Darling Beast

“Oh! Oh, I see.” She cocked her head, examining the diagram. “But what are these?” She pointed to a square and then a circle.

  Follies—places for lovers to sit or amusements like the waterfall. Things to gaze upon and amaze the viewer.

  “And these?” She traced the wavy lines.

  He inhaled quickly, excited that she was interested, frustrated that he couldn’t just tell her.

  Quickly he reached over and flipped through the pages of the notebook still in her hands. He found a blank one and ripped it out, then turned back to his diagram of the maze. He wrote swiftly on his knee, the pencil nearly poking through the paper in several places. The wavy lines are the parts of the hedge that I can salvage from the fire. The plants that are still living.

  He showed her his words, waited while she read, her brows knit, and when she looked up, snatched the paper back before she could say anything.

  The solid lines will be new plantings. The maze will be the centerpiece of the new garden. The pond on one side, the theater on another, so that from the theater one will look across the maze to the pond. There may be viewing places in the theater itself so that visitors may see the maze and those within it. It will be—

  The pencil finally broke through the paper at this point. He balled his fist, frustrated, the words bottled up inside him.

  Slim fingers covered his fist, cool and comforting.

  He looked up.

  “Beautiful,” she said. “It will be beautiful.”

  His breath seemed to stop in his lungs. Her eyes were so big, so earnest, so completely captivated by his trifling drawings, his esoteric work. So few were interested in what he did—even Asa began to fidget after only minutes if Apollo tried to explain his plans for the garden.

  Yet this gamine woman looked at him as if he were a sorcerer.

  He wondered if she had any idea how seductive her very interest was.

  She blinked and drew back as if conscious that she’d let too much show. “And amazing. And wonderful. I’ll look forward to wandering your maze, though I’m sure I’ll never figure it out—I’m terrible at puzzles. I’ll need to bring a guide, I think. Perhaps—”

  The outer door opened at that point and Miss Stump jumped up from the settee. “Oh, Maude, wherever have you been?”

  “Down to the dock to get those eels the wherryman promised me.” Maude set a basket—presumably containing the aforementioned eels—on the table. “Missed me, did you?” Her brows rose as she glanced at the notebook Apollo had reclaimed. “What’s that?”

  Miss Stump sent him an ironic glance. “Caliban isn’t nearly as foolish as he was making us believe.”

  “Then he can talk?”

  Both women looked at him and Apollo could feel the heat burn his neck.

  “No, he can’t.” Miss Stump cleared her throat. “Indio’s in his bath. I’d better see if he’s remembered to wash his ears—or if he’s flooded the floor again.”

  She hurried into the back room.

  Maude began unpacking her eels. “Brought back some water from the river to wash the dishes. It’s by the door, if’n you want to bring it in.”

  Apollo pocketed his notebook and went to fetch the water. Had he known that they needed it, he’d have offered to go down to the river.

  He set the bucket of water by the fireplace to warm, conscious that the old woman was watching him.

  When he turned she pinned him with a gimlet gaze. “You’ve got a tongue and my Lily says as how you’re not stupid, so you mind telling me why you can’t speak?”

  He opened his mouth—even after nine months it was an automatic reaction. After all, he’d spent eight and twenty years opening his mouth and having speech emerge—without thought or effort. Such a simple thing. A mundane, everyday thing, speech, the thing that set men apart from the animals.

  Lost—perhaps forever—to him now.

  So he opened his mouth and then didn’t know what to do, for he’d tried before, tried for days and weeks, and all that had occurred was a damnably sore throat. He thought of that day, of the boot shoved into his neck, of the Bedlam guard leering down at him as he threatened hell, and he could actually feel his throat closing, cutting off hope and humanity and the power of speech.

  “Maude!” Miss Stump was there now and he had no idea what she saw on his face, but she was frowning fiercely—at the maidservant. “Stop badgering him, please. He can’t talk. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter why.”

  It might make him a weakling, but he took her defense gratefully. A part of him railed against his own cowardliness. A man—even a man without the power of speech—shouldn’t hide behind a woman’s skirts. Apollo ducked his head, avoiding both women’s gazes as he strode to the door. This had been a mistake—he’d known it from the first. He should never have given in to the temptation to come here. To try to associate with other folk as if he were a normal man still.

