Darling Beast (Maiden Lane 7)

This man had wanted to arrest him. To take him back to the hell that was Bedlam. He ought to kill the dragoon—or at the very least render him unable to ever come after him again. He’d known men who would do the same and never think on the matter after.

But Apollo was, for better or for worse, not one of those men. He’d had more than enough violence crammed down his throat in Bedlam. On the whole he preferred more civilized methods of solving dilemmas.

He opened his satchel, took out his notebook, and wrote, I didn’t kill them.

Trevillion, from his position prone on the ground, craned his neck to read and huffed out a breath. “You certainly looked like you’d killed them that morning—you were covered in blood, clutching the knife, and not in your right mind.”

His words were accusatory, but his tone was curious.

Apollo began to feel a small, curling shoot of hope. He shrugged cautiously and wrote, Drunk.

Trevillion’s right leg seemed to be bothering him, for he was kneading the calf muscle. “I’ve seen plenty of men after a night of drinking. Most have some kind of method to their madness. You didn’t make any sense at all.”

Apollo sighed. His scalp stung from the bullet crease, his head hurt, and the blood from the wound was beginning to soak into his shirt. But worse, he could still feel Miss Stump’s cool, slim fingers on his cheek. So close, so intimate. The other man had ruined that fragile moment. She’d looked absolutely terrified when Apollo had warned her away with the boy. He wanted to find her and assure himself that she was safe and unafraid.

That her look of terror had been caused by the situation, not him.

Apollo almost rose and left Trevillion lying there in the mud. But the soldier knew him and had discovered him—somehow that must be dealt with.

And, too, Trevillion was the first in a very long time to actually listen to his side of events about that morning.

So instead of stomping off he picked up his notebook again and wrote carefully, I remember sitting down with my friends, remember drinking the first bottle of wine… and nothing after.

While Trevillion read that, Apollo removed both waistcoat and shirt and wrapped his shirt around his bleeding head like a Turk.

The soldier looked up. “Drugged?”

Apollo tilted his head and shrugged, hopefully conveying, Probably. He’d had time to think the matter over in Bedlam—long, long years of regret and speculation. The idea that the wine had been drugged seemed more than obvious after the fact.

He stood and held out his hand to the other man.

Trevillion looked at his hand so long, Apollo nearly withdrew it.

The other man grimaced at last. “I suppose you could’ve killed me by now anyway.”

Apollo cocked an eyebrow at that, but heaved Trevillion up when he took his hand. The soldier’s body was stiff. He didn’t utter a sound, but it was quite apparent he was in pain.

Trevillion leaned on his cane, but Apollo kept his arm around the other’s shoulder—and since the soldier didn’t complain, it was evident his help was needed. Apollo guided him the few steps to the fallen tree Miss Stump had used as a writing desk. The soldier gingerly lowered himself, wincing as he did so, his right leg held rigid and straight before him.

Trevillion eyed him as Apollo squatted before him. “Why can’t you speak?”

He wrote one word in the notebook. Bedlam.

The soldier frowned over that, his fingers tight on the notebook’s edges. He looked up, his eyes sharp. “If you didn’t kill those men, then someone else did—someone who never paid for his murders. I arrested the wrong man. I condemned the wrong man.”

Apollo simply looked at him, fighting to keep his lip from curling. Four years. Four years of starvation, beatings, and boredom, because some other man had killed his friends. Any regret seemed long past due.

All at once he opened the door and let them in from that black room at the back of his mind:

Hugh Maubry.

Joseph Tate.

William Smithers.

Maubry, with his intestines spilling on the tavern’s sawdust floor. Tate entirely intact, save for a wound high on his chest and three missing fingers. Smithers, his boyish face surprised, eyes open, throat cut.

He hadn’t known them particularly well. Maubry and Tate had been at school with him, Smithers had been some distant relation of Tate’s. They’d been jolly fellows, good for a night of drinking—before he’d woken to a nightmare.