“We were at the theater that night.” He held her eyes as if afraid to look away. “Only Father, Mother, and I, for Hero was too young and Phoebe was just a baby. It was something of a privilege for me—I wasn’t that long out of a governess’s care. I remember we saw King Lear and I was dreadfully bored, but I didn’t want to show it, for I knew it would make me seem naïve and young. Afterward, we got in the carriage, and I don’t know how, I can’t remember, though I’ve been over and over it in my mind, but Father was talking about guns. I’d received a pair of fowling pieces for my birthday, and I’d taken them out and shot some birds in the garden in London the week before, and he’d been quite angered. I’d thought he was done scolding me, but it came up again and this time he said he’d take my guns away from me until I learned to handle them properly. I was surprised and angered and I shouted at him.”
He inhaled sharply as if he couldn’t catch his breath.
“I shouted at my father. I called him a bastard, and my mother began to weep and then to my horror I felt tears at my own eyes. I was fourteen and the thought of crying in front of my father was too terrible to bear. I threw open the carriage door and ran out. Father must’ve stopped the carriage then and come after me, and I suppose Mother followed. I ran and ran. I didn’t know where we were, and I didn’t much care, but the houses were tumbling down and I could smell spilled gin and corruption. I heard my father’s shouts as he neared, and in a moment of malicious stupidity I ducked around a corner, behind some barrels—gin barrels—and hid. The smell of gin was overwhelming, filling my nostrils, my lungs, my head until I wanted to vomit. I heard a shot.”
He stopped, his mouth opening wide, as if he were screaming, but no sound emerged.
He bared his teeth and flung back his head, still holding her gaze with those awful eyes. “I peered around the barrel and my father… my father…” He closed his eyes and opened them again as if unable to look away. “He saw me, as he lay there with the blood upon his chest. He saw me hiding and he… he moved his head, just a bit, in a small shake, and he smiled at me. And then the highwayman shot my mother.”
He gulped. “I don’t remember what happened then. I’m told they found me over my parents. All I recall is the stink of gin. That and the blood in my mother’s hair.”
He looked down at his hands, fisting them and opening his fingers again as if they were foreign appendages.
He glanced up at her and somehow he’d come back to himself, contained all that terrible sorrow and anger and fear, enough to make ten strong men fall down like babes. Maximus held it all inside of him and straightened his shoulders, his chin level, and Artemis couldn’t understand it—where he got the strength to hide that awful, bloody wound in his soul—but she admired him for it.
Admired him and loved him.
She felt an answering wound open within her own soul, a kind of faint reflection of all the pain he’d endured, just because she cared for him.
“So you see,” he said quietly, in full possession of himself, even standing completely naked. He was the Duke of Wakefield now as much as when his stood and gave a speech in the House of Lords. “I have to do it myself. Because I caused their deaths, I have to avenge them—and my honor.”
She held out her hands to him, and he approached the bed and sank to one knee before her. “Can you look at me now, knowing what kind of coward I am?”
“My darling,” she said, cupping his face in her hands, “You are the bravest man I know. You were but a boy, then, surely someone else has told you this?”
“I was the Marquess of Brayston, even then.”
“You were a child,” she said. “A willful, silly child who lost his temper. Your father didn’t blame you. He protected you as he lay dying, telling you not to leave your hiding place. Think, Maximus. If you had a child—a son—wouldn’t you give your life for his? Wouldn’t you be glad, even if you died, that he lived?”
He closed his eyes and laid his head in her lap. She ran her palms over his head, feeling the soft bristles beneath her fingers.
After a while she bent and softly kissed his forehead. “Come to bed.”
He rose then and climbed beneath the sheets, pulling her close. She faced away from him, his heavy arm across her waist, and stared into the darkness and waited for sleep.
“YOUR GRACE.”
For a moment, as Maximus swam to consciousness, he thought he’d imagined Craven’s voice. He blinked. Craven was hovering next to his bed.
“Craven,” he said stupidly. “You’re back.”
Craven arched an eyebrow, looking miffed. “I never went away, Your Grace.”
Maximus winced. By the amount of “Your Grace’s” Craven was tossing around, he was still on the outs with his valet. “I didn’t see you about the house.”
“Your Grace doesn’t know all that goes on in this house,” Craven pointed out acidly. “There is a gentleman waiting for you downstairs. He says his name is Alderney.”
“Alderney? At this hour?”
Craven raised both eyebrows at once. “It’s just before noon, Your Grace.”
“Oh.” Maximus sat up, careful not to disturb Artemis. His mind felt muddy, but whatever Alderney had come for must be important.
“I’ve provided your visitor with luncheon and he seems quite content, so I believe you have time to perform your ablutions and make yourself presentable before entertaining him.”
“Thank you, Craven,” Maximus said a little wryly as he rose, nude, from the bed. “You know about Captain Trevillion?”
“Indeed,” Craven replied, back still turned. “I have looked in on the captain and he appears to be resting peacefully. The doctor has sent word he will return this afternoon to see to his patient.”
“Good.” Maximus felt better knowing the captain had survived the night.
