Darling Beast

It wasn’t much—certainly not as grand as some of the houses he’d once seen as a young buck new to town, before his fall from grace—but it was homey. And that was all that mattered.

“Well?” Maude demanded, pointing to one of the chairs at the table. “Have a seat, milord.”

For a terrible second Apollo couldn’t breathe. Then in the next moment he realized that the honorific had been meant sarcastically. He nodded, hoping his face hadn’t betrayed his surprise, and pulled out a chair to sit.

Maude was still scowling. “What’s wrong with him? Can’t he talk?”

“No, he can’t,” Indio said simply, saving Apollo from having to do his dumb show.

“Oh.” Maude blinked, obviously taken aback. “Has he had his tongue cut out?”

“Maude!” Miss Stump cried. “What a horrible thought. He has a tongue.” Her brows knit as if from sudden doubt and she peered worriedly at Apollo. “Don’t you?”

He didn’t even bother resisting the urge. He stuck out his tongue at her.

Indio laughed and Daffodil began barking again—obviously her first reaction to nearly everything.

Miss Stump stared at Apollo for a long second and he was aware that his body was heating. Carefully he withdrew his tongue and snapped his mouth shut, giving her his most uncomprehending face.

She humphed and abruptly took her seat.

“It’s a fair enough question, it is,” Maude defended herself. “Why can’t he talk, then, if’n his tongue works well enough, I’d like to know?”

“I don’t know why he can’t talk.” Indio took the chair next to Apollo. “But he saved Daff from drownding today.”

“What?” Miss Stump paused in the act of reaching for the plate of sliced chicken on the table. “You’re not to go near the pond, you know that, Indio.”

“I wasn’t near the pond,” Indio explained with a boy’s complicated logic. “Daff was. Caliban went in and took her out and wrapped her in his shirt. And then Daff spewed on his shirt.”

Both women swung their heads to eye his shirt askance.

Apollo repressed an urge to lift his arm and sniff to see if the shirt still stank of dog vomit.

Miss Stump blinked. “Spew isn’t a nice word, Indio, I’ve told you before.”

“Then what is?” Indio asked—rather reasonably, in Apollo’s opinion. “Can I have some of the chicken now?”

“Yes, of course.” Miss Stump began to serve the chicken, the skin crisp and brown, the meat tender and moist. “Actually, we don’t talk about such things at the dinner table.”

“Never?” Indio looked very puzzled.

“Never,” his parent said quite firmly.

“But if Daff eats an earthworm like she did last week, how—”

“So how did Caliban come to be nearby when Daffodil went into the pond?” Miss Stump asked loudly.

“He was chopping at a stump with a funny-looking ax,” Indio said, and Apollo wanted to tell him, adze, but instead he took a bite of the chicken. “And me an’ Daff were walking. But not,” he added, “to the pond. We was walking not near the pond.”

Apollo chanced a glance at the ladies and winced. Neither woman had swallowed that particular story.

“Then he’s a gardener.” Miss Stump picked up her wineglass and eyed him with far more interest than was safe.

“Not just any gardener,” Indio said. “He tells all the other gardeners what to do.”

At which point Apollo nearly swallowed his bite of chicken the wrong way. He choked and gasped and Miss Stump pounded him hard on his back.

“Does he indeed?” she asked, with a pointed look at him.

How the hell did the boy know that? Not even the other gardeners knew he’d designed the garden. He had a rather complicated method of leaving written instructions for the lead gardener—a slow but methodical man named Herring—so that none of them realized their employer was working right under their noses.

“Why do you think that?” Maude asked interestedly.

Apollo flicked his wrist and knocked his plate to the floor. It was a sad waste of good roast chicken, but not to be helped. The plate smashed on impact, shards skidding across the charred boards, gravy and meat oozing everywhere. Daffodil rushed over and began gobbling chicken as Indio and Maude tried keep her from inadvertently eating a piece of crockery.

In the melee Apollo looked over and met Miss Stump’s gaze. Her green eyes were narrowed speculatively on him and he felt a thrill shoot through him, low and visceral.

The feeling might’ve been simple fear, but on the whole he thought it was something far, far more dangerous.

MAUDE AND INDIO were shouting, grappling with Daffodil and the mess on the floor, but Lily was frozen, staring into murky brown eyes. Not eyes the color of coffee or chocolate or that lovely China tea that came in a little red paper packet and that she could no longer afford. No, Caliban’s eyes weren’t like any delicious beverage. They were simply brown. As dull and uninspiring as a dumb animal’s.

Except…

Except that they were surrounded by the lushest lashes she’d ever seen on a man: short, black, and thick, and exotically beautiful in their own way. Why hadn’t she noticed before? Caliban’s eyes were simply breathtaking.

But what was more disturbing, there was a glimmer, somewhere in the muddy-brown depths, that made Lily draw in her breath. It was a glimmer of intelligence—sharp intelligence—and it made her afraid. Because if Indio was right, if this man—this stranger—was not just a simple gardener, but was somehow in charge of the other gardeners, then he wasn’t at all what she’d first taken him for. She was aware, suddenly, of how huge he was, of how male. He was in her home, with her little boy and an old woman, and they had no defenses.

