Duke of Midnight

Miss Picklewood’s lips pursed. “Very well. I expect one day won’t make any difference. Attend Harte’s Folly and then, my dear, it must be over.”

Artemis glanced at Maximus. He had his face turned, his teeth clenched so tightly she could see the muscle flex in his jaw. Their affair wouldn’t be over—he’d offered her a house—but she supposed as far as Miss Picklewood was concerned it didn’t matter as long as she was hidden away.

Artemis rose from the table, not looking at Maximus again. “You needn’t say anything more, Miss Picklewood, for you’re quite right. I can’t stay here with Phoebe. If you’ll both excuse me, I’ll go begin packing.”

She walked to the door of the dining room with her head held high, but she still couldn’t help the small sob when she closed the door without anyone protesting.

IT WAS LATE when the door to the cellar opened. Apollo didn’t bother turning. He’d already been served his supper by the valet. Now he simply lay on his back, his arm thrown across his eyes and dozed.

But the footsteps that approached his bed were lighter than a man’s.

“Apollo.”

Artemis stood over him with a cloth bag in her hands.

He sat up.

“We have to hurry,” she said as she dropped the bag to the ground beside his cot. The bag clanked.

She bent and took out a mallet and a chisel. “You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to find these. I finally asked one of the stable boys and voila.”

She looked inordinately pleased for a woman who was risking herself for him. He scowled and wished he could swear. God damn it. Wakefield had seduced her—he knew it—and now she was going to risk the duke’s wrath. Where would that leave her if that bastard decided to throw her out?

“Well?” She set her hands on her hips. “I certainly can’t do it.”

He grabbed his notebook and wrote in it before thrusting it at her. She took the notebook, and he picked up the chisel and set it on the first link in the chain that dropped to the floor from the circlet around his ankle.

“Won’t the duke punish you?” Artemis read aloud.

He struck the chisel with a ringing clang.

Artemis lowered the notebook to look at him with exasperation. “No, of course not. You’ve been reading too many of those lurid pamphlets I used to bring you in Bedlam. I’m not even sure the stories they report are real. In any case, Maximus might be quite cross with me, but he’d hardly punish me. Really. The thought.”

He hit the chisel again before giving her a speaking glance and mouthed, pointedly, Maximus?

“I’ve already told you he’s a friend.”

He rolled his eyes. Artemis was lying to him for that bastard. He wished the duke’s skull was beneath the mallet. He struck the chisel for a third time as hard as he could. The link broke open.

“Oh, well done!” Artemis exclaimed and bent to help him work the broken link from the two still attached to the manacle around his ankle. “You’ll have to wrap that with a cloth or something so it doesn’t clink. I brought clothes.” She gestured to the bag.

He took the notebook from her and wrote, Why now?

She read his words and her face went carefully blank just before she smiled and looked back up at him. “I’ll be leaving Wakefield House soon and I wanted to make sure you were free before I go.”

Why was she leaving? What else was going on? Silently he mouthed, “Artemis.”

She pretended not to see. “Hurry up and get dressed.”

Troubled by her haste and his unanswered questions, he obeyed. He’d been given breeches and a shirt by the valet. Now he changed into the fresh clothes, which also included a waistcoat, coat, and shoes.

Everything was just a bit too small, including the shoes.

Artemis looked at him apologetically. “I got them from one of the footmen. He had the largest feet in the household.”

Apollo shook his head, smiling for her, and bent to kiss his sister. He had nothing save what she’d given him. He grabbed up the notebook and wrote, How will I contact you?

She stared at the notebook for a moment, and he could tell by her expression that she hadn’t thought of that.

He took back the notebook. Artemis. We must stay in touch. You’re all that I have now and I don’t trust your duke. At all.

“Well that’s just silly, the part about Maximus,” she said when she’d read what he’d written. “But you’re right—we mustn’t lose each other. Do you know where you can go from here?”

He’d been thinking on the matter as he lay in the cot for days and he had a ready answer of sorts. He wrote carefully, I have a friend by the name of Asa Makepeace. You may send a letter in care of him to Harte’s Folly.

He gave the notebook to her and saw when her eyes widened in astonishment. “Harte’s Folly? I don’t understand. Is that where you’ll go?”

He shook his head, gently taking the notebook from her hands. Better you don’t know.

She was reading over his shoulder. “But—”

Take care of yourself.

He thought he saw her smile waver when she read it, then she was hugging him tightly. “You’re the one who needs to take care of yourself. Your escape is still all the news. They’ll be searching for you.” She drew back to look at him, and to his consternation he saw that she had tears in her eyes. “I couldn’t bear to lose you again.”

He bent and kissed her forehead. Even if he could speak there was nothing he could say to comfort her.

He turned to go.

“Wait.” She laid her hand on his arm, forestalling him. “Here.” She thrust a smaller bag into his hands. “There’s three pounds sixpence. It’s all I have. And some bread and cheese. Oh, Apollo.” Her brave speech ended on a little sob. “Go!”

She gave him a shove just as he was about to bend to her again.

So without looking at her, he turned and ducked into the cramped tunnel he’d seen Wakefield take earlier that night.

He had no idea where it would lead him.

