Darling Beast

by Elizabeth Hoyt

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” the duke snapped, for once discomposed. He thrust out a hand. “Get on!”

  HE’D SAID THAT he loved her.

  Lily stared at the doorway, not sure she should believe what had just happened.

  He loved her.

  What did that mean to him? Was he going to offer to keep her? Or was it something he said to every woman he bedded?

  But no. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she disregarded it. Apollo was a good man. If he said he loved her—loved her—then he did.

  She sat in the bed, entirely nude, the coverlet pulled over her breasts, and felt a strange, tenuous feeling: happiness. Ridiculous. She didn’t even know if he’d escaped—and she had more than enough proof from Richard and Kitty’s marriage that aristocracy and actresses couldn’t mix. But…

  He would escape. He was strong and determined and he was Apollo. He’d battled past the footmen and butler and the other gentlemen guests were certainly no match for him. He’d escape and she’d meet him in the garden tomorrow, and…

  And what?

  Perhaps they could find a way. He wasn’t the usual aristocrat, after all, and… and she loved him.

  She shivered, thinking about it, such a risk, not only for herself, but also for Indio and Maude. Could she risk their happiness as well?

  “He has good taste at least.”

  She started at the strange voice and saw George Greaves stroll into the room as if he were entering an afternoon tea party.

  She stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”

  “As well you should, you little whore,” he said without any heat at all. He closed the door behind him.

  Lily fisted her hands, prepared to jump out of the bed and run—nude, if she had to. “Get out of my room.”

  “My room, actually—or my father’s, which amounts to the same thing,” George said, taking a chair and placing it so he faced the bed. “You, Miss Goodfellow, have abused my father’s hospitality.”

  “In what way?”

  He crossed his legs and she noticed that he was completely dressed in breeches, waistcoat, coat, and immaculately tied neckcloth. What had he been doing as his guests slept? “You’ve been conspiring with my cousin, it seems, against my family.”

  “Not conspiring,” she said, hoping against hope that this might be explained away. “He didn’t murder those men. He just wants to prove it.”

  “Do you really expect me to believe that?” he asked with clear contempt. “As I said, conspiring with my cousin, Lord Kilbourne, perhaps to kill us all in our beds.”

  “What?” She stared at the man. Did George Greaves truly believe that Apollo had come here to murder everyone in their beds? He must realize how ridiculous that sounded.

  “He’s a madman—everyone knows it and I’m tired of him dragging down the family name.” He looked at her with a reddened face, his eyes bulging.

  Oh, dear. Perhaps George was the real madman in the family. Lily put on her most fluffy-headed female face. “I’m afraid I don’t understand all these matters and it’s not quite nice for you to be in here when I haven’t even my chemise on. If you’ll just go—”

  “My father should’ve been the viscount, not my mad uncle or his bloodthirsty son,” George said, and Lily wondered if he’d even heard her. “Ridiculous that the family line has sunk into the mire of insanity and mental disease. I’m going to put a stop to this outrage once and for all.”

  Lily blinked and then shook her head, taking a deep breath. Fluffy-headedness hadn’t worked. Perhaps bluntness would. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because,” George said precisely, “your connection to my cousin has provided me with an opportunity to end all this. You’re going to help me right the wrong. Kilbourne has escaped into the night, I have no idea where, but I’m sure you do.”

  “I don’t,” she said immediately. “I’m sorry, but I don’t. He’s probably decided to flee England.”

  His smile wasn’t amused at all. “No, I doubt that very much. And it would be a very great pity if you don’t know where he’s headed, because if you don’t then I have no further use for you—or your supposed son.”

  “What…” She swallowed, her throat thickening. “What do you mean?”

  “I believe you call him Indio? A boy of about seven with one blue eye and one green.”

  “How do you know about Indio?” she breathed, bewildered.

  For a moment George’s eyes flickered to the side before he glared at her. “Eyes just like my good friend Lord Ross.”

  She simply stared at him. She ought to get up, dress, and leave the room. Walk out of here and forget everything he’d insinuated. But there was Indio.

