He’d commandeered one of the rooms behind the gallery, where once the musicians, dancers, and pantomime players had prepared for their performances. Here he’d propped a big, oiled tarp over one corner to keep out the rain and wind, and brought in a straw mattress and two chairs. Spartan accommodations, certainly, but there were no fleas or bedbugs, which made this heaven compared to Bedlam.
Apollo took back his notebook and scrawled: They live in the theater. She’s an actress—Robin Goodfellow. Harte has given her his permission to stay here for the nonce.
“You know Robin Goodfellow?” For a second Artemis’s ducal dignity fled her and she looked as awed as a small lass given a halfpenny sweet.
Apollo decided he needed to find out more about Miss Stump’s acting career. He nodded warily.
Artemis had already recovered her aplomb. “As I remember, Robin Goodfellow is quite young—not more than thirty years, certainly.”
He shrugged carelessly, but alas, his sister had known him for a very, very long time.
Artemis leaned forward, her interest definitely engaged. “She must be witty, too, to play all those lovely breeches roles—”
Breeches roles? Those tended to be risqué. Apollo frowned, but his sister was nattering on.
“I saw her in something last spring, here at Harte’s Folly with Cousin Penelope. What was it?” She knit her brow, thinking, then shook her head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. Have you talked to her?”
Apollo glanced pointedly at his notebook.
“You know what I mean.”
He skirted the truth: My circumstances don’t lend themselves to polite social calls.
Artemis’s mouth crimped. “Don’t be silly. You can’t continue to hide forever—”
He widened his eyes incredulously at her.
“Well, you can’t,” she insisted. “You must find a way to live your life, Apollo. If that means leaving London, leaving England, then so be it. This”—she gestured to the tarp and chairs and straw mattress—“this isn’t living. Not truly.”
He grabbed the notebook and scribbled furiously. What would you have me do? I need the money I invested in the garden.
“Borrow from Wakefield.”
He scoffed, turning his head aside. The last thing he wanted was to be in debt to his brother-in-law.
Artemis raised her voice stubbornly. “He’ll gladly lend you the money you need. Leave. Travel to the continent or the Colonies. The King’s men won’t pursue you so far, not if you take another name.”
He looked back at her and wrote angrily, You would have me abandon the name I have?
“If needs be, yes.” She was so brave, his sister, so determined. “I hadn’t wanted to mention this before, but I think I might’ve been followed.”
He looked at her in alarm. Followed here today?
“No.” She shook her head. “But on other days I’ve come to visit you. Once or twice I thought a man was following me.” She grimaced. “Never the same man, mind, so it may be I’ve entirely made the thing up.”
He frowned at her.
“Don’t give me that look,” she said. “I wasn’t sure—I’m still not sure—but don’t you see? If I was followed, if someone were to discover your hiding place… Apollo, you simply can’t stay here. You must leave the garden. Leave England. For your own safety.”
He blinked and stared down at his notebook, the paper smudged from his hand. He wrote carefully, I cannot. I didn’t do it, Artemis.
“I know,” she whispered. “I know. But you don’t have any way of proving it, do you?”
He was silent—which was answer enough, he supposed.
She placed a hand on his arm. “This stubborn refusal to leave England will be the death of you or worse.” She leaned forward. “Please. You’re kind and smart and… and wonderful. You didn’t deserve Bedlam and you don’t deserve this awful half life. Please don’t let—”
He turned his shoulder to her, but that had never stopped his sister when she was on a tear.
“Apollo. Please don’t let obsession or… or revenge consume you. A name is important, I know, but it’s not nearly as important as you. Don’t let me lose my brother.”
At that he did look up to see—oh, God, no—that her eyes were glittering. That he simply could not stand. He reached out and took her hand in his, the feel of it familiar and calming.
She inhaled. “Just promise me you’ll not give up on life.”
He pressed his lips together, but nodded firmly.
She smiled tremulously. “Besides, perhaps with this Robin Goodfellow about you’ll find something else to find interest in. She’s quite pretty, isn’t she?”
Pretty wasn’t the right word. Gamine, sly, seductive… his brain stuttered on the last and for a moment he thought he’d give himself away. How fortuitous that he’d been practicing a dumb face. Apollo used it now on his sister, who retaliated by laughing and flinging an apple at him.
He caught it deftly and wrote, How is His Grace the Ass?
She frowned over the notebook as he’d known she would. “You really must stop calling him that. He did, after all, save you from Bedlam.”
He snorted and wrote, And then chained me in his sinister cellar. I’d be there still if you hadn’t released me.
She sniffed. “ ’Tisn’t sinister—especially now that he’s using most of it to store wine. Maximus is well, thank you for inquiring. He sends his regards.”
He gave her a look.
“He does!” She tried to appear convincing, but he merely shook his head at her. Had it not been for Artemis’s persuasion—and Wakefield’s regard for her—Apollo would still be languishing in Bedlam. Wakefield had certainly not freed him because he thought Apollo sane—or innocent.
Artemis heaved a sigh. “He’s not nearly as awful as you make him out to be—and I love him. For my sake, you ought to take a more charitable disposition toward my husband.”
