetto,’Marco muttered. Perhaps he had been a fool to think charm and flattery would be more effective, more unexpected than brute force in this vital errand. Lady Riverton was used to dealing with rough tombaroli, after all; flirtation would be unsuspected.

And indeed Lady Riverton did seem to like him, seemed more than happy to have him escort her around Bath. But if he came no closer to finding the silver very soon, he would have to find a new plan. Quickly.

Because he felt like the veriest fool. Not to mention whorish, dancing court on a giggling woman he despised!

Sometimes, when Lady Riverton took his arm and simpered up at him, he saw not her brown ringlet-framed face, but the blue, teasing eyes of Thalia Chase. That clear, bright blue that could darken in a stormy instant as she squabbled with him. Or could turn a pale, misty grey in the candlelight.

He had not been so fascinated by a lady since he was a young man, infatuated with Maria. Poor Maria, so lovely—so unlucky in love.

He had only spent a brief time with Thalia in Sicily, but a woman like Thalia Chase, so beautiful, intelligent, creative, and as forceful as a summer rainstorm, left a great impression indeed. If she knew what he was up to now, surely those eyes would flash with contempt. Running full-tilt into battle, roaring with fury, was more her style.

And perhaps she was right. Perhaps his cause was too great to be won except in pitched battle, with bloodshed. His old friends in Florence and Naples, who shared those dreams of Italian independence, of glories regained, would say so. But he, fool that he was, still stubbornly hoped otherwise.

That was why it was so very important to find that silver.

Marco pushed himself out of the chair, and went to the desk set in a small alcove of the room. It was stacked with books and papers, with the blotted pages of the pamphlet he was writing. The subject was what he had learned in Santa Lucia, of the peaceful, prosperous Greek town and farms that were once on that site. A beautiful site, where a great agora and amphitheatre rose, where farmers grew barley, olives, grapes, and wealthy families built their fine holiday villas. There was culture, contentment, a thriving worship of Demeter and her daughter Persephone.

It was that worship that had given birth to an elaborate set of temple silver. Beautifully decorated cups, libation bowls, ladles and incense burners, sacred to the earth goddess who gave the valley its riches. Until that peaceful community had been destroyed by invading Romans and their mercenaries, who looted, burned and killed, enslaving any who survived. One pious man had snatched the silver from the temple, just ahead of the invading army, and had hastily buried it in his farmhouse cellar.

There it had stayed until the tombaroli hired by Lady Riverton dug it up for her own selfish pleasure, her own hidden collection of precious, stolen antiquities. Complete sets of temple silver from the Hellenistic period were rare indeed, and these pieces and their story had high symbolic value. A heritage of beauty and culture, smashed by an invading army.Yet another piece of Italy’s past, lost.

He sat down at the desk, reaching for his inkwell. It was a tale that had to be told. Yet how very much more powerful it would be to have the silver itself! It would inspire others to join their cause.

Marco had spent nearly all his adult life dedicated to the glorious past, and to Italy’s future. To retrieving lost artefacts, lost history. He would find the silver, too, no matter what it took.

And if only the memory of Thalia Chase’s all-seeing eyes would cease to haunt him!

Chapter Three

It was the crowded hour for the Pump Room, ten o’clock in the morning, when Thalia and Calliope stepped from the Abbey churchyard under the pillared colonnade and into the throngs of people.

The vast white space, bathed in pale grey light from the cloudy day outside, echoed with laughter and animated conversation. Snatches of words floated to the ceiling and dispersed. That hat—the height of vulgarity! Could hardly breathe in the assembly, it was absurd. The doctor says I must…

‘And this is supposed to be conducive to reviving one’s health and spirits?’ Calliope said doubtfully, dodging a dowager’s Bath chair as it rolled past. ‘All these crowds with their nonsensical chatter? We might as well have stayed in London!’

Thalia took her sister’s arm, drawing her close as Calliope leaned on her. Cameron had gone to sign the book, agreeing to meet them by the pump itself. If they could safely cross the room.

Thalia was not tall, but she did know how to get her way when needed. She edged the gossiping hordes aside with her blue silk-clad arm, giving any who stood in her way a calm stare until they hastened to clear a path.

‘The air in London was not good for you,’ she said, taking their place in line for glasses of water. ‘Nor for Psyche. Here you can rest and recover, with no demands on your time at all. NoAntiquities Society, no LadiesArtistic Society, all those unending societies…’

‘Lady Westwood? Miss Chase?’ a voice said, and Thalia and Calliope turned to see Lord Grimsby, a friend of their father’s from the Antiquities Society, standing behind them, leaning heavily on his walking stick.

‘Lord Grimsby!’ Calliope said. ‘What a delightful surprise to see you here.’

‘You cannot possibly be as surprised as we were to hear of your father’s marriage to Lady Rushworth!’he said, chortling. ‘But Sir Walter wrote to us that you might be visiting Bath soon. My wife and daughter will be so pleased to hear you have arrived. Society has been so sparse in Bath.’