  Indio.

  “Have you met his wife?” he asked softly. “Daughter of a rather wealthy marquis. Ross was ecstatic to’ve caught such a wife. Mind, a large portion of her dowry is tied to her eldest son’s inheriting his name. He won’t be very pleased to find that his perfect little lordling has been displaced by a child got on an actress. God only knows what Ross would do if he found that his eldest son still lives. Really, I wouldn’t give tuppence for the boy’s life.”

  She sat in silence, her world crashing down around her ears, because there wasn’t any choice, any hope for her and Apollo. Probably there never had been any hope. It’d been the dream of a silly girl, easily burned away with the rising of the sun.

  He’d said he loved her. Something in her clenched, sharp and painful, as if she’d been cut deep inside and the blood were slowly leaking out where no one could see.

  But that didn’t matter anymore.

  She was a mother and Indio was her son.

  She lifted her chin and looked George Greaves dead in the eye, and she was oddly proud that there was no tremor in her voice when she said, “What do you want me to do?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ariadne stayed by the monster’s side for days as he recovered from his injuries, and despite his fearsome aspect she found him gentle and kind. Around them the garden was lovely, but terribly silent. One day Theseus burst from the maze, dirtied and smeared with dried blood. “Get thee away from the beast!” he cried to Ariadne, brandishing his sword. “For I shall not be routed this time. I shall not rest until I have severed this terrible monster’s head from its body.”…

  —From The Minotaur

  It was near six of the clock the next evening when Lily cautiously approached the pond in Harte’s Folly. The sky was just beginning to take on a mauve cast as the sun floated low in the sky, and the birds had started their evening chorus. It was almost lovely, and for the first time she saw how the garden would look one day. Most of the dead trees and hedges had been cleared and in the few days she’d been away the remaining plants had burst into the light green of spring.

  Of life.

  Except she wasn’t walking to life. She marched to death with a gun at her back.

  Behind her, George Greaves’s tread was heavy and ominous. He was probably stamping on the new grass she took care to avoid.

  In the last day and a half he’d not left her side except when she’d had to relieve herself, and even then he’d stood close outside the shut door. If she’d disliked him before—and she had—she’d grown to loathe him in the last thirty-six hours. He was a truly disgusting man without, as far as she could see, any redeeming quality. He’d even refused to pay the wherryman a fair price when they’d made the garden docks.

  A nasty, petty, small-minded man, but sadly a dangerous one as well.

  She was going to betray her love to this man.

  “Make no sound, now,” he murmured in a voice she’d come to despise. “We’ll wait for your lover and then you’ll be free to go.”

  She doubted that, but she didn’t have much choice, either, so she kept walking until she saw the glint of blue water.

  Lily stopped. “Here. This is where I agreed to meet him.”

  “Truly?” George glanced around, his lips twisted in
a sneer. “Well, I suppose mud must seem romantic to the insane—and their common lovers.”

  She rolled her eyes, not bothering anymore to protest Apollo’s innocence. She’d begun to suspect that George knew full well that Apollo hadn’t killed his friends.

  “Just stand where you are,” he instructed, backing behind some obscuring bushes. “And don’t turn to look at me. You give any hint that I’m here and I’ll shoot first him and then you, do you understand?”

  She folded her arms. “Quite.”

  There was a small silence in which she thought she heard the call of seagulls by the Thames.

  “Where is your son?” he asked with horrible casualness. “You left him with a nursemaid, didn’t you?”

  She didn’t bother replying. All this would be for naught if she simply gave away Indio’s location.

  He chuckled softly at her silence. “We’ll discuss it later, you and I, never fear.”

  Something seemed to move behind them and she turned her head to look.

  All was quiet.

  “A dog or some such,” George said, which was ridiculous. She would’ve known had a stray dog been living in the garden.

  Then came the sure tread of a man who knew his way about the garden.

  Lily straightened.

  He was nearing.

  Damn it, he was early.

  George cocked his gun.

  She swallowed, though she didn’t look at him. “I thought you meant to arrest him.”

