Darling Beast

“Like he can’t understand,” Indio said.

“Start undressing,” she reminded him.

Indio sighed heavily. “He can.”

She placed her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow.

“Caliban’s smart,” Indio insisted, his voice only slightly muffled by the shirt over his head. He pulled it all the way off, making his hair stand on end, and looked at her.

She bit her lip. “How do you know?”

Indio shrugged and sat on the floor to push off his stockings. “I just do.”

She frowned, thinking. Caliban had presented himself as dull-witted the first time she’d seen him. Was it a ruse? And if so, whyever would…?

“Mama,” her son said with all the exasperated patience of a seven-year-old. He’d somehow taken off everything but his smalls while she was woolgathering.

“Yes, dear.”

“I’m old enough to bathe myself.”

That was actually debatable, since though Indio could wash the more obvious parts of himself—such as his feet—he had the tendency to forget anything else, such as his neck, face, knees, and elbows.

But she sighed and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll check back in a bit, then, shall I?”

“Yes, please,” he said, scrambling out of his smalls.

Daffodil immediately attacked them as Indio got in the bath.

Lily opened the door. “Maude, would you—”

She cut herself off. Maude was nowhere in sight, but Caliban was across the room, holding a page of her play to the light of the fire. His eyes were intent, his brow slightly creased—and he was quite obviously reading the page.

Quietly she closed the door behind her and folded her arms on her chest as her heart began to beat faster.

She lifted one eyebrow. “Who are you?”

Chapter Four

Nine months later the queen was brought to bed with the king’s firstborn. But the child was horribly deformed, with the head, shoulders, and tail of a bull, and the remainder of his body human, the skin overall as black as ebony. When the queen looked between her bloodied thighs at the monster she’d birthed, she fell insensible, never to fully recover her wits thereafter…

—From The Minotaur

Apollo turned slowly and stared blankly at Miss Stump. He’d been so enthralled by the wit of the play—a play he suspected she’d written—that he hadn’t heard the door open until it was too late. Perhaps if he made no reaction to her words…

She huffed and crossed her arms. “I’m not an idiot, you know. If you’re reading that”—she tilted her chin at the sheet of paper still in his hands—“you’re no half-wit. Who are you and why have you been pretending to be mute and a fool?”

Well, it’d been a last-ditch effort anyway—and not a very good one. He let the paper drop to the small side table and crossed his own arms, looking back at her. Whatever she might think, he really couldn’t talk.

She frowned—rather ferociously for such a small thing. “Tell me. Are you in hiding from creditors or the like? What’s your name?”

That was perilously close to the truth. Best to divert her before her imagination ran wild. He sighed and uncrossed his arms to draw out his notebook. He flipped to a blank page and wrote, I can’t speak.

He handed the notebook to her.

She glanced at it and snorted. “Truly?”

He nodded once and held out his hand for the notebook.

She gave it to him. “Then tell me your name at least.”

He wrote again and showed her the notebook. Caliban will do.

She studied his writing, her brows knit. “You really can’t speak?” She looked up. Her voice was softer now, more curious. She handed him back the notebook.

He shook his head as he wrote. I mean you and yours no harm.

When he glanced up again, she was watching him intently, and for a moment he stilled. Her lichen-green eyes reflected the candlelight, the light flickering deep within their depths, and it struck him suddenly and without warning how beautiful she was. Not in the common way, with soft cheeks and rounded mouth, but with a sharp little chin and intelligence that fairly radiated out of those light-green eyes.

If only this were another life—one in which he might impress her with his title or his own verbal wit.

He blinked and looked down at the notebook in his hand. The page had wrinkled beneath the clench of his fingers. He was in hiding, his title of no consequence under the circumstances, and he couldn’t speak.

She’d tilted her head to read the notebook, seemingly unaware of his thoughts, and for a moment she was very close to him.

He inhaled the scent of her hair: orange and clove.

She glanced up and took a step back, suddenly wary. “You still haven’t said why you’re here.”

He sighed. Indio was correct: I’m a gardener.

She took the notebook to read his writing; then, before he thought to stop her, she was flipping back through the pages.

“You’re more than a simple gardener, aren’t you?” She sank into the old settee, seemingly not noticing how the thing rocked unsteadily beneath her.

Apollo wasn’t going to risk the fragile piece of furniture beneath his weight. He crossed to the round table and brought back one of the chairs. She was examining his sketch of the pond with the bridge in the background when he returned. He placed the chair across from her and sat.

She turned the page slowly, tracing her fingers over the next sketch: a study of an ornamental waterfall. “These are lovely. Will the garden really look like this when you’ve finished with it?”

He waited until she glanced at him, then nodded.

Her brows knit as she turned another page. The next one showed a wide, craggy oak at the foot of the bridge. “I don’t understand. Where did Mr. Harte find you? I think I would’ve known if there were a mute gardener of your talents in London.”