Thalia glanced around at the jostling crowds. ‘I can see that!’

‘You must come to the next meeting of the Classical Society, of course. We are not as numerous as the Antiquities Society in London, but we do have lectures and debates quite often, as well as excursions to see the Roman artefacts. There are so many Roman sites to be seen around Bath, y’know!’

‘It all sounds most delightful, Lord Grimsby,’ Calliope said. ‘We were just wondering what we should do without our various societies.’

‘We must keep up standards, Lady Westwood, even in Bath. Such a treat to have some of the Chase gels in our midst. You will come to our meeting next week?’

‘We would enjoy that,’ said Thalia. ‘But I fear my sister is under very strict orders to rest.’

Lord Grimsby chortled again, his old-fashioned wig trembling. ‘Aren’t we all, Miss Chase? What else is Bath for but to rest? That doesn’t mean we should rest our minds, as I’m sure your father would agree. Our meetings are very quiet, pleasant affairs. I will have Lady Grimsby call on you tomorrow. Until then!’

As Lord Grimsby limped away, Calliope gave their coins to the attendant and accepted two glasses of the water. ‘No demands on our time, eh?’ she whispered.

Thalia laughed. ‘I forgot Father has friends everywhere. We could probably set up camp on a mountaintop and someone would come along with an invitation to a lecture.’

‘Well, since Cam has joined forces with the blasted doctors and forbidden dancing, I must take my amusement where I can find it,’ Calliope said. She took a sip of water, and wrinkled her nose.

‘Drink it all, Cal,’ Thalia said, taking a suspicious sniff of her own glass. ‘Sulphur and iron, delicious!’

Calliope laughed, too. ‘Not exactly French champagne, is it?’

‘It is Bath champagne, and will make you strong again.’

Calliope raised her glass. ‘Here is a toast. May we all be well enough to travel to Italy next year.’

‘I will certainly drink to that.’ As Thalia clicked her glass with her sister’s, she couldn’t help remembering a pair of dark eyes, a wide, merry grin. A man who seemed a very part of the warmth and freedom of Italy. Part of the exhilaration of life, of real life, messy and complicated and beautiful.

Not this pallid reflection of existence. Not the constant hollow loneliness of feeling adrift in the world.

She took a drink of her water, and it was just as flat and stale as everything else had been since she had left Sicily and Count Marco di Fabrizzi. Grey. She gazed over the glass rim at the room beyond, at the constantly shifting crowd.

And suddenly she was tired. Tired of herself, her moping ways ever since she had returned to England. Moping never got anyone anywhere, she knew that well.

‘You know, Cal,’she said, ‘if we cannot get to Italy now, we must make Italy come to us.’

Calliope, who had been frowning into her glass, brightened. ‘How so, sister?’

‘We shall have a party, just as you wanted. Our own Venetian ridotto.’

‘In our little drawing room?’ Calliope said with a laugh.

‘A miniature ridotto, then. With music, wine, games.You can wear a fine new gown, and preside over the festivities from a regal chaise. That should make the doctors happy. And I will perform scenes from—from The Merchant of Venice! And Venice Preserved.’

‘How delightful! I do want a new gown to show off the fact that I once again have a waist. Who shall we invite?’

Thalia surveyed the room again. ‘Oh, dear. I fear it shall be a rather sedate ridotto. We must be some of the very few people under the age of fifty here!’

‘No matter. A party is a party.’ Calliope set about doing what she did best—organising.

By the time Cameron joined them, bearing yet more water, they had the plans well in hand.

‘You see, my dearest,’ he said happily, ‘you have roses in your cheeks already.’

‘That is because she has me to order around,’ Thalia said. ‘Like the perfect older sister she is.’

Calliope made a face at her. ‘I never order people around. I am as agreeable as a summer’s day.’

Thalia and Cameron exchanged a wry glance past Calliope’s bonnet brim.

‘Who is in the book today?’ Thalia asked.

‘Not very many names as of yet,’ he answered. ‘None of our acquaintances, anyway. Just a woman named Lady Riverton. Would she be the widow of old Viscount Riverton, the antiquarian? I never met him, but my father said his collection of Greek coins was very fine.’

Thalia froze, her fingers tightening on her glass. ‘Did you say Lady Riverton?’ she said hoarsely.

Calliope gave her a puzzled glance. ‘Do you know her, Thalia?’

Calliope did not know the complete story of the events in Sicily. Thalia simply hadn’t known how to tell her. How did one explain stolen silver caches, ghosts and breaking into a man’s house in the middle of the night? It all sounded bacon-brained in the extreme. So Calliope did not know what Lady Riverton had done, hiring ruthless thieves to help her steal the silver altar set, and then double-crossing even them to escape with her ill-gotten treasure.

And now she was in Bath, of all places! How could that possibly be? Showing up and brazenly signing the book. She must feel rather secure, knowing Marco, Clio and the Duke of Averton were far away, and no one among the invalids and retired clergymen would know her bad deeds. Had she come to hide the silver? Or chase some other treasure? Lord Grimsby was correct, there were many Roman sites nearby.

