Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)

Artemis waited, shifting from one foot to another, disappointment seeping through her breast as the door remained silently closed. Perhaps he hadn’t meant to see her again. Perhaps he’d thought it only a one-time event. Perhaps he was bored with her now.

Well. She wasn’t yet finished with him.

She tried the handle and found the door unlocked. She quickly pushed it open and entered, closing it just as quickly behind her.

Then she looked around.

She hadn’t the time to examine his rooms last night—she’d been otherwise distracted. Artemis went to the connecting door through which Maximus had emerged the night before. It led to a sitting room-cum-study. Percy stood from where he’d been lying before the banked fire and stretched before coming over to greet both her and Bon Bon.

Artemis patted his head absently as she examined Maximus’s sitting room. Books lined the walls and overflowed into neat stacks on the floor; an enormous desk was completely covered with papers, also in neat, cornered stacks. The only thing, in fact, that looked at all out of order was a globe on a stand, which appeared to be draped with Maximus’s banyan. Artemis bit her lip to quell their upward curve at the sight. She wandered to the globe, giving it a gentle spin, banyan and all, before setting her candlestick on the desk and trailing her fingers across the papers. She saw a news sheet, a letter from an earl mentioning a bill before parliament, a letter in a much less refined hand pleading for monies to send a boy to school, and a scrap of paper with what looked like the beginnings of a speech in a bold hand—Maximus’s, presumably. For a moment Artemis studied the speech, tracing the words and feeling warm as she followed the clear points he laid out in making his argument.

She laid aside the paper and saw the corner of a thin book peeking out from under one pile. Carefully, she pulled it out and looked at the title. It was a treatise on fishing. Artemis raised her brows. No doubt Maximus had scores of streams on his properties, but did he ever have time to fish? The thought sent a pang of melancholy through her. Did he sneak peeks at his fishing book in between all his duties? If so, it shed a curiously vulnerable light upon the Duke of Wakefield.

Artemis picked up the fishing book and, curling into one of the deep chairs before the fireplace, began to read. Both dogs came to settle at her feet, curled together, and then quiet descended on the room.

The book was surprisingly entertaining and she lost track of the time. When next she looked up and saw Maximus lounging in the doorway to his bedroom watching her, she didn’t know whether it had been five minutes or half an hour.

She stuck a finger in the book to save her place. “What time is it?”

He tilted his head to the side, peering at the fireplace, and she saw that a clock sat on the mantelpiece. “One in the morning.”

“You were out late.”

He shrugged and pushed away from the doorway. “I often am.”

He turned to walk back into his bedroom and she set aside the book, rose, and followed him, leaving the sleeping dogs behind in the sitting room. He wore the same coat and waistcoat that he’d worn to the supper at home with Phoebe.

She found another chair and sat to watch as he peeled off the coat. “Were you out as the Ghost?”

“What?”

She nearly rolled her eyes. As if she couldn’t guess where he’d been all this time. “Were you running about as the Ghost of St. Giles?”

He doffed his wig and placed it on a stand. “Yes.”

He took a small dagger from his boot and set it on the dresser.

Her eyebrows rose. “Do you always carry that?”

“No.” He hesitated. “It’s a souvenir from tonight.”

Had he fought then? Rescued some other poor woman attacked in St. Giles?

Had he killed tonight?

She examined his expression, but she found him impossible to read at the moment. His face was closed as tight as a locked room.

The waistcoat came off next and was thrown carelessly over a chair opposite to where Artemis sat. She wondered if he usually had Craven help him undress—most aristocrats did, but then he seemed very comfortable in his movements. She remained silent and at last he glanced over at her.

He sighed. “I was hunting a particular footpad—the one who killed my parents. I thought I might’ve finally found him…” He trailed off, shaking his head bitterly. “But I failed. I failed as I have every other night I’ve hunted. I wasn’t even able to get close enough to see if it was the right man.”

Artemis watched as he stripped his shirt off with a violent movement, revealing those broad shoulders. How many nights had he returned to his house alone, having lost what had seemed a promising trail to his parents’ murderer?

He picked up a pitcher of water from his dressing table and poured into a wash basin. “No words of sympathy?”

She watched him splash water on his face and neck. “Would anything I say make a difference?”

He froze, water dripping from his chin as he leaned over the basin, his back still toward her. “What do you mean?”

She shivered and tucked her feet into the chair beside her, pulling the edge of her wrap over her bare ankles. “You’ve hunted for years now, in secret and alone. Done so without praise or censure. You are a force unto yourself, Your Grace. I doubt anything I said or do would move you.”

He shifted finally, swiveling his head to look at her over his shoulder. “Don’t call me that.”

“What?”

“Your Grace.”

His reply made her want to cry, and she didn’t know why. He was… something to her now, but it was all so complicated, made more so by his title and all it entailed. If only he’d been a pleasantly poor man—a solicitor or merchant. Penelope wouldn’t have been interested in him then. Artemis wouldn’t bear the guilt that she was hurting her dear cousin. They could’ve married and she would tend his house and cook their meals. It would’ve been so much more simpler.

And then, too, she would’ve had him all to herself.

