“Good.” He turned and led her down the hall. “These are my sister’s rooms.” He indicated a pale green door. “And here is the pink room where Phoebe wants you to stay.” He gestured to the next door down, which stood ajar. A maid hurried out, pausing only to curtsy deeply to Maximus.
Artemis peeked inside. The walls were covered in a deep rose-watered silk, lending the room its name. A canopied bed was bracketed by two carved tables topped by yellow marble, and the fireplace was surrounded by rose-veined marble.
“It’s delightful,” Artemis said truthfully. She glanced over her shoulder to the duke. “Are your rooms on this floor as well?”
He nodded. “Down this corridor.”
They turned into a passage and walked toward the back of the house.
“Here’s the blue sitting room—the one that Phoebe likes to use. And these are my rooms.”
The doors to his rooms were a rich forest green detailed in black.
“Come.” He led her to a small door paneled to look like the surrounding wainscoting. Behind it was a narrow staircase, obviously a servant’s stairs. They went down, spiraling into the dark, but Artemis followed him without fear.
Two floors below, and through a door cut into a stone stairs, he paused before a second door and looked at her intently. “No one must know he is here. I had to take him out as the Ghost. They’re looking for him.”
She nodded, her throat clogging. Four years. Four years he’d been locked up in Bedlam.
Maximus unlocked the door and opened it, revealing a long, low subterranean room.
“Your Grace.” It was the servant that Artemis had noticed at the dueling demonstration. He’d risen from a chair set beside a cot. And on the cot—
Artemis rushed forward, ignoring everything else. Apollo lay so still, his dear face made almost unrecognizable by dark bruises and swelling. What flesh that wasn’t maimed was very pale.
She fell to her knees beside him, reaching out one trembling hand to push the shaggy hair from his forehead.
“Craven,” Maximus spoke behind her. “This is Miss Artemis Greaves, the sister of our patient.”
“Ma’am.” The servant nodded.
“Have you called a doctor?” she asked without taking her eyes from Apollo’s face. She slid her hand over his unshaven cheek to his neck and searched. There. A flutter. The blood still beat within his veins.
“No,” Maximus answered.
She turned at that, her eyes narrowed. “Why not?”
“I told you,” he said patiently, his voice even. “No one must know.”
She held his gaze a moment longer before turning back to Apollo. He was right. Of course he was right. They mustn’t risk Apollo being discovered and possibly being forced to return to Bedlam.
And yet to see him like this and offer no care near killed her.
Craven cleared his throat. “I’ve been looking after his lordship, Miss. There’s not much else a doctor could do.”
She glanced at the man quickly. “Thank you.” She meant to say more, but something was caught in her throat. Her eyes stung.
“Weep not, proud Diana,” Maximus murmured. “The moon will not allow it.”
“No.” She agreed, swiping fiercely at her cheeks. “There’s no need for tears yet.”
For a moment she thought she felt a hand on her shoulder. “You may stay here with him for a while. Craven needs a respite in any case.”
She nodded without turning. She didn’t dare.
The men’s footsteps retreated and she heard the door shut behind them. The candle flames wavered and then stood still again.
Still, like her brother.
She laid her head on his arm and remembered. They’d been children in a family broken by madness and genteel poverty, left to run wild by parents with other cares. She recalled wandering the woods with him, watching him catch frogs in the tall grass by the pond. She’d searched for bird nests in the reeds as he fought dragons with fallen branches. The day he’d been sent away to school had been the worst of her young life. She’d been left with Mama, an invalid, and Papa, who was usually off on “business”—one of his wild schemes to repair their fortunes. When Apollo had returned for the holidays she’d been relieved—so relieved. He hadn’t left her forever.
She watched his chest rise and fall and remembered and reflected. All her life things had been taken from her: Apollo, Thomas’s affection, Mama and Papa, her home, her future. No one had ever asked her opinion, garnered her thoughts on what she wanted or needed. Things had been done to her, but she’d never had the chance to do things. Like a doll on a shelf, she’d been moved about, manipulated, flung aside.
