Duke of Midnight

Page 6

She glanced at him quickly, startled. “Do I?”
He bowed his head, murmuring quietly, “You seem an intelligent woman. You know I’m courting your cousin. Therefore, my offer is but a way to gracefully meet her again tonight.”
There didn’t seem much to say to that, so Artemis remained quiet as they gathered the three glasses of punch.
“Tell me, Miss Greaves,” the duke said as they began the trek back across the ballroom. “Do you approve of my courtship of your cousin?”
“I can’t imagine that my approval matters one way or the other, Your Grace,” Artemis clipped out, unaccountably irritated. Was he patronizing her?
“Can’t you?” One corner of his mouth flicked up. “But you see I grew up in a house full of women. I don’t discount the weight of a whispered confidence in a feminine boudoir. Several judicious words from you in your cousin’s ear could scupper my suit.”
She looked at him in astonishment. “Your Grace assigns me more power than in truth I have.”
“You’re modest.”
“Truly I am not.”
“Hmm.” They were nearing Penelope who was still in conversation with Scarborough. Wakefield’s eyes narrowed. “But you haven’t answered my question: will you back my suit?”
She glanced at him. In her position she ought to tread carefully. “Do you have an affection for Penelope?”
“Does that matter to Lady Penelope?” He arched an eyebrow pointedly.
“No.” She lifted her chin. “But I find, Your Grace, that it matters to me.”
Penelope turned and, catching sight of them, broke into a gorgeous smile. “Oh, Artemis, finally. I vow I’m quite parched.” She took her cup from Artemis’s hands and looked up through her eyelashes at Wakefield. “Have you come to scold me some more, Your Grace?”
He bowed and murmured something over her hand.
Artemis took a step back. Then another. The tableau—Penelope, Wakefield, and Scarborough—were the players in this theater.
She merely swept the stage.
She tore her gaze from the trio and looked about the room. Several chairs had been set against the wall for the older guests and such. She caught sight of a familiar face and began moving in that direction.
“Would you like some punch, ma’am?”
“Oh, how kind!” Bathilda Picklewood was a stout lady with a round, pink face framed by gray curls. In her lap was a small black-white-and-brown spaniel, alertly watching the room. “I’d just begun to think that I ought to go in search of punch.”
Artemis held her hand out to the spaniel—Mignon—as Miss Picklewood took a sip. Mignon licked Artemis’s fingers politely. “Lady Phoebe isn’t here?”
Miss Picklewood shook her head regretfully. “You’re aware that she doesn’t attend crowded events. I’m here tonight with my good friend Mrs. White—she’s gone to repair a bit of lace on her costume.”
Artemis nodded as she settled next to the older lady. She did know that the duke’s youngest sister didn’t usually attend crowded events, but she’d hoped anyway. A sudden thought occurred to her. “But Lady Phoebe will be at her brother’s house party, surely?”
“Oh, yes, she’s quite looking forward to it, though I’m afraid the duke isn’t.” Miss Picklewood chuckled. “He hates house parties—really any party. Says it takes him away from more important things. I saw you with Maximus earlier.”
It took Artemis a moment to remember that Maximus was the Christian name of the Duke of Wakefield. Funny to think of a duke having a Christian name, but it suited him. She could see him as a ruthless Roman general. But of course Miss Picklewood would call Wakefield by his given name. She was a distant relation to the duke, and she lived with him and Lady Phoebe as a sort of companion for the young girl.
Artemis looked at the other woman with new interest. Miss Picklewood must be one of the women his house was full of. “He was helping me bring the punch to Penelope.”
“Mmm.”
“Miss Picklewood…”
“Yes?” The older lady looked at her with bright blue eyes.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard how you came to live with the duke and Lady Phoebe?”
“Oh, that’s simple enough, my dear,” Miss Picklewood said. “It was after the death of both of their parents.”
“Yes?” Artemis frowned at her lap. “I didn’t remember that.”
“Well, it was before your time, wasn’t it? Seventeen twenty-one, it was. Poor Hero had just turned eight and Phoebe was only a babe, not quite a year. When I heard—I was staying with an aunt of mine—I knew I had to go. Who else would look after those children? Neither the duke nor poor, dear Mary—Maximus’s mother, you know—had living siblings. No, I came down at once and found the house in chaos. The servants were all in shock, the men of business were nattering on about the lands and money and succession and not noticing that the boy had hardly risen from his bed. I took charge of the girls and helped Maximus as best I could. He was stubborn even then, I’m afraid. After a while he said he was the duke now and didn’t need a nanny or even a governess. Quite rude, but then he’d lost his parents. Awful shock.”
“Hmm.” Artemis looked over to where the duke was standing near Penelope, his eyes half hooded and impossible to read. “I suppose that explains quite a bit.”
“Oh, yes,” Miss Picklewood said, following her gaze. “It does indeed.”
They sat for a moment in silence before Miss Picklewood roused herself. “So you see, it can be quite a good life, nonetheless.”
Artemis blinked, not following her companion’s train of thought. “I’m sorry?”
“Being a lady dependent on the kindness of relatives,” Miss Picklewood said gently and quite devastatingly. “We might not have children of our own blood, but if one is lucky one can find others to help through life.” She patted Artemis’s knee. “It’ll all come right in the end.”
