Amanda McCabe - Mischief in Regency Society - To Catch a Rogue

She was beautiful, just like that ancient woman with her lyre. Beautiful and intelligent and spirited. But as stubborn as a wild horse in the valleys of Greece.

Seeming to sense his regard, she glanced towards him. For a fleeting moment, she lacked the protective veil she usually drew around herself. Her gaze was open, vulnerable, gleaming with unshed tears. The eerie beauty of the music had moved her, as it did him, and for an instant they were bound together by the enchantment of the past.

Then the veil fell again, and she turned away so that he saw only her black curls, the pale curve of her neck and bare shoulder. But the magic was still there, a shimmering web of connection that urged him to press his lips to that white hollow at the nape of her neck, to trail kisses along her spine, breathing in the warm scent of her. Feeling her tremble under his touch until she cried out and that maddening veil vanished for ever, and he could see her true self.

Yet what would that true self be? A beautiful muse in truth—or a gorgon of destruction? Only a madman would take on one of the Chase Muses, and Cameron wanted to hold on to his tenuous sanity for as long as he could.

Suddenly, the music, the overheated room, the strange allure of Calliope Chase were too much for that thread of sanity. The old wildness was rising up in him like a fever. He spun around and left the room, the strains of music trailing behind him. In the foyer, the servants were placing the krater on a high pedestal where it could be viewed in distant safety after the performance.

It was too high to be touched without the stepstool the servants took when they left, yet from his vantage point Cam could clearly see the lyre player. The jewels in her headband, the delicate sandal peeking from the hem of her robe. From here she was even more like Calliope Chase. Beautiful and untouchable.

“Are you trying to decide how to steal it?” Calliope asked.

Cameron glanced back to find her standing in the drawing-room doorway, watching him with those steady brown eyes. Her face was a smooth and unreadable piece of marble, yet he could feel her tense wariness.

He should not be surprised at her suspicion. They had been at odds ever since that reception at his house, when she found Hermes missing from his niche. Their arguments only grew with every meeting after that. Yet still it hurt, like the sharp pinpricks of a tiny but fatal poisoned arrow. As he listened to the ancient music, as those strange, intimate thoughts of her neck and skin bombarded his mind, he felt so bound to her. So close to discovering the mystery of her.

But she seemed to think him a thief. The connection was not there for her. Not a muse then, or a gorgon either. Just a cold judge. The cool Athena he had once thought her.

He buried that hurt, shoving it down deep and piling other emotions on top of it—carelessness, insouciance. A chill to match her own.

“Perhaps you would care to come closer, Miss Chase, and ascertain for yourself if I carry a fresh lily in my pocket,” he said lightly, as if he did not care one whit for her suspicions. He stepped forward, holding out the edges of his coat so she saw the smoothness of the silk lining.

She did not move away, but her shoulders stiffened. “I am not a fool, Lord Westwood.”

“Indeed not, Miss Chase. ‘Foolish’ is the last word anyone could use to describe you. ‘Misguided’, perhaps.”

Something flared deep in those unreadable eyes, a flash of some black fire. But still she did not rise to his bait. She seldom did. “I am not the one so misguided as to turn to crime in order to prove a point! I am not the one who holds the honour of my family or the claims of scholarship so cheap. Those of us with the advantages of education and travel have a duty—”

“And who are you, Calliope Chase, to lecture me on duty? Or honour?” His temper, tamped down so carefully for so long, burst out in a veritable Catherine wheel of sparks. His desire for her, her beauty and stubbornness, his frustration—it would all drive him mad, in truth!

He stalked closer to her, so close he could smell the summer scent of the roses in her hair, see the delicate blue tracery of veins under her ivory skin, the throb of her life pulse at the base of her throat. That wild urge to grab her and kiss her until her chilly frostiness thawed and flowed away, leaving only her, them, was nigh undeniable.

She did not turn away, just stared up at him, still and wide-eyed, that pulse beating until he swore he could hear it. Hear her heartbeat. He even reached for her, his fingers aching to clasp the smooth, bare inch of skin above her kid gloves, but some last flicker of sanity made him drop his hands, back away from her.

“How can you know me so little, Miss Chase?” he said hoarsely.

Her lips parted, yet she said nothing. For a second, a whisper of doubt floated across her face. A hint of puzzlement. Then it was gone, hidden again.

“What else am I to think?” she said. “How can I know you at all?”

Cameron could bear it no longer. He spun away from her and left the house, storming past the startled footman who appeared at the front door. The night air was chilly and clammy as he strode along the quiet street, leaving the lights and music of Lady Russell’s house behind him. He could not quite leave Calliope Chase behind, though. Her quiet, accusing ghost seemed to follow him as he turned the corner.

“Infernal woman,” he muttered. There was only one place he could exorcise her—the most raucous, most disreputable gaming hell he knew, far from these genteel squares and solemn prosperity. The Devil’s Dice. There not even Calliope Chase’s ghost could survive.

As Lady Russell’s front door slammed behind Lord Westwood, Calliope sagged against the base of the krater’s pillar. Every ounce of willpower that held her upright, that kept her from fleeing, flooded away in a cold rush, leaving her weak and trembling. Why did she feel this way every time she saw him? Why did they always quarrel so?

Behind her, she heard the click of the drawing room door opening and closing, the rise and fall of music, the patter of slippers against the parquet floor.

“Cal?” Clio whispered. Her steady arm went around Calliope’s waist, and Calliope turned into her gratefully. “What is wrong? Are you ill?”

“No, no. I just—needed some air,” Calliope answered.

“So you came out here alone?”

“I was not quite alone. But then I said something wrong, as I always do with him, and he left. Just ran out the front door into the street rather than be here with me!” Calliope realised she was not making any sense. She hardly understood herself! Why did she care at all if Cameron de Vere, a reckless probable-thief, ran away from her? She didn’t want to be with him, either.

Did she?

Clio glanced towards the door, frowning. “Who ran out into the street?”

“Lord Westwood, of course.”

“You mean you were speaking with Lord Westwood out here, and he became so angry he just ran off…” Clio’s stare shifted to the krater above their heads, and her green eyes hardened, turning oddly intent. “Oh, no, Cal. You surely did not accuse Lord Westwood of being the Lily Thief!”

Calliope covered her hot cheeks with her gloved hands, trying to blot out the memory of his anger. Of her own impulsive ridiculousness. “I—may have.”

“Cal…” Clio groaned “…whatever has come over you? I could see Thalia doing such a thing. She would challenge the devil himself to a duel! Not you. Are you ill? Do you have a fever?”

“I wish I did, then I would have some excuse.”

Clio shook her head. “Poor Cal. I am sure he will not speak of it to anyone, since his father and ours were such friends.”