  A small, damp hand caught Apollo as he made for the door, and such was his disquiet, he nearly pulled away.

  But he remembered in time and stopped.

  Indio looked up at him, his hair in wet spirals, dripping onto his nightshirt. The boy had his brows drawn together, but underneath his stern expression there was hurt. “Are you leaving?

  Apollo nodded.

  “Oh.” Indio let go of Apollo’s hand and chewed his bottom lip. “Are you coming back? Daff wants you to.”

  Since Daffodil was presently asleep on the hearth, this seemed extremely unlikely.

  Apollo frowned, not knowing how to reply. He shouldn’t return. It was a danger to himself—and not only in the sense that his identity might be discovered.

  “Please do.” Miss Stump’s voice was quiet, but when he glanced at her, her expression was firm.

  He held her green gaze a moment more and then looked back at the boy and nodded.

  The reaction was immediate and overwhelming. Indio’s face was taken over by his grin and the boy surged forward as if about to hug him. Only at the last minute did he pull himself back and hold out a hand instead.

  Apollo’s palm engulfed the boy’s but he shook Indio’s hand as if he were a duke in velvet instead of a seven-year-old in damp linen, with bare feet.

  He wished he could say something, but in the end all he did was nod again and walk out the door.

  Still, he heard the old maidservant as she spoke to Miss Stump: “You’re a fool.”

  THE PROBLEM WITH writing witty dialogue, Lily thought bitterly the next afternoon, was that ideally one should actually be witty in order to write wittily.

  At the moment Lily felt about as witty as Daffodil—who was chasing a fly. As Lily watched, the little dog jumped on the old settee and snapped at the fly, missed—again—and nearly toppled off the back.

  Lily groaned and laid her head in her folded arms. It was a sad thing indeed when one felt as intelligent as Daffodil.

  “Uncle Edwin!” Indio had for once stayed close to the theater and his shout of ecstasy could be clearly heard through the door.

  Lily hastily tidied her writing table, straightening the papers and picking up a quill that had fallen to the floor.

  A second later the door to the theater burst open and Edwin Stump ducked inside, a wrapped parcel under his arm. He didn’t duck because he was so very big—he stood but a few inches taller than Lily herself—but because he was carrying his nephew on his shoulders.

  Maude trailed behind with the remains of their washing in a basket. The maidservant glared sourly at Edwin.

  “Oof!” Edwin exclaimed as he tumbled Indio onto the settee and set his package by it. Daffodil immediately leaped on the boy, licking his giggling face. Edwin turned to Lily, his hand pressed dramatically to the small of his back. “I think he’s put on a stone or more since I last saw him.”

  “Mayhap you should visit more often,” Lily said, rising. She crossed to hug her brother and then stood back to examine his face.

  Edwin Stump was eight years her senior, and looked nothing like h
er. This was probably the result of their having different fathers. Mother had been in her heyday as a leading actress when she’d started increasing with Edwin. He was the result of a happy liaison with the younger son of an earl. Eight years later, gin and happenstance had taken their toll on Lizzy Stump. By that time her beauty had been ravaged by drink and disappointment, the earl’s younger son was long gone, and she no longer commanded the lead—or even a secondary role—in plays. As a result Lily had been conceived after a night of drinking with a common porter—a fact her mother was apt to bring up in moments of high emotion.

  Edwin had a long, thin face, dominated by black arching brows that stood out like signposts of his temperament in his fair complexion. His smile was a V of merriment with more than a dash of mischievousness, completely impossible to ignore. His black eyes could dance with joyous spirits or glower with ill intent—and they were quick to change. Lily had more than once heard Maude muttering under her breath that Edwin was the Devil’s bastard—as much fey as mortal. Lily had to admit that if she believed in such nonsense she’d think Edwin a magical creature herself.

  He had, after all, saved her on more than one occasion from her mother’s drunken neglect when she was a girl.

  “Would you like some tea?” Lily asked.

  “Have you anything stronger?” Edwin threw himself on the settee beside Daffodil and Indio.

