Darling Beast (Maiden Lane) (4 page)

Apollo bent to pick up his long-handled adze. He swung it over his head and then down into the soft ground at the root of a stump. The heavy adze hit with a satisfying
thump
and he could feel that he’d struck one of the main roots.

He wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt and heaved the adze free from the stump. Then he swung again.

“
Daff
,” came a hiss from the bushes.

Apollo’s lips twitched. Indio hadn’t chosen a particularly adept spy-mate. The greyhound obviously didn’t
understand his young master’s need for stealth. Even now she was wandering out of their hiding place, nose to the ground, more interested in some scent than Indio’s frantic call. “Daff.
Daffodil.
”

Apollo sighed. Was he really expected not to notice the dog? He was mute, not blind—or deaf.

Daffodil ambled right up to his feet. She’d apparently lost her fear of him in the last week of spying—or perhaps she was simply bored of sitting still. In any case she sniffed the tree stump and the adze, and then abruptly sat to scratch one ear vigorously.

Apollo extended a hand for the little dog to sniff, but the silly thing jumped back at his movement. She was quite near the pond bank and her sudden leap caused her back legs to slip in the mud. She tumbled down the bank and into the water, disappearing beneath the surface.

“Daff!” The boy ran from his hiding place, his eyes huge with fear.

Apollo put out his hand, blocking him.

The boy tried to dart around his outstretched arm. “She’ll drown!”

Apollo seized him and swung the boy off his feet and then set him down firmly, placing his hands on his shoulders and bending to stare into his eyes. He narrowed his eyes and
growled
, never so frustrated by his loss of speech as now. He couldn’t argue with the child—tell him what he meant to do and instruct him to
obey
, and thus he was reduced to animal grunting. Better the boy should fear him, though, than drown trying to rescue his pet.

Indio gulped.

Apollo stepped back, keeping his eye on the boy, and
pulled off his shoes, waistcoat, and shirt. He hesitated a moment, staring suspiciously at the boy.

Indio nodded. “Yes.
Please.
Please, help her.”

Without waiting further, Apollo turned and waded swiftly into the water. The little dog had reemerged at the surface, but she was thrashing in panic instead of trying to swim.

Apollo grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and lifted her clear from the pond. She hung pathetically, water streaming from her rat-thin tail and drooping ears. He turned and waded back to the shore.

The boy hadn’t moved from where Apollo had stopped him. Indio watched him intently.

Apollo picked up his shirt and wrapped the shivering greyhound in it before handing the little dog to the boy.

Indio clutched her to his chest, his eyes swimming in tears as the dog whimpered and began to lick his chin. He looked from the pet in his arms up at Apollo. “Thank you.”

Daffodil coughed, choked, opened wide her narrow mouth, and vomited up a thin trail of pond water all over the shirt.

Apollo winced.

He turned and found the worn cloth bag he’d brought his lunch in. Fortunately, he’d placed his notebook in it earlier, so that at least wasn’t wet. Apollo repressed a shuddering shiver as he crouched and rummaged in the sack. Earlier he’d eaten his luncheon—a pork pie—and wrapped a leftover piece in a cloth. Apollo rose with the bundle and the little dog immediately leaned from her master’s arms, sniffing eagerly at the cloth. Apollo unwrapped the morsel and broke off a piece, holding it
out. Daffodil snatched it from his fingers and gulped it down.

Apollo almost laughed.

“She likes piecrust,” the boy said shyly.

Apollo merely nodded and fed Daffodil another bit.

“ ’Course she likes bread and sausage and chicken and green beans and apples and cheese as well,” Indio continued. Not so shy after all, then. “I gived her a raisin once. She didn’t like that. Is that your dinner?”

Apollo didn’t answer, simply offering the last of the pie to Daffodil. She gobbled it and then began nosing his hand, looking for crumbs. She seemed to have forgotten her unexpected swim already.

“It’s kind of you to give it her,” Indio said, stroking Daffodil’s head. “D’you… do you like dogs?”

Apollo glanced at him. The boy was staring up at him hopefully and for the first time Apollo noticed that his eyes were of different colors: the right blue, the left green. He turned away to stuff the bit of cloth back into his bag.

“Uncle Edwin gived me Daffodil. He won her in a game of cards. Mama says a puppy is a silly thing to wager for. Daff’s an Italian greyhound, but she didn’t come from Italy. Mama says Italians like skinny little dogs. I named her Daffodil because that’s my favorite flower and the prettiest. She doesn’t know to mind,” Indio said sadly as Apollo rose.