Apollo privately wondered how many times Wakefield had heard the inverse of this little speech, but he nodded at his sister anyway. There really was no point in arguing the matter with her.
Her eyes narrowed for a moment as if she found his capitulation too easy, then she nodded in return. “Good. Someday I’d like you two to be friends, or,” she added hastily as he cocked an incredulous eyebrow, “at least polite to one another.”
He didn’t bother replying to that. Instead Apollo rummaged in the bundle of foodstuffs further. There was a big loaf of bread and he brought it out and set it on a piece of wood to slice.
“There’s actually another matter I needed to talk to you about,” his sister said, her voice unusually hesitant.
Apollo looked up.
She was turning an apple around and around in her fingers. “Maximus heard it from someone—I suspect Craven, because for a valet, he certainly seems to know everything about everyone. It’s just a rumor, of course, but I thought I should tell you anyway.”
He abandoned the bread and placed a fingertip under her chin to make her look at him.
He cocked his head in question.
“It’s the earl,” she said, meeting his eyes.
For a moment his mind went blank. What earl? Then, naturally, it came to him: the unsmiling old man in a black full-bottomed wig who’d come to see him once—only once—to inform him that as the man’s heir he was to be sent away to school. The old man had stunk of vinegar and lavender and he’d had the same eyes as Apollo.
Apollo had loathed him on sight.
He stared into his sister’s eyes—thankfully the dark gray of their mother’s—and waited.
She took both his hands, giving him strength as she said, “He’s dying.”
Chapter Five
The king saw what his wife had birthed and drew back his arm to kill the monster, but his priest stayed his hand. “It is rumored that the people of this island once worshipped a god in the shape of a great black bull. Better, my liege, to let this thing live than risk offending such an anc
ient power.”…
—From The Minotaur
Captain James Trevillion glanced at the small brass clock on the table next to his chair. Four fifteen. Time to return to his charge. Carefully he placed a lopsided cross-stitch bookmark between the pages of the book he was reading: The History of the Long Captivity and Adventures of Thomas Pellow. He picked up his two pistols and shoved them securely into the holsters of the wide leather bandoliers that crisscrossed his chest. Then he reached for the cane.
The damnable cane.
It was plain, made of hardwood, with a wide head. Trevillion leaned heavily on the cane, bracing his crippled right leg as he heaved himself to his feet. He paused a moment to adjust to standing, ignoring the ache that shot through the leg. The ache was bone-deep, which made sense, since it was a bone of that leg that’d been broken—not once, but twice, the second time catastrophically.
It was the second break that had cost him his army career in the dragoons. The Duke of Wakefield had offered him another job instead—although Trevillion still wasn’t entirely sure if he should be grateful for that offer or not.
He glanced out the window as he waited for the ache in his leg to die down. He could see several gardeners laboring over a crate in the back garden. As he watched, the top was pried off, revealing rows of what looked like sticks packed in straw.
Trevillion raised his brows.
He pivoted gingerly and limped out his door and into a hallway in Wakefield House—the duke’s London residence. His room was at the back of the house, at the end of one of the corridors. Not a servant’s room, certainly, but not a guest’s, either.
Trevillion’s mouth quirked. He lived in a strange limbo between.
It took him five excruciating minutes to negotiate the stairs down to the floor below. Just as well that the duke had been so generous with his living situation.
The servants had the topmost fifth floor of Wakefield House.
He could hear feminine laughter now as he laboriously approached the Achilles Salon. Quietly he pushed open the tall, pink-painted doors. Inside, three ladies sat close together, the ruins of a full tea service on the low table before them.
As he began limping toward them, the youngest, a pretty, plump, brown-haired girl, turned in his direction a full second before the other ladies looked up as well.
He marveled at how Lady Phoebe Batten was always the first to be aware of his presence. She was blind, after all.
“My warder comes for me,” she said lightly.
“Phoebe,” Lady Hero Reading whispered, chiding. She was the middle Wakefield sibling—younger sister of the duke, elder of Lady Phoebe—but the two women looked nothing alike. Lady Hero was taller than her sister, with a willowy figure and flame-colored hair. No doubt she thought he couldn’t hear her undertone, but alas, he could. Not that it mattered. He was fully aware of what his charge thought of him and his duties.
“Won’t you have a seat?” the third member of the tea party asked kindly. Her Grace the Duchess of Wakefield, Artemis Batten, was an ordinary-looking woman—excepting her rather fine dark-gray eyes—but she held herself with all the command of a duchess. If one were unaware of her history, one would never guess that she’d served as an impoverished lady’s companion to her distant cousin until her marriage to the duke.
A formidable lady indeed.
“Thank you, my lady.” Trevillion nodded and chose a chair a discreet distance from the trio. However much she hated it, it was his job to watch over and protect Lady Phoebe. Obviously he wasn’t needed when she was with her sister and sister-in-law—or indeed anywhere in Wakefield House—but should she wish to go out after tea, he was bound to accompany her.
Whether she liked it or not.
Lady Hero rose. “I ought to get back to Sebastian anyway. No doubt he’s woken from his afternoon nap.”
