To Deceive a Duke Read Free Page B

gold satin and tarnished tassels, stared right at Etna in the distance, to Lake Pergusa and eventually even to the sea.
    The palazzo’s small garden, wild and overgrown, seemed to drop off into sheer space. As if an eagle could launch itself into space and go wheeling out over the amphitheatre and into the mist beyond, right from this garden.
    The front of the palazzo, on the other hand, sported a much more respectable-looking courtyard, paved and neatly planted with myrtle trees, with tall limestone walls and wrought-iron gates that opened to the narrow street beyond. Its cobblestone length was silent, and seemed rather little travelled, but it did lead right to the village square with its shops and cathedral, its view of the whole village and everyone in it.
    Perfect.
    ‘Tell me,’ Edward said, not turning his gaze from the theatre, ‘where is the house the Chase family rents?’
    ‘The Chases?’ the agent said, sounding a bit confused. His mind was obviously slow to turn from views and furnishings to the other inhabitants of Santa Lucia. ‘Ah, yes, the family with the daughters! Their home is on the other side of thesquare, just beyond the cathedral. They are often seen on walks in the evenings.’
    So, not far from here. Edward closed his eyes, and it was as if he felt her very presence beside him. The wilful Muse.
    ‘I will take the palazzo,’ he said, opening his eyes again to the dazzle of the Sicilian sunlight. ‘It is perfect.’
     
    By the next morning, Edward’s battalions of servants had removed the baroness’s dour-painted ancestors and the worst of the gilt furniture and replaced them with choice selections of the Averton antiquities collection. Graceful red-figure amphorae rested on stands under the shocked stares of the plaster angels. A few marble statues took up places in the newly dusted corners, touches of austere elegance amid all the wedding-cake flourishes.
    Edward’s own chamber overlooked the front courtyard and the street beyond. The largest bedroom, which was obviously the baroness’s own to judge from the bedhangings draped from a huge family coat-of-arms, looked upon the grand view of garden and hills. But he preferred this smaller space, where he could watch the town and passers-by.
    He examined the arrangements as the servants deposited the last of his trunks and crates. Gilded mouldings carved in the shape of roses, wheat sheaves and arrows garlanded the windows and doors, matching the white-and-gold bed and armoire. The blue-and-red carpet was faded and threadbare, as were the coverlets and bedhangings of blue watered silk. It all lacked the medieval grandeur of his Yorkshire castle, the Gothicism of Acropolis House in London. But the mattress was aired, the room spacious enough—and he could see almost the entire town from the window.
    Including the edge of the Chase house.
    ‘It will all do very well,’ he murmured, watching closely as the footmen carried in the last of the antiquities so carefully shipped from London. A statue of Artemis with her bow raised. The famous ‘Alabaster Goddess’. They placed her next to the fireplace, where she looked as if she was about to shoot down a row of simpering porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses on the mantel. Along her base, barely visible in the veined marble, was a scratch mark from a thief’s lever.
    Edward traced it lightly with his fingertip, the tiny groove that was the only reminder of that night in the gallery of his London house. Artemis’s cool fierceness always reminded him of Clio. The goddess of the moon, of the hunt—she never let any mortal man stand in the way of what she wanted, what she believed to be right. She never shied away from any danger.
    But Artemis was immortal, the favourite child of all-powerful Zeus, who would never let harm come to her. Clio, despite her daring, was all too human. One day her gallant recklessness would surely catch up with her, and she would tumble heedlessly into the danger.