Daffodil wriggled and the boy set her cautiously on the ground. The greyhound struggled from the folds of the shirt, shook herself, and then squatted, watering the ground—and a corner of the shirt.

Apollo sighed. He really was going to have to wash that shirt.

Indio sighed as well. “Mama says I ought to train her to sit and beg and most ’portantly come when we call her, but”—he took a deep breath—“I don’t know how to.”

Apollo bit his lip to keep down a smile. It was too bad that he’d already fed all the scraps to the dog. He glanced at the boy.

Indio was staring at him frankly. “My name’s Indio. I live in the old theater.” He pointed in the direction of the theater with a straight arm. “My mama lives there and Maude, too. She’s a famous actress, my mama, that is. Maude’s our maidservant.” He chewed on one lip. “Can you speak?”

Apollo shook his head slowly.

“I thought not.” Indio dug into the mud with the toe of one boot, frowning down. “What’s your name?”

Well, he couldn’t answer that, could he? Time he was back at work, anyway. Apollo reached for his adze, half expecting the boy to run away at his movement.

But Indio simply stepped back out of his way, watching with interest. Daffodil had wandered several feet away and was now digging energetically in the mud.

He was wet and chilled from the air, but work would soon fix that. Apollo took another swing at the tree stump, hitting it with a
thwock!

“I’ll call you Caliban,” Indio said as Apollo lifted the adze again.

Apollo turned and stared.

Indio smiled tentatively. “It’s from a play. There’s a wizard who lives on a island and it’s all over wild. Caliban lives there, though he
can
speak. But he’s big like you, so I thought… Caliban.”

Apollo was still staring helplessly at the boy through
this explanation. Daffodil had paused to sneeze and glance at them. Her nose was adorned with a clot of mud.

There were dozens of reasons to refuse the boy. Apollo was in hiding, a price on his head, wanted for the most awful of crimes. The boy’s mother had already made plain that she wanted him nowhere near her son. And what did he have to offer the boy after all, mute and overworked and on the run?

But Indio smiled up at him with mismatched eyes and cheeks made red from the wind, and an air of sweet hope that was simply impossible to refuse. Somehow, against his better judgment, Apollo found himself nodding.

Caliban. The illiterate knave from
The Tempest
. Well, he supposed he could’ve done worse.

Indio might’ve chosen
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
—and named him Bottom.

“Indio!”

Lily paused and glanced around the blackened garden an hour later. She hated to keep Indio locked inside the old theater, but she was going to have to if he insisted on disappearing like this. The sun would soon be setting. The garden held all manner of dangers for a little boy—and that was without the interest the duke had shown her son yesterday afternoon. Lily hadn’t liked that comment Montgomery had made about Indio’s eyes.

Not at all.

A sense of urgency made her cup her hands around her mouth to shout again. “
Indio!
”

Oh, let Indio be safe. Let him return to her, happy and laughing and covered in mud.

Lily trudged onward toward the pond. Funny how she’d learned to pray again when she’d become a mother so suddenly. For years she’d never thought of Providence. And then she’d found herself whispering beneath her breath at different, frightening points in Indio’s short life:

Let the fever break.

Don’t let the fall be fatal.

Thank you, thank you, for making the horse swerve aside.

Not the pox. Anything but the pox.

Oh, dear God, don’t let him be lost.

Not lost. Not my brave little man. My Indio.

Lily’s steps quickened until she found herself almost running through the charred brambles, the clutching branches. She’d never let him out again when she found him. She’d fall to her knees and hug him when she found him. She’d spank him and send him to bed without his supper when she found him.

She was panting as the path widened and she came to the clearing by the pond. She opened her mouth to call yet again.

But she was struck dumb instead.

He was there—Indio’s monster. He was in the pond, his back to her.

And he was quite nude.

Lily blinked, frozen in place. The garden was all of a sudden eerily still as the day made its last farewell. His massive shoulders were bunched, his head lowered as if he saw something in the water. Perhaps he was struck by his own reflection. Did he know himself when he saw that man beneath the water—or was he frightened at the sight? She felt a flash of pity. He could not help his own huge
size—or the deformity of his brain. She ought to speak, ought to make her presence known, ought to…

All thought left her head as the giant plunged beneath the water.

Lily’s mouth half opened.