Artemis held very still because she had a quite mad urge to tear sweet Miss Picklewood’s hand from her leg. To stand up and scream. To run through the ballroom, out the front door, and keep running until she felt cool grass beneath her feet again.
This couldn’t be her life. It simply couldn’t be.
She did none of that, of course. Instead she nodded pleasantly and asked Miss Picklewood if she’d like another glass of punch.
Chapter Three
Now one hot day whilst hunting, King Herla came upon a clearing with a cool, deep pool. He dismounted and knelt to drink from the pool, and as he did so he saw reflected in the water a strange little man riding on a billy goat.
“Good day to you, King of the Britons,” called the little man.
“And who might you be?” asked King Herla.
“Why, I am King of the Dwarfs,” said the dwarf, “and would like to make you a bargain.”…
—from The Legend of the Herla King
Artemis drifted up into consciousness from a dream of a dappled forest and lay remembering. It had been cool and quiet, the moss and damp leaves under her bare feet muffling her footfalls. A hound or maybe several padded behind her, keeping her company. She’d come on a clearing through the trees, and anticipation had made her breath catch. Something was there, some creature that really shouldn’t have been in any English forest, and she wanted to see—
Someone was in her room.
Artemis froze, listening. Her room at Brightmore House was at the back of the house, small, but comfortable. In the morning a maid came to light the fire, but otherwise no one disturbed her here. Whoever was in her room was not the maid.
Perhaps she’d imagined it. The dream had been quite visceral.
She opened her eyes. Faint moonlight from the one window showed her the familiar shadows of her room: the chair by her bed, the old dresser by the window, the small mantelpiece—
One of the shadows detached itself from beside the mantel. The shadow coalesced into a figure, large and looming, his head distorted by a floppy hat and the outsized nose on his mask. The Ghost of St. Giles.
He was rumored to rape and ravage, but bizarrely, she felt no fear. Instead a strange elation filled her. Perhaps she was still enthralled by her dream.
Still, best to make sure.
“Have you come to kidnap me?” Her voice emerged a whisper, though she hadn’t consciously thought to lower it. “If so, I hope you’ll do me the courtesy of letting me put on a wrap first.”
He snorted and moved to her dresser. “Why are your rooms apart from the family?” He, too, whispered.
He hadn’t spoken in St. Giles, and she really hadn’t expected him to answer. Curiosity made her stir from her nest of covers, sitting up.
It was chilly with the fire dead and she shivered as she wrapped her arms about her knees. “Room.”
He paused in whatever he was doing at her dresser and his head turned, the mask a menacing profile. “What?”
She shrugged, though his back was to her and she at least could hardly see in the dim light. “There’s only the one room.”
He turned back to the dresser. “You’re a servant, then.”
Hard to tell from a whisper, but she rather thought he meant to provoke her.
“I’m Lady Penelope’s cousin. Well,” she amended, “first cousin twice removed, strictly speaking.”
“Then why do they put you here, away at the back of the house?” He crouched and pulled out the bottom drawer of her dresser.
“Haven’t you heard of a poor relation?” She craned her neck, trying to see what he was doing. He appeared to be pawing through her stockings. “You’re a fair distance from St. Giles tonight.”
He grunted and shoved the drawer in, moving to the one above it. That one held her chemises, all two of them; she wore the third.
She cleared her throat. “Thank you.”
He stilled at that, his head still bent over her drawer. “What?”
“You saved my life the other night.” She pursed her lips, considering. “Or at the very least my virtue. And that of my cousin’s. I can’t think of why you might have done it, but thank you.”
He turned at that. “Why I might have done it? You were imperiled. Wouldn’t any man help?”
She smiled ruefully—and a little sadly. “In my experience, no.”
She thought he’d simply go back to searching her room, but he paused. “Then I’m sorry for your experience.”
And the odd thing was that she thought he meant it. She pleated the coverlet between her fingers. “Why do you do it?”
“Do what?” He rose and began on the top drawer.
That held her few personal possessions: old letters from Apollo from when he’d been sent away to school, a miniature of Papa, Mama’s earbobs, the gilt flaking off and one of the wires broken. Nothing of interest, except to her. She supposed she should feel resentment that a stranger was laying hands on her meager possessions, but really, in the larger scope of all the things that had happened in her life, this was quite a small indignity.
He stilled. “You’ve half a loaf of bread in here and two apples. Do they not feed you that you must steal food?”
She stiffened. “It’s not for me. And it’s not stealing—not really. Cook knows I took them.”
He grunted and resumed searching.
“Why do you don the disguise of a harlequin actor and run about St. Giles?” She cocked her head, watching him. His movements were economical. Precise. Yet, strangely graceful for a man. “You know, there are those who think you a ravisher of women—and worse.”
“I’m not.” He shut the drawer and glanced about her room. Had years spent hunting in the night made him able to see in the dark? She could hardly make out the outlines of her room and it was her own. He chose the old wardrobe next, a piece that had been replaced with something newer and finer in one of Brightmore House’s guest rooms. He opened the door, peering in. “I’ve never violated any woman.”