Except she wasn’t a doll.
What she might’ve once had: a home, husband, and family of her own was gone now. She would never have them. But that didn’t mean that she couldn’t decide to have something else.
That she couldn’t live her life as best she could. As best she wanted.
She could either spend the rest of her life being manipulated and quietly mourning what she’d lost, or she could create a new life. A new reality.
The candles had burned low when Craven opened the door to the chamber again. “Miss? It’s late. I can sit with Lord Kilbourne for the night while you go to bed.”
“Thank you.” She rose, stiff from sitting on the cold stone floor, and looked at the man. “You’ll let me know if he changes?”
“Yes, I will,” he said, and his voice was kind.
Artemis touched Apollo’s cheek and then turned to make her way up the stairs.
Up out of stagnation and despair.
Chapter Eleven
For one hundred years King Herla led his wild hunt, and all those who had the misfortune to see the shadowy riders in the moonlit sky crossed themselves and muttered a prayer, for death often followed such a sighting. On one night of the year, and one night only, King Herla and his hunt became corporeal: the night of the autumn harvest when the moon was full. On that night everyone who could hid in terror, because King Herla sometimes caught up mortals into his wild hunt, dooming them for eternity.
It was on such a night that King Herla captured a young man. His name was Tam.…
—from The Legend of the Herla King
Maximus was just sealing a letter in his sitting room when he heard the door to his bedroom open. Craven had already gone down to tend to Kilbourne, and the other servants had strict instructions not to bother him between the hours of ten at night and six in the morning. Maximus rose and crossed to look in his bedroom.
Artemis stood by his bed, her beautiful dark gray eyes calmly inspecting it.
Something within his veins began to heat. “These are my private rooms,” he said as he strolled toward her.
“I know.” She watched him without any fear. “I’ve come to give you back your ring.”
She unwrapped the fichu from about her neck, revealing the plain square neckline of her dress and the chain that disappeared into the valley between her breasts. Dipping a finger into the shadowy recess, she pulled out the chain and drew it off over her head. He just caught sight of something else on the chain—something green—and then she took the ring off before tucking the chain into a pocket and giving the ring to him. He stepped closer to her and took the ring between his fingers. It was warm from her body heat, as if she’d brought the ancient metal to life. Holding her gaze, he screwed the ring onto his left little finger. As he stared into her eyes she seemed to stop breathing and the color rose, delicately pink, in her cheeks, giving the illusion of vulnerability. Something in him wanted to seize her and lick the tenderness from her sweet skin.
He swallowed. “Why are you here?”
She shrugged one delicate shoulder. “I told you: to bring you your ring.”
“You come to a bachelor’s rooms—bedroom—well after dark all by yourself to give him a trinket you could just as easily hand him in the morning.” His voice was mocking. He wanted to break her suddenly. To make he
r feel the rage he did at the situation they had been placed in. Were it not for her history—and his—he might’ve courted this woman. Might’ve made her his wife. “Have you no care for your reputation?”
She stepped toward him until she was so close he fancied he breathed the same air as she and when she tilted her face up to look at him he saw that she wasn’t nearly as calm as he’d imagined.
“No,” she murmured, her voice a siren’s song, “none at all.”
“Then I’ll be damned if I will,” he muttered and kissed her.
THERE. THERE IT was again: that whirlpool pulling her in, sweeping away all the doubts and fears and sorrow, all her thoughts. Leaving in their place only feeling, pure and searing. He licked into her mouth with a hot, conquering tongue. Artemis stood on tiptoe, trying to get closer to him, spreading her fingers wide against the silk of his banyan. If she could, she would’ve crawled right into him, made a home for herself in his broad, strong chest, and never emerged again.
