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sardonically. ‘ Your house, is it?’ But he followed her instructions, swinging down from his horse yet staying several feet away, holding loosely to the reins as his horse began to crop at the clover. ‘Is this far enough?’
    Clio nodded again. ‘You said you wanted to talk, Averton.It must be something important indeed to bring you all this way.’
    ‘It is,’ he answered. Yet then he fell silent, just watching her as if he had never seen her before in his life. As if she were some strange creature, a unicorn or phoenix, maybe, that he could not understand.
    Clio shifted on her feet. ‘Did someone snatch away your precious Alabaster Goddess? It was not me, I vow. I have been in Sicily for weeks. Or perhaps it was—’
    ‘Clio,’ he said, in a voice that was quiet, soft, but full of steely command. ‘I have come here because you are in danger.’

Chapter Four
    C lio could scarcely understand what she was hearing. Could this just be a dream after all? Every moment she had ever spent with Averton had been bizarre, to be sure, but this…
    ‘Did you just say I am in danger?’ she asked, studying his face for signs of—what? Joking? Subterfuge? It was not the Duke’s way to make jests, nor hers.
    There was no hint of humour or deception in his face, though. No change in those Viking-warrior features at all, except for a tiny tic in the muscle along his jaw as he stared at her.
    Clio stared back, hardly daring to move, to breathe. The thunderstorm had left the air heavy and thick, the breeze practically crackling around her. Around them. It was as if snapping tendrils snaked out from the grey sky, wrapping ever tighter around her, binding her closer and closer to him.
    It was like a myth, a tale of jealous gods and enchanted spells that bound mortals to them against their every sensible inclination. Every shred of sense.
    Clio shook her head, trying to clear it of such dark fancies. It was just this place making her feel so, that web of myth andfantasy that had been woven around her ever since she was a child. And being faced with Averton, of all people, when she least expected him! Was least prepared for him, and the effect he always had on her.
    As if she ever could be prepared for him. Every single time she saw him, it was like a lightning storm all over again. Beautiful, treacherous and so completely disorienting.
    She took a step back. ‘I know of no dangers here except you. You needn’t have gone to all this trouble to warn me of that. ’
    His brow creased, as if in a flash of pain, yet that spasm was gone in an instant, banished under a mocking smile. ‘Did I not prove to you in Yorkshire that you are never in danger from me? I sent you and your friend—Marco, was it?—on your merry way, with scarcely a scolding word. Even though you were in the midst of stealing from me. I am the last person you need fear, Clio.’
    She swallowed hard, remembering another night, that gallery at Acropolis House. ‘Indeed?’
    ‘Indeed. I want to be your friend, if you will let me.’
    ‘My friend, is it?’ she said, nearly choking on a humourless laugh. ‘So, that is why you are here? To offer friendship, along with cryptic warnings of danger? I think it more likely you are here to see what my father has found in his Greek villa. To see what you can snatch to add to your vaunted collections, hidden away in the darkness so no one else can ever see them.’
    ‘Clio!’ he growled, his icy calm cracking at last. He dropped the reins, his hands curling into fists.
    And Clio felt a stirring of some strange satisfaction.
    ‘You are the most obstinate woman I have ever met,’ he muttered. ‘Why can you not just listen to me for once in your life?’
    ‘Just listen to you? Quietly do what you want, just as everyone does with the exalted duke? Well, I’m sorry, your Grace, but I am too busy to stand here arguing with you any longer.’ She strode past him, not sure where she was going, only knowing that she had to