Darling Beast (Maiden Lane #7)(17)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

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.

He’d commandeered one of the rooms behind the gallery, where once the musicians, dancers, and pantomime players had prepared for their performances. Here he’d propped a big, oiled tarp over one corner to keep out the rain and wind, and brought in a straw mattress and two chairs. Spartan accommodations, certainly, but there were no fleas or bedbugs, which made this heaven compared to Bedlam.

Apollo took back his notebook and scrawled: They live in the theater. She’s an actress—Robin Goodfellow. Harte has given her his permission to stay here for the nonce.

“You know Robin Goodfellow?” For a second Artemis’s ducal dignity fled her and she looked as awed as a small lass given a halfpenny sweet.

Apollo decided he needed to find out more about Miss Stump’s acting career. He nodded warily.

Artemis had already recovered her aplomb. “As I remember, Robin Goodfellow is quite young—not more than thirty years, certainly.”

He shrugged carelessly, but alas, his sister had known him for a very, very long time.

Artemis leaned forward, her interest definitely engaged. “She must be witty, too, to play all those lovely breeches roles—”

Breeches roles? Those tended to be risqué. Apollo frowned, but his sister was nattering on.

“I saw her in something last spring, here at Harte’s Folly with Cousin Penelope. What was it?” She knit her brow, thinking, then shook her head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. Have you talked to her?”

Apollo glanced pointedly at his notebook.

“You know what I mean.”

He skirted the truth: My circumstances don’t lend themselves to polite social calls.

Artemis’s mouth crimped. “Don’t be silly. You can’t continue to hide forever—”

He widened his eyes incredulously at her.

“Well, you can’t,” she insisted. “You must find a way to live your life, Apollo. If that means leaving London, leaving England, then so be it. This”—she gestured to the tarp and chairs and straw mattress—“this isn’t living. Not truly.”

He grabbed the notebook and scribbled furiously. What would you have me do? I need the money I invested in the garden.

“Borrow from Wakefield.”

He scoffed, turning his head aside. The last thing he wanted was to be in debt to his brother-in-law.

Artemis raised her voice stubbornly. “He’ll gladly lend you the money you need. Leave. Travel to the continent or the Colonies. The King’s men won’t pursue you so far, not if you take another name.”

He looked back at her and wrote angrily, You would have me abandon the name I have?

“If needs be, yes.” She was so brave, his sister, so determined. “I hadn’t wanted to mention this before, but I think I might’ve been followed.”