Well, Lady Riverton had obviously not counted on Thalia. That would be her undoing. Thalia was accustomed to being underestimated. Her blonde curls and blue eyes fooled many into thinking her merely fluffy and empty-headed. She knew now how to work such low expectations to her advantage.

Lady Riverton would be very sorry she ever came to Bath.

‘Thalia?’ Calliope said. ‘Do you know this Lady Riverton?’

‘There was a Lady Riverton in Sicily,’ Thalia answered lightly. ‘A ridiculous lady with far too many hats, and a fawning cicisbeo named Mr Frobisher who followed her everywhere.’ Frobisher—one of Lady Riverton’s greedy dupes. He was paying the price now. But Thalia saw no need to mention that.

‘I take it you were not exactly bosom bows,’ Cameron said wryly.

‘You could say that.’

‘Well, perhaps this is a different Lady Riverton,’ Calliope said. ‘I should hate to meet such a creature just now. The combination of ridiculous bonnets with all this water would be too much for my constitution.’

Thalia handed her empty glass to a passing attendant. ‘Excuse me for a moment, Cal,’ she said. ‘I see someone I must speak to.’

She strolled away, keeping to the edges of the room where the crowds were thinner. Though she walked slowly, smiling and nodding at acquaintances as if she hadn’t a care in the world and no place to be, she carefully scanned each face. Each overly adorned bonnet. If Lady Riverton was indeed here, Thalia would find her. She could not hide.

Thalia felt more excited than she had since leaving Santa Lucia. She had a purpose again, an errand! A way to do something useful. Oh, if only Clio were here, so they could work together again as they had on the ghost play that had flushed out Mr Frobisher and the true villain, Lady Riverton. If only…

If only Marco were here. Despite their bickering, they had proved to be a fine team when united in a scheme.

But she was alone as she circled the Pump Room, dodging walking sticks and offers of yet more water. It was all up to her now.

There was no sign of Lady Riverton, and Thalia had begun to despair of her errand when at last she caught a glimpse of a tall-crowned brown satin hat trimmed with bright blue and yellow feathers. They waved above the crowd like a gaudy beacon.

Thalia stretched up on tiptoe, straining for a better glimpse. Not for the first time, she wished she were taller, more like Clio. All she could see were backs, blocking her view! Using her elbow again, she forced her way through at last to a somewhat clearer space near the counter.

The woman with the feathers was just taking a glass of water. Her brown satin pelisse and a cameo earring, a chestnut ringlet, was all Thalia could see. But then she laughed, that dreadful high-pitched giggle Thalia well remembered. It was Lady Riverton, without a doubt.

Thalia’s first, fiery instinct was to dash forward, snatch that terrible hat off the woman’s head—along with a handful of hair!—and demand to know where the silver was. But even she, with all her Chase impulsiveness, knew that causing a scene in the Pump Room would avail her nothing. It would cause a scandal, and worse would tip her hand to Lady Riverton, making it all too easy for her to escape again.

No, she had to bide her time. Plan her next move carefully. She wouldn’t fail again.

She slid closer to Lady Riverton, who was chattering away as if she was in no way guilty of anything but crimes of fashion. ‘…must procure theatre tickets tout suite, my dear! There is no finer way to meet people in Bath, I am sure. The Upper Rooms can be such a squeeze, but only the very best people are in the theatre boxes.’

Thalia nearly laughed aloud, wondering what Lady Riverton’s idea of the ‘best people’ could possibly be. And who was the poor man being forced to listen to such faradiddle? He was too tall to be Mr Frobisher, who as far as Thalia knew was still in the Santa Lucia gaol. As she watched, Lady Riverton took her escort’s arm and the pair of them turned to stroll away into the crowd.

Thalia hurried in the direction of their path, nearly tripping over the front wheel of yet another Bath chair. By Jove, but those things were a menace! At last she came face to face with Lady Riverton, and saw that her escort was…

Marco. The Count di Fabrizzi himself, in all his Roman-god handsome splendour.

For an instant, all she could do was gape at him in utter astonishment. Surely it could not be! Perhaps he had a twin. An evil twin, who paraded around the spa towns of Europe with silly females, and stole their jewels when they were not looking. She had read about such men.

But even as the absurd thought flitted through her mind, she knew that it really was Marco who stood there. No one else could have eyes like that.

As he glimpsed her, those dark eyes widened in surprise, and a smile touched his lips. A mere flash of the dimple set deep in his smooth olive cheek. Then it was as if he suddenly remembered their true situation, and that smile vanished. The spark deep in his eyes went out, and he watched her warily.

As if he did remember—remember that night she had broken into his house, and had no idea what unpredictable thing she might do now.

Thalia smiled politely, sweetly, and said in her brightest voice, ‘Lady Riverton! Count di Fabrizzi. What a great surprise to see you here in Bath. It has been far too long since we last met.’

