All in all a lovely turn of events. Usually she’d be happy and looking forward to both the party and the work.
Instead she felt a persistent melancholy. Caliban—Lord Kilbourne—had to all appearances escaped the soldiers, but she had no idea where he was. Indio had spent the week she’d been frantically writing moping about the garden, bemoaning his loss and driving her half mad. Even Maude, who should’ve been glad all her dire warnings about the man had proven correct, was silent on the subject. The afternoon after the soldiers finally left the garden, Lily had crept into the musician’s gallery and found his meager nest. He’d left a few clothes, an end of bread, and his notebook. This last she’d pocketed as some pathetic token—of what, she wasn’t exactly sure.
So it was with false cheer that she entered the Greaves House hallway. It was an older manse with narrow, dark rooms. She glanced around, already worried about where they could put on the play.
“Ah, our players,” Mr. William Greaves said rather pompously. He was a man in his sixties who’d probably been handsome as a youth. Now, however, he had a uniform dreary grayness about him, with a lined, sagging jawline and a puffiness around the eyes that bespoke too much drink or rich food. “I collect you must be Miss Goodfellow?”
She curtsied. “Your discernment is quite amazing, sir.” She swept wide her arm to indicate the other players behind her. “May I introduce Mr. Stanford Hume.” An older, florid-faced actor bowed stiffly. Poor Stanford suffered from lumbago. “Miss Moll Bennet.” Moll curtsied low, drawing Mr. Greaves’s eye to her lush bosom. “And Mr. John Hampstead?” John grinned and swept a lavish bow. He was tall and thin and wasn’t particular as to the sex of his paramours.
They four were the principal players, though of course there were other actors to fill the remaining parts of the play.
“Welcome, welcome to Greaves House,” Mr. Greaves said expansively, and then rather ruined the effect by becoming practical. “I believe my butler has your rooms ready. I do hope you’ll be joining us for dinner. A most jolly company, I think. Ah, here’s my son and his wife arrived. You’ll excuse me?”
And they were left to the direction of the butler.
Who, naturally, looked faintly contemptuous. “Lake.” He snapped his fingers and one of the footmen came forward. “Show these persons to their rooms, please.”
“Ta, love,” John said cheekily to the butler.
And they tramped after Lake the footman.
“Well, at least they have us inside,” Moll said philosophically as they mounted the stairs. “Last house play I did would you believe they wanted us to bunk in the stables like gypsies? No, indeed, I said. Inside in a room at least as nice as the downstairs maids or back to London I go on the next stage. They grumbled, but I had my way in the end. That was Richard II in Cambridgeshire, d’you remember, Stanford?”
“I do indeed,” Stanford intoned in his plummy voice. “Most depressing production I’ve ever been in.”
“Don’t know what they were thinking,” agreed Moll. “A history play for a house party. Can you imagine?”
The footman, who, unlike the butler, seemed rather in awe of them, showed them to two rooms. After hearing Moll’s story about being housed in the stables, Lily was a bit afraid of what they’d be given. But other than being quite at the end of the hall, their rooms seemed to be nice.
“Better’n the stables anyway,” Moll said cheerfully as she poked her head in the wardrobe. “We’ll be sharing the bed, looks like”—she nodded at the canopied bed—“but I don’t snore, so it should be fine. Best tidy ourselves and go on downstairs. I’ve a feeling we’re the entertainment for the night.”
That was often the case, Lily reflected as they took turns at the washbasin and changed out of their dusty traveling clothes. The actors hired for a private performance were also considered professional guests by their host—there to enliven the party.
They were ready to appear in a little less than an hour. Moll was in dark brown and mauve, while Lily had on one of her favorite dresses, a scarlet affair with a deep, square neckline and white ruffles on the bodice and sleeves.
“Shall we?” Moll teased and they stepped out into the hall to find John and Stanford waiting.
“Ladies!” John swept them a ridiculously elaborate bow.
“Ass,” Stanford muttered, offering Moll his arm.