“So soon?” Lady Phoebe pouted, then immediately brightened. “We’ll take tea next week at your house—preferably in the nursery.”
Lady Hero laughed gently. “I fear taking tea with an infant and a small child in leading strings is a messy business at best.”
“Messy or not, Phoebe and I look forward to seeing our nephews,” the duchess said.
“Then please come.” Lady Hero smiled ruefully. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you when you leave with mashed peas in your hair.”
“A small price to pay to spend time with Sweet William and baby Sebastian,” Her Grace murmured. “Come, I’ll see you to the door. I’ll be leaving shortly anyway.”
“You will?” Lady Phoebe’s eyebrows drew together. “But you were gone this morning as well—quite mysteriously, too. Where are you off to now?”
It was small, but Trevillion caught it—a slight waver in the duchess’s gaze, swiftly corrected before she replied. “Just to visit Mrs. Makepeace at the orphanage. I shan’t be long—I’ll certainly return by supper, if Maximus ever emerges from his study and wonders where his wife has gone.”
“He spends entirely too much time in there. Truly Parliament won’t fall apart if he takes one day away.” Lady Hero bent to buss her sister on her cheek. “Next week, then? Or shall I see you at the Ombridges’ soiree?”
Lady Phoebe sighed heavily. “Maximus says I can’t attend. Too crowded, it seems.”
Lady Hero darted a glance at the duchess, standing behind Lady Phoebe. The duchess’s mouth flattened as she shrugged.
“It’s sure to be a terrible bore,” Lady Hero said cheerfully. “A crush like that. You wouldn’t like it anyway.”
Trevillion felt his own mouth tighten as he looked away in irritation. Lady Hero was trying to soften the blow, he knew, but she was going about it in the wrong way. He’d not been serving as Lady Phoebe’s bodyguard for long—only since just before Christmas—but in that time he’d come to realize that the girl loved social events. Musicales, balls, afternoon tea parties, anything with people. She lit up when she was at these gatherings. But her elder brother, Maximus Batten, Duke of Wakefield, had decreed that such outings were too dangerous for Lady Phoebe. Thus she went to very few social events outside her family—and those were carefully vetted.
Trevillion shifted, scraping his stick against the floor. Lady Phoebe swiveled her head, looking in his direction.
He cleared his throat. “I believe, my lady, that the rose canes you ordered have arrived. I noticed the gardeners unpacking them. I don’t suppose they need your supervision, but if you have an opinion on where they’re planted—”
“Why didn’t you say so at once?” Lady Phoebe was already moving, her fingertips trailing and tapping lightly along the backs of chairs as she walked. She halted at the door and half turned, not quite looking in his direction. “Well? Do come on, Captain Trevillion.”
“My lady.” He rose as briskly as he was able and limped toward her.
“Good-bye, dearest.” Lady Hero touched her sister’s shoulder as she passed by Lady Phoebe on the way out the door. “Try not to be so impatient.”
Lady Phoebe merely rolled her eyes.
The duchess tucked her chin as if hiding a smile. “Enjoy your roses.”
Then both she and Lady Hero were gone and he was alone with his charge.
She tilted her head, listening as he drew near. “They’re in the back garden? How did the canes look?”
“I saw them from my window, my lady,” he said as he drew abreast of her. “I couldn’t ascertain their condition.”
“Hmm.” She pivoted and began walking toward the stairs, her fingertips trailing along the wall.
He always felt a twinge of fear when she neared the staircase—it was wide and curving, and made of highly polished marble. But he’d learned after a few brief spats early in his employment that Lady Phoebe did not wish to be helped down the stairs. Indeed, despite his qualms, she’d never so much as faltered on them in his presence.
Still, he watched intently as she began her descent, ready to grab her arm should she waver.
“You’re hovering,�
� she said without turning.
“Hovering is my job.”
“That’s debatable.”
“No, actually, it isn’t,” he said, flatly.
“Humph.” They’d reached the ground floor now and she turned to walk toward the back of the house.
He grimaced as he took the last step overly hard on his bad leg.
She didn’t turn, but he noticed that she slowed her pace for him.
He limped grimly after.
Outside, a wide, paved terrace ran along the entire back of the house. Beyond was a formal garden, the flower beds mostly dormant at this time of year. There were two gardeners plus the young boy who helped them. All three came to attention as Lady Phoebe appeared.
“M’lady,” the eldest, a gnarled specimen of a man, called to give her their direction.
“Givens,” Lady Phoebe said. “Never tell me you’re planting without me.”
“Nay, m’lady,” the other gardener replied. He could’ve been Givens’s twenty-years-younger twin, they looked that much alike. In fact, Trevillion suspected that they were in some way related. He made a mental note to find out how.
“We was jus’ lookin’ over the canes,” Givens said.
“And how are they?” Lady Phoebe started forward. The canes had been laid out on the lawn between the flower beds.
Trevillion cursed under his breath and lengthened his stride, his stick thumping on the paving stones. He caught up to her just as she neared the shallow steps that led down to the garden.
“If you don’t mind, my lady.” He took her arm without waiting for her reply.
“And if I do?” she murmured.
There was not much point in answering that question, so he merely said, “The grass begins here.”