Lady Riverton smiled and nodded, those feathers bobbing maniacally. Marco bowed, still wary and serious. As well he might be, for Thalia was determined to discover what his game was here.

‘Why, if it is not Miss Thalia Chase!’ Lady Riverton said gaily. ‘And looking just the same as when we parted in dear Santa Lucia. How is your lovely sister, the new Duchess?’

‘Clio and her husband are both well, thank you,’ Thalia said, giving the bizarre couple her sweetest smile. ‘They are still travelling on the Continent.’

‘I was so very sorry to miss their wedding, but I had to travel in haste to Naples to visit an ill friend,’ Lady Riverton said. ‘That is where I met Count di Fabrizzi again! He has been such an attentive escort.’ She simpered up at Marco, her gloved hand tight on his arm.

Marco gave her an indulgent smile, his eyes soft as he gazed down at her. As if he could not watch her enough, get enough of her presence.

Thalia remembered how just such a look from him could make her feel, back in Santa Lucia. How his teasing smiles made her feel all hot and chilled, weak and invincible, light and unbearably serious, all at the same time.

She wished she still had a glass of the vile water, so she could throw it at him. First Clio, now Lady Riverton! The—the bounder.

‘How fortunate, Lady Riverton, that you possess the happy talent of making friends wherever you go,’ Thalia said.

‘Indeed I do! My dear husband, the late Viscount Riverton, said it was my greatest gift. Or one of them, anyway!’ Lady Riverton giggled, leaning on Marco’s arm even more. He seemed to have no objections, though Thalia noticed they were beginning to attract interested attention from the passers-by.

‘Speaking of friends, Miss Chase,’ Lady Riverton continued, ‘never say you are here on your own! Your sister’s great marriage must have caused such a lowering of spirits for you. I hope the waters will soon restore your bloom.’

Thalia felt her ‘blooming’ cheeks grow warm. ‘On the contrary, Lady Riverton. We are all most happy that Clio has found someone who loves and values her as much as we do. And I am here with my eldest sister, Lady Westwood, who has recently had a child.’

‘Indeed?’ Lady Riverton said. ‘Well, I am glad you are here with someone to see to the proprieties. If I recall from Santa Lucia, you yourself are often too busy to worry about such things.’

Proprieties like stealing? Destroying history? Thalia again felt that burning urge to throw something. At Lady Riverton, whose smugly smiling countenance said she knew Thalia could do nothing in such a public place. At Marco, who seemed to fawn over Lady Riverton like a simpleton, like a new Marco di Fabrizzi. He was obviously playing some game, and it was maddening that she could not decipher it!

‘Thalia? Will you introduce us to your friends?’ she heard Calliope say, and she turned gratefully to her sister. Calliope had always been the sensible one, the one that drew the rest of them down to earth when their wild Chase-ian schemes sent them flying off.

But Calliope was staring at Marco with wide eyes, as if she could not account for his presence here. Yet how could she know him? She had not been in Sicily. She knew nothing of the silver fiasco there.

Cameron came to her side, taking her hand. The two of them exchanged a long glance.

If Thalia thought she was confused before, now she felt she had tumbled down into an abyss. An upside-down world where nothing made sense.

‘May I introduce Viscountess Riverton,’ Thalia said, automatically mouthing the polite words. ‘And the Count di Fabrizzi. This is my eldest sister and her husband, Lord and Lady Westwood.’

There were bows and curtsies all around, perfectly polite and conventional. But Thalia still felt that strange tension in the air, that taut sensation, as if all the good manners would suddenly snap and send them into chaos.

‘We are always happy to meet friends of Thalia’s,’ Calliope said. ‘I hope we will see more of you around Bath.’

‘Oh, indeed!’ Lady Riverton trilled. ‘We are to attend the assembly on Tuesday, and I want to organize a card party soon at my villa. I will send you a card!’

‘We look forward to it,’ Calliope said.

‘But now I fear you must excuse us,’ Cameron added. ‘My wife has an appointment at the Hot Bath this afternoon.’

‘How delightful,’ Lady Riverton said. ‘Nothing like taking the waters! We shall see you very soon, I’m sure.’

Not if I can help it, Thalia thought. Calliope took her arm in a firm clasp and led her past the still-simpering Lady Riverton, the inscrutable Marco.

At Marco’s shoulder, Cal suddenly paused and hissed, ‘Don’t think I don’t remember you, Marco. I hope you left your crowbar at home this time, because I will not let you cause trouble for another of my sisters.’

‘Lady Westwood, I would not—’ Marco began. But Calliope had already marched onwards, drawing Cameron and Thalia with her.

Even as the crowd closed behind them, Thalia could swear she felt Marco’s stare on the back of her neck, a warm tingle against her skin.

She rubbed at her nape, just under the edge of her bonnet. ‘You already knew Marco?’ she whispered.

Calliope gave her a sharp glance. ‘You are on a Christian-name basis with him?’