That left Lily to take John’s arm as they descended. She’d worked with both Moll and John before and was finding Stanford to be quietly witty beneath his role as the elder actor. In normal circumstances she’d be enjoying herself immensely: a country house, a party, genial colleagues, and the prospect of a week’s worth of good food.
Tonight, though, she simply saw the party as something to endure.
On the first floor was a large salon and Lily glanced around it, mentally trying it on for size for their play. The lighting wasn’t very good—it was an interior room with only two windows at the far end—but the play would be at night anyway and with several dozen candles, it might well do.
She caught Stanford’s eye and when he winked, she knew he was thinking the same thing.
Then their host entered and with him the rest of the house party guests.
The first were Mr. and Mrs. George Greaves, their host’s son and his wife, though, since the older man was a widower, Lily suspected his daughter-in-law had had a hand in planning the party. She was a plain woman in her thirties, quiet, but with an intelligence in her eyes when they were introduced to her. Her husband, in contrast, had a carrying voice that would’ve done him well had he taken to the stage. George Greaves was a big, burly man and still had the good looks age had faded from his father.
Behind them was another, somewhat younger couple. Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Warner were still newlyweds and obviously in love. They made a striking couple, as both had beautiful butter-yellow hair, and Lily couldn’t help thinking they were destined to have a gorgeous brood of children.
Miss Hippolyta Royle was accompanied by her father, Sir George Royle, who had made his fortune in India and been knighted for his efforts. She was a dark beauty who obviously doted on her aging parent.
Besides Miss Royle, there were two other single ladies at the party: Mrs. Jellett, a society widow with a gossiping gleam in her eye, and Lady Herrick, the wealthy—and quite beautiful—widow of a baronet.
Lily was just thinking that the house party was weighted heavily in favor of the ladies when their host cried, “Ah, Your Grace, you’ve arrived!”
She turned to see the Duke of Montgomery, Malcolm MacLeish…
And Caliban.
Only he wasn’t Caliban. Not anymore. He was Viscount Kilbourne, his hair tied severely back, wearing a dusky-blue suit heavily embroidered in gold and crimson, and a cream waistcoat, and looking every inch the aristocrat.
LILY WORE A crimson gown that exposed the upper slopes of her lovely breasts, white and inviting.
Apollo felt a bit as if he’d been hit square between the eyes.
“You did not tell me Miss Goodfellow would be here,” he hissed in Montgomery’s ear.
“Didn’t I?” replied the duke. “Why? Was the information of import to you?”
Oh, the other man knew well enough that the information that Lily would be attending this same house party had been “of import.” In the weeks he’d spent preparing for the house party, Apollo had endured quite a bit of time with the duke. He was frighteningly intelligent, mercurial, and selfish to the point of mania, and had the sort of impish sense of humor that found the predicaments of others funny. Rather like a little boy who enjoyed pitching battles between beetles and worms. Except the duke was much, much more powerful than a little boy.
So it was hard to tell if the duke hadn’t told Apollo about Lily because he was amusing himself—or for some other more nefarious reason.
Not that Apollo gave a damn at the moment.
Over two weeks it’d been since he’d last seen her—two weeks in which he’d gone to bed
every night wondering how she was and what she was doing, and waked with the image of her face behind his eyes.
Her lichen-green eyes had widened fractionally when she’d turned to see him, but she’d controlled herself all too soon, plastering on a bright social face that he was beginning to hate already.
His uncle, William Greaves, was making the introductions, but Apollo had eyes only for her.
She curtsied to him, murmuring huskily, “Mr. Smith,” as she did so, for they’d settled on the silly pseudonym for the party.
He couldn’t help himself. It’d been too long and he didn’t know how she felt about him anymore. If she hated him or even—God forbid—believed him to be a bloody murderer.
He caught her fingers and bent over them in a bow he’d learned as a boy and relearned again just in the past weeks. “Miss Goodfellow.”
One was supposed to kiss the air above a lady’s hand, but he brushed his lips over her knuckles, soft, but insistent. He wouldn’t let her forget what they’d had between them.