The setting sun broke through the cloud cover and bathed the pond in golden light, reflecting off the ripples left by his movement. He burst from the water. He was facing her now. The muscles bunched on his arms as he slicked his wet, shoulder-length hair back from his face. The mist swirled amber over the surface of the water, adorning his gleaming skin as if he were the tributary god of this ruined garden. Her pity evaporated, burned away by the sudden realization that she had it all wrong.

He was…

She swallowed.

Good Lord. He was
magnificent
.

The water trickled down his chest, trailing through a diamond of wet, dark hair between his beaded nipples, down over a shallow, perfectly formed navel, and into a dark line of wet hair that disappeared—rather disappointingly—into the concealing misted water.

She blinked and glanced up—only to find that the giant, the beast, the monster was looking directly back at her.

She ought to be ashamed. He was a mental defective and she was ogling him as if he were able to reciprocate any feeling she might have… except his expression didn’t seem stupid now. He almost looked
amused
by her stare.

Not defective at all.

And an awful, terrible,
mortifying
thing happened: she felt herself grow wet.

Just yesterday she’d had tea with the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. The Duke of Montgomery had aristocratic cheekbones, sapphire-blue eyes, and shining, golden hair—and he’d moved her not at all.

Yet this…
beast
before her, this man with his wild muddy-brown hair, his animallike shoulders, his big, knobby nose, his wide, crooked mouth and heavy brow.
Him
she found attractive.

Obviously she needed to take a new lover—and soon.

He began wading to the shore, his leaden expression returned. Had she imagined the look of intelligence, supplying one where none existed?

Lily squeaked as he neared, but sadly, did
not
turn her back.

She had a moral defect—a despicable personal flaw—for she simply could
not
look away. Her eyes dropped to the wet black tangle between his legs as he strode toward her, the water swirling about his muscled thighs. There was a hint of the flesh below, crude and male and—

“Mama!”

Lily jumped, whirling, her hand on her heart, which surely had stopped, poor, worn thing.

“Indio!” she gasped, rather breathlessly, for her wretched son had chosen
this
moment to emerge from the shrubbery. He was standing on the path she’d just come from, a leaf stuck in his curly black hair. Daffodil, looking even muddier than usual, capered up to her and planted filthy paws on her skirts.

“Mama, can Caliban come for supper?” Indio asked, his mismatched eyes wide and entirely too innocent.

“I…
what
?” Lily asked weakly.

“Caliban.” Indio gestured behind her.

She glanced over her shoulder to find—to her mingled relief and disappointment—that the man was slowly buttoning the falls of a ragged pair of breeches. The setting sun limned the wet slope of his shoulders, but his big fingers fumbled on the buttons. Whatever intelligence she’d imagined in his eyes was gone. But then it’d probably never been there in the first place.

She looked back at Indio, brow knitted. “Caliban?
That’s
Caliban?”

Her son nodded. “I named him just today.”

“You…” She shook her head. She’d found—shortly after Indio learned to talk—that letting him lead a discussion could result in a tangled web, incomprehensible to anyone over the age of seven. Sometimes one must simply cut through the tangle. “Indio, it’s suppertime and Maude is waiting for us. Let’s—”

“
Please?
” Indio came closer and took her hand, pulling her down to whisper in her ear, “He hasn’t anything to eat and he’s my
friend
.”

“I—” She looked helplessly back at Caliban.

He’d donned his shirt and was staring at her with his mouth half open. As she watched he scratched his… well, his
male parts
, quite obliviously, just as a half-wit might.

Her eyes narrowed. He’d not looked half-witted at all a minute ago. Perhaps she’d imagined it. Perhaps she’d wanted to condone her own baser impulses by giving the object of her thoughts reason that simply wasn’t there.

And perhaps she was dithering over the matter too much.

She glanced back at Indio’s pleading face and made her decision. She straightened and said loudly, “Of course, darling, let’s invite your friend to supper.”

A choking sound came from behind her, but when she turned, Caliban’s face was stupidly blank. He snorted, hawked, spat into the pond—ew!—and scrubbed his hand across his mouth.

She smiled widely. “Caliban? Would you like to eat?
Eat?
” She mimed lifting a spoon to her mouth and then chewing. “Eat. With. Us.” She pointed back along the path. “At the theater. We have
good
food!”

Her exaggerated miming was ridiculous—and if he
wasn’t
mentally defective, it was insulting. She watched him closely to see if he’d break—change expression, show in any way that he did harbor normal intelligence.

But he simply stared back blankly.

It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d misread a man. Sighing—and telling herself firmly that she most certainly
wasn’t
disappointed—Lily began to turn away.