‘I—well…’ Thalia stammered. How could she even begin to explain all that had happened to Calliope? She couldn’t, not here, not now.

But it seemed Calliope had explanations of her own to make. She stared straight ahead, always smiling. She tightened her grip on Thalia’s arm until she had no choice but to smile, too.

‘We can’t speak of this here,’ Calliope whispered. ‘Wait until this afternoon, when we are at home.’

Cameron thrust another glass of water into Thalia’s hand. She stared down at it, wishing it was something a bit stronger. Homemade Sicilian grappa, perhaps—forgetfulness in a glass.

Yes, she could certainly use some of that now. Instead, she just gulped down the water, and cringed.

Chapter Four

‘La, but I have seldom seen anyone so altered as Miss Thalia Chase!’ Lady Riverton said, clutching Marco’s arm as they made their way through the Pump Room. ‘I don’t remember her being so pale and wan, do you?’

Marco felt his jaw tighten, even as he fought to maintain a careless smile. A fun-loving façade, which was everything in this tightrope game he played. Wan was the last word he would use to describe Thalia. He feared the fiery sparks from her blue eyes would set him ablaze.

He was still a bit unsettled by her sudden appearance there before him. Her presence could so easily send this house of cards tumbling, and then where would he be? Without the silver, without justice for Lady Riverton and her minions. And assuredly without Thalia.

He suppressed the urge to glance back, to see if Thalia still watched him with that contemptuous glare. He kept walking with Lady Riverton, nodding and smiling at everyone as if he had nothing more than pleasure in mind.

That was all they expected of Italians, after all. Sunny, hedonistic pleasure. And those romantic, preconceived notions of theirs served his purpose most admirably. It was easier to get on with his work when no one watched too closely, expected too much.

Yet, somehow, the thought of Thalia Chase’s disapproval pained him.

‘But then, of course Miss Chase would be out of sorts,’ Lady Riverton went on. ‘Her elder sisters are married now, so advantageously! Even her eccentric old father has remarried. Yet she, poor thing, has no prospects.’

‘I hardly think someone who looks like Miss Chase could be entirely without prospects,’ Marco couldn’t resist saying.

Lady Riverton shot him a frown from under her silly hat. ‘You find her pretty, then?’

He shrugged carelessly, and gave her one of those grins he was coming to loathe. But ladies had often told him his smile was well-nigh irresistible; he might as well make us of it.

Indeed, Lady Riverton did relax her hard clasp on his sleeve, smiling at him in return.

‘I amaman,’he said.‘Therefore Icannot help but find Miss Chase pretty. That would be enough for many men, but not for me.’

‘No?’

‘No. I prefer more substance to a lady. Intelligence. Experience.’ He gave her arm a surreptitious touch. ‘Hidden depths.’

Lady Riverton giggled. ‘Count di Fabrizzi, you are far too amusing.’

‘I seek only to please.’

‘That, I think, you could not help but do.’ She surveyed the crowd around them, giving a deep sigh of satisfaction when she saw that they, too, were observed. ‘I am the envy of every lady here, to have your companionship.’

And that was what Marco had wanted, of course, when he had sought Lady Riverton’s renewed acquaintance. He had had no luck finding the whereabouts of the silver any other way, and her own abodes proved to be surprisingly well guarded. She was no fool, though she liked so much to play one.

But she was a woman, and receptive to a handsome man’s flirtations. He had almost gained her trust, was so close. He was sure of it.

Then Thalia appeared.

Lady Riverton excused herself to go and speak to an acquaintance, leaving Marco at last able to slip away. Even his acting skills, honed over years in service to his cause until he could play a gypsy, a king, or a careless flirt to perfection, felt strained in the glasshouse atmosphere of Bath. Under all its pretty gentility, its endless pursuit of diversion, lurked a deep vein of tension. The sense that everyone was just watching, waiting, for something to explode.

Like his head.

Marco slipped out of the doors into the Abbey churchyard. It was just as crowded there, but at least there was fresh air, the open expanse of pearl-grey sky overhead. It had not yet begun to rain, as it always seemed to do in this blasted town, which made everyone linger outside just a bit longer.

Across the yard, past the edifice of the church and the swirl of the milling crowds, Marco caught a glimpse of a bright blue silk pelisse. Thalia had paused to gaze into a shop window, with no sign nearby of her sister and brother-in-law.

Without thinking, without even considering the indisputable fact that he was better off staying far away from her, Marco hurried toward her. He was irresistibly drawn to her, as if her golden hair was a beacon of light and truth in the grey day. A ray of bright honesty in a sordid world.

He remembered how she had portrayed Antigone in that ancient amphitheatre in Santa Lucia, so solemn and certain. He had thought then how Sophocles’s doomed princess suited her, both of them women set on their own course. Determined to do what was right no matter the consequence.

He loved that about her, and hated it, too. Her sister Clio had been his partner in the cause of preserving ancient history for a long time. Clio understood him, for they were alike in their belief that subterfuge and deceit were sometimes required when dealing with their dangerous foes. But Thalia had no deceit in her. She was a warrior of the battlefield. She would happily skewer her enemy, yet she would look them in the eye while she did it.