This man, she wanted this man, despite his wretched title, his money, his land, his history, and all his myriad obligations. Maximus. Just Maximus. She’d take him bare naked if she could—and be the gladder for it.
The man without the trappings was what she craved, but since his trappings came with him, she’d take them perforce as well.
He pulled back, his chest heaving, and looked at her angrily. “Don’t start something you mean to stop.”
She met his gaze squarely. “I don’t mean to stop.”
His eyes narrowed. “I cannot give you marriage.”
She’d known. She’d never thought he could—she would’ve sworn so had she been asked a minute earlier—but his blunt words were an arrow of pain piercing her heart nonetheless. She bared her teeth in a smile. “Have I asked you to?”
“No.”
“And I never shall,” she vowed.
He still wore his white wig and she snatched it off, flinging the expensive thing aside. Underneath, his dark brown hair was shorn close to his head. She ran her hands over it, reveling in the intimacy. This was the private man beneath. This was the man without his public persona.
Suddenly she wanted all his disguises stripped away. She began working frantically at the buttons of his banyan, almost tearing the beautiful shot silk in her haste.
“Hush,” he murmured to her, catching her hands with his own. He looked at her, and although his voice was gentle his face was not kind. “Are you experienced, my Diana?”
She scowled. The very last thing she wanted was for him to send her away because of some ridiculous scruples. On the other hand, she didn’t want any more lies between them. “No.”
His expression didn’t change, save for a small, satisfied curve of his lips. “Then by your leave, we’ll take this slow, both for your sake and because I have a mind to savor you.”
If she’d wanted to protest, she wouldn’t have been able to. He spread her hands wide and bent to take her mouth again. She felt the press of his thumbs, rubbing in slow, sensuous circles on her palms even as his lips parted hers. The kiss lingered achingly, as if they’d all the time in the world. He licked across her upper lip, pulling back teasingly when she opened for him.
“Maximus,” she moaned.
“Patience,” he chided, and angled his head before pressing his mouth against hers again.
She tried to pull her hands from his, but his grip was too strong. He chuckled low in his throat and pressed into her, still holding her hands wide. She was distracted by a nip at the corner of her mouth and then she found herself falling backward.
For a split second alarm made her frame stiffen… and then she bounced on a soft, feathered mattress. Artemis looked up and saw Maximus standing over her that satisfied little smile on his lips again.
He reached down and traced the line of her throat, his touch light, nearly tickling as his fingers trailed to where her bodice cut across her breasts.
She shivered.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten when your fichu slipped from your dress,” he murmured. “Strange, for I’ve seen more immodest décolletages at every ball I’ve ever attended, yet I’ve been entirely unable to remove the thought of your breasts from my mind.” His gaze flicked up to hers, dark and enigmatic. “Your breasts and other parts of you. Perhaps it’s the very fact that you usually cover yourself so modestly in public that makes the unveiling that more anticipated. Or perhaps”—he bent and whispered in her ear—“it’s you. Merely you.”
She swallowed even as he licked around the rim of her ear, pausing to tug on her earlobe with his teeth before trailing his open, wet mouth down her neck and to the slopes of her breasts.
“I’ve never before been so obsessed with a woman,” he said, his warm lips brushing against her flesh with each word. “I wonder if you’ve ensorcelled me, Diana?”
His tongue probed between her breasts and she inhaled sharply. He’d at last let go of her hands and she moved both to his head, holding him against her as he made love to her still-clothed bosom. Surely if anyone were bespelled it was she? In moments she would be giving up any hope of marriage. Of the future she’d taken for granted before Apollo’s arrest.
She felt nothing but exultation at the prospect. To finally live. To take the reins of her own life, however hobbled. This was what she wanted.
If she were bespelled, she wanted the spell to never end.
Artemis blinked and saw that Maximus was watching her. “Second thoughts?”
“The exact opposite.” She pulled him down and this time it was she who kissed him. Fiercely, if not expertly.