Indio started forward and took the big man’s hand as naturally as he’d taken his mother’s. “Come on! Maude’s making roast chicken and there’ll be gravy and dumplings.”

Caliban looked at the boy and then her.

She raised an eyebrow. She’d already pled her piece—she wouldn’t do so again. Not for a lackwit.

Was there something behind the muddy-brown eyes? A glimmer, a glint of challenge? She couldn’t tell, and in any case she was no longer certain of her own perception.

But it didn’t matter. Caliban nodded slowly.

Lily turned and started back up the path, Daffodil
scampering ahead. Her heart, that silly, mercurial thing, was beating in double time.

This was going to be interesting.

T
HIS WAS A
very bad idea.

Apollo followed Lily Stump, watching her skirts sway from side to side as she walked. Her back was rigidly straight, but the nape of her neck was soft and unguarded, trails of dark hair curling down from the knot at the crown of her head. He had an animal urge to set his teeth against her nape, test the tender flesh, taste the salt on her skin.

He swallowed, glad the cool evening air kept him from embarrassment. There was no reason for him to have accepted her offer of supper. He had another cold pork pie safely stowed in the ruins of the musician’s gallery where he’d set up camp while he worked in the garden. He was tired and sore and still damp from washing off the sweat and mud of the day. His recently rinsed shirt clung, wet and uncomfortable, to his shoulders.

Everything—
everything
—he’d worked for would be forfeit if anyone discovered who he really was.

And yet he was holding the hand of a little boy and trailing the boy’s exasperating mother. Perhaps he was lonely. Or perhaps it was the look in her eyes when he’d emerged from the pond and found her watching him that urged his footsteps on. It had been a long time—a very,
very
long time—since a woman had last looked at him like that. As if she saw something she liked.

As if she might want more.

He’d spent four years in Bedlam, most of them chained in a stinking cell. He’d escaped last July, but in the months
since, he’d been in hiding—not a situation conducive to finding a willing wench. And of course there’d been that last beating—the one that had stolen his voice. The prison guard had reached for his falls. Had—

But he wouldn’t think of that now.

Apollo inhaled, shoving aside a black mass of shame and anger.

Indio looked up at him. “Caliban?”

Apollo realized he’d squeezed the boy’s hand. Deliberately he made himself relax his hold and shook down his shoulders. Stupid for a man as big as he to feel such wretched fear. He was out of Bedlam. He’d made sure—
damned
sure—that guard was no longer a threat to anyone.

He was free.

Free.

Free.

He tilted back his head, watching the sun cast her flame-colored skirts upon the sky as she set over his ruined garden. Beyond the theater, between the tops of blackened and burnt trees, one could just make out a glitter that was the mighty Thames.

This had once been a lovely pleasure garden. When he was done with it, it would be a wondrous pleasure garden, even better than before.

But right now they were nearing the theater.

Apollo assumed the blank expression that he wore around the other gardeners—and only just in time. The door flew open and a tiny, gray-haired woman stood in the opening, arms set akimbo on hips.

“What,” she barked, “is that?”

“We have a guest for supper tonight,” Miss Stump
replied, and as she glanced back at him he thought he saw a mischievous glint in her eye. “Indio’s monster, in fact—though Indio now calls him Caliban.”

“Caliban?” Maude narrowed her eyes, cocking her head as she examined him critically. “Aye, I can see that, but is he safe in the theater with us is what I’m wanting to know?”

Apollo felt a tug on his hand. He looked down at Indio, who whispered, “She’s nice. Truly.”

“Don’t fuss, Maude,” Miss Stump murmured.

“He’s my friend,” Indio explained earnestly. “And he fed Daff all his dinner.”

At the mention of her name, the little dog ran over and, growling in what she no doubt considered a ferocious manner, began to worry the ragged hem of Apollo’s breeches.

“Humph,” Maude said, her tone as dry as dust. “If that’s the case, better come inside, all of you.”

Indio bent and rescued Apollo’s breeches by picking up Daffodil, who immediately began bathing his face with her tongue. He laughed and trotted past Maude. His mother gave Apollo an indecipherable look and motioned him in ahead of her. Apollo ducked his head and entered the charred theater, trying to quell his unease. There was no reason to think she’d seen through his subterfuge.

The last time he’d been in the building was on the night the garden had burned. Asa Makepeace was an old friend and the only one Apollo had trusted to keep his whereabouts secret when he’d been rescued from Bedlam. He’d hidden in the garden for only a day before the place had burned down. Then the theater had been smoldering and had stank of smoke and devastation.