Darling Beast

“Yes, I see, but there mustn’t have been very much room down there.”

“No, there wasn’t,” Indio assured her earnestly. “And Caliban lay on top of me an’ Daff.” He leaned close to whisper in her ear. “He’s very heavy. Daff squeaked. I think she was nearly squashed.”

Lily laughed through her tears at this bit of information, for she understood as her son seemed not to that Caliban had covered Indio to protect him from the tree roots.

She glanced again at Caliban as she said, “You and Daffodil were very brave.”

“And the best part, Mama,” Indio said, tugging her hand to get her attention, “the best part is Caliban spoke. Did you hear him? He shouted my name!”

“What?” Lily stared at Indio’s filthy little face and then back up at Caliban. She absently noted that he had a bleeding scratch on his cheek. That shout right before the accident—had that been him?

Caliban looked away from her, his face pale, and she immediately wanted to get him alone so that she might find out if he could truly speak.

“I’m glad your boy’s safe, ma’am.” Mr. Herring’s words were kind but he was looking worriedly at the wreckage of the tree and machine.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be taking him back to the theater for a bath and to patch up his scratches. And I’ll do the same for… erm…” Good Lord, what did the other gardeners call Caliban? She gestured vaguely at him.

“What?” Mr. Herring glanced at her in alarm. “But I’ve already lost the new man—ran off who knows where. I’ll be needing Smith.”

Smith? Lily drew herself up. “I’m afraid I must insist, Mr. Herring.”

“Oh, very well.” The head gardener waved her off wearily. “Probably won’t get much work done the rest of the day anyway. Don’t know what I’ll be tellin’ the master.”

“I have a feeling that won’t be a problem,” Lily muttered under her breath, ignoring Caliban’s warning glare. She turned to Indio. “Can you walk to the theater, love?”

The question seemed to prick her son’s male pride—a fickle, easily provoked thing—and he snapped back, “Of course, Mama.”

His hauteur was rather ruined, though, by the drooping of his shoulders. Now that the excitement was past it was evident that the accident had taken its toll upon Indio’s stamina. He yawned widely even as he stumbled down the path. In another few steps Caliban scooped him up without a word.

The thought made Lily eye the big man carrying her son on his shoulder. He could talk—or at least he had spoken. One word, true, but surely where there was one there were more? Lily spent the rest of the walk to the theater with myriad questions swarming her brain.

Maude was away shopping for the afternoon, so the theater was empty when they arrived.

She waited until they were safely inside before turning to Caliban and demanding, “Can you talk?”

He opened his mouth and for a terrible moment nothing happened, but then sound emerged, creaking and halting. “I think… yes.” He swallowed and winced, as if the words physically hurt.

“Oh,” Lily whispered, pressing her fingertips to her trembling mouth. “Oh, I am glad.”

“Told you,” Indio said sleepily from Caliban’s shoulder.

“So you did,” Lily replied, wiping at her eyes with her fingers. She was turning into a veritable watering pot. She inhaled to steady herself. “I think you need a nap, little man.”

It was a measure of how exhausted Indio was that he didn’t even protest that he was now much too old for naps. Lily relaxed her cleanliness standards far enough to simply insist she wash his face for him before laying him down, already mostly asleep, in her own bed.

She gently shut the door to her bedroom and looked up to find Caliban reading her play in the outer room.

He set down the sheet he’d been holding and cleared his throat. “It… is… good.” He looked at her. “Very… good.”

His voice was naturally deep, but there was a strained, hoarse quality about it that suggested damage.

“Thank you.” She’d had compliments on her plays, but they’d always been filtered through Edwin. No one had told her in person that they liked her writing. “It’s not done, of course, and I need to work quite hard on it if I’m to get it finished in time—I’ve only a week—but I think it might well be one of my better ones. That is, if I can do something about Pimberly. He’s rather priggish at the moment. But”—she reeled in her wandering words with a deep breath—“you don’t want to hear about—”

“I do,” he said, interrupting her.

“Oh.” She stared and then had to look down shyly—she was never shy! “That’s good. I mean… I’m glad, but you’ll be wanting to wash your face and see to your wounds right now, surely?”

He nodded, perhaps saving his voice, but he kept his gaze on her, watching her as she fetched water and cloths. She came to where he sat at the table and placed the basin there.

“May I?” she asked, surprised at how husky her voice was.

He nodded again, tilting his face up.

First she peeked beneath the bandage on his head. The wound was scabbing over and didn’t look damaged, so she replaced the bandage and left it as it was. In the silence she dipped a cloth in the water and wrung it out, then gently patted at his face. Up close she could see it was badly scraped in several places, and she thought of his bearing the brunt of that tree for her son.

She rewetted the cloth. “How is your back?”

“It’s… fine.”

She smoothed over his right cheekbone where the bloody cut was. “I’ll check it after I’ve washed your face.”

“There’s no… need.”

She smiled, sweet but insistent. His back would’ve been the hardest hit when he’d covered Indio and Daffodil. “I want to.”