And he feared he was the one about to be skewered.

She saw his reflection in the shop window, her gaze rising to meet his, but she did not turn around.

‘I’m surprised your friend has let you off the leading strings,’ she said.

Marco laughed despite himself. ‘She is not exactly my friend.’

‘No, I suppose not. It is quite obvious she considers herself to be more than that. I imagine she required a replacement for poor Mr Frobisher.’

That stung. He remembered Frobisher, scurrying around Santa Lucia to do Lady Riverton’s every bidding—until she betrayed him.

Marco longed to tell Thalia what was really going on. They had worked so well together in Sicily, once they had joined forces. Yet the thought of her innocent enthusiasm for the play, of that shining integrity, stopped him. Clio had warned him to keep Thalia out of danger.

And he never wanted to see her in danger again. Not Thalia. Even if the price was her contempt. He had sworn after Maria died that no woman would suffer because of his work again.

‘She is useful in introducing me to your English society,’ he said cautiously.

‘And I must ask myself, why would an Italian nobleman, a count, need an entrée to English society?’she said. She turned away from the window to face him, gazing up at him steadily from beneath her white straw bonnet.

There was certainly nothing wan about her. Her smooth cheeks were pink, her eyes a shining sky-blue. ‘Why are you here?’ she demanded. ‘Really?’

He summoned up every ounce of those theatrical skills, remembering all too well that she was also an accomplished thespian. ‘I heard there was much amusement to be had in Bath. Sicily was too dull after you and your sister left, and Florence is overrun by boring Austrians.’

‘So you came to Bath?’ she said doubtfully, scowling up at him. Those furrows on her brow only made her more adorable, made him want to catch her up in his arms and kiss those ridiculous wrinkles until she laughed with him again.

‘Do you suffer from gout, perchance?’ she said, obviously completely oblivious to his lascivious desires. To the way her white lilac perfume drove him insane. ‘From digestive complaints? All those tomatoes in the Italian diet…’

Marco laughed. ‘Not at all. I wanted a glimpse of your prince’s strange Oriental palace.’

‘Then you are in entirely the wrong place, Count. The Pavilion is in Brighton.’

He slapped his open palm to his forehead. ‘Ah! My terrible English.’

‘Well, at least you have Lady Riverton to rescue you.’ Thalia stepped closer, so close he could see the silvery flecks in her eyes, the blonde curls that had escaped from her bonnet to brush against her brow.

‘We are indeed a long way from Sicily,’ she murmured. ‘But I remember what happened there. You are up to something in Bath, Count di Fabrizzi, and I will discover what it is.’

Marco was afraid of that. He had been acquainted with the Chase sisters long enough to know they never backed away from a challenge. Now he had two of them on his trail, Thalia and Lady Westwood, who had once met him in his gypsy guise in Yorkshire, trying to steal a statue from the Duke of Averton. Would Clio and that Duke, now her husband, show up next?

That was the last thing he needed. Not when matters were so precariously balanced.

‘Miss Chase,’ he said coolly, ‘I know that this is an impossible task for a Chase female, but I would advise you to mind your own business. You have no call to interfere in my personal affairs.’

Her eyes flashed. ‘Your personal affairs, is it? Well, I have no desire to “interfere” with anyone who has the bad taste to associate with Lady Riverton. And I see clearly that there is nothing wrong with your English!’

Marco feared he might fall into those angry eyes and drown. Forget about everything but Thalia, her beauty, her wonderful temper, her talent—and the way she had haunted his thoughts ever since Sicily. He forced himself to step away from her, to give her one of his careless grins.

‘Then I hope we understand each other, Miss Chase,’ he said. ‘I bid you good day.’

‘And good day to you, sir!’she snapped. She spun around in a flurry of blue-and-white skirts, stalking off into the crowd. She was quickly swallowed up by the throngs of people, vanishing as if she had never been there at all.

It took all Marco’s resolve to turn back toward the Pump Room, to not run after her. Not catch her in his arms and tell her everything. The contempt in her eyes cut deeper than any sword.

But she could not know of his real feelings. Not now—not ever.

Chapter Five

‘Fool, fool!’ Thalia muttered, pacing from one end of her chamber to the other. She didn’t know if she meant herself—or Marco di Fabrizzi. Or perhaps they were all fools. It certainly felt like it at that moment.

She reached the carved marble fireplace, and turned to stalk back in the other direction. Even though her room was exceedingly pretty, with creamcoloured wallpaper, and cream-and-blue chintz curtains and hangings, it was not terribly large. It didn’t quite allow for satisfactory stalking, so she plopped herself down at the little writing desk instead.

She had begun a letter to Clio that morning, before they left for the Pump Room, and now Thalia didn’t know how to go on with it. All the family news, the gossip about Bath, seemed so silly beside what she really longed to write.