There was no way to answer that without giving himself away. She waited a beat and then turned the page again. The drawing here caught her eye, and she pivoted the notebook, examining the sketch. “What is it?”

Parallel lines took up both pages across the open notebook, some intersecting, some leading nowhere. A few of the lines were wavy. Here and there a circle or square sat in spaces between the lines.

He leaned closer, inhaling orange and clove, and wrote along one side of the page, next to the sketch, A maze.

“Oh! Oh, I see.” She cocked her head, examining the diagram. “But what are these?” She pointed to a square and then a circle.

Follies—places for lovers to sit or amusements like the waterfall. Things to gaze upon and amaze the viewer.

“And these?” She traced the wavy lines.

He inhaled quickly, excited that she was interested, frustrated that he couldn’t just tell her.

Quickly he reached over and flipped through the pages of the notebook still in her hands. He found a blank one and ripped it out, then turned back to his diagram of the maze. He wrote swiftly on his knee, the pencil nearly poking through the paper in several places. The wavy lines are the parts of the hedge that I can salvage from the fire. The plants that are still living.

He showed her his words, waited while she read, her brows knit, and when she looked up, snatched the paper back before she could say anything.

The solid lines will be new plantings. The maze will be the centerpiece of the new garden. The pond on one side, the theater on another, so that from the theater one will look across the maze to the pond. There may be viewing places in the theater itself so that visitors may see the maze and those within it. It will be—

The pencil finally broke through the paper at this point. He balled his fist, frustrated, the words bottled up inside him.

Slim fingers covered his fist, cool and comforting.

He looked up.

“Beautiful,” she said. “It will be beautiful.”

His breath seemed to stop in his lungs. Her eyes were so big, so earnest, so completely captivated by his trifling drawings, his esoteric work. So few were interested in what he did—even Asa began to fidget after only minutes if Apollo tried to explain his plans for the garden.

Yet this gamine woman looked at him as if he were a sorcerer.

He wondered if she had any idea how seductive her very interest was.

She blinked and drew back as if conscious that she’d let too much show. “And amazing. And wonderful. I’ll look forward to wandering your maze, though I’m sure I’ll never figure it out—I’m terrible at puzzles. I’ll need to bring a guide, I think. Perhaps—”

The outer door opened at that point and Miss Stump jumped up from the settee. “Oh, Maude, wherever have you been?”

“Down to the dock to get those eels the wherryman promised me.” Maude set a basket—presumably containing the aforementioned eels—on the table. “Missed me, did you?” Her brows rose as she glanced at the notebook Apollo had reclaimed. “What’s that?”

Miss Stump sent him an ironic glance. “Caliban isn’t nearly as foolish as he was making us believe.”

“Then he can talk?”

Both women looked at him and Apollo could feel the heat burn his neck.

“No, he can’t.” Miss Stump cleared her throat. “Indio’s in his bath. I’d better see if he’s remembered to wash his ears—or if he’s flooded the floor again.”

She hurried into the back room.

Maude began unpacking her eels. “Brought back some water from the river to wash the dishes. It’s by the door, if’n you want to bring it in.”

Apollo pocketed his notebook and went to fetch the water. Had he known that they needed it, he’d have offered to go down to the river.

He set the bucket of water by the fireplace to warm, conscious that the old woman was watching him.

When he turned she pinned him with a gimlet gaze. “You’ve got a tongue and my Lily says as how you’re not stupid, so you mind telling me why you can’t speak?”

He opened his mouth—even after nine months it was an automatic reaction. After all, he’d spent eight and twenty years opening his mouth and having speech emerge—without thought or effort. Such a simple thing. A mundane, everyday thing, speech, the thing that set men apart from the animals.

Lost—perhaps forever—to him now.

So he opened his mouth and then didn’t know what to do, for he’d tried before, tried for days and weeks, and all that had occurred was a damnably sore throat. He thought of that day, of the boot shoved into his neck, of the Bedlam guard leering down at him as he threatened hell, and he could actually feel his throat closing, cutting off hope and humanity and the power of speech.

“Maude!” Miss Stump was there now and he had no idea what she saw on his face, but she was frowning fiercely—at the maidservant. “Stop badgering him, please. He can’t talk. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter why.”

It might make him a weakling, but he took her defense gratefully. A part of him railed against his own cowardliness. A man—even a man without the power of speech—shouldn’t hide behind a woman’s skirts. Apollo ducked his head, avoiding both women’s gazes as he strode to the door. This had been a mistake—he’d known it from the first. He should never have given in to the temptation to come here. To try to associate with other folk as if he were a normal man still.

A small, damp hand caught Apollo as he made for the door, and such was his disquiet, he nearly pulled away.

But he remembered in time and stopped.

Indio looked up at him, his hair in wet spirals, dripping onto his nightshirt. The boy had his brows drawn together, but underneath his stern expression there was hurt. “Are you leaving?

Apollo nodded.

“Oh.” Indio let go of Apollo’s hand and chewed his bottom lip. “Are you coming back? Daff wants you to.”