  The settee wobbled ominously and Lily sent it a worried glance. “We have wine,” she said reluctantly. Edwin’s jaw was unshaven, his bristles in dark contrast to his snowy wig.

  “Then pour me a glass, there’s a lass.” He smiled at her winsomely.

  She went to where the bottle stood on the mantel, ignoring Maude’s tutting.

  “Thank you,” Edwin said when he took the glass from her fingers. He swallowed a sip and winced. “Good Lord, that tastes like—”

  Lily widened her eyes and looked pointedly at Indio.

  “A mud puddle,” Edwin finished smoothly.

  “Ick,” Indio said with interest. “Can I taste it?”

  Edwin tapped him on the nose. “Not for another year at the very least.”

  Lily cleared her throat.

  Edwin rounded his eyes at Indio. “Maybe even two.”

  “Bollocks,” her son said, making Lily choke in shock.

  “Indio!”

  But Edwin was laughing so hard he was spilling his wine, much to the delight of Daffodil, who was lapping it up off the settee.

  “Here now.” Thankfully Maude intervened. “Best come outside, Indio, you and Daffodil.”

  “Aw!”

  “I seem to remember…” Edwin looked theatrically about the room. “Ah!” He picked up the parcel he’d earlier left by the settee. “This might be for you, young nephew.”

  Indio eagerly took the parcel and unwrapped it, revealing a toy wooden boat, cloth sails and all.

  Indio looked up, his mismatched eyes shining. “Thank you, Uncle Edwin!”

  Her brother waved a hand magnanimously. “Think nothing of it, scamp. No doubt you’ll want to try it out in that pond I saw.”

  “But only with Maude nearby,” Lily said hastily.

  “Or Caliban?” Indio asked.

  Lily hesitated for a moment, but the big man had been exceptionally gentle with her son last night. “Or Caliban,” she agreed.

  “Huzzah!” Indio rushed from the theater, chased by a barking Daffodil.

  Maude gave her a look that promised a talk later on and then followed her charge.

  Lily sighed, taking a seat on one of the wooden chairs from the table. “You shouldn’t have spent so much on him.”

  Her brother shrugged carelessly. “It was hardly a king’s ransom.”

  And yet the money could’ve been better spent on clothes or food. Lily pushed the thought aside. Edwin had never been frugal with his money and a boy needed a treat once in a while as much as clothes and food.

  He grinned at her as if he could tell the path of her thoughts. “Who is Caliban? An imaginary friend?”

  “No, he’s quite real.”

  “And Caliban is truly his name?” Her brother’s eyebrows were high arches of curiosity.

  “Well, no—not that we know of, anyway. He’s a gardener here. Indio has taken to following him about.”

  But Caliban was much more than that, Lily realized as she pleated her skirt between her fingertips. She remembered those huge hands, deftly holding his pencil as he impatiently wrote. Those beautifully airy sketches in his notebook. It was laughable, really, that she’d at first taken him for an idiot. It was only the day after his confession and she couldn’t think of him as anything but intelligent. Wonderfully intelligent.

  And for some reason she didn’t want to discuss the big, gentle gardener with her sometimes devious brother. She glanced up at him. “Will you sup with us?”

  His own look was swift and calculating, but he took her abrupt change of subject meekly enough.

  “I’m sorry, no.” Edwin got up to pour himself more wine. “I have an appointment I must keep this evening.” He took another swallow of the wine and then turned one of his most charming smiles on her. “I came to see how the play is going.”

  “Terribly.” She groaned and slumped in her chair. “I can’t think how I ever wrote dialogue before—it’s so wooden, Edwin! Perhaps I should burn it and start over.”

  Usually this was the point at which her brother teased her out of her doubts, but he was oddly silent.

  She straightened, looking at him.

  He was grimacing into his wineglass. “As to that…”

  “What is it?”

  He shrugged. “It’s nothing really, but I promised to have the play done by next week. I have a buyer who wants to use it for a house party theatrical.”

  “What?” She gasped, feeling her chest tighten. For a moment she wondered if the house party the play was intended for was the same one she herself was to act at, but then sheer panic swamped the thought. However was she to finish in a week?

