To Deceive a Duke Read Free

not one of the ‘Chase Muses’. Now that Calliope was wed, everyone looked to her to be next. To marry as well as her sister had—an earl!—and to start her own family, her own conventional life as chatelaine of a household, as a society hostess; to take her place in her family’s scholarly, aristocratic world.
    But Calliope loved her new husband, was happy in the life she had chosen. Clio had certainly never found anyone she could esteem as Cal did her earl. Clio did not belong in such a life. Maybe she didn’t belong anywhere at all. Except here.
    She lifted her spyglass again, training it on the valley below her rocky perch, the stretch of land between her and Thalia’s theatre. It was really this valley that had brought them to Enna in the first place, an ancient Graeco-Roman site buried in a twelfth-century mudslide and only recently uncovered. Much of the site was still hidden beneath hazelnut orchards, but her father and his friends were working hard at exploring what was revealed: the theatre; part of the agora , or market place; some crumbling walls delineating shops and small houses; a great villa with almost intact mosaic floorsin the atrium, which was Sir Walter’s pet project; and a small, roofless temple, probably devoted to Demeter, with its bothros , or well-altar, still ready to accept sacrifices even if the grand silver altar set was long gone.
    She could see them through the oval of her glass, her father sweeping off more of the mosaic floor as her fourteen-year-old sister Terpsichore—Cory—sketched the tile scenes of tritons and mermaids. Lady Rushworth, shielded by a giant straw hat, examined some newly found pottery fragments, sorting them into baskets. Other friends and servants scurried around like busy ants. They would not miss her when she crept away. They never did.
    Clio snapped the glass shut and tucked it inside her knapsack. Slipping the strap over her shoulder, she turned and made her way up the steep stairs cut into the stony hillside.
    When she reached a fork in the steps, with one way leading to Santa Lucia, she glanced up, raising her hand to shield her spectacles from the glare of the sun. The crumbling crenellations of the medieval castle’s tower stood starkly against the bright sky, eternally vigilant as it stared out over the valley. She was again reminded of the Duke, of his Yorkshire castle that matched his strangely archaic, handsome appearance, his long red-gold hair, his strong hands that gripped her own so tightly, holding her prisoner to that intense light in his beautiful green eyes.
    Clio frowned at the memory, unconsciously flexing her wrists. He could so easily have been one of the crusaders who had built that tower, standing between the crenellations, surveying his conquered land while his banners whipped in the wind behind him. Secure in the knowledge that his money, his exalted title, his fine looks would always gain him anything he wanted. The world was his.
    But not her. Never her.
    Clio turned away from the castle, from the safety of Santa Lucia and its old walls, and hurried up a second, even steeper set of stairs. They wound up and around the hill, and she soon left the noise and bustle of the valley behind. Even the sun grew dimmer here, the shadows longer, deeper, colder.
    On the other side of the hill, the stairs suddenly switched back, taking her downwards again. Unlike the sunny valley where her family worked, this place still slumbered. It was a meadow, covered with a blanket of white clover, seemingly undisturbed except for the hum of bees, the distant tinkle of goats’ bells in the hills.
    She knew people must come here. There was rich fodder for those herds of goats, and wild fennel and oregano for the cooking pots. But she never saw anyone at all. The cook at their hired house, Rosa, had told her this was a sacred spot, a spot where once there had been an altar to Demeter. A crude sheaf of wheat carved into the trunk of a towering hawthorn tree,