  “He’s a dangerous murderer,” he whispered back. “Better to be safe than sorry. Don’t worry. I’m a good shot. You won’t be hurt.”

  Not externally, anyway, she thought, and took a step backward, toward him.

  “What are you doing?” he hissed. “Stay where you are.”

  She took another step closer to George, just as Apollo came into sight. He wore a plain brown suit and black tricorn and he looked like a man of middling means, perhaps a doctor or the owner of a shop or a head gardener. Someone from her own station in life.

  Someone she could love and live with until she and he grew old.

  He looked up and smiled at her in that moment and she whirled and caught George’s pistol, pulling it down, away from her lover, her love, her life.

  Pulling it toward her own breast.

  The shot, when it came, was deafening.

  APOLLO SAW LILY turn and wrestle with George Greaves.

  Saw the spark and the plume of black smoke.

  Saw her stagger back and fall, dead.

  Dead.

  Strangely, he didn’t hear a thing.

  George turned and saw him and raised the pistol, but he’d already used the one shot to kill Lily, his beloved Lily, so Apollo batted it aside. The pistol went spinning into the underbrush as Apollo raised his hand and plowed it into George’s face.

  He didn’t hear that, either. Or feel it.

  Just as well.

  George went down and Apollo followed, beating into that face, because it was the last thing Lily had seen—the face of her killer—and he meant to destroy it.

  Blood spattered and George opened his mouth, his teeth scarlet-stained. He might’ve been saying something, might’ve been begging, but since Apollo couldn’t hear, it didn’t matter.

  Something crunched beneath his knuckles, and Apollo realized he was grinning, his lips pulled back from his bared teeth, turned into the monster Lily had first thought him.

  It didn’t matter.

  Nothing mattered anymore.

  George spat blood and a bit of broken white that might’ve been a tooth and Apollo split his ear.

  But the eyes were still there—the eyes that had looked on Lily’s death—and he aimed his fist toward them.

  “Apollo.” The voice was Lily’s, but that couldn’t be, because… because…

  Her hands, white and soft, wrapped about his bloodied knuckles and gently stopped him.

  Sound suddenly rushed back in.

  George was breathing with a harsh rasp, Apollo was making a noise like a sob, and Lily…

  Dear God, Lily was saying his name.

  He looked up and saw her face, blackened on one side with flecks of blood high on one cheek.

  He let the front of George’s shirt go and his head thudded against the ground.

  Apollo turned on his knees and cupped her sweet face with his unclean hands. “How?” he choked. “I saw you die. I saw you fall dead to the ground.”

  “The pistol fired over my shoulder,” she whispered. “Apollo, what have you done to your poor hands?”

  “God!” he cried, pulling her face down to his, kissing her nose and cheeks and eyelids, making sure she still lived and breathed. “Dear God, Lily, never do that to me again.”

  “I won’t, love.” Tears were making muddy streaks through the gunpowder on her cheek. “Ow, that stings.”

  Richard Perry, Baron Ross stepped out from the bushes. “Get away from her.”

  “Sod off,” Apollo retorted, possibly because he was too tired to be surprised.

  “Get away from her or I’ll shoot her.” Ross, of course, had not one but two pistols.

  Reluctantly Apollo stood and took a step away from Lily. “We really must talk, darling, about the sort of riffraff you bring to secret meetings.”

  “I didn’t know he was there,” Lily said grumpily.

  “Did you really think my good friend George wouldn’t tell me about my son?” Ross said. “Jesus, he said this would be easy—capture you, Kilbourne, and get my son. Look at this mess now. Have you killed George?”

  “Sadly, no,” Apollo replied without glancing at the man on the ground. He could hear his cousin’s harsh breathing. “Put the damned gun down.” He was becoming tired of people pointing guns at his Lily.

  Ross ignored him, his gaze worryingly focused on Lily. “Where is he? Where is Indio?”

  And before Apollo could think of what to do, Lily opened her mouth.

