Duke of Midnight

Maximus had thought the tales of the murder scene exaggerated, but the beast before him looked quite capable of tearing a man’s head from his shoulders.

“Apollo.” Artemis started around Maximus.

He caught her arm and drew her to his side.

She shot him an irritated glance.

The one her brother gave him was much more murderous. He stared at Maximus’s hand tight about his sister’s wrist and then raised angry eyes to meet Maximus’s gaze. Maximus was relieved to see that Kilbourne didn’t share his sister’s eye color. His eyes were a muddy brown. The madman opened his mouth and made a choking sound before closing his lips. A low rumble came from deep in his chest and it was a moment before Maximus realized that Kilbourne was growling at him.

The hairs stood up on the back of his neck.

“Let me go to him,” Artemis said, pulling against his grip.

“No.” One thing to let her into the room when he thought her brother still weak. Quite another to let her near this animal.

“Maximus.” Both Craven and Kilbourne swiveled their heads to stare at her when she used his Christian name. She ignored them. “You may come with me, but I will touch and talk to my brother.”

Maximus swore beneath his breath, earning himself a disapproving stare from Craven. “You are the most stubborn woman I know.”

She merely stared at him with an implacable look that would’ve done justice to the most severe of society dowagers.

He sighed and turned to the madman. “Show me your hands.”

Maximus half-expected no response at all, but Kilbourne immediately shoved his great paws in front of him.

Maximus lifted his eyes to the animal’s and saw sardonic anger in the muddy brown.

Not such a beast after all then.

“I am Wakefield,” Maximus said directly to the man. “I don’t believe we’ve met before. On the request of your sister I took you out of Bedlam and brought you to my own house.”

Kilbourne lifted one eyebrow and glanced about the long, low cellar.

“You’re under the house,” Maximus said. “I was forced to take you out at sword point. The governors of Bedlam would very much like to have you back.”

Kilbourne’s eyes narrowed speculatively, then he looked at Artemis.

“You’re safe here. He won’t make you return to Bedlam,” she said. Maximus felt a tug on the grip he still had on her arm. “Will you?”

He didn’t dare take his eyes off the viscount. “No. My word of honor: if you’re committed to Bedlam again, it won’t be from any action of mine.”

The sardonic expression had returned to Kilbourne’s eyes. He hadn’t missed the implication that Maximus thought him quite capable of doing something that would have him apprehended and returned to the madhouse.

Another tug on his hand and a reproachful “Maximus.” Her next words were for her brother, though. “You can trust him, darling. Truly.”

Kilbourne didn’t take his gaze off Maximus, but he nodded. He took a breath and opened his mouth. A terrible, wrenching noise issued from Kilbourne’s lips and Maximus’s eyes widened as he realized.

“Stop!” Artemis tore herself from his hand and hurried to her brother. “Apollo, you must stop.”

Kilbourne grimaced horribly, his hand clutching his throat.

“Let me see.” Artemis placed her small hand on his great paw. “Craven, would you be so kind as to bring us some water, wine, and a few cloths?”

“Right away, ma’am.” The valet turned.

“Bring foolscap and a pencil as well,” Maximus said.

Craven hurried from the room.

“Darling,” she crooned to the monster, and Maximus couldn’t stop the stab of jealousy, even if it was her brother. “You must let me have a look.”

The great paw dropped.

Artemis drew in a sharp breath.

Even from his stance behind her, Maximus could see the black bruise stamped upon Kilbourne’s throat.

It was in the shape of a boot.

She turned to look at Maximus, her beautiful gray eyes stricken.

He took her hand again, this time to comfort rather than to restrain. Kilbourne watched with narrowed eyes as his sister curled her fingers about Maximus’s hand. For a madman he seemed uncommonly aware.

Artemis turned to help her brother to lie down upon the cot. He might’ve regained consciousness, but he obviously was still injured. She smoothed the blanket over his chest and murmured softly to him as they waited interminably for Craven’s return.

It seemed like hours later when Craven reentered the cellar, bearing the requested items.

Artemis immediately took one of the cloths the valet held and dipped it in the jug of water he’d brought. She wrung out the cloth and laid it on her brother’s throat, her movements exquisitely gentle.

Maximus waited until she was done before handing the pencil and paper to Kilbourne.

The man looked at him, then propped himself on one elbow to scratch out words on the paper.

Maximus bent to read the bold, scrawled hand:

When can I leave?

APOLLO WAS ALIVE. That was the main thing, Artemis reminded herself late that afternoon as she trailed Phoebe from shop to shop. Even if he still—distressingly—couldn’t talk, even if Maximus seemed to think her darling brother mad—despite her protests and Apollo’s own quite sane manner this morning—at least he was safe.

Everything else could be managed as long as he was alive and safe. Apollo would heal and speak again, and she would somehow persuade Maximus of what an idiot he was being.

Apollo would be all right.

“Artemis, come see.”

She brought herself back to the present at Phoebe’s eager urging. Shopping with Phoebe was nothing like shopping with Penelope. Penelope shopped like a general planning a major campaign: she had objectives, strategies for assault and retreats—though she hardly ever retreated—and the ruthless eye of a woman ready to slaughter her enemy—in this case the shopkeepers of Bond Street. Despite Penelope’s great wealth, she seemed to consider it her duty to bargain down the price on everything she bought.