MAXIMUS DIDN’T KNOW how long he’d been searching St. Giles that night when he heard the pistol shot. He dived around a corner and ran flat out down an alley, heading toward the sounds. Overhead the moon guided him, his fair mistress, his unattainable lover.

The hoarse shouts of men and the clatter of hooves on cobblestones came from ahead.

He spilled into a cross street and saw to his right Trevillion riding hell for leather straight toward him. “He’s headed toward the Seven Dials!”

Maximus ran across in front of the horse, so close he fancied he felt the horse’s breath upon his cheek as he passed. On foot he could duck down one of the many tiny alleys too small for a man on horse and head Old Scratch off. For he knew, deep in his soul, that it was Old Scratch that Trevillion hunted tonight. Old Scratch, the man who wore his mother’s pendant at his throat.

Old Scratch, who’d murdered his parents nineteen years ago on a rainy St. Giles night.

A jog to the left, a duck to the right. His legs were aching, the breath sawing in and out of his lungs. The Seven Dials pillar loomed ahead, in the circular junction of seven streets. Old Scratch sat his horse casually under the pillar, as if waiting for him.

Maximus slowed and slunk into the shadows. The highwayman didn’t have his pistols out, but he must have been armed.

“Your Grace,” Old Scratch called. “Tsk. I’d thought you’d grown out of hiding long ago.”

He felt the coldness invade his chest, the fear that he was too small, too weak. The powerlessness as he’d watched this man shoot his mother. There had been blood on her breast, splattering scarlet over the white marble of her skin, running in the rain into her spilled hair.

He wanted to vomit. “Who are you?”

Old Scratch cocked his head. “Don’t you know? Your parents knew—it’s why I had to kill them. Your mother recognized me, even beneath my neck cloth, I’m afraid. Pity. She was a beautiful woman.”

“Then you are an aristocrat.” Maximus refused to rise to the bait. “And yet you’ve sunk to thieving in St. Giles.”

“Robbing, I’ll have you know.” Old Scratch sounded irritable, as if he thought robbery somehow above thievery. “And it’s a pleasant hobby. Gets one’s blood flowing.”

“You expect me to believe that you do this for excitement?” Maximus scoffed. “Acquit me of stupidity. Are you a poor younger son? Or did your sire gamble your inheritance away?”

“Wrong and wrong again.” Old Scratch shook his head mockingly. “I grow weary, Your Grace. Don’t be such a coward. Come out, come out to play!”

Maximus stepped from the shadows. He was no longer a cowering boy. “I have all of them but that one, you know.”

Old Scratch clucked as his big black horse shifted from one foot to another. “The emerald drops like this?” He touched his gloved fingers to the emerald pin at his throat. “That must’ve cost a pretty penny, for I know I sold them for such. Your mother’s necklace kept me in wine and wenches for many years.”

Maximus felt his ire rise and tempered it. He wouldn’t be drawn out so easily. “I only need that one to have it remade.”

Old Scratch crooked one finger. “Come and take it.”

“I intend to,” Maximus said as he circled the horse and man. “I’ll take it and your life as well.”

The highwayman threw back his head and laughed. “Am I the reason for that?” He gestured to Maximus’s costume. “La, sir, I confess myself flattered. To’ve driven the Duke of Wakefield into madness so deep that he donned the guise of a common actor and runs the streets of St. Giles. Why, I—”

It happened so fast Maximus had no time to think, let alone act. He heard the clatter of hoofbeats behind him, saw the glint of metal as Old Scratch raised his left hand from where he’d kept it hidden in his coat.

And then there was the flash and the bang.

The terrible, terrible bang.

An equine scream. Maximus jerked and whirled. Behind him, a horse was falling, writhing on the ground. He turned back to Old Scratch. The highwayman was spurring his horse into one of the seven radiating streets.

Maximus started after him.

The horse screamed again.

This time when he looked he saw the man trapped beneath the horse. Christ. The horse had fallen on its rider.

He ran back to the wounded horse. The horse’s legs were stiffened and the entire big body shuddered.

A dragoon rode up and stopped, simply gaping.

“Help me get him out!” Maximus shouted.

He glanced into the bloodied face of the man on the ground and saw it was Trevillion. Beneath the blood, his skin was bone-white. The dragoon captain was silent, his teeth clenched, his lips pulled back in a grimace of agony.

“Take his other hand,” Maximus ordered the young soldier. The man grasped his captain’s arm and together they heaved.

Trevillion gave a deep, awful groan as his legs came free of his horse. Maximus saw that the dragoon captain’s lip was bloody from where he’d bitten it through. He knelt by Trevillion and winced when he looked at his right leg—the same leg that Trevillion limped on from some previous injury. It was bent in an unnatural angle, the bone quite obviously broken—and broken badly.

Trevillion reached up and grasped Maximus’s tunic front with surprising strength, pulling him down close enough that the other soldier couldn’t hear. “Don’t let her suffer, Wakefield.”

Maximus glanced at the mare—Cowslip, he remembered now. A silly name for a soldier’s horse. He looked back at Trevillion, his chin bloody with his attempt to silence his own pain.

“Do it,” the captain grunted, his eyes shimmering. “God damn it, just do it.”