Mischief in Regency Society. Amanda McCabe
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sighed. Perhaps Father would not overhear them at the British Museum, but the rest of London would. Still, Clio was right. They needed to clear their heads after last night, and where better than among the glorious beauties of the Parthenon sculptures? Terpsichore—Cory—was a delightful girl, just turned thirteen now and wanting so much to be a young lady, and she deserved a treat after being separated from their younger sisters, who stayed in the country with their various nurses and governesses.
And surely they wouldn’t run into Lord Westwood there. The man probably didn’t rise until two at the earliest, and the Elgin Marbles must represent all he abhorred: treasures taken from Greece and displayed for Londoners.
“Mary, I shall need a walking dress and warm pelisse,” she said, swallowing the last of her chocolate. “And my lap desk. I need to send notes to the Ladies Society.”
They had battle plans to draw up.
The Chases’ de facto second home when in town was always the British Museum. They had been brought there since earliest childhood, escorted from artefact to artefact by their parents, instilled with a love for the past by the beauty of the pieces and by their father’s vivid tales. Many of their favourites—Greek vases, Egyptian sculptures, Viking helmets—were immortalised for them in their mother’s sketchbooks, kept by Clio since Lady Chase’s death in birthing the youngest Muse, Polyhymnia, three years ago.
But their mother had never seen the sisters’ favourite room of all, the Temporary Elgin Room—which was showing signs of becoming rather more permanent. This was where they went now, after climbing up the wide stone steps and passing through the massive pillars into the sacred hush of the museum.
“May we visit the mummies after we see the Marbles?” Cory asked eagerly.
Clio laughed. “Morbid child! You only want to scare your little sisters with gruesome tales of them in your next letter. But we can visit them, if there is time.”
Cory wrinkled her nose. “There won’t be. You two always spend hours with the Marbles.”
“You enjoy them, too, silly monkey, and you know it,” Calliope said. “Perhaps after the Marbles and the mummies we can have an ice at the shop across the way.”
Smiling happily with the promise of dead Egyptians and a sweet, Cory went off to sketch her favourite sculpture yet again, the head of a horse from the chariot of the Moon, his mane and jaw drooping after an exhausting journey across the heavens. Calliope and Clio strolled over to the back wall, where the frieze depicting the procession of a Panathenaic festival was mounted. It was quiet there for the moment, despite the milling crowds, tucked behind the massive carved figures of Theseus and a draped, headless goddess.
Calliope stared up at the line of young women, all of them gracefully poised and beautifully dressed in chitons and cloaks, bearing vessels and libation bowls as offerings to the gods. They were not as well displayed as they deserved; the room was cramped and ill lit, the walls dark. But Calliope always loved to see them, to revel in their classical beauty, in the procession that never ended. And today she was glad of the dim light, for it hid the purplish circles of her sleepless night.
“I have called for a meeting of the Ladies Society tomorrow afternoon,” she told Clio.
Clio’s gaze did not turn from the figure of the head girl in the procession, the one that held aloft an incense stand, but her lips curved down. “So soon? We usually only convene once a week.”
“This is an emergency. The Duke of Averton’s ball is coming up soon. We must be prepared for whatever might happen there.”
“Do you still think you-know-who plans to snatch the Alabaster Goddess away that night?”
“I’m not sure. That is why I said we need to be prepared for anything. Even nothing. The ball might pass off quite peacefully—or as peacefully as anything could at Averton’s house. The sculpture will stay in place…”
“But it will not stay in place!” Clio hissed. Her hand tightened on the head of her furled parasol, and for a moment Calliope feared she might stab it into the air, or at an unwary passerby. “Averton is sending it off to his infernal fortress in Yorkshire, where no one will ever see it again! He is a vile, selfish man with no care for his collections. Do you think that is a better fate for poor Artemis than to fall into the hands of the Lily Thief?”
Calliope bit her lip. “It’s true that he is well named the Duke of ‘Avarice’. I like him no better than you, Clio. He is a very—strange man. But at least we would know where the statue is, and one day a museum or legitimate antiquarian could acquire her. If the Lily Thief took her, she would vanish utterly! We would learn nothing from her then.”
“Honestly, Cal! I do love you, but sometimes you don’t seem to understand.” Clio stalked away, her parasol swinging, and left Calliope standing alone.
Calliope stared up again at the carved procession, swallowing hard against her pricked feelings. She and Clio were as close as two sisters could be, drawn together by their love of history, by the need to be “mothers” to their younger sisters in the wake of their own mother’s death. And she knew Clio had a temper that subsided as quickly as it flared. That did not make their little quarrels any easier, though.
What was it lately, Calliope wondered, that caused such arguments? First Lord Westwood, now her sister. Her eyes itched with unshed tears, and she rubbed at them hard. When she looked up again, she feared she was hallucinating. Lord Westwood stood right beside her, staring down at her solemnly, his glossy curls brushed carelessly from the sharp, shadowed planes of his face so that he seemed one of the sculptures himself.
She blinked—and found he was still there. She drew in a steadying breath, and offered him a tentative smile. “Lord Westwood.”
“Miss Chase,” he answered. “I trust you are enjoying your outing?”
“Yes, very much. My sisters and I visit the museum whenever we can.” She gestured towards Cory, who was still sketching the horse’s head with Clio leaning over her.
“I come here often, as well,” he said.
“Do you? I—I imagine it reminds you of your mother’s homeland,” she said carefully, wary of yet another quarrel. How could one speak of these controversial carvings without starting a fuss, though?
But he simply answered, “Yes. Her tales when I was a child were always of gods and goddesses, and even muses.”
Calliope smiled. “Perhaps then you have an understanding of how changeable a muse can be?”
He smiled in return, a quick grin that seemed to light up their dim corner of the room. “I have heard tell of such things. One day the muse will smile on you, the next she has vanished. Perhaps that is simply part of her allure.”
Allure? Did he then find her—alluring? She would have thought “prickly” or “annoying” more likely adjectives he would use. But then, did she not think the same of him? Annoying, and yet strangely alluring. She shrugged away these distracting thoughts and said, “Sometimes, too, a muse forgets her manners. Says things she should not. Then she must apologise.”
“Is that what this is, Miss Chase? An apology?”
Calliope sighed. “I fear so.”
He clutched at his heart, staggering back as if in profound shock. “Never!”
She laughed. “I would not have you think I was not properly brought up, Lord Westwood. I should not have said those things to you last night. My sister says I should blame it on the spell of the music or on the wine, but in truth I do not know why I said them. I was just rather out of sorts.”
“I suppose I have been out of sorts with you in the past as well, Miss Chase. Perhaps we can start anew. Cry pax.”
“Pax, then. For now.”
“For now. Come, let me show you my favourite of these friezes.” He offered her his arm, and though she only laid her