Artemis had once witnessed a shopkeeper acquire a tic under his eye after two hours of waiting upon Lady Penelope Chadwicke.

In contrast, Phoebe shopped like a honeybee in a field of wildflowers: erratically and with no clear purpose in mind. So far they’d stopped at a stationer’s, where Phoebe had flitted from bound books to blank sheets of foolscap, caressing the papers and bindings with sensitive fingers. She’d finally alighted on a darling little blank notebook bound in dyed green calfskin and embossed in gold bumblebees—rather fitting, that. Afterward they’d wandered into a perfume shop, where Phoebe had sniffed delicately at a bottle and sneezed for the next ten minutes, complaining under her breath about the overuse of ambergris. That had been a relatively short stop. Phoebe had tried another few bottles and then left, whispering that the proprietor hadn’t the proper nose for perfumes.

Now they stood in a tobacconist’s as Phoebe poked into different jars. Behind the jars of finely ground tobacco were twists of leaf tobacco for smoking.

Artemis wrinkled her nose—she’d never particularly cared for the aroma of tobacco smoke. “Does your brother imbibe from a pipe?”

“Oh, Maximus never smokes a pipe,” Phoebe said absently. “Claims it makes his throat dry.”

Artemis blinked. “Who are you buying the tobacco for, then?”

“No one,” Phoebe said dreamily, inhaling. “Did you know that even the unscented tobacco has different, distinct odors?”

“Erm, no.” Artemis hesitantly peered over the smaller woman’s shoulders. Although she could see a slight variation in the color of the tobacco powder in the rows of open jars, they all looked virtually the same to her.

The proprietor of the shop, a man with a long, sloping face and a belly to match, beamed. “My lady has a wonderful sense for the leaves.”

Phoebe’s cheeks pinkened. “You flatter me.”

“Not at all,” the man said. “Would you like to sample the snuff? I just received a new shipment from Amsterdam. Would you believe it’s scented with lavender?”

“No!” Apparently lavender was an unusual scent. Phoebe looked quite excited.

Half an hour later they exited the shop with Phoebe clutching a small pouch of the precious snuff. Artemis eyed it doubtfully. Many fashionable ladies took snuff, but Phoebe seemed a little young for such a sophisticated hobby.

“Artemis!”

She looked up at the call, in time to see Penelope hurrying toward them, a beleaguered maid trailing behind, laden with packages.

“There you are,” her cousin exclaimed as she drew close, rather as if she’d somehow misplaced Artemis. “Hullo, Phoebe. Are you shopping?” Phoebe opened her mouth, but Penelope continued on without pause. “You wouldn’t believe the dreariness of my journey back to London. Nothing to do but embroider, and I pricked my thumb three times. I did try to have Blackbourne read to me, but her voice is quite sputtery, not at all like yours, Artemis, dear.”

“That must’ve been very trying for you.” Artemis hid a smile, feeling quite fond of her cousin suddenly.

“Well, of course I don’t mind lending you to Phoebe at all,” Penelope said carefully, and then rather spoiled the intent of her statement by adding, “Did the duke notice my generosity?”

Artemis’s lips parted, but no sound emerged, for her mind had come to a halt. The duke. Maximus. Penelope was still determined to have him as husband—of course she was! She didn’t know—nothing had changed for Penelope in the last two days.

While everything had changed for Artemis.

She’d lain with the man her cousin wanted as a husband, and she had a sudden urge to weep. It wasn’t fair—either to Penelope or herself. Life shouldn’t be this complicated. She should’ve stayed far, far away from the duke. Except that while she might’ve been able to hold the duke at length, Maximus the man was another matter entirely.

And despite the guilt that seeped through her veins like poison, she couldn’t help but feel that Maximus, if not the duke, belonged to her, not Penelope.

At least that was the way the world should be.

“… so grateful,” Phoebe was saying when Artemis became aware that the other two women were still talking. “I do appreciate you lending her to me.”

“Well, just as long as I get her back eventually,” Penelope said, sounding like she was regretting her beneficence, and Artemis realized with another horrid pang that she might never go back to Penelope. What did Maximus want with her? Would she become his mistress, or was he interested in only one night?

Blackbourne shifted, and one of the boxes in her arms began to slide.

“But I’d better go,” Penelope said, eyeing her purchases like a hawk. “The crowds are awful today, and I was forced to leave the carriage two streets over.”

They said their farewells, and Artemis watched Penelope retreat, chiding poor Blackbourne over the packages all the while.

“We’d best hurry,” Phoebe said, laying her hand on Artemis’s arm.

Artemis raised her eyebrows as she carefully guided the younger woman away from the noisome street. “To where?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Phoebe grinned up at her. “We’re meeting Hero for tea at Crutherby’s.”

“Oh.” Artemis couldn’t help a small jolt of pleasure. She quite liked the elder of the Batten sisters, though she didn’t know her as well as she knew Phoebe.

Another block further, just past an elegant millinery shop, Crutherby’s ornate sign loomed up ahead. A smiling maid opened the door, and Artemis immediately caught sight of a flaming head of hair sitting in the corner of the little shop.