Dearest Clio—was the Count di Fabrizzi in love with you, as I suspect he was? Was his heart utterly broken when you married the Duke? And is that now why he has turned to the attentions of Lady Riverton?

Thalia frowned as she stared down at the paper, seeing not the half-finished scribbles but Marco’s face at the Pump Room. That handsome, bronzed Italian face, smiling down so flirtatiously at Lady Riverton.

Lady Riverton, of all people! No, she really could not believe it. It had to be a scheme of some sort.

Thalia reached for her pen and ink, hastily adding a long postscript to the letter. Clio would know how to advise her, could tell her the whole truth of what had happened in Santa Lucia. If only Thalia did not suffer agonies of embarrassment that her sister might guess her own feelings!

The Chase sisters were always united against the world, but amongst themselves they could tease unmercifully.

‘My dear Clio,’ she wrote. ‘Since I concluded my missive, a most curious thing occurred. I met with an old acquaintance from Santa Lucia at the Pump Room—and he was not alone…’

She wrote the rest of her tale as fast as she could, and sealed it up before she could change her mind. She also had to write to her father, and to her younger sister Cory. But she found she was too tired after that one letter, and closed up her writing box until later.

As she shut the lid, she glimpsed a bundle of documents tucked away in its depths. Her play, The Dark Castle of Count Orlando.

It was only one act at the moment, Thalia thought wryly, and likely to remain so for some time. The story, full of intrigue, secrets, forbidden romance, and picturesque Italian ruins full of ghosts and curses, had seemed so grand in Santa Lucia. A story of how finding real love could overcome anything at all. Now that she was face to face with its inspiration, though…

She firmly closed the lid, turning the key in the little lock. She had no confidence in her observational skills now. How could she write convincing drama? Convincing romance?

A knock sounded at the chamber door. ‘Come in,’ Thalia called, dropping the key into her desk drawer.

A housemaid entered, bobbing a curtsy as she announced, ‘Lady Westwood is returned, Miss Chase, and asks if you will join her in the drawing room for tea.’

Very glad of the distraction, Thalia hurried downstairs to the gold-and-coral drawing room, where Calliope reclined on the couch. Another maid set out an array of tempting cakes and little sandwiches, but there was no sign of Cameron or little Psyche.

Thalia kissed her sister’s cheek, noticing that, aside from a few damp curls at her temples and a slight pinkness in her cheeks, she seemed unaffected by the waters of the Hot Bath. She also didn’t seem to want to eat, though she sipped at some tea.

‘You weren’t at the baths very long,’ Thalia said, helping herself to a strawberry tart. Sadly, emotional turmoil always made her feel more hungry!

‘It is far too warm,’ Calliope said. ‘I could scarcely breathe.’

‘That, my dear, is why they call it the Hot Bath! Here, have a cucumber sandwich, it will revive you. Where has Cameron gone?’

Calliope obediently nibbled at the sandwich. ‘I sent him to procure some theatre tickets, and to see about the assembly at the Upper Rooms on Tuesday.’

‘Are you quite certain you feel up to all that, Cal? Rest, remember. That is why we came to Bath.’

Calliope frowned down at her half-eaten sandwich. ‘I am tired of resting! And I told you, I will not have you grow bored and leave us.’

‘I would not leave you! And I am not bored. I’m a Chase, remember? We are never bored. There is always reading to do, studying, writing…’

‘Indeed. Though I have not noticed you doing much writing lately.’

‘I will get back to it soon.’ She thought of that Italian play upstairs. Would she ever want to write of the mysteries of love again?

‘Perhaps you are the one who should rest, Thalia. You look weary.’ Calliope paused, setting aside her plate. ‘I have been thinking, perhaps Bath was not the best place to visit. We could leave here, go to Brighton. Or Tunbridge Wells. Maybe even back to Italy! They have spa towns there.’

‘You are not yet strong enough to travel to Italy,’ Thalia protested. ‘And we have just arrived in Bath. What is this urge to leave so suddenly?’

Calliope shrugged. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘Of course it is not nothing. Is it—is it because of meeting with Count di Fabrizzi this morning?’

‘So, you do know this so-called Count.’

‘And so do you!’ Thalia cried. ‘I knew it! But how? I don’t understand anything.’

‘Not even why he might be here?’

‘Especially not that.’

Calliope gave a deep sigh. ‘It is true I have met him before, though in a far different guise. He was pretending to be a gypsy.’

‘A gypsy!’ Thalia gasped. This was turning into a tale far more interesting than any she could ever devise for a play. And Marco just became more and more complex, more incomprehensible to her. ‘When was that?’

‘Oh, a long time ago, before Cameron and I were married,’ Calliope answered. ‘You remember when we went to Yorkshire, to visit Emmeline Saunders’s family?’

‘Of course I remember. Our Ladies Artistic Society was chasing after the Lily Thief then. We went to Averton’s castle…’ Suddenly, Thalia felt like the greatest of fools. She slumped back in her chair, shaking her head. ‘Was Marco the thief? Even back then?’

