Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(36)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

His lips left her throat. She could hear Scarborough’s voice somewhere back at the ruins, still telling his silly children’s stories. She could hear a bird trilling a series of high, bouncing notes, suddenly cut off. She could hear the rustling of the eternal trees. But she couldn’t hear him.

Perhaps he wasn’t there anymore. Perhaps he was merely a figment of her imagination.

She opened her eyes in panic.

He was staring at her with a face entirely expressionless, as if made from cold stone. Nothing showed at lips or brow or cheek. Nowhere save in his eyes. Those burned with an impassioned fire, reckless and deep, and her breath caught at the sight as she waited for her—and her brother’s—fate.

A GODDESS SHOULD never have to beg. It was the one thought, clear and simple, that ran through Maximus’s mind. Everything else—his rank, the party, their conflict, seemed to fall away from that one truth. She should never have to beg.

He still tasted her mouth on his tongue, still wanted to crush her breasts against his chest and bend her until she bared her throat to him, but he made himself let her go.

“Very well.”

Artemis blinked, her sweet lips parting as if she didn’t believe what she’d heard. “What?”

“I’ll do it.”

He turned to go, his mind already making plans, when he felt her fingers clutch at his sleeve. “You’ll take him from Bedlam?”

“Yes.”

Perhaps his decision had already been made from the moment he’d seen tears in her eyes. He had a weakness, it seemed, a fault more terrible than any Achilles’s heel: he couldn’t stand the sight of her tears.

But her eyes shone as if he’d placed the moon itself into her hands. “Thank you.”

He nodded, and then he was striding in the direction of Pelham before he could linger and be drawn again into the seduction of her mouth.

He emerged into the sunshine and was almost surprised by the sight of his guests. His tête-à-tête in the woods with Artemis had seemed like an interlude in another world, a journey of days, when it had in reality been only minutes.

Cousin Bathilda looked up with a crease between her brows. “Maximus! Lady Penelope was wondering if you might show us the famous abbey well. Scarborough has been telling us that some poor girl flung herself into it centuries ago.”

“Not now,” he muttered as he brushed past her.

“Your Grace.” Bathilda had never been mother to him. His own mother had died when he’d been fourteen—old enough to no longer need a parental hand. Yet when Bathilda—rarely—used that tone and the courtesy of his title, he always paid attention.

He turned to face her. “Yes?”

They stood a little apart from the group. “What are you about?” she whispered, frowning. “I know Lady Oddershaw and Mrs. Jellett have spent the last five minutes muttering between themselves over you and Miss Greaves, and even Lady Penelope must be wondering what you can have had to say to her lady’s companion that necessitated dragging the poor woman off into the woods.” Bathilda took a deep breath. “Maximus, you’re on the very brink of causing a scandal.”

“Then it’s a good thing that I have cause to go to London,” he replied. “I’ve had word that a business matter cannot wait.”

“What—?”

But he had no time to make further ridiculous excuses. If Artemis was right and her brother was truly dying, he must get to London and Bedlam before the man perished.

The thought prompted him to start into a jog as soon as he was away from sight of the abbey. Maximus was panting by the time he made Pelham. He detoured by the stables to order two horses saddled, then ran inside the house. He wasn’t surprised to see Craven eyeing him askance at the top of the stairs.

“Your Grace seems out of breath. I do hope you’re not being chased by an overly enthusiastic heiress?”

“Pack a light bag, Craven,” Maximus snapped. “We’re going to London to help a murderous lunatic escape from Bedlam.”

Chapter Nine

King Herla and his men traveled back to the land of humankind, but what a surprise met them when at last they saw the sun. Brambles hid the entrance to the cave, and where once there had been fertile fields and plump cattle, now a strange, thorny forest had grown, and in the distance they saw the ruins of a great castle. They rode until they found a peasant to question.

“We have no king or queen here,” stuttered the peasant. “Not since noble Herla King disappeared and his queen died of grief—and that, my lords, was nigh on nine hundred years ago.”…

—from The Legend of the Herla King

Artemis could hear voices as the duke met his guests at the abbey ruins. The tones rose and then fell, and then it was nearly quiet enough that she might imagine that she was by herself in the little wood. Alone and safe.

But she was no longer a girl with fanciful dreams. She knew she must face the real world—and the rest of the guests.

She took a deep breath, smoothed down her hair, and before she could waver, made for the abbey.

It wasn’t very bad—not nearly as bad as the morning after Apollo was arrested. Then she’d had to walk through the village green to fetch a bit of beef from the butcher. He’d closed his doors and pretended not to see her outside and she’d had to walk home empty-handed, with the loud whispers of people she’d thought her friends in her ears.

The guests turned and stared as she emerged from the woods, and Lady Oddershaw and Mrs. Jellett put their heads together, but Phoebe smiled at the sight of her.

One genuine smile of friendship was worth a thousand false faces.

“Where have you been?” Penelope asked when she reached her. “And where is your fichu?”

Artemis felt the heat rise in her cheeks—and her too-bare throat—but there was nothing for it but to brave it out. Casually she put her hand to her neck—and discovered the chain with the emerald drop and Maximus’s ring was exposed as well. Had Maximus seen his ring? If he had, he’d given no indication. She tucked them both back into her bodice as casually as she could. The ring was merely a signet ring—like many others in England. Hopefully it wouldn’t be recognized.

“Artemis?” Penelope was waiting for her answer.

“I saw a bearded titmouse and wished for a closer look.”

“With the Duke of Wakefield?”

“He has an interest in nature,” she said, entirely truthfully.