Darling Beast (Maiden Lane #7)(41)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

“Put me down,” she said in her most haughty voice. Had she not been so very breathless, it would’ve come off rather well.

“You’re sure?” he drawled. There was a slash of color high on each of his craggy cheekbones and his eyes were lidded with sensuality.

Was she? “Quite,” she said, much more firmly than she actually felt.

He sighed heavily and let her slide—slowly—down his chest.

“Erm… thank you,” she said, trying and probably failing to regain some of her dignity. She brushed down her skirts, looking anywhere but at him. “We should return to the theater. I sent Maude and Indio out for meat pies for our supper and they should be back soon. You’re invited, of course.”

“I’m honored… to accept,” he said as formally as if she were the Queen.

She nodded and began to set off before she realized that they were in a part of the garden she’d never seen before. “Where are we?”

“The heart,” he said, his voice low and rasping. “The very… heart of my future garden… the center of the maze.”

She shivered at his words. This place didn’t look any different from anywhere else in the garden, but garden hearts, she supposed, like human hearts, could be disguised.

“I can’t see it,” she said.

He took a step toward her and turned her to face the same way as he, her back against his chest. “Here,” he said, wrapping his arms over her shoulders to hold her hands. “There’ll be a folly… of some sort right here… beneath our feet. A fountain or… waterfall or statue. Benches for lovers to sit and… kiss. The entrance will be over here”—he pointed to a space to the right—“and the maze… will wind all around us… like an embrace.”

Slowly he turned with her, tracing with his outstretched hand his imaginary maze.

“You have so much faith,” she whispered.

She felt him shrug behind her. “It’s there already… just waiting for the right person… to find it and bring it alive,” he said softly in her ear. “A maze… is eternal, you know, once discovered.”

She shivered at that and pulled away, turning to give him a bright smile. “Indio will be waiting impatiently for his supper.”

He nodded, but didn’t return her smile. “Of course.”

“I don’t understand how you can see so much in what is only destruction and debris now,” she commented as they turned back toward the theater. She was very careful to keep from brushing against him as they walked, for she was afraid that if they touched a spark might be lit. She felt as if a fine tension ran along her skin, making her nervously aware of his every movement.

He shrugged beside her. “I see it in my mind’s eye, complete… and wonderful. It’s only a matter of… planting and moving… to reveal what’s already there.” He glanced at her fondly. “Really, ’tisn’t such a mysterious thing.”

She had a certain suspicion that he was talking about something else as well.

He coughed rather harshly, and she looked at him quickly. “How is your throat?”

“Sore,” he replied. “But… that is to be expected… after so long unused.”

“I’m very glad you can speak again.”

He smiled at her finally and then they were at the theater.

Daffodil scampered to greet them, closely followed by Indio with the news that he and Maude had brought back two large pies and they must wash at once to have them while they were still hot.

Thus instructed, Lily and Caliban washed by the old water barrel.

“Mama,” Indio said as they sat, “the wherryman had only two teeth and he could spit ever so far.”

And he proceeded to tell them all about the wherryman’s unusual and rather disgusting skill.

Caliban expressed suitable interest in this dining conversation and Lily was content to watch the play between the two males. Even Maude unbent enough to give her opinion on long-distance spitting and the number of teeth one usually found in the average wherryman.

Lily almost forgot her nervous tension until after supper, when Maude was clearing the dishes with Indio’s help.

Caliban drew Lily out the theater door, quietly closing it behind them.

“See?” he said, pointing to the North Star. “In another year… or two, you’ll no longer… be able to glimpse… the stars from the garden. The lights… and fireworks will obscure them.”

“So I should treasure the wildness now?” she asked whimsically.

“Perhaps,” he said, drawing her close. “Or… just be glad that you… have this time, hard though… it seems at the moment. After all, most of London has not this… grand view… of the night sky. Only we two.”

“As if we have a world of our own.”

He smiled right before he kissed her, and she knew somehow he felt the same. They were a universe apart, Adam and Eve, in a garden that wasn’t quite Eden.

And then she thought no more for many long minutes as he leisurely kissed her, mouth opened wide over hers as if he would consume her, meld with her and make them one being under the starlit night sky.

When at last he drew back she felt a little dazed, almost off-balance, as if the world had tilted a bit on its axis.

“Tomorrow,” he said, walking backward into the dark. “Shall I… show you the secret island… in the pond?”

“If you must,” she said, the tremble in her voice betraying her discomposure.

The last thing she heard before he disappeared into the garden was the sound of his laughter.

IT WASN’T EVEN dawn when Apollo woke the next morning, but he knew it was already too late.

He could hear people in the garden.

“In th’ gallery, ’e said,” a male voice called.

A disturbed bird shrilled as it flew away.

Another man swore softly.

They were close—very close.

Apollo rolled from his pallet, glad that he’d slept in his clothes, and grabbed his shoes and his pruning knife. There was no door to the alcove in the musician’s gallery where he slept, only the tarp he’d hung over the corner. He slipped, barefoot, to the side, down the gallery.

Just as men appeared in the pink-gray light of morning in his garden. They were closing in on him.

Soldiers. They were soldiers. Red-coated, with bayonets fixed on their guns.

The breath caught in his throat. His right heel skidded on grit-strewn marble, and he beat back a sudden, cowardly wave of panic.