He made no reply to that, so she continued, gently wiping around his nose, over the broad brow, and up the craggy cheekbones. Not a handsome face. Not pretty or comely. But it was a good face, she thought. Certainly masculine.

Certainly one she was attracted to.

She paused, swallowing at the thought. She did not know this man. She knew of him—knew that he would without hesitation fling himself into a filthy hole to save her son, knew he was kind to silly dogs and quarrelsome old women, knew he could, with a single, certain look, make her insides heat and melt—but she did not know him.

She straightened, concentrating as she wetted the cloth again, watching her fingers wring brown water out. “How did you lose your voice, Caliban?”

When she turned back to him, his face was closed, his eyes shuttered.

“Please,” she whispered. She had to find out something—some small thing about him.

Maybe he understood her plea. Or perhaps he was so tired he could no longer fight her.

“It was a… beating,” he said, his voice croaking. He cleared his throat, but it sounded the same when next he spoke. “He… a man stood… on my neck.” He touched his hand to his Adam’s apple.

She stared. He was big and brave and she knew he could move swiftly. How could he have been bested in a fight? Unless…

“How many were there?” she whispered.

His eyes flicked to hers, sardonic acknowledgement in them. “Three.”

Even so… “Were you drunk or asleep?”

He shook his head. “I was…”

He looked away from her as if ashamed. Her eyes narrowed. What had happened to put that look on Caliban’s face?

He cleared his throat and tried again. “I… was… chained.”

Chained. She blinked. The only persons she knew who might be chained were prisoners.

Suddenly she felt much better. A man might be imprisoned for many things—debt chief among them. Edwin had spent an uncomfortable month in Fleet Prison several years back.

She bent to wipe his chin, the cloth catching at stubble. “And you couldn’t speak after?”

“No.” He frowned. “I could… not…” He inhaled sharply as if in frustration. “I… was knocked out… they… the three of them…” He swallowed, grimacing, and she realized with sudden comprehension that there might be more to the story.

A big, powerful man chained, made helpless. She’d seen boys poke at a chained bear—a beast they’d run screaming from were it free to do as it would. Little boys—and weak men—fancied themselves brave in the face of such helplessness. It made them giddy with false power. And they were apt to wield that power in terrible and cruel ways.

Had such a thing been done to her Caliban?

The thought made her light-headed with rage. No one had the right to bolster his own feeble manhood by tearing down Caliban’s.

She took a deep breath, knowing that pity was the last thing he’d want. “I see,” she said, her voice level.

He shook his head, his mouth twisting. “It was… months… ago.”

And his simple bravery, his quiet pride, finally broke her. She let the cloth slip from her fingers and bent down to kiss him.

His reaction was immediate and decided. He wrapped his strong arms around her waist and pulled her into his lap, forcing her to straddle his legs. He cradled the back of her head in the spread of his fingers, angled his head for a better fit, and opened his mouth over hers.

And, oh, the man knew how to kiss.

His tongue licked into her mouth, tasting of wine and want, sure and in no hurry. He explored her thoroughly, sliding against her own tongue, taunting before withdrawing. He caught her bottom lip between his teeth, worrying gently, and chuckled low in his throat when she moaned and arched into him. Her skirts were caught between their bodies and naturally he still wore his breeches, but she could feel a hardness there—big and powerful. Her breasts ached against her bodice and she suddenly wished all their clothes vanished—that she could discover him for who he was.

She must’ve gone a little mad then, for she found her fingers threaded in his still dusty hair, tugging at it, demanding something that she couldn’t articulate.

It was he who had to break from her, and only then, as she was glaring at him for the interruption, did she hear Maude humph behind her.

“Far be it from me to interrupt, hinney, when you’re a-wallowin’ in the mud with a man, but I’ve supper to put on.”

“BUT WHY ARE we going to Harte’s Folly?” Lady Phoebe asked late the next morning, wrinkling her nose, presumably at the stink of the Thames, although for all Trevillion knew it was at his continued presence in her life. “I understand the theater and garden are quite burned to the ground.”

“They are, my lady.” Trevillion glared at the wherryman who’d been unashamedly listening in. The wherryman hurriedly bent to his oars. “But the garden is in a state of renovation and I thought you’d be interested. Also,” he added very drily, “I have business there, and since my job is to guard you and you insisted on going out today, I couldn’t very well make the journey without you.”

“Oh,” she said, her voice small, as she let her fingers trail in the water.

The wherryman scowled at him.

Trevillion sighed and turned to watch the Harte’s Folly dock draw near. The pleasure garden had been a very popular attraction before the fire, and the dock had once been wide and well maintained. Now it was half fallen into the Thames, only a narrow part shored up and rebuilt with new wood. Behind the dock the burnt and ruined vegetation looked positively grim—not at all like a frivolous pleasure garden. ’Twas said that Harte intended to rebuild the garden entirely, but Trevillion thought it an almost impossible goal, attainable only with a tremendous outlay of money, and then the end result still uncertain.