As he rose he caught the faint glimmer of irritation crossing her face and he was glad. Better he engender vexation or even outright hatred than indifference. Then they were moving past each other and away as other guests were introduced.
“Wasn’t that interesting?” Montgomery chirped as he accepted a glass of wine from a footman.
“Someone’s going to murder you in your sleep one of these days,” Apollo returned, waving away the same footman. He wanted to keep a clear head for the coming evening.
“Oh, but only if they can get past my man-traps,” the duke said absently.
He was probably jesting, but it was entirely possible Montgomery slept with an array of traps scattered about his bedroom. The man was like an Oriental potentate.
“Why did you bring me?” Malcolm MacLeish asked, suddenly and irritably.
The Scotsman’s color was high and his pleasant face was twisted into a sulky scowl. For the first time Apollo realized that he might not be the only insect Montgomery was playing with tonight.
“Oh, I suppose to remind you of your obligations,” Montgomery replied carelessly. “And to have fun, of course.”
The question was, whose “fun” was he counting on? Apollo had an uneasy feeling it was the duke’s own.
He glanced away from his sponsor and over to William Greaves, the reason he was here in the first place. His uncle was an ordinary-looking man, a bit pompous, a bit weak about the mouth, but was he capable of ordering the senseless murder of three men merely to entrap his nephew? It didn’t seem possible, but if it hadn’t been he, then who?
Apollo could detect no hint of a family resemblance in his uncle, but his cousin, George, had been a revelation. Like Apollo, he was a big man, well over six feet, with broad shoulders and brown hair. His facial features were rather better formed than Apollo’s own, but there was enough similarity that it made seeing the man like catching his own reflection in a mirror out of the corner of his eye. It puzzled him at first, this sense of familiarity, until he realized what it was: they moved alike, he and his cousin.
Apollo frowned, thinking, only to be interrupted by Montgomery. “Try not to look too much like the tragic hero of a melodrama, if you please. We’re at a party.” And with that he sauntered over to Lady Herrick, who was not only quite a beauty but apparently wealthy as well.
Just Montgomery’s type, Apollo thought sourly. Poor woman.
“He collects people, you know,” the architect said. “Like a spider collects flies. Traps them, ties them up in silken threads, and keeps them until he has use of them.” MacLeish turned to Apollo, his blue eyes very cynical for one so young. “Has he collected you, too?”
“No.” Apollo was watching Lily again, as she threw back her head in laughter at something Mr. Phillip Warner had said. Her throat was long and white and he wanted, rather violently, to lick it until she stopped laughing at other men’s jests. “He may think he has me, but he’ll find he’s very much mistaken.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” MacLeish murmured, following his gaze, “but ’twas I who was mistaken in the end.”
Apollo spared a glance at the other man and then moved away without comment. Whatever was going on between Montgomery and his architect, he hadn’t the time for it.
His eyes were fixed on Lily.
CALIBAN—NO, LORD KILBOURNE—was coming toward her and Lily wasn’t entirely certain what to do. She’d been aware of him this entire time, for his eyes seemed to burn into her back no matter where she moved in the room. It really wasn’t fair: it was he who had disappeared into thin air without so much as an explanation or word to her whether he was all right or not. And now he’d turned up at a house party of all things, still using that ridiculous name, Mr. Smith. Had he even invented an appropriate Christian name to go with Smith? A thought struck her, low and terrible. Dear God, she didn’t even know his proper Christian name! She’d let him kiss her and yet didn’t know the first thing about him. The realization made her bitter and a little unwise.
“What’s your real name?” she demanded as he made her side, and if she had to blink back wetness from her eyes, she told herself it was tears of anger.
He glanced around, presumably making sure no one could overhear him. Fortunately, Mr. Phillip Warner had moved away to flirt with his own wife and no one was within earshot.
He replied in a very low voice, “Apollo Greaves, Viscount Kilbourne.”
Apollo? Apollo? She nearly goggled.
