Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)

Makepeace nodded, his expression grave. “You didn’t have to.”

“You never had to,” St. John concurred.

THAT NIGHT ARTEMIS lay nude in Maximus’s huge bed and watched as he shaved. She’d already had a lovely, hot bath and washed her hair twice. They’d dined in his rooms, a simple supper of chicken and gravy with carrots and peas and a cherry tart for dessert.

Nothing had ever tasted better.

“It’s rather a miracle that no one was killed,” she said. She’d been very glad of that news, even after spotting a very familiar set of broad shoulders among the crowd at the dock. “Do you think anything remains of Harte’s Folly?”

“Last I heard it was still smoldering,” Maximus replied without turning. He frowned at his reflection in his dresser mirror. “But I understand that the theater is completely gone as well as the musician’s colonnade. They might be able to save some of the plantings, but whether Harte will rebuild…” He shrugged. “The gardens are probably a lost cause.”

“It’s too bad,” she murmured. “Phoebe loved Harte’s Folly, and I rather liked it, too. It was such a magical place. Why do you think Lord Noakes set it alight in the first place?”

“Presumably to cover the fact that he’d just murdered his nephew,” Maximus replied.

“What?” She thought about the blood on Lord Noakes’s hands. “Poor man!”

“Well, he was trying to blackmail his uncle,” Maximus said drily. “If he’d just told me that he’d gotten the pendant from his uncle’s house in the first place, he’d be alive right now.”

“Mmm.” She picked at the coverlet. “Well, I suppose I wouldn’t have been going to Harte’s Folly again in any case.”

“Why not?” he asked absently. “Was the play not to your liking?”

“We didn’t get that far.” She sighed. “Penelope had rather a fit when we first arrived and caused a scene. I’m surprised no one told you.”

He turned slowly. “What?”

She looked at him. “She called me a whore.”

“Damn it.” He scowled at his hands. “That rather destroys my plans.”

“Plans for what?”

“When I was swimming through that foul water, I decided.” He went to his lockbox and opened it. “I was going to have it remade before I asked you. It seemed symbolic somehow.” He glared at her. “Now I’ll just have to do without.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I’m sorry?”

Then Maximus did something very strange: he went on one knee before her.

“This isn’t right at all,” he said, continuing to glare as if he found it all her fault.

She sat up. “What are you doing?”

“Artemis Greaves, will you do me the honor of—”

“Are you insane?” she demanded. “What of your father? Your conviction that you must marry for the dukedom?”

“My father is dead,” he said softly. “And I’ve decided the dukedom can go hang.”

“But—”

“Hush,” he snapped. “I’m trying to propose to you properly even without my mother’s necklace.”

“But why?” she asked. “You think my brother is mad.”

“He seemed sane enough to me the last time I saw him,” Maximus said kindly. “He tried to attack me.”

She goggled. “Most would take that as confirmation of his madness.”

He shrugged, reaching into the lockbox for the pendant she’d worn about her neck for so long. It lay next to the other six emeralds, all recovered now that the last had been taken from Noakes’s dead body. “He thought I’d seduced his sister.”

“Oh.” She blushed, still uncomfortable with the thought of Apollo knowing about… that.

“I know that this is rather disappointing,” he said as he slipped off his signet ring and threaded it on the chain the pendant still hung on. “But I intend to make you respectable.”

“Not because of what Penelope said?” she protested.

“No.” He put the necklace over her head, settling the ring and the pendant between her breasts with care. The brush of his warm fingers made her nipples peak. “Well, yes, in a way. I don’t want you to think that I would allow anyone to call you such. I vowed it to myself when I was searching for you underwater. That if I could get you out alive…” He cleared his throat, frowning. “Anyway, you can wear the necklace at the wedding.”

“Maximus.” She took his face, making him look up at her. “I don’t want to marry you simply because you want to protect my name. If—”

Her heartfelt protest was interrupted by him lunging at her and taking her mouth. He kissed her thoroughly, openmouthed, until she had trouble remembering what exactly they’d been talking about.

When he broke the kiss, he still held her tight, almost as if he were afraid to let her go. “I love you, my Diana. I’ve loved you, I think, since I discovered you walking barefoot in my woods. Even when I thought I couldn’t marry you, I fully intended to keep you by my side forever.” He pulled back to look at her and she saw to her absolute astonishment that there was a trace—a very small trace—of uncertainty in his expression. He smoothed a thumb down the side of her face. “You mustn’t leave me. Without you there’s no light in the world. No laughter. No purpose. Even if for some silly reason you don’t wish to marry me, promise me at least—”

“Hush.” She cupped his face in her hands. “Yes, I’ll marry you, you foolish man. I love you. I suppose I’ll even wear your mother’s extravagant necklace—though it won’t look nearly as good on me as it would’ve on Penelope. I’ll do anything you want, just so that we can remain together. Forever.”

He surged up over her at that, capturing her mouth, surrounding her with his strong, possessive arms.