Craven cleared his throat. “I couldn’t help but notice that Viscount Kilbourne was no longer in the cellar.”
Maximus stilled, water dripping from his face. “What?”
“He appears to have somehow freed himself from his chain with the help of a mallet and chisel and escaped.” Craven very carefully didn’t look at Artemis, still burrowed beneath the covers.
Maximus had no such qualms, and he noticed that her breathing was too light for sleep. “Craven, I wonder if you might leave us for a moment?”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
Maximus eyed his valet as he turned to the door. “Were you aware that Miss Picklewood returned unexpectedly from the country? She seemed to have information that could only have come from inside this house. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Craven widened his eyes. “Whatever are you insinuating, Your Grace?”
Maximus gave him a wry look and closed the door behind him.
When he turned back, Artemis was watching him. There was a sorrow in her eyes that sent a chill through his bones.
Perhaps that was why his voice was overloud when he demanded, “You let him out, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” She sat up. “Did you truly expect anything else?”
“I expected you to obey me when I told you that he must remain locked up.”
“Obey.” Her face had gone white and blank, save for the blaze within her eyes.
She was withdrawing and he couldn’t let her. “Yes. I would’ve found a safe place for him—a place away from people he might hurt. You—”
She made a scoffing sound and threw back the covers. Underneath she was nude, her skin rosy and delicious from sleep. “You want me to obey like all your other minions. To fit neatly in the box in which you decide to place me. Can’t you see? I’ll rot in that box. I cannot be contained by your expectations of me.”
He felt the argument spiraling out of his control. He was adept at debate within the House of Lords, but this was no logical political argument—this was emotions laid raw between a man and a woman.
He looked at her helplessly, knowing somehow that this argument enco
mpassed far more than the difficulty of what to do with her brother. “Artemis—”
“No.” She rose, as martial as any Greek goddess, and grabbed her chemise. “This is my brother we’re talking about, Maximus.”
“You’ll take his part before mine?” Oh, he knew it was a mistake even before the words left his lips.
Her shoulders squared. “If I must. We shared a womb. We’re flesh and blood, tied together forever, both physically and spiritually. I love my brother.”
“As you don’t me?”
She stopped, her chemise in her hands before her. For a moment her shoulders slumped and then she raised her head. His goddess.
His Diana.
“When you’ve tired of me,” she said softly, precisely, “Apollo will still be my brother. Will still be there for me.”
“I’ll never tire of you,” he said, knowing with every thread of his soul that he spoke the absolute truth.
“Then prove it.”
He knew what she asked with such an open and vulnerable face. Something within him shriveled and died. She deserved this. Deserved a husband and a home and children. His children. But he’d been on the rack too long for a penance he wasn’t sure he could ever entirely pay. The dukedom… his father.
“You know…” His voice was hoarse, the croaking of a dying man. He licked his lips. “You know why I cannot. I owe him my life, my service, the duty of being the duke.”
She shrugged one delicate, bare shoulder. “Well, I do not owe your father’s memory anything.”
He staggered as if she’d slapped him. “You cannot—”
“No,” she said. “I cannot. I thought I could do this, truly I did, but I’m not brave enough, you see. I can’t hurt everyone around me, can’t hurt Penelope, can’t hurt me any longer.” She held out a trembling hand. “I don’t fit into the pretty little box you’ve made for me. I can’t watch you rise from my bed knowing you’ll visit another woman’s. I’m not a saint.”
“Please.”
He was pleading. He who had never bowed before anyone before.
She shook her head and he broke, grasping her hand, pulling her body against his. “Please, my Diana, please don’t go.”
She made no spoken answer, but she tilted her face up to his, parting her lips so sweetly when he pressed his mouth to hers. He cradled her face in his palms, holding her like the precious thing she was as he sipped from her lips. She was his, in this world and the next, and if he could only convince her of that one, immutable fact, then he could still save this.
Could still live and breathe with her by his side.
So he slid his fingers into her hair, resting his thumbs at her temples as he licked into her mouth. He claimed her, gently, slyly, using all the sexual wiles that he’d ever learned.
She moaned and arched her neck and he crowed inside, even as he moved his mouth to her throat, licking down that slim column, tasting woman and need.
She tried to break away, to turn her head, groaning. “Maximus, I can’t—”
“Hush,” he whispered, his hands shaking as he slid them down to her waist. “Please. Please let me.”
He walked backward, making no sudden, jarring movement as he drew her with him, until he found a chair and lowered himself into it.
“Oh, Maximus,” she sighed as he pulled her down, holding her tenderly across his lap.
“Yes, sweet,” he murmured as he opened his mouth over her nipple.
“Darling,” she said and caught his face between her hands, making him meet her eyes.
He didn’t want to. He didn’t like the look in her eyes—a grim determination.
“I love you,” she whispered and his soul soared until she uttered her next words. “But I must leave you.”
“No.” He clutched at her hips as if he were a child of three refusing to give up his toy sword. “No.”
“Yes,” she replied.
Something cruel rose in him then, born of grief and rage. He caught the back of her head and brought her mouth to his. Would she deny this? How could she find it possible?
