Darling Beast (Maiden Lane #7)(16)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

Edwin Stump was eight years her senior, and looked nothing like her. 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…