Duke of Midnight

“Have you killed?”

He paused at that, before reaching into the wardrobe to move aside her spare day gown. “Once or twice. The men deserved it, I assure you.”

She could believe that. St. Giles was a terrible place. A place where people were driven by poverty, drink, and despair to the depths of a human soul. She’d read reports in her uncle’s discarded news sheets of robberies and murders, of entire families found starved to death. For a gentleman to venture into St. Giles night after night for years to confront the demons unleashed by man’s worst state… he must have more than a trifling reason. She very much doubted he did it for excitement or on a dare.

Artemis inhaled on the thought. What sort of man acted as he did? “You must love St. Giles very much.”

He whirled at that, and an awful, loud laugh broke from his lips. “Love. Dear God, you mistake me, ma’am. I do it not for love.”

“Yet the citizens of St. Giles are the ones who benefit from your…” She trailed off, trying to think of how to describe what he did. Hobby? Duty? Obsession? “Work. If, as you say, you don’t harm except those who deserve it, then those who live in St. Giles are the safer for what you do, surely?”

“I care not how my actions affect them.” He closed the door to the wardrobe with finality.

“I do,” she said simply. “Your actions saved my life.”

He was standing, looking about the room. There wasn’t much left: the mantel and her bedside table, both without anything to hide something in. “Why are you so concerned with my actions in any case?”

Even in his whispered voice he sounded irritable, and she supposed he had a right. “I don’t know. I guess that you’re a… novelty, really. I don’t usually have the occasion to talk to a gentleman at length.”

“You’re Lady Penelope’s relation and companion. I would think between balls, parties, and teas you’d have more than ample opportunity to meet gentlemen.”

“Meet them, yes. Have a true conversation?” She shook her head. “Gentlemen have no reason to talk to ladies such as I. Not unless their intentions are less than honorable.”

He took a step toward her, almost as if the movement was involuntary. “You’ve been accosted by men?”

“It’s the way of the world, isn’t it? My position makes me vulnerable. Those that are strong will always go after those they think are weak.” She shrugged. “But it isn’t often, and in any case I’ve been able to fend for myself.”

“You aren’t weak.” It was a statement, final and without doubt.

She found his conviction flattering. “Most would think me so.”

“Most would be wrong.”

They stared at each other and she had the idea that they were both somehow taking stock of the other. She certainly was. He wasn’t what she would have expected, had she bothered to think about what to expect from a masked harlequin. He seemed to be truly listening to her, and that hadn’t happened to her in a very long time. Well, except with the Duke of Wakefield last night, she silently amended.

The Ghost had understood her truth in a shockingly short period of time.

Then there was his anger—the underlying pulse of suppressed rage that seemed to vibrate through him. She could feel it, almost a living thing, pressing against her.

“What are you looking for?” she asked abruptly. “It’s rather rude for a gentleman to enter a lady’s room without permission.”

“I’m not a gentleman.”

“Really? I thought otherwise.”

She’d spoken without thinking and immediately regretted it. He was beside the bed in an instant, large, male, and dangerous, and she remembered at this inopportune moment what the creature had been in that clearing in her dream: a tiger. In an English forest. She almost laughed at the absurdity.

She was forced to tilt her head up to see him, baring her neck, which was never a good idea when in the presence of a predator.

He bent over her, deliberately planting his fists on the bed on either side of her hips, caging her in. She swallowed, feeling the heat of his body. She could smell him: leather and male sweat, and it should have repelled her.

Except it did the opposite.

He thrust his masked face into hers, so close she could see the glint of his eyes behind it. “You have something that belongs to me.”

She held very still, breathing in his exhalations, sharing the same air as he, like a very dear enemy.

His face dipped toward hers, angling, and her eyelids fell. For a very brief moment, she thought she felt the brush of something warm across her lips.

Footsteps sounded in the hall outside her room. The maid was coming.

She opened her eyes and he was simply gone.

A moment later Sally the upstairs maid came in the room with her coal shuttle and brushes. Sally started when she noticed Artemis still sitting up in bed. “Oh, miss, you’re up early. Shall I send for some tea?”

Artemis shook her head, inhaling. “Thank you, no. I’ll go down for some in a bit. We came in late last night.”

“That you did.” Sally clattered at the hearth. “Blackbourne says as her ladyship didn’t get in until past two in the morn. In a right mood she is, too, for having to wait up so late. Oh, and how did the window get left open?” Sally jumped up and crossed to the window, slamming it shut. “Brrr! ’Tis too early for such a draft.”

Artemis’s eyebrows rose. Her room was on the third floor and there was no convenient trellis or vine on the wall outside. She hoped the silly man wasn’t lying dead in the garden.

“Will that be all, miss?”

A fire was crackling on her hearth and Sally was already by the door, pail in hand.

“Yes, thank you.”