She twined her arms about his neck and let him ravish her mouth, sighing as he parted her legs, settling them on either side of his hips. His cock pounded, a crude symbol of his desires, between them. He thumbed the head, pressing it toward her until he rubbed against her pretty cunny with the base thing. She was wet on the back of his fingers, open and hot, and his soul sang with vicious joy when she moaned helplessly.
He’d have this, by God, if nothing else of her.
She arched, a graceful bow of eroticism, and ground her hips against him.
He ran his hand up over her soft belly to her lovely breasts, tweaking each in turn, mindful of any way to drive her to her point.
But she foiled his intentions. She rose up above him and opened determined gray eyes before tangling her fingers with his on his cock. Even that small touch made him grit his teeth. He watched with half-lowered lids as she brought him to herself, his crown wet and sensitive, and notched him in her cunny.
“Maximus,” she whispered, all moonlight and strength. “I love you. Never forget that.”
And she impaled herself on him.
Ah! He closed his eyes. It was sweet to the point of agony. He grabbed her hips, preventing any movement so that he might not spill too soon. Her depths were hot and tight and home.
He opened his eyes. “Never leave me.”
She shook her head, breaking free from his rein and rising like the huntress she was. She let his poor cock slip to the very mouth of her before slamming herself back down. She rode him. Her thighs were strong and lithe, her brows drawn down in resolute purpose, and her lips were parted wide in something very like wonder.
It was the last that made him move. Dear God, if he couldn’t have anything else, if she was determined to hollow him out and leave him a husk, then he would remember this:
Artemis riding him like the goddess of the hunt.
He drew her face to his and covered that wondrous mouth, seeking her heat with his tongue, and tried not to break like a green lad. And he held out, until her rhythm faltered, until she gasped against his lips, until her sheath clutched at his cock in the throes of release. He let himself go then, bringing her damp and limp body into his embrace, holding her hips as he lunged up once, twice, as deep as possible.
As if he could stay within her forever.
He spilled his seed.
She lay against him, sweet, sweet weight, until she turned her head a little. He rose then, with her cradled in his arms, and brought her to the bed, gently laying her there.
“I need to see what Alderney has come about,” he murmured to her. “I won’t be a moment. Stay here until I return.”
She merely closed her eyes, but he took that as assent, quickly dressing and running down the stairs.
Alderney was bent nearly in half, examining a curio on an Italian marble table, but he straightened with a jerk when Maximus entered the sitting room.
“Oh! Ah, good morning, Your Grace.”
“Good morning.” Maximus gestured to a settee. “Will you sit?”
Alderney lowered himself to the settee and sat fidgeting for a moment.
Maximus raised an eyebrow impatiently. “You wanted to see me?”
“Oh! Oh, yes,” Alderney said as if startled out of a reverie. “I thought it best to come and tell you at once because you seemed to think it so important before.”
Here he stopped and blinked expectantly at Maximus.
“Tell me what?”
“That I’d remembered,” Alderney replied. “Who gave me that pendant you showed me. Well, he didn’t really give it, now did he? More like I won it from him. You see, he said that the tabby cat that came ’round the kitchens of our house would have three kittens and I said rubbish, there were at least six in there, and when the cat finally let us see her kittens—wary little thing she was, she’d hidden them under the porch—it turned out that I was quite right, there were six and so
he had to give me the pendant.”
Alderney took a deep breath at the end of this recitation and beamed.
Maximus inhaled very carefully. “Who gave you the pendant?”
Alderney blinked as if surprised that Maximus hadn’t worked it out for himself. “Why, William Illingsworth, of course. Now, where he’d gotten it, I haven’t a clue. Came back from the hols with the thing and was showing all the boys and the next night after I got it off Illingsworth, well, then I went to play a game of dice with several of the boys and that’s when I lost it to Kilbourne.” Alderney looked sad. “Poor Kilbourne. I quite liked him at school, don’t you know, though we called him Greaves back then as his father was still alive and he hadn’t yet inherited the courtesy title.”
Maximus stared. “Illingsworth.”
“Yes,” Alderney said brightly. “It only came to me last night because my wife said that the ginger cat our children keep in the nursery is expecting, and then naturally I thought of that wager I made with Illingsworth.”
“Do you know where William Illingsworth is now?” Maximus said without much hope of a positive answer.
“Right now, no.” Alderney shook his head gravely. “But if you go ’round to his house his servants might have an idea.”
“His house,” Maximus repeated.
“Why, yes,” Alderney replied. “Lives over on Havers Square. Not the nicest address, but then he lives off a limited income. His pater was something of a gambler.”
“Thank you,” Maximus said, rising at once.
“What? What?” Alderney looked startled.
“My butler will see you out. I’ve an appointment.”
Maximus barely waited until the man had left the room before bounding back up the stairs. There was still time. If he could just make her listen to him…
He opened the door to his bedroom and saw at once that he’d run out of time after all.
Artemis was gone.
Chapter Nineteen
The burning coal in Lin’s hands turned into her own dear brother, Tam. He jumped from the phantom horse he rode and as his feet touched the earth he once more was mortal.