“Roll over, then, my goddess of the moon,” he murmured against her lips. “Let me free you from these earthly weights.”
She moved to her belly, then, and felt the tiny tugs as he unhooked her bodice, untied her skirts, unlaced her stays. He was right: each layer of cloth removed from her body made her lighter. More free.
He gently nudged her to her back and drew her stays over her head, then he plucked the pins from her hair, putting each one carefully in his banyan pocket, until her hair fell down in a great, heavy loop.
“Artemis,” he whispered as he drew her hair to her breast, “goddess of the hunt, of the moon, and of childbirth.” His lips quirked wryly. “I’ve never understood the last, as she’s a virgin goddess.”
“You forgot wild things,” she whispered back. “She guards all the wild animals and the places they live, and I suppose childbirth is, at base, the closest a woman comes to becoming an animal, isn’t it?”
He pulled back, examining her face, and then grinned, quick and mercurial. “I adore the turnings of your mind.”
The word adore made her heart leap foolishly, but she knew that sort of declaration meant very little in the bedchamber. She would be content with what she could have, not what she really longed for.
She wound her arms about his neck. “You still wear your banyan.”
“Mmm,” he hummed, but his attention was once again on her bosom. Her chemise was old and worn, and she had no doubt at all that her breasts could be seen quite clearly through the thin material.
He slid his hand over one breast, pulling the material taut. “Did you do this?”
He rubbed a thumb over a small, neat square patched over a hole worn into the linen. The patch happened to sit right above her left nipple.
“Yes,” she said. “Who else?”
“A practical woman.” He fitted his mouth over her nipple.
She arched into his sucking warmth, her fingers flexing against his scalp. “A woman without any other options.”
He looked up, his face suddenly grim. “Have you come to me because of your lack of options?”
“No.” She frowned at him because she resented the abrupt absence of his lips. “I’ve come to you because I want to.” She arched up to him, scraping her teeth against the edge of his jaw before falling back. “I come of my own free will. I have the right to do as I wish.”
He nodded slo
wly. “So you do.”
And he caught her chemise between his hands and ripped it from top to bottom.
She was bare before him now, everything from her nipples to the place between her legs. She should be ashamed. Embarrassed and confused.
Instead she felt wonderfully free. She stretched her arms over her head, arching her back, and looking through her eyelashes up at him. “Will you take off that banyan now?”
His eyelids had half-lowered, his gaze a burning brand upon her naked skin as he stared at her legs. “Yes, I believe I will.”
He straightened and she watched as he carelessly flicked open the buttons lining the front of his banyan. Beneath he wore merely a shirt and breeches. He shrugged off the shirt easily, the muscles on his shoulders bunching and relaxing as he moved.
She caught her breath as his torso was revealed. She hadn’t seen many a male chest unclothed—a rustic or two when she was a child, once a drunken soldier in the streets of London, and of course the marble chests of statues—but she had a mind that most aristocratic men didn’t have such muscled bodies. She was reminded abruptly that this man was not only the Duke of Wakefield but also the Ghost of St. Giles. What exertions had built such massive shoulders, such bulging upper arms, and such a deep chest? This body had been honed to fight. This was the body of a dangerous warrior.
His eyes narrowed as if he knew her thoughts and he shucked his breeches and hose quickly before climbing into the bed.
“Now we two are as God made us,” she said as he settled over her again.
He arched an eyebrow. “And you prefer me thus?”
“Always,” she said. “There’s nothing between us now—neither your past nor mine. Your rank and titles mean nothing here.”
He bent to kiss the tip of her breast, making her wiggle. “Most ladies prefer my ducal finery, I think.”
“But then I am not most ladies,” she said sternly.
“That is true. You are like no other lady I know,” he breathed and took her nipple into his mouth.
Heat enveloped her, making her moan. She could feel his tongue against her sensitive breast, the curling hairs on his chest tickled her belly, and one hard thigh was suddenly pressed against the apex of her legs.