Artemis waited until the maid had closed the door behind her before drawing the thin chain around her neck out from under her chemise. She wore it always because she didn’t know what else to do with what hung on it: a delicate pendant with a glittering green stone. Once she had thought the stone was paste, a pretty ornament Apollo had given her on their fifteenth birthday. Four months ago she’d tried to pawn it for more money to help Apollo—and found out the horrible truth: the stone was an emerald set in gold, which made it a treasure too dear, for ironically she couldn’t sell such a fine piece without awkward questions about its provenance. Questions she simply couldn’t answer. She had no idea where or how Apollo could’ve gotten such an expensive piece of jewelry.

She’d worn the emerald pendant for months now—too afraid to leave the damnably expensive thing alone in her bedroom—but yesterday she’d added something else to the chain.

Artemis fingered the Ghost’s signet ring, the red stone warm under her thumb. She should’ve given it back. It obviously was important to him. Yet something had made her want to conceal it and keep it a little longer. She examined the ring again. The stone had once had a crest or other insignia carved into it, but it was so battered by age that only vague lines remained, impossible to decipher. The gold, too, had the matte patina of age, the band worn thin on the underside. The ring, and thus the family it belonged to, was very old indeed.

Artemis frowned. How had the Ghost known she had his ring? She hadn’t told anyone besides Wakefield, not even Penelope. For one wild moment she imagined the Duke of Wakefield donning the motley of a harlequin.

No. That was just absurd. More likely the Ghost had either known he’d dropped the ring in her hand or simply guessed by process of elimination.

Artemis sighed and tucked the ring and pendant back under her chemise. Time to dress. The day had begun.

MAXIMUS CROUCHED ON the sloping roof of Brightmore House, fighting the urge to reenter Miss Greaves’s room. He hadn’t found his ring—his father’s ring—and the insistent beat to return was strong in his chest. Under the impulse to take back what was his, there was a subtler, softer cadence: to speak again to Miss Greaves. To look into her eyes and find out what made her so strong.

Madness. He shook off the siren’s call and leaped to the next house. Brightmore House was in Grosvenor Square; the white stone buildings around the green in the middle were new and close together. It was child’s play to travel by rooftop to the end of the square and then slither down a gutter into an alley. Maximus kept to the shadows for the length of the short alley and then once again took to the rooftops.

Dawn was near and people rarely looked up.

Had she pawned his father’s ring? The agony of the thought made him gasp even as he ran along the crest of a roof. He’d searched her room and meager possessions and the ring hadn’t been there. Had she given it away? Dropped it somewhere in St. Giles?

Surely not, for she’d made a point of boasting about having it in her possession at the ball. But she was poor—that much at least was starkly evident after seeing the room her cousin had gifted her. A gold ring would fetch enough money for some small luxury.

He waited at the edge of a crumbling building, watching as below a night soil man labored with two foully full buckets.

Then he jumped to the next roof.

Maximus landed silently, despite the distance across the alley, the only sign of his exertion the slight grunt as he rose. He remembered his father’s hands, the strong, blunt fingers, the dark hairs on the backs, and the slight curve of the right middle finger, broken as a child. His father might’ve been a duke, but he always had a healing cut or abrasion or bruise on his hands, for he used his hands without any regard for his rank. Father had saddled his own horse when he’d been too impatient to wait for a groom, sharpened his own quill, and loaded his own fowling piece when hunting. Those hands had been broad and scarred and had seemed, to Maximus as a boy, to be utterly competent, utterly reliable.

The last time he’d seen his father’s hand, it had been covered in blood as Maximus had removed the signet ring.

He dropped to the street and saw that his feet had brought him to St. Giles. To the spot where it had happened.

To his left a worn cobbler’s sign squeaked over a door so low that all but children would have to duck to enter. The sign was new as was the shop—it had been a tavern selling gin all those years ago, beside it a narrow alley where barrels of gin had once stood. Maximus flinched, glancing away. He’d hidden behind those barrels, and the stink of gin had filled his nostrils that night. When he’d taken the mask as the Ghost, this had been the first gin shop he’d shut down. To the right was a teetering brick building, the upper stories wider than the lower, every room let and relet until it might as well have been a rat warren—only one inhabited with humans instead of animals. Near his feet the wide channel was so blocked with detritus that not even the next rain would clear it. The very air hung thick and wet with stink.

To the east the sky had begun to pinken. The sun would soon be up, clearing the sky, bringing the hope of a new day to every part of London, save this one.

There was no hope in St. Giles.

He pivoted, his boots scraping against the grit underfoot, recalling Miss Greaves’s comment. Love St. Giles? Dear God, no.

He loathed it.

A faint cry came from the narrow alley where the gin barrels had once stood. Maximus turned, frowning. He couldn’t see anything, but daybreak was coming. He needed to return home, get off the streets before people noticed him in his Ghost costume.

But then the cry came again, high and nearly animal in its pain, but most definitely human. Maximus strode closer to peer into the alley. He could just make out a slumped form and the glint of something wet. Immediately he bent, catching an arm and pulling the figure into the relatively better lit lane. It was a man—a gentleman, by the fine velvet of his coat—with blood on his bare, shaved head. He must’ve lost his wig.

The man groaned, his head sagging back as he looked up at Maximus. His eyes widened. “No! Oh, no. Already been robbed. Don’t have me purse anymore.”