When at last he allowed her to draw breath she saw that he was frowning sternly at her. “We’ll marry in three months. You’ll wear the Wakefield emeralds and the earbobs I’ll have made, but mark me well, you are confused. No one would look better in those emeralds than you. Your cousin might be a pretty face, but you, my darling, courageous, maddening, seductive, mysterious, wonderful Diana, you are the Duchess of Wakefield. My duchess.”

Epilogue

Tam cried out his sister’s name, expecting Lin to turn to ash before his eyes. But a strange thing happened when Lin touched the earth: nothing at all. She bent her head and whispered something into the ear of the little white dog, whereupon the animal leaped from her arms to the ground and stood wagging his tail. Immediately the wild hunt’s horses and riders fell from the sky, each one assuming his mortal shape as he landed on the earth. The last to descend from the sky was King Herla himself. He stepped from his horse and as his booted foot touched the ground he drew a deep, shuddering breath, tilting his head back to feel the rays of the dawning sun upon his face.

Then he smiled and looked down at Lin, his eyes no longer pale. Now they were a warm brown. “You’ve saved me, brave little maiden. Your courage, cleverness, and unwavering love has broken the curse set on me, my men, and your own brother.”

At his words the men of his retinue threw their hats into the air, cheering.

“I owe you everything I have,” King Herla said to Lin. “Ask what you will for your reward and it is yours.”

“Thank you, my king,” Lin said, “but I want for nothing.”

“Not jewels?” asked King Herla.

“No, my king.”

“Not land?”

“Indeed not, my king.”

“Not horses or cattle?”

“No, my king,” Lin whispered, for King Herla had stepped closer as he had questioned her and she had to tilt back her head to look him in the eye now.

“Nothing I have will tempt you?” King Herla murmured.

Lin could only shake her head.

“Then perhaps I should offer myself,” Herla said as he sank to his knees before her. “Wonderful girl, will you have me as your husband?”

“Oh, yes,” Lin said and all about her the King’s men cheered again.

Then King Herla married Lin in a ceremony that was quite nice but not nearly as grand as his first wedding so many centuries before. After that, he cleared the dark wood of brambles, tilled the fields again, rebuilt his crumbling castle, and caused fat cattle to graze upon his lands. The people were once again content and well-fed. And if King Herla ever felt the urge to go a-hunting, he ignored it and turned to see the smile of his wise queen instead, for he’d already found and captured the best quarry of all.

True love.

—from The Legend of the Herla King

MEANWHILE…

“Nine fucking years.”

Apollo sat on an overturned tin pail and watched as his good friend, Asa Makepeace, thrust the bottle of wine gripped in his fist into the air, a defiant salute.

“D’you hear me, ’Pollo?” Asa demanded, waving the bottle so wildly he nearly boxed Apollo’s ear with it. “Nine fucking years. I could’ve been whoring or drinking or pottering about the continent, seeing places, and instead I was working, nay, slaving on this very pleasure garden, building and planting and coddling fickle actresses and more fickle actors and now, now it’s nothing but a smoldering pile of shit. I say again: nine fucking years!”

Apollo sighed and drank from his own bottle as Asa continued to repeat his profane refrain. Apollo’s bottle was half gone, which was good since he no longer cared that the wine stank of smoke. They sat in the only part of Harte’s Folly still standing: the actor’s dressing rooms behind the stage.

Or what had once been the stage. That part of the theater, and indeed the rest of it, was a still-smoldering blackened mess of fallen beams and debris, too hot to sift through to see if anything could be recovered, although Apollo was very doubtful on that score.

It might have been nine years of Asa’s life lost tonight, but it was also the last bit of capital Apollo had to his name gone, too. Just before he’d woken that dreadful day to find three of his acquaintances bloodily slaughtered around him, he’d taken that capital—a tiny legacy from his father—and invested the lot in Harte’s Folly. At the time it had seemed a sound financial move: he was terrible with money while Asa seemed on the verge of wealth and prosperity with the pleasure garden. Apollo hadn’t expected too much—maybe enough made in interest to keep himself and Artemis.

That dream had just turned to ash.

“ ’Spect I’ll have to live on the street now,” Asa was saying mournfully to his bottle. “My family isn’t too fond of me, you know. And I haven’t any talent or trade save the ability to talk people into things—like I talked you into giving me all your savings, ’Pollo.”

Apollo would’ve corrected Asa’s misconception—he’d made the investment decision of his own free will—but he still couldn’t speak, and he wasn’t sure it mattered anyway. Asa seemed to be almost enjoying wallowing in his own tragedy.

“Hullo?”

They looked at each other at the call from without.

Asa’s eyebrows rose comically high on his forehead. “Who d’you think that is?” he asked in a very loud whisper.

“Ah, there you are.” The prettiest man Apollo had ever seen picked his way through the trash strewn around their little shelter. He was exquisitely dressed in a silver waistcoat and a pink satin coat and breeches, but it was his hair that drew the eye: shining golden curls drawn back by a huge black bow.

Fop, thought Apollo.

“Who the hell are you?” Asa asked belligerently.