Mischief in Regency Society: To Catch a Rogue

Westwood held out his hand to help her rise. She slid her fingers into his clasp, still warm from the exercise, and let him lead her from the dance floor. The ballroom was even more crowded than before, newcomers swelling the throng until it reached the very walls, spilled out on to the terrace and the grand staircase. Yet Calliope could hardly hear them for the humming in her head, could not feel their press, their clamour. She only felt his hand on hers.

“Did I tell you that you look quite lovely tonight, Miss Chase?” he said, so close to her ear that his breath stirred the loose curls at her temple.

Calliope shivered. “I—thank you, Lord Westwood. You did say I made a plausible Athena.”

“I would not be surprised if you started a battle right here, leading us to victory over the Spartans.”

Calliope laughed nervously. “I don’t think I could, Lord Westwood. Even Athena could not find her way through this crush. And I can’t find my sister. A poor goddess I would make.”

“Perhaps she went to peek at Artemis,” he suggested.

“But the Alabaster Goddess is hidden! The duke said she would only be revealed later.”

“Ah, yes, you did speak to our notorious host. Or should I say inadequate host, for I have not seen the man since I arrived.”

“Yes, I did see him, but not in quite a while. It was over there, by that Daphne…” Calliope paused, remembering the duke’s caress on Daphne’s cold cheek. “I would feel better if I could find Clio.”

“I’ll help you search,” he said. “This is a big house, to be sure, but she has to be in it somewhere.”

“Oh, would you? I don’t want to take you away from the dancing. Or the cards.”

“A mystery is always more fun than a game of loo, Miss Chase. And ‘find the missing muse’ should be more interesting than a dance—unless it’s with Athena, of course.” His tone was light, but Calliope thought she sensed disquiet in his eyes, in the tight line of his jaw. It made her own uncertainties stronger. She was very glad of his help, not at all sure she wouldn’t get lost in this vast mausoleum on her own.

Plus, if he was with her he couldn’t steal the Alabaster Goddess!

“Thank you, Lord Westwood,” she said. “I appreciate your assistance.”

“What!” he cried in mock astonishment. “Calliope Chase appreciates something about me? Never say so.”

“I won’t let it become a habit,” she said. “And I will appreciate it even more if you actually find Clio.”

“Then let us waste no time. I’m sure two instances of gratitude in one evening would be quite more than I could bear.”

He steered her adroitly through the crowd, deftly sidestepping human barriers and looming statues until they found their way out the ballroom doors. There were also people in the small foyer at the head of the grand staircase, and in the card room and antechambers, but none of them were Medusa. Clio was also not in the ladies’ withdrawing room, which Calliope checked without Westwood’s assistance. Nor had anyone seen her.

Even more unsettling was the fact that no one had seen the duke for quite a while, despite the persistent buzz of gossip about him.

Calliope rejoined Westwood in the foyer, removing her helmet from her aching head. The headache forming behind her eyes was pounding and persistent, insisting that something was amiss.

“Did you say you know where the Alabaster Goddess is?” she asked Westwood.

“I’ve heard a rumour.”

“I think we should look there, then. Unless you think Averton has a secret dungeon somewhere?”

He gave a humorless laugh. “I wouldn’t put it past him. But we’ll ask Artemis first.”

He turned on his heel and set off from the foyer, finding a deserted narrow corridor. Calliope followed closely as they left the light and noise of the party behind. The duke’s house was even more of a crypt than she had first thought, or perhaps more of a catacomb. An odd, twisting series of corridors and chambers. Unlike the Roman version, though, these catacombs held not human bones and ashes, but the bones of civilisations. A jumble of marble and basalt and mosaic, all piled together with no concern for the various cultures and time periods.

Calliope thought of her father’s own collections, so carefully labelled and placed neatly in glass cases. How much each piece meant to him, and his daughters, so much more than a mere beautiful object. More than something to possess and show off, they meant knowledge, a link to lives long turned to dust. A way to understand the past, or at least begin to understand it.

It was obvious from this opulent clutter, this clash of Minoan, Archaic, Classical, Egyptian, Assyrian, Roman, Celtic, that the duke did not see them in this way. Their true value was lost to him.

As was surely the true value of her sister. Wherever Clio was.

At that unsettling thought, Calliope stumbled, reaching out to catch herself on a stone Egyptian lioness.

“Ouch!” she gasped.

Westwood spun around, and her hand landed not on the cold statue but on warm, shifting flesh. His arm went about her waist, holding her steady.

Only she felt even dizzier now, pressed so close to him, than she had falling towards the ground.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice rough.

“Yes,” Calliope answered slowly. “I must have stumbled on something.”

“Easy enough to do in this warehouse.”

Calliope eased herself away from him, leaning back against the kore until she could catch her breath. “I was just thinking it was a catacomb.”

“A most apt description, Miss Chase. A pile of dead things, hidden away from the daylight.”

Calliope studied the reclining Egyptian lioness, her muscles coiled and massive paws flexed, as if she would rise at any moment. How fierce she looked! How unhappy at being caged. Would she try to run away like Daphne? “Do you think they are dead?”

“Let us say sleeping, rather,” he said. He ran his hand over the lioness’s head, and Calliope felt as if she, too, could experience that touch. Rough and chipped, battered by the centuries, but still holding the imprint of her creator. “They can’t breathe in such a gloomy place.”

“Exactly. With no one to see their true worth.” She paused, turning her gaze from the lion’s obsidian stare to meet Westwood’s. In this shadowed light his eyes were just as dark, just as mysterious. “But we don’t agree on what their worth is.”

“Do we not?” His hand tightened on the rippled stone. “I think we agree on far more than is first apparent, Miss Chase.”

If only that were true! Calliope remembered her long-ago daydreams, that he could be the one man who understood her, who shared her dreams. Those hopes were shattered when she had found the Hermes statue gone. “How so, Lord Westwood?”

Instead of answering her, of telling her what she found she yearned to hear—how they could find common ground and be friends at long last—he just smiled. “Do you not think that sometimes you could call me Cameron? I still look around for my father when I hear ‘Lord Westwood’. Everyone I met in Italy and Greece called me Cameron. Or Cam.”

“I’m not sure.” Cameron. How informal it sounded. How—inviting.

“Come, now! No one can hear us but our friend the lioness. And she won’t tell. She loves to keep secrets.”

Indeed, there did seem to be a satisfied gleam in those obsidian eyes, as if she relished having one more secret to add to the vast store she had collected in her long lifetime. Like the Aphrodite statue in the conservatory, and her remembered orgies. “Do you not think she holds enough secrets as it is? I’m sure this house has more than its share.”

“No doubt you are right. Nasty secrets. But, while she is the duke’s captive, she is our friend. She wants us to be in accord.”

“Very well. I suppose I could call you Cameron, when only inanimate objects can hear us.”

“Shh!” He put his hands over the carved ears. “She’s not inanimate, remember? Only sleeping.”

“When will she awaken? When she’s taken from this place at last?”