To Kiss a Count

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.’