Darling Beast (Maiden Lane 7)

Apollo couldn’t help but agree.

“IS WANTONISH A real word?” Lily asked Maude several days later.

She sat at the kitchen-cum-dining-room table while Maude hung their washing next to the fireplace.

“Wantonish,” Maude said, rolling the word around her mouth. She shook her head decisively as she twitched one of Indio’s shirts into place over the drying rack. “No, never heard of it.”

Damn! Lily pouted down at the play she was writing, A Wastrel Reform’d. Wantonish was such a wonderful W word—and she really needed more of those. “Well, does it matter if ’tisn’t a real word? William Shakespeare devised all sorts of new words, didn’t he?”

ast he was wearing breeches.

Apollo pushed past his friend into the room—although not far. There simply wasn’t much space to move. The room was swarming, teeming, breeding with things: towers of stacked books stood on the floor, a table, and even the big four-poster bed in the corner, a life-size portrait of a bearded man leaned against one wall, next to a stuffed raven, which stood next to a teetering pile of chipped, dirty dishes, and next to that was a four-foot-tall model of a ship, rigging and all. Colorful costumes were piled haphazardly in one corner and papers were scattered messily on top of nearly everything.

Makepeace shut his door and a few sheets fluttered to the floor. “What time is it?”

Apollo pointed to a large pink china clock sitting on top of a stack of books on the table before looking closer and realizing the timepiece had stopped. Oh, for God’s sake. He chose a more direct way to show the time by dodging around the table, crossing to the only window, and yanking the heavy velvet curtains open.

A cloud of dust burst from the fabric, dancing prettily in the early morning sunlight streaming into the room.

“Ahhh!” Makepeace reacted as if skewered. He staggered and flung himself back on the bed. “Have you no mercy? It can’t be noon yet.”

Apollo sighed and crossed to his friend. He pushed one leg over ungently and perched on the side of the bed. Then he took out his ever-present notebook and a pencil stub.

He wrote, Who is the woman in the garden? and shoved the notebook in front of Makepeace’s eyes.

Makepeace went cross-eyed for a second before focusing on the writing. “What woman? You’re mad, man, there isn’t any woman in any garden unless you’re talking about Eve and that garden, which would make you Adam and that I’d pay to see, especially if you wore a girdle of oak leaves—”

During this ramble Apollo had taken back the notebook and written more. Now he showed it to the other man, cutting him off mid-rant: Green eyes, overdressed, pretty. Has a little boy named Indio.

“Oh, that woman,” Makepeace said without any show of embarrassment. “Lily Stump. Best comic actress in this generation—perhaps any generation, come to think of it. She’s impossibly good—it’s almost as if she casts a spell over the audience, well certainly the male members. Uses the name Robin Goodfellow on the stage. Wonderful thing, made-up names. Quite useful.”

Apollo gave him a jaundiced look at that. Asa Makepeace was more commonly known as Mr. Harte—though very few knew both of the man’s names. Makepeace had taken the false name when he’d first opened Harte’s Folly nearly ten years ago. Something to do with his family being a religious lot and disapproving of the stage and pleasure gardens in general. Makepeace had been vague about it the one time Apollo had quizzed him on the subject.

Apollo scribbled in the notebook again. Get her out of my garden.

Makepeace’s eyebrows shot up when he read the note. “You know, it’s actually my garden—”

Apollo glared.

Makepeace hastily held up his hands. “Although, of course, you have a significant investment in it.”

Apollo snorted at that. Damned right a significant investment—to wit: all the capital he’d been able to scrape together four and a half years ago. And since he’d spent most of the intervening time ensconced in Bedlam, he hadn’t been able to acquire any other capital or income. His investment in Harte’s Folly was it—his only nest egg and the reason he couldn’t simply flee London. Until Harte’s Folly was once again on its feet and earning, Apollo had no way of getting his money back.

Hence his decision to help by overseeing the landscaping of the ruined garden.

Makepeace let his hands drop and sighed. “But I can’t make Miss Stump leave the garden.”

Apollo didn’t bother writing this time. He just arched an incredulous eyebrow and cocked his head.

“She hasn’t anywhere else to stay.” Makepeace rolled off the bed, suddenly alert.

Apollo waited patiently. One good thing about being mute: silence had a tendency to make others talk.

Makepeace sniffed his underarm, grimaced, and then pulled off his shirt before he broke. “I might’ve stolen her away from Sherwood at the King’s Theatre, which for some reason Sherwood took personally, the ass. He’s made it impossible for her to get work anywhere in London. So when she came to me last week unable to pay the rent on her rooms…”

He shrugged and tossed the dirty shirt in a corner.

Apollo’s eyebrows snapped together and he wrote furiously. I can’t keep in hiding with strangers running about the garden.