Darling Beast

Damn. He hadn’t meant to scare her. Apollo stepped from behind the tree.

“Oh.” She glanced around, her brows drawn together. “Is this your place? I can move elsewhere. I didn’t mean to disturb your work…”

He’d started shaking his head with her second sentence. She finally seemed to notice, winding down her protests until they trailed away into silence. For a moment they simply stood, staring at each other, alone in this ruined garden. A breeze rattled the thin branches of the bushes and blew a lock of her dark hair across her mouth to catch in the seam of her plush lips. She pushed it behind her ear, her gaze still tangled with his.

He didn’t want her to leave, he knew it suddenly. He talked to Artemis, to Makepeace—and to no one else. There was no one else—save her, now. She’d found his secret, knew he wasn’t just a hulking mute, devoid of brain or soul. And more—she stirred something deep within him, something he’d thought had been beaten out of him in Bedlam.

Carefully he took a step back, hoping she’d understand that he was ceding the ground to her.

“Stop!”

They both started at her voice.

Miss Stump cleared her throat and said in a lower tone, “That is… I mean, if you’d like to stay and continue your work, I… I don’t mind.”

He nodded once and turned.

“Wait!” He heard her call from behind him, but there was no point in trying to explain when actions were simpler.

He jogged back to the tree he’d been trying to take down earlier and picked up his shovel and his satchel before returning.

Miss Stump was bent over her papers again, but he made sure to make enough noise that he wouldn’t startle her.

“Oh,” she said, straightening. “You’ve come back.”

Was that relief in her voice?

His mouth twisted wryly at himself. She was a lauded actress, vivacious, quick, and pretty. Even when he’d been able to speak, most of his feminine company had been bought. He wasn’t a comely man. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Yet she seemed happy that he’d returned, and that simple fact made his chest bloom with joy.

He dropped his satchel and took up the shovel, sticking it into the base of one of the dead bushes, striking at the root mass. The blade only went halfway into the soil, so he jumped with both feet on the shoulders of the blade, driving it the rest of the way down. He could feel as the blade sliced through the roots and he grunted with satisfaction. He’d spent part of the previous night sharpening the shovel to do just that. Gingerly he began prying with the handle—too hard a movement and he’d snap it, or worse, the iron blade itself. He’d already lost two shovels this spring.

“You don’t mind if I continue?” he heard Miss Stump ask. “It’s just that I need to finish writing this soon—very soon.”

He glanced up curiously at that, wondering at the worried line between her brows as she stared down at her manuscript. Makepeace had said she couldn’t get acting work at the moment. Perhaps this was her only means of making money.

He shook his head in reply.

“I’m only in the third act,” she said absently. “My heroine has gambled away all her brother’s money because, well, she’s dressed as her brother.”

She glanced up in time to catch his raised eyebrows.

“It’s a comedy called A Wastrel Reform’d.” She shrugged. “A complicated comedy because right now no one knows who anyone is. There’s twins—a brother and sister—named Wastrel, and the brother has convinced his sister—her Christian name is Cecily—to pretend to be him so that he might seduce Lady Pamela’s maid, and he’s engaged to her—Lady Pamela, not her maid.”

She took a breath and Apollo slowly smiled, because against all odds, he’d understood everything she’d just said.

Miss Stump grinned back. “It’s silly, I know, but that’s what comedy is, really—a lot of silly things happening, one after another.” She glanced down at her play, running her finger down the page. “So Cecily, dressed as Adam—that’s the brother—has lost terribly at a hand of cards to Lord Pimberly. Oh! That’s Fanny—the maid’s—father, and Lady Pamela’s scorned suitor. Although of course no one knows that Pimberly is Fanny’s father, otherwise she wouldn’t be a lady’s maid, now would she?”

Apollo leaned on his shovel and cocked an eyebrow.

“Kidnapped at birth, naturally,” she replied. “But fortunately she has quite a distinctive birthmark. Right here.” She tapped the upper slope of her right breast.

Apollo defied any man not to follow the direction of her finger. She had a lovely breast, gently swelling above the severe square neckline of her dress and modestly covered by a filmy fichu.

“Yes, well.” Her husky voice made him raise his gaze. Her cheeks had pinkened, but that might’ve been the wind. “In any case, I’m writing a scene between Cecily and Lord Pimberly in which Pimberly demands his money and Cecily doesn’t have it. And naturally he’s begun to realize he’s attracted to her at the same time.”

She cleared her throat.

He nodded, messing a bit with his shovel to look as if he were still working. Actually, he was beginning to fear that the blade was stuck in the roots.

Miss Stump glanced at her manuscript and slipped back into what he now knew was Cecily—the sister dressed as her brother. “Do you judge a gentleman by his bits, my lord?”

She turned and placed her fists on her hips again, in the wide-legged stance. “Pardon me, but I said chits.”

Turn. Her hands dropped. “And yet, ’tis still your manly bits we discuss.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “No?”

He screwed his mouth to the side and reluctantly shook his head.

“Blast!” she exclaimed under her breath, bending to the paper. She scratched out something and then froze, obviously thinking.

He wasn’t even pretending to work anymore.

She gasped and then hunched over her manuscript, scribbling furiously before straightening, a gleam of triumph in her eye.

