Darling Beast (Maiden Lane 7)

Nine months later the queen was brought to bed with the king’s firstborn. But the child was horribly deformed, with the head, shoulders, and tail of a bull, and the remainder of his body human, the skin overall as black as ebony. When the queen looked between her bloodied thighs at the monster she’d birthed, she fell insensible, never to fully recover her wits thereafter…

—From The Minotaur

Apollo turned slowly and stared blankly at Miss Stump. He’d been so enthralled by the wit of the play—a play he suspected she’d written—that he hadn’t heard the door open until it was too late. Perhaps if he made no reaction to her words…

She huffed and crossed her arms. “I’m not an idiot, you know. If you’re reading that”—she tilted her chin at the sheet of paper still in his hands—“you’re no half-wit. Who are you and why have you been pretending to be mute and a fool?”

Well, it’d been a last-ditch effort anyway—and not a very good one. He let the paper drop to the small side table and crossed his own arms, looking back at her. Whatever she might think, he really couldn’t talk.

She frowned—rather ferociously for such a small thing. “Tell me. Are you in hiding from creditors or the like? What’s your name?”

That was perilously close to the truth. Best to divert her before her imagination ran wild. He sighed and uncrossed his arms to draw out his notebook. He flipped to a blank page and wrote, I can’t speak.

He handed the notebook to her.

She glanced at it and snorted. “Truly?”

He nodded once and held out his hand for the notebook.

She gave it to him. “Then tell me your name at least.”

He wrote again and showed her the notebook. Caliban will do.

She studied his writing, her brows knit. “You really can’t speak?” She looked up. Her voice was softer now, more curious. She handed him back the notebook.

He shook his head as he wrote. I mean you and yours no harm.

When he glanced up again, she was watching him intently, and for a moment he stilled. Her lichen-green eyes reflected the candlelight, the light flickering deep within their depths, and it struck him suddenly and without warning how beautiful she was. Not in the common way, with soft cheeks and rounded mouth, but with a sharp little chin and intelligence that fairly radiated out of those light-green eyes.

If only this were another life—one in which he might impress her with his title or his own verbal wit.

He blinked and looked down at the notebook in his hand. The page had wrinkled beneath the clench of his fingers. He was in hiding, his title of no consequence under the circumstances, and he couldn’t speak.

She’d tilted her head to read the notebook, seemingly unaware of his thoughts, and for a moment she was very close to him.

He inhaled the scent of her hair: orange and clove.

She glanced up and took a step back, suddenly wary. “You still haven’t said why you’re here.”

He sighed. Indio was correct: I’m a gardener.

She took the notebook to read his writing; then, before he thought to stop her, she was flipping back through the pages.

“You’re more than a simple gardener, aren’t you?” She sank into the old settee, seemingly not noticing how the thing rocked unsteadily beneath her.

Apollo wasn’t going to risk the fragile piece of furniture beneath his weight. He crossed to the round table and brought back one of the chairs. She was examining his sketch of the pond with the bridge in the background when he returned. He placed the chair across from her and sat.

She turned the page slowly, tracing her fingers over the next sketch: a study of an ornamental waterfall. “These are lovely. Will the garden really look like this when you’ve finished with it?”

He waited until she glanced at him, then nodded.

Her brows knit as she turned another page. The next one showed a wide, craggy oak at the foot of the bridge. “I don’t understand. Where did Mr. Harte find you? I think I would’ve known if there were a mute gardener of your talents in London.”

There was no way to answer that without giving himself away. She waited a beat and then turned the page again. The drawing here caught her eye, and she pivoted the notebook, examining the sketch. “What is it?”

Parallel lines took up both pages across the open notebook, some intersecting, some leading nowhere. A few of the lines were wavy. Here and there a circle or square sat in spaces between the lines.

He leaned closer, inhaling orange and clove, and wrote along one side of the page, next to the sketch, A maze.