Well, he certainly couldn’t use Apollo with Smith—what an entirely inane name. Almost as bad as Caliban when one considered it. What mother looked down at an infant son and thought, god of light? No one could live up to a name like that. Especially since he had a twin sister…
Lily’s brain stuttered to a stop and she realized simultaneously both who Apollo-the-god’s twin sister was and who Apollo-the-man’s twin sister must be.
“Your sister is Artemis Batten, the Duchess of Wakefield,” she hissed.
“Hush,” he muttered.
“Your sister’s a bloody duchess.”
“Yes?” He looked at her oddly, as if everyone had a duchess as a sister.
“Which means the duke is your brother-in-law.”
“He’s rather an ass, if that makes any difference.”
“It doesn’t,” she said decisively. “It truly doesn’t. Why are you even talking to me? I’m the blasted help.”
“You are not and you know it,” he said impatiently. “I need to talk to you. To explain—”
“I’m paid to be here,” she said with as much dignity as possible under the circumstances. “And you’re born to all this”—she waved her hand at the room, which, ill-lit though it was, still had a gold ceiling—“and more. You and I have nothing—absolutely nothing in common. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’ll thank you to stay away from me.”
She pasted a smile on her face and moved away from him as gracefully as she could. There was no need to cause a scene, just because her heart was breaking. Ridiculous, really. When he’d been a penniless workman in a garden, shabby and mute, he’d been well within her reach. Now that he was cleaned up and dazzling in his expensive clothes—that waistcoat alone must have cost more than she’d make in half a year—he was as high above her as the sun itself.
Apollo, indeed. Perhaps his name really did fit him.
If he was the god Apollo then she was merely a shepherdess or suchlike. Someone quite lowly and of the earth, not the sky. Shepherdesses might mate with gods in mythology but it always ended rather badly for the poor mortal.
And she had good cause to know that such was the case in this world as well.
The butler entered at that moment and announced supper and they went in to another dark room, this one long and narrow so as to fit an endless mahogany table. Lily found herself seated with the Duke of Montgomery on one side and the delightful Mr. Warner on the other. Directly across from her was Mr. George Greaves with Mrs. Je
llett on one side and Mrs. Warner on the other.
They’d hardly begun on a rather watery beef broth when Mrs. Jellett, a lady of mature years in a frock of a startling yellow-green shade, leaned forward and said loudly, “Have you heard aught of your mad cousin, Mr. Greaves? I understand that he barely escaped capture by soldiers in the destroyed Harte’s Folly pleasure garden.”
Mr. William Greaves’s mouth thinned into nonexistence and anyone could see that he did not like the subject—which of course hardly dissuaded his guests.
“ ’Tis said he killed three men with an enormous knife.” Mrs. Warner shivered dramatically. “The very thought that a murderous madman is on the loose is enough to make one want to hide under the bed.”
“Or in the bed?” the duke murmured over his glass of wine.
“Are you offering bedchamber protection, Your Grace?” Lady Herrick asked lazily.
The duke bowed from the waist. “For you, madam, I would make the sacrifice.”
“Such bravery,” cried Moll from the other side of the duke. “I vow ’tis enough to send a lady into a paroxysm.”
That comment prompted a round of titters from the ladies.
Lily stared at her plate, trying not to feel any sympathy for Caliban—Apollo—but it was hard. The others talked about him as if he were a maddened beast to be shot on sight. Would she have felt that way if she’d only heard the stories and not known the man beforehand? Would she have condemned a stranger at once without benefit of trial?
Probably. Fear had a tendency to drive away the courtesy of civilization.
Mrs. Jellett was still curious about the original topic of conversation. She addressed George Greaves. “Tell me, Mr. Greaves, was your cousin always mad? Did he do anything bizarre or cruel as a boy?”
Mr. William Greaves spoke up from the head of the table, his voice grim. “I fear, madam, that that side of the family has always had strange turns. My brother, alas, was prone to overexcitement followed by melancholies from which he could hardly rouse himself. A pity”—he took a sip of his wine—“that as eldest the title naturally falls to his side.”