Amanda McCabe – Mischief in Regency Society: To Catch a Rogue (страница 18)

“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?”

“When she sees the sunlight again?”

Calliope remembered Lady Tenbray’s Etruscan diadem, far from the sun of its homeland. “And will you be the one to liberate her—Cameron?”

He gave the lioness a considering glance. “Do you think I’m strong enough, Miss Chase? Calliope?” he said teasingly, flexing his—admittedly impressive—arm muscles.

“Are you a hidden Herakles, then?”

“Ah, fair doubter! But as I am not Herakles, merely Hermes, I fear your doubts are justified. She would be much too heavy for me, winged sandals or not. One day, though, someone will free her from this place. Free all these things.”

“Send them back where they came from?”

He shrugged. “Some place where they can be safe. I don’t think anything can be safe here.”

“Oh!” Calliope cried, sharply reminded of their errand. “Clio.”

“Yes, we should move on. If you’re quite recovered?”

“Of course.”

He held out his arm and she accepted his support, letting him lead her down yet another corridor towards a narrow, winding staircase. She couldn’t help but glance back at the lioness, so silent and stolid. Except for that gleam in her eye. That secret glint.

Had she seen Clio tonight?

“The Alabaster Goddess is up here,” Cameron said, clambering up the steps.

Calliope looked up. She saw only a stout wooden door, somewhat ajar, and yet more shadows. More darkness. “How do you know?”

“Still so suspicious! And after I asked you to call me by my given name and everything.”

“The duke said her location was a secret.”

“I have my ways. Come, do you want to see or not, Athena?”

She glanced again towards that doorway. It could conceal anything at all. She half-expected a many-headed Hydra to leap out at them, snarling and slavering. “I want to see.”

“Follow me, then. I may not be Herakles, but I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

He held out his hand, beckoning, and Calliope reached out and clasped it. Held fast to it, like a lifeline in a stormy sea. They climbed up the last of the stairs together, and slowly pushed open the silent door.

That entrance led not to Hades or a vast black river, but to a long, narrow gallery. Tall windows let in moonlight, which mingled with the glow of sputtering candles and cast a soft illumination on more antiquities, more statues and stele and sarcophaguses. Calliope blinked at the light, at first unable to see anything beyond the rich clutter.

Next to her, Cameron stiffened, and a curse escaped his lips in a soft, ominous explosion.

“What…?” Calliope began. Then she saw it.

The Alabaster Goddess, the pride of the Duke of Averton’s collection, lay on her back on the floor, her bow aimed upward at the inlaid ceiling. Her gleaming alabaster body seemed intact, tangled with a length of black satin, but her wooden base was split and splintered.

And, at her feet, lay the duke himself.

Cameron dashed forward, Calliope close on his winged heels. The duke’s bright hair was darkened with a spreading stain, his eyes closed, his skin as pale as Artemis’s. His leopard skin was torn beneath him, and the coppery tang of blood was thick in the cool, dusty air.

“Is he dead?” Calliope whispered.

Cameron knelt down beside the prone duke, reaching out to touch the base of his bare neck. “Not yet. I can feel a pulse, but it’s thin. See here,” he said, gesturing to a gash along the duke’s forehead. “It matches Artemis’s elbow.”

Calliope glanced at the goddess and saw that her arm was indeed stained, a dried smear of rust-coloured blood. “He must have been here for quite a while, for it to dry like that. Do you think the statue fell on him?”

“Maybe her base broke as he was gloating over her. It would seem to be poetic justice of a sort.”

“Or maybe…” Calliope leaned closer, pushing down her nausea. “No. It can’t be.”

“What?”

Shivering, Calliope gestured towards the duke’s hand.

Clutched in his fist was a ripped swathe of green-and-gold silk. Half-hidden underneath his arm was a scattering of sparkling green beads.

“What is this?” Cameron asked tightly.

“Clio,” Calliope groaned. “These are from her costume.”