Free To Bed a Libertine by Amanda Mccabe Page A

got into such delicious trouble. With their fat, pleasure-seeking ruler, all the poets and actors and painters with such wondrous, wild ideas, not to mention the beautiful gowns, and all the passionate love affairs so many indulged in. It was quite delightful.
    At last Erato reached the small clearing. In the center of the grassy circle was the oracle spring, where anything could be seen. Its power was great and had to be used carefully, but it could show her the Chase Muses or anyone else she sought. She knelt beside the bubbling water and stared deeply into its opaque depths.
    “Goddess of the spring, reveal to me what I seek,” she whispered, concentrating very hard on the water’s surface. “Show me my desire.”
    At first she saw only her own reflection. Her heart-shaped, ivory-white face and blue eyes, her dark red hair bound with gold ribbons, the green silk tunic sliding from her shoulders. Then, slowly, the image shifted. Her face blurred, replaced with the delicate features and black hair of Calliope, the eldest of the Chase Muses. Erato sat back on her sandaled feet, watching intently as the scene grew clearer. Calliope was in her London drawing room, surrounded by her sisters and a few of their friends. It appeared they were having a meeting of their Ladies Artistic Society—and they did not look happy. Calliope was frowning, her slender shoulders stiff in her long-sleeved white gown.
    She held up one of their English newspapers. It was a rather primitive way to disseminate gossip, Erato thought. Hermes and the cupids were much more efficient. But the Chases seemed to like the papers and read them every day.
    Calliope pointed to a black headline-The Lily Thief Returns!
    “Oh, marvelous,” Erato said. The exploits of the Lily Thief, a criminal who stole purloined antiquities from their greedy English owners and returned them to Greece and Italy, were very amusing. Erato knew who the thief was, of course; she had even watched one or two of the clever thefts from this very oracle spring. But no one else yet realized the truth, which made it even more fun.
    “It has been many weeks since this criminal struck,” Calliope said. She spoke quietly, but her pretty cheeks flushed bright pink. A hopeful sign of deep, passionate feeling. “I suppose he realized that attention was drifting from his foul deeds.”
    Thalia Chase stopped her song at the pianoforte, her golden curls bouncing as she turned to face her sisters. Clio Chase, who was taking down the record of their meeting, peered over her spectacles, her auburn brow arched.
    The Chases’ friend Lady Emmeline Saunders said, “Perhaps the Lily Thief has good reasons for what he does.”
    “Reasons such as profit and riches?” Thalia cried. Erato’s task would be easy enough when Thalia found her true mate; she felt things so very fervently. “I am sure he saw a pretty penny from the sale of Lord Egremont’s krater and the Clives’ Bastet statue.”
    “Antiquities have more than monetary value, you know,” Clio said calmly. She would be more of a challenge when it came to romance. She was such a cool, intellectual young lady. But she certainly had her own secret desires. “Something their previous owners seemed to have lost sight of.”
    “Of course they do,” Calliope said. The eldest Chase Muse would probably be Erato’s greatest problem. She refused to consider herself a romantic soul at all. It would take someone very special indeed to change her mind. “That is what makes the exploits of the Lily Thief so heinous. Who knows where these objects have gone, or if they will ever be seen again? We will have no access to the lessons they could teach us. It is a terrible loss to scholarship. We are going to have to catch the Lily Thief ourselves.” Her proclamation caused a flurry of excitement among the Ladies Artistic Society, but even that faded at the clamor that arose when one of the women by the window cried out, “Oh, it is Lord