He turned back to the dresser without a word, picked up a flannel cloth, and rubbed it with soap. He raised one arm, the muscles flexing on his back in a rather spectacular show, and washed himself along that side and under his arm.

He dipped the cloth into the basin and repeated the performance on the right side as well before finally glancing over at her just as she shivered again.

Maximus scowled and dropped the cloth into the water. He stoked the fire, making it flame high. Then he strode to his wardrobe and plucked out a lap rug, came to her, and arranged the plush folds over her legs.

“You should’ve told me you were cold.” His hands were infinitely gentle.

“Your water is cold,” she murmured. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

He shrugged. “I find it bracing.”

“Then bring your cloth here.”

He looked at her curiously, but did as she bade.

She took the wet cloth from him. “Turn around and kneel.”

He arched one brow, and she remembered that she was ordering a duke to kneel before her. But he wasn’t just that anymore, was he? He was Maximus now.

Maximus, her lover.

He turned and lowered himself. The fire burnished his broad back, highlighting muscle and sinew.

Slowly she drew the wet cloth between his shoulder blades.

He bowed his head and arched his back.

She took the hint and rubbed the cloth gently over the damp hair at the top of his neck before drawing the cloth down his spine.

He drew in a breath. “I was fourteen when they died.”

She hesitated only a fraction of a second before she smoothed the cloth back up his spine.

“I…” His shoulders moved restlessly. “I didn’t know what to do. How to find their killer. I was angry.”

She thought about a boy deprived of his parents in such a shocking way. “Angry” was probably a great understatement.

“I spent the next two months doing what I had to. I was the duke.” His shoulders bunched and flexed. “But every night I thought about my parents—and what I would do to their murderer when I found him. I was fairly tall for my age—nearly six feet tall—and I thought I could defend myself. I started going into St. Giles at night.”

Artemis shuddered at the thought of any boy—for a fourteen-year-old youth was still a boy to her mind—going into St. Giles after dark, no matter how tall he might be.

“I had a fencing master and I considered myself quite good,” Maximus continued. “Still, it wasn’t enough. I was badly beaten and robbed by a footpad one night. I got two black eyes. Craven was quite angry.”

“You had Craven even then?”

He nodded. “Craven had been my father’s valet. I suspect he made inquiries. The next day as I lay in bed, I had a caller.”

She drew the cloth gently over his shoulders. “Who?”

“His name was Sir Stanley Gilpin. He was a business partner and friend of my father’s—not a particularly close one, actually, as I found out later.”

“Why did he visit?” She’d finished washing his back, but she was loath to stop touching him. Gingerly she stroked a bare finger over the bunched muscle at his neck. It was so hard.

“That’s what I wondered,” he said, swiveling his head a bit. She couldn’t tell if he disliked her touch or not, but he didn’t protest, so she laid her hand against his skin, feeling the heat. “I’d never met him before. That first day he stayed an hour, talking about Father and other, more inconsequential things.”

“First day?” she questioned softly, daring to place both hands on his back. “He came back?”

“Oh, yes.” He bowed his head and arched his back into her hands, like a giant cat urging her to stroke. “He came back every day for the week that I was abed. And then at the end of that week he told me he could train me so that I wouldn’t be beaten the next time I went to St. Giles to look for my parents’ murderer.”

Her hands stilled for a moment as she heard his words. On the one hand, she was glad someone had cared enough—been strong enough—to train him so he wouldn’t be hurt. On the other, he’d been only fourteen.

Fourteen and already preparing for a life of hunting.

It seemed wrong somehow.

He pushed back against her hands in silent command, so she began rubbing over his shoulder blades, feeling the thick flesh bound over strong bone.

He sighed and his shoulders seemed to relax a bit. “I went with him and found that he had a sort of training place—a big room in his house where there were sawdust dummies and swords. He showed me how to use the swords not as a gentleman, but as the footpads might. He taught me not to fight fair, but to fight to win.”

“How long?” she asked, her voice choked.

“What?” He started to look over his shoulder, but she dug her thumbs into the ropes of muscle on either side of his spine. Instead he groaned and let his head fall.

“How long did you train like this with Sir Stanley?” she whispered.

“Four years,” his voice was almost absent. “Mostly by myself.”

“Mostly?”

He shrugged. “At the beginning, when I first came, there was another boy, a sort of ward of Sir Stanley’s. Actually I suppose he was a young man—he must’ve been eighteen at the time. I remember that he fought ferociously—when he wasn’t reading—and he had a dry sense of humor. I rather liked him.”

Maximus’s admission was almost whispered to himself. Artemis felt tears prick at her eyelids. Had he had any friends of his own age after his parents’ death—or had he spent all his time training for revenge? “What happened to him?”

Maximus was silent so long she thought he might not answer, but then he rolled one shoulder. “Went off to university. I remember I got a package from him once—a book. Moll Flanders. It’s rather risqué. I think I still have it around here somewhere. Later, after I’d left, Sir Stanley trained a third boy. I’ve met him once or twice. I suppose we three were sort of Sir Stanley’s legacy. Strange. I haven’t spoken to either about that time—about any of it—in years.” He sounded troubled.