‘No, he wasn’t the thief,’ Calliope answered quietly. ‘But I certainly wouldn’t put it past him to be a thief. Clio tells me he is quite fanatical about Italian history and culture, about retrieving parts of its great heritage that have been scattered. He must feel such contempt for collectors like our father and Averton! That is probably why he and Clio got along so very well.’

A cold wave broke over Thalia, and she covered her eyes with her hands. ‘He was in Yorkshire with Clio.’ Of course he was. He did love Clio. It was probably good that she was reminded of that fact, before she foolishly drowned in those dark eyes of his.

She lowered her hands to find Calliope gazing at her, her expression full of sisterly concern. Dearest Cal—she had protected all of them for so long, had taken her position as the eldest of the Muses so seriously. But she needed to take care of herself now, and Thalia was weary of being protected.

‘I don’t know what his feelings for Clio might have been then,’ Calliope said. ‘She is married now, and it seems he has transferred his affections to Lady Riverton. I wouldn’t trust appearances, though. Not with a man like that.’

‘A man who is a gypsy, a count, and a thief, all in one?’ Thalia said with a laugh. ‘Not to mention a ladies’ man. Please, Cal, do not worry about me. I won’t fall prey to his charms, great though they are. I haven’t the time or energy for deciphering such vast complexities as the Count di Fabrizzi.’

‘You are the most “energetic” person I know, Thalia,’ Calliope said. ‘And I am sure you could decipher anything you set your mind to. But I would never want to see you hurt by a man who was so entirely unworthy.’

Thalia laughed again, as if she hadn’t a care in the world about ‘unworthy’men. Yet she turned her face away so Cal could not see her eyes. ‘Not when there are so many worthy men beating down my door?’

‘You have far more suitors than any other young lady I know! Mr Bramsby, Lord Egreton, young Viscount Moreby—I know they have all made an offer, and they seem quite respectable. Not to mention utterly infatuated.’

Thalia thought of those men, of the avid way they looked at her as they drove in the park, the way they lined up to dance with her at balls. The flowers they sent, the compliments they paid. The way they never even saw past her façade, her prettiness, her connections, into the real her.

For a few moments in Santa Lucia, she had thought someone did see. Saw, and understood, and answered. But that was foolish.

‘They are respectable,’ she answered, pouring more tea. ‘And nice enough. I doubt any infatuation would last more than a few days, though, once they saw what I am really like.’

Calliope sighed. ‘It is true that we Chase girls are not quite as other ladies. We were raised to actually use our brains, to speak our minds! But there are men who quite like that, I think.’

Thalia gave her a teasing smile. ‘Men like Cameron?’

Calliope laughed. ‘I have never held back from expressing my thoughts to him! We have very—lively conversations. And quarrels, from time to time.’

‘Cameron is a very fine man, to be sure. But there aren’t many like to him to be found in England.’

‘Perhaps that is because his mother was Greek. It is true that my husband is quite unique, but I am sure we can find someone just as special for you.’

Thalia doubted that. Her sisters were very fortunate in their marriages. Lightning didn’t strike three times.

‘I am content as I am,’ Thalia said. ‘I will write my plays, and teach Psyche her music when she is older. I will be the perfect maiden aunt!’

Calliope laughed, but Thalia could see she looked tired again. ‘I cannot be selfish enough to keep you with me, though I would dearly love it. Psyche is so very—vivid now, I cannot imagine what will happen when she is walking and talking.’

‘Or, heaven forefend, when she is old enough to have suitors of her own! She is a true Chase.’ Thalia went to tuck a blanket around Calliope’s legs. ‘I will leave you now, Cal dear, so you can rest. Please, don’t worry about me. I am entirely well and happy.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Thalia said firmly.

‘Very well. I will pretend I believe you. Just do one thing for me.’

‘Of course.’

‘Write to Clio and ask her about the Count. She will know more of him than I, and she can tell you things I have promised not to speak of.’

Promised not to speak of? Thalia positively ached with curiosity. Ordinarily she would bombard Calliope with questions, but her sister’s pale face stopped her. Calliope was weary, and she would never tell her secrets anyway. She had her share of the Chase stubbornness.

‘Yes, I will write to Clio,’ Thalia said. She went to the pianoforte, running her fingertips over the cool ivory keys. This was no time for the storms of her beloved Beethoven, the one she always turned to when her thoughts were in turmoil. Instead, she played for Calliope a folksong she had learned in Italy, a light, trilling piece to raise the spirits.

It raised hers, too, drawing her into the other world music always created for her. A place where nothing mattered but sound and creation, emotion and freedom. But as she moved into another song, she happened to glance up at the window.

Passing along the curve of the Crescent were Marco and Lady Riverton with her little dog, arm in arm and laughing.

Thalia’s fingers fumbled, clashing on a discordant note. She looked hastily to see if Calliope had noticed, but her sister was asleep. And when Thalia turned back to the window, Marco was gone.

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