Maiden Lane [6] Duke of Midnight (25 page)

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?

A
POLLO 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.

“Miss Greaves!” Lady Hero Reading looked up at their approach. “What a lovely surprise. I hadn’t known you’d be accompanying Phoebe here today.”

“Lady Penelope has lent her to me,” Phoebe said as she felt for a chair and lowered herself into the seat. “We’ve been shopping.”

Hero rolled her eyes at Artemis. “She didn’t take you to that terrible tobacconist, did she?”

“Well…” Artemis tried to think of how to answer.

“It’s not terrible,” Phoebe said, rescuing her. “Besides, how else am I to surprise Maximus with snuff?”

“Maximus has quite enough snuff as it is,” Lady Hero said as two girls began placing tea things on the little table between them. “And I can’t help but think ’tisn’t quite respectable for an unmarried lady to be seen in such an establishment.”

Phoebe’s brows drew together ominously. “That’s the very shop you buy Lord Griffin’s snuff at.”

Hero looked smug. “And
I’m
no longer a maiden.”

“Shall I pour?” Artemis hastily cut in.

“Please,” Lady Hero said, distracted. “Oh, there are fairy cakes. I always like fairy cakes.”

“I did get something for you as well,” Phoebe said and fished the little bumblebee notebook from her pocket.

“Oh, Phoebe, you are a dear!” Lady Hero’s face shone with genuine delight.

Artemis felt a twinge of sadness. Of course the notebook wasn’t for Phoebe herself—she wasn’t sure the girl
could see to read or write anymore. She looked down, careful to steady her hand as she poured. It wouldn’t do to spill the hot tea.

“It looks just like the one Mother used to have,” Hero murmured, still examining the notebook.

“Really?” Phoebe leaned forward.

“Mmm.” Her elder sister looked up. “Do you remember? I showed you it when you were in the schoolroom. Mother used it to remember names. She was dreadful at it, you know, and she hated to admit it, so she always had the notebook and a small pencil with her…” For a moment Lady Hero’s voice trailed away, and she stared into space as if looking at something far distant from the cozy teahouse. “She forgot it that night, for I found it in her rooms months later.” Lady Hero frowned at the small notebook. “It must’ve vexed her—they’d gone to the theater, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” Artemis said, though she wasn’t sure Lady Hero had been speaking to her. “I thought they were killed in St. Giles.”

“They were,” Lady Hero murmured, tucking the little notebook away before accepting a dish of tea. “But why they were there no one knows. St. Giles is quite the opposite direction home from the theater they’d attended. What’s more, they were on foot. The carriage was left streets away. Why they left the carriage and why they headed into St. Giles is a mystery.”

Artemis knit her brows as she poured a second dish. “Doesn’t the duke know why they went that way on foot?”

Lady Hero glanced at Phoebe before staring into her tea. “I don’t know if he can remember.”

“What?” Phoebe looked up.

Lady Hero shrugged. “Maximus doesn’t like to talk about it—you know that—but over the years I’ve gleaned bits and pieces here and there. As far as I can tell, he won’t talk about anything that happened that night after the last act of the play.”

For a moment they were silent as Artemis poured herself the last dish of tea.

“He saw them killed, I have no doubt,” Lady Hero whispered. “When the coachman and footmen found them, Maximus was lying over their dead bodies.”

Artemis blinked at the terrible image and carefully set down her teacup. “I didn’t know he was wounded.”

Lady Hero looked up, her eyes weary with an old sorrow. “He wasn’t.”

“Oh.” Unaccountably, Artemis’s eyes blurred. The thought of Maximus, so strong, so sure, broken as a boy and huddling over the bodies of his parents… it was simply too awful to contemplate.

“I wish I could’ve known them.” Phoebe broke the silence. “And Maximus, too, before… Well, he must’ve been different.”

Lady Hero smiled, as if at a fond memory. “I remember he had a terrible temper and was quite spoiled. Maximus once threw a plate of roasted pigeons at a footman because he had wanted beefsteak for his dinner. The plate hit the footman’s face—his name was Jack—and broke his nose. I don’t think Maximus had meant to hurt the footman—he simply hadn’t thought before he acted—but Father was furious. He made Maximus apologize to poor Jack, and Maximus wasn’t allowed to ride his horse for an entire month.”

Phoebe wrinkled her brows in thought. “I can believe
the temper—Maximus is quite frightening when he loses his calm—but I can’t even imagine him acting that impulsively. He must’ve been very different as a boy.”

“He was different before Mother and Father were killed,” Lady Hero said pensively. “Afterward he was so quiet—even when he started speaking again.”

“Strange how people can change,” Phoebe said. “It’s disconcerting, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes.” Lady Hero shrugged. “I personally find it stranger how often people
don’t
change—no matter what happens around them.”

Artemis lifted her brows. “Have you a particular person in mind?”

Lady Hero sniffed. “Certain males can become quite ridiculously protective. Can you imagine? Griffin thought I should stay abed today just because I felt a little ill this morning. You would think he’d never seen…”

Lady Hero swallowed the rest of her sentence, but she seemed unable to stop her hand drifting to her middle.

Artemis raised her eyebrows.

“Never seen what?” Phoebe asked.

“Well…” Lady Hero actually blushed.

Artemis cleared her throat, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I may be wrong, but I believe you are about to become an aunt, Phoebe. Again.”