  Chapter Twenty

  Then the monster rose, his massive shoulders bunched, his hands fisted, his bull’s head lowered, the two curved horns pointed menacingly at Theseus. The lad didn’t hesitate. With a warlike cry he ran at the monster, his sword raised. The monster did not move until the last moment, and then with a brutally swift toss of his head he impaled the youth upon his horns…

  —From The Minotaur

  “Are you insane?” Lily asked Ross pleasantly. “Do you really think I’d tell you where he is after you beat his mother, my dearest friend, to death?”

  “Tell me or I’ll shoot you,” he replied, not very originally, but it still put a thrill of fear into Apollo’s heart.

  “Lily,” Apollo said gently.

  Lily crossed her arms. “Go ahead, then. I’ll not give my son up to a rat like you.”

  “Don’t you mean my son?” he snapped back, stupid and irate.

  Apollo lost what little patience he still had. “Damn it, Montgomery, aren’t you ever going to act?”

  “Oh, fine,” the duke replied sulkily from behind him and shot Richard in the leg.

  Richard fell to the ground, moaning.

  Lily blinked. “What—?”

  The duke glanced at his pistol and frowned. “Pulls a bit to the right. I was aiming for his groin.” He toed Ross’s pistols away from the writhing man and turned to Apollo. “I’ll have you know this entire business has been a loss to me—a dead loss.”

  Lily blinked again and looked uncertainly at Apollo. “How—?”

  Apollo pulled her into his arms. He was still quite shaken from having nearly lost her, and the warmth of her body was a balm. “Shh. There’s no point in trying to get him to make sense. Best to just let him ramble. I learned that on the carriage ride to London.”

  “He was such a lovely pigeon,” Montgomery said mournfully, watching Richard writhe on the ground. “A secret marriage, a hidden heir. I could’ve milked him for years.”

  “You were going to blackmail him for money?” Lily asked.

>   “Money?” The duke looked affronted. “Nothing so crass. Information, knowledge, leverage. That’s the sort of stuff I adore. But”—Montgomery sighed gustily, folding his arms with his pistol dangling from one hand—“my sentimental heart got the better of me. That, and I really do want this garden finished. Kilbourne is the most imaginative gardener I’ve ever encountered.”

  Lily’s eyes widened and she turned to Apollo as if only just now realizing something. “You brought him with you to meet me?”

  He shrugged. “It seemed like a good precaution. After all, I intended to flee with you from England and I wasn’t sure if you’d be followed here.”

  “But I thought you didn’t trust him,” she complained.

  “I don’t, mostly.” He grimaced. “But he did help me get away from my uncle’s house.”

  “And I shot Ross just now, too,” the duke said brightly. “Shall I shoot Greaves as well? No doubt he deserves it and I’ve another pistol in my pocket.”

  At which point Edwin Stump burst from the shrubbery, followed closely by the Duke of Wakefield and Captain Trevillion. All three were holding pistols and breathing rather hard.

  Apollo blinked.

  “Are we late?” Edwin asked, panting.

  “Yes,” Lily replied from Apollo’s arms. She sounded rather querulous.

  “Good Lord, His Grace the Ass hiding in the bushes,” Apollo muttered. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  “Ah, Kilbourne, you’ve regained your voice,” Wakefield drawled. “Pity, but I presume my wife is thrilled. And you are?” He looked pointedly at Montgomery.

  Montgomery bowed mockingly, still holding his pistol. “Montgomery. And you’re Wakefield, yes?”

  One of Wakefield’s eyebrows rose. “Quite.” He turned to Apollo. “I was told that we were here to save you. I see that I’ve been sadly misinformed.”

  “You would’ve saved him had my brother been on time,” Lily said, glaring at Edwin.

  “I’ve been shot,” Ross moaned from the ground.

  George merely groaned.

  Wakefield turned very slowly to Ross and said gently, “Lord Ross, I believe? Your son from your first marriage is playing with my wife at the moment. She seems to have grown quite fond of him in a very short time. Felicitations on finding him alive and well. It’s not every day that one discovers one’s heir.”