She tossed her head as Cecily. “Indeed, and would you know a chit should you see one?”

Now she was a baffled Pimberly. “Naturally.”

“Oh, my lord?” She turned her head and looked over her shoulder through lowered lashes at the imaginary Pimberly, all daring flirtation. “And how is that, may I ask?”

“How?”

“How does a gentleman of your unsurpassed perception differentiate a chit from a bit?”

And she batted her eyelashes.

The juxtaposition between the ribaldry of her words and the innocence of her expression was so silly, so utterly enchanting, that Apollo couldn’t help it: he threw back his head and laughed.

LILY STUMBLED AT the sound, entirely forgetting both Cecily and pompous Pimberly, forgetting her play and everything else, really, and simply stared.

Caliban was laughing.

Deep and full, a masculine laugh, his shaggy head thrown back, eyes closed in mirth and crinkling at the corners, straight white teeth flashing. He wore a white shirt topped by a brown waistcoat missing two buttons. The sleeves were rolled to just below his elbows, revealing strong brown forearms lightly sprinkled with dark hair. His breeches were grayed black and over his worn shoes he wore stained buff gaiters. A red kerchief was tied loosely at his neck and he’d wrapped a wide leather belt around his waist to hold his pruning knife. She’d seen innumerable laborers in her lifetime, but she’d never really looked at them. Now she gazed her fill at Caliban and thought how terribly, awfully appealing he was: physically strong, yet able to critique her play, and with a sense of humor to boot. He was so much more than a simple laborer.

But that thought was followed quickly by another: if he could laugh, then why could he not speak? She felt rather stunned, watching the strong cords of his throat work as he laughed. It made no sense to her, for surely he was using his voice to laugh?

He opened his eyes, his laughter dying, as he met her gaze, and Lily realized that she’d stepped closer to him in her fascination. She stood almost touching him, his heat, his masculinity like a magnet to her. He dipped his head, watching her, traces of his amusement lingering on his face. She couldn’t help it: she reached out and touched his face, her fingertips running lightly down his lean cheek, feeling the catch of invisible stubble. He was so hot, so alive. She stood on tiptoe, her hand slipping to the back of his neck, beneath the wild tumble of his brown hair, to pull his homely face down to hers. She just wanted to see, to capture some of that vitality and find out if it tasted as sharp as it looked.

She was so absorbed, in fact, that the male voice, when it came from behind her, nearly startled her out of her skin.

“I’ve come to bring you back.”

She jumped, whirling to see who had invaded their Eden, but she wasn’t as fast as Caliban.

He shoved her to the side—not gently—and charged the stranger. Caliban’s head was down, massive shoulders bunched like a bull’s. He caught the other man about the middle, his momentum sending both men skidding to the ground, the stranger on the bottom. Caliban growled, slamming his fist at the stranger. But the other man was swift, pulling his head to the side and avoiding what surely might’ve been a disabling blow.

The stranger was in his prime, dressed all in black, wearing his own dark hair pulled back into a braided queue. A tricorn hat had been knocked from his head and she saw that a walking stick had also fallen to the side.

“Stop!” she cried, but neither man paid her the least mind. “Stop!”

The stranger wrapped one leg over Caliban’s, heaving to displace him, but the mute must’ve outweighed him by a couple stone or more. Caliban, meanwhile, hit the man repeatedly in the side, each blow earning him a grunt of pain from his adversary.

Metal flashed between them, and Caliban reared back, grabbing for something. Oh, dear God, the other man had a pistol! Both men had a hand on it. They strained in ghastly embrace, each trying to turn the barrel to the other’s face. The stranger’s fist shot out and struck Caliban square in the jaw. His head whipped to the side with the blow, but he didn’t let go of the awful pistol. Lily wavered, afraid to venture nearer, afraid to leave the scene. She wanted to help, but couldn’t think how. If she tried to strike the other man, she’d merely interfere with Caliban—and any distraction could prove fatal.

A flash and a horrific bang.

Lily screamed, half-crouching in reaction, her hands over her ears.

She started forward, afraid she’d see blood—afraid to see Caliban’s dynamic face rendered slack by death—but the men were still struggling. Somehow the shot had missed them both.

“Mama?”

Indio’s voice was high and scared, his eyes fixed on the men wrestling on the ground. Lily thought her heart would beat right out of her breast. She flew to her son, catching him up in her arms even though she hadn’t carried Indio for years. She turned with him clutched to her chest, in time to see the stranger draw a second pistol. Caliban grabbed the other man’s wrist and glanced up, as if searching for her.

Their eyes met, and she didn’t know what he saw in hers, but his face was distorted in a scowl, his visage warlike and grim.

A man like this could kill, she thought, somewhere in the back of her mind where she was still sane. I should be afraid of a man like this.

Then he jerked his chin, sharply, and the message was clear: he wanted her and Indio gone.

A better woman might’ve stayed, might’ve argued or in some way helped him, but evidently she wasn’t that better woman.

Lily turned and fled, stumbling, sobbing, clutching Indio.

And as she did she heard the second shot.

Chapter Six

So the king took the baby and walled him up in an impenetrable labyrinth at the center of the island. There the monster lived and grew, unseen by any human. But on certain nights there could be heard a mournful lowing such as a bull might make, and on those nights the people of the island shivered and shuttered their windows…