  Edwin grimaced, his mobile mouth stretching into a comical shape. “It’s just that I’ve had a bit of bad luck at cards lately. I need my portion of the play proceeds and this is a quick sale. Apparently the buyer had originally engaged Mimsford to write the play, but the old sod has fled London and his creditors.”

  They’d made a bargain years ago, when Lily had started writing plays: Edwin would take the plays and sell the works under his name. He was both a man and a much better salesman than she. He knew how to float on the fringes of aristocratic society—something Lily had never wanted to do—and thus had myriad associates. Their arrangement had worked very well in the past. She and Edwin had made a tidy sum together. But now she was at the end of her resources and had begun to wonder if she should try selling her plays herself. Of course that wasn’t very fair to Edwin…

  She shook her head, trying to think. “Whom do you owe, Edwin?”

  “Don’t take that tone with me.” He stood suddenly and tossed back the rest of the wine in the glass. “It’s insulting.” He glanced slyly at her. “And it reminds me of our dear mother.”

  That sent a guilty chill down her spine. “But—”

  He darted over and knelt in front of her chair, taking her hands. “Darling, it’s nothing to worry about, truly. Just finish the play, hmm? Quick as you can.” He squeezed her hands and bussed her cheek. “You know you’re the best. Far better than that hack Mimsford, and he’s had two smash hits in a row at the Royal.”

  “But Edwin,” she said helplessly, “what if I can’t write that fast?”

  She saw his eyes darken before he dropped his gaze. “Then I’ll have to find some other means of ready blunt. Perhaps Indio’s father—”

  “No.” It was her turn to squeeze his hands. Her heart had begun to beat in terror against her rib cage. “Promise me you’ll not approach him, Edwin.”

  “You must allow he’s very rich—”

  “Promise.”

  “Very well.
” He made a discontented moue. “But I need to pay my creditors somehow.”

  “I’ll finish the play,” she said, dropping his hands.

  He looked up at her through his eyelashes. They really were quite long, she thought absently. They almost gave him an innocent demeanor.

  Almost.

  “By next week.” His voice was light, but no less hard for it.

  “By next week,” she agreed.

  “Splendid!” He kissed her again, on both cheeks, and rose to dance across the room, his good humor restored. “Thank you, darling. That’s a load off my mind. Now I really must dash. I’ll be back next week to pick up the manuscript, shall I?”

  And he was out the door before she could say anything.

  Lily stared stupidly at the door. However was she to finish her play in a week?

  “WHY,” ASKED ARTEMIS Batten, the Duchess of Wakefield, “are we hiding in a ruined musician’s gallery?”

  Apollo grinned fondly at his twin sister. A duchess only five months and she swanned about as if born to the role. She wore some type of dark-green costume with wide lace ruffles at the sleeves that even he could tell was outrageously expensive. Her brown hair was bound up neatly at her nape and her dark-gray eyes were calm and happy—a wonderful improvement over the four years when she used to visit him in Bedlam.

  Then her eyes had been filled with sick despair.

  He took out his notebook and wrote, Don’t want you to be seen by the other gardeners and Indio.

  She frowned over his words as he dug into the wicker basket she’d brought with her: a new shirt—thank God—some socks and a hat and a smaller, cloth-wrapped parcel filled with lovely food.

  After Bedlam, he’d never take any sort of food for granted again.

  “Who’s Indio?” Artemis asked, quite reasonably, as he bit into an apple.

  He held the apple between his teeth—ignoring his sister’s wrinkled nose—as he wrote: Small, very inquisitive boy with a dog, a nursemaid, and a curious mother.

  Her eyebrows shot up as he crunched the apple. “They live here?”

  He nodded.

  “In the garden?” She glanced around at the charred, crumbling walls of the musician’s gallery. In front of the gallery was a row of marble pillars, which had once supported a roof over a covered walkway. The roof had caved in during the fire, leaving only the crumbling pillars. Apollo had plans for those pillars. With a little scouring, and a judicial blow from a mallet here and there, they would become very picturesque ruins. Right now, though, they were just gloomy, blackened fingers against the sky.