To Deceive a Duke Read Online Free

Foolish girl.
    Edward turned away from Artemis and her bow, and found himself facing a full-length mirror. What a strange vision he was, framed in the gilt flourishes and ribbons of that rented glass! The shoulder-length fall of reddish-blond hair his valet so often hinted he should cut, for the sake of fashion, was tied back. As stark as his black wool coat and white cravat, skewered with a stickpin carved with a cameo head of Medusa. As stark as the sharp cheekbones and square jaw that was the legacy of all the Radcliffes, handed down from some distant Viking ancestor.
    Yes, he looked like a true Radcliffe, the heir to the old dukedom, but he was flawed. His nose, thin and straight as a knife blade in the faces of his late father and older brother,was marred by a badly healed break across the bridge. The legacy of a boyish, long-ago brawl with the man who was now Clio’s brother-in-law.
    And, a gift from the Muse herself, a jagged scar on his forehead. Healed to a white line now, it was the exact shape of Artemis’s stone elbow.
    Edward laid his fingertips lightly on the mark, feeling its slight roughness. Feeling again the fire of her kiss.
    Yet he did not let her go then. He could not. It was as if there was a devil inside him, a dark demon that dwelled there, hidden, from the time he was a boy. A part of him that desired Clio Chase no matter what she did—now matter what he did. But he could not let her stand in the way of his work in Santa Lucia.
    Edward reached out and tilted the swinging mirror between its hinges until it faced the faded blue wallpaper, and he was hidden from himself. He took off his coat and tossed it over the foot of the bed, rolling up his shirtsleeves to reveal the glint of his ruby-and-emerald rings. His forearms were well muscled and sun-bronzed, the arms of a man who had been working on archeological sites under the southern sun for many of his years. The frilled sleeves hid those signs of unducal labour, just as the rings hid the white calluses at the base of his fingers.
    It would never do for anyone to see what he was really up to. What the famously reclusive, famously louche ‘Duke of Avarice’ was truly like.
    He unlocked the small, iron-bound box on the dressing table. Stacked in there were letters and papers, bags of coins, but beneath was a false bottom, which had stayed neatly in place ever since the box had left England. Edward levered it upwards and drew out two objects. A tiny silver bowl, Grecian to judge by its decorations, second century BCperhaps. It was exquisite, hammered with a pattern of acorns and beechnuts, etched with rough Greek letters spelling out ‘This belongs to the gods’. A warning, and a promise.
    Beside it was a scrap of green-and-gold silk, torn along a seam, edged with sparkling green glass beads.
    He laid them both carefully aside, the bowl and the silk. They were the symbols of all that brought him to this place. All that brought him again to Clio’s side—even as he fought against that desire.
    But fate, it seemed, always had other plans when it came to him and Clio Chase.

Chapter Three
    ‘A h, another invitation from Lady Riverton!’ Clio’s father announced over the breakfast table. He waved the embossed card in the air before depositing it with the rest of the post.
    ‘Again?’ Clio said, only half-listening as she buttered her toast. Her head was still full of the farmhouse, of her plans for the day. It looked as if it might rain, as it so often did here in the mornings. The sky outside the windows was ominously grey, and she had to cover up yesterday’s work before the house’s cellar filled up with water. ‘We were just at her palazzo last week. Weren’t we?’
    ‘But this is different,’ Sir Walter said. ‘An evening of amateur theatricals, it says. And her refreshments are usually quite good, you know. Those lobster tarts last time were lovely…’
    Clio laughed. ‘Father, I vow you begin to think only of your stomach! But we