She knew all too well what destruction a big man could wreak.

She drew a shaky breath as Indio sat back down again, between Lily and Caliban.

Indio leaned close to the giant and whispered, “You can have some of mine.”

Lily swallowed, gripping her apprehension firmly. Perhaps Indio had misunderstood something he’d seen. Surely a mute couldn’t be the head gardener? Surely Caliban was exactly what he’d seemed when she’d first come upon him in the garden?

“That’s quite all right, Indio,” she said evenly. “Maude can serve him another portion.”

Her former nursemaid shot Lily a quick look, but said nothing as she fetched the only other plate they owned and began filling it.

“Indio,” Lily said carefully as she touched her wineglass. Her own appetite had fled completely. “Tell me about how Daffodil fell into the pond?”

Her little boy crinkled up his nose. “We-ell, we was walking, me an’ Daff, and then Daff sort of skidded.”

She waited, but Indio was looking at her with an expression of suspicious innocence.

“Indio,” she started, but her son took that as a prompt to speak again.

“He was real quick, Caliban was. Fished Daff out of the water like a… a… well. A drownded rat. Sorry, Daff.”

Indio looked apologetically at the dog. Not that there was any need. Daffodil wasn’t paying her master any mind. She sat nearly under Caliban’s chair. Apparently her tiny little brain had decided that Caliban was the God of All Fallen Food.

“Hmm,” Lily murmured. “I trust that won’t happen again?”

“No, Mama,” Indio said, ducking his head.

“Indio.”

He raised his head, looking at her pleadingly from his beautiful eyes.

She hardened her heart. “I mean it. I don’t want you near that pond again—with or without Daffodil.” She inhaled and said more softly, “Think what might’ve happened had Caliban not been there to save Daff.”

He looked again at the little dog—who had one delicate paw on Caliban’s solid thigh—and swallowed. “Yes, Mama. I mean, I won’t go there again.”

“Good.” She blew out a breath. Hard to tell if he’d remember his promise the next time the water sang its siren song to him, but she had to hope. Deliberately she lightened her tone. “What else did you do today? I vow, I haven’t seen you since luncheon.”

“Me an’ Daff comed back for tea. Don’t you remember?” Indio had pulled his legs into the chair and was kneeling on it again—a habit that she really ought to stop someday. “You was writing on your—”

He abruptly stopped speaking and cast a guilty glance at the behemoth beside him. Fortunately, Caliban was taking a bite of Maude’s excellent dumplings and didn’t seem to be paying any attention to their discussion.

“Mmm,” Lily murmured, covering for him. “And then what did you do?”

“We went to the old musician’s gallery but,” he added hastily as her brows began to lower, “we didn’t go in. An’ then Daff found a toad.”

Lily glanced at the little dog in alarm. Daffodil now had both paws on Caliban’s thigh and was giving him a tragically pleading look. She really was terribly spoiled. “She didn’t catch it, did she?”

Daffodil routinely found the most disgusting things edible.

“No,” Indio said sadly, “It got away. But we did catch a cricket. I was going to keep it in a cage as a pet, but Daff swallowed it before I could. I don’t know why. She didn’t seem to think it tasted very good.”

Maude snorted. “That might explain the spewing.”

“Not spewing,” Lily murmured to her, sotto voce.

Maude rolled her eyes. “You prefer retch?”

“I prefer not discussing it at the dinner table, but nobody seems to be paying me much mind.” Lily turned to Indio. “Now then, I see you’ve finished your supper. I think it’s time for your bath.”

“Maa-ma,” he whined in the disappointed voice every boy used at the notion of cleanliness. “But Caliban isn’t done eating.”

She smiled tightly. “I’m sure he’ll be fine with Maude.”

“And you aren’t done eating, either,” he pointed out earnestly.

“I’ll finish the rest of my meal later.”

She rose and walked to the small fireplace, where a kettle had been set long before supper. It was gently steaming now. She caught up a rag and reached for the handle, but another, much bigger, hand got there first.

Lily gave a tiny jump, watching wide-eyed as Caliban picked up the hot kettle as easily as lifting a twig. At least he’d had enough sense to shield his palm from the heat with a rag.

He stood blank-faced until she pulled herself together.

“In here.” She stepped gingerly around his bulk and led him into the little bedroom. A tin hip bath was waiting, laid beside the bed on some old cloths. It was already half full of cold water. “You can pour it in there.”

He lifted the hem of his shirt to hold the bottom of the kettle and she caught an unsettling flash of his stomach.

Hastily she looked away, her cheeks heating.

“Mama?” Indio stood in the doorway.

“Come in,” she said briskly to her son, and then to the man: “Thank you for your help. You can go back to the table.”

Without a word he turned and left the tiny room, closing the door behind him.

Indio stuck a finger in the bathwater and swirled it around. “Why d’you talk to Caliban like that?”

Daffodil trotted over and placed her front paws on the rim of the tub to peer in.

“Like what?” Lily asked absently. She rolled up her sleeves and tested the water with an elbow, making sure it was neither too hot nor too cold. The bath was barely more than a shallow basin. She could use it herself by standing or crouching in it, but she missed the bigger copper half-bath they’d had to sell.