Darling Beast (Maiden Lane 7)

“I’m very glad you can speak again.”

He smiled at her finally and then they were at the theater.

Daffodil scampered to greet them, closely followed by Indio with the news that he and Maude had brought back two large pies and they must wash at once to have them while they were still hot.

Thus instructed, Lily and Caliban washed by the old water barrel.

“Mama,” Indio said as they sat, “the wherryman had only two teeth and he could spit ever so far.”

And he proceeded to tell them all about the wherryman’s unusual and rather disgusting skill.

Caliban expressed suitable interest in this dining conversation and Lily was content to watch the play between the two males. Even Maude unbent enough to give her opinion on long-distance spitting and the number of teeth one usually found in the average wherryman.

Lily almost forgot her nervous tension until after supper, when Maude was clearing the dishes with Indio’s help.

Caliban drew Lily out the theater door, quietly closing it behind them.

“See?” he said, pointing to the North Star. “In another year… or two, you’ll no longer… be able to glimpse… the stars from the garden. The lights… and fireworks will obscure them.”

“So I should treasure the wildness now?” she asked whimsically.

“Perhaps,” he said, drawing her close. “Or… just be glad that you… have this time, hard though… it seems at the moment. After all, most of London has not this… grand view… of the night sky. Only we two.”

“As if we have a world of our own.”

He smiled right before he kissed her, and she knew somehow he felt the same. They were a universe apart, Adam and Eve, in a garden that wasn’t quite Eden.

And then she thought no more for many long minutes as he leisurely kissed her, mouth opened wide over hers as if he would consume her, meld with her and make them one being under the starlit night sky.

When at last he drew back she felt a little dazed, almost off-balance, as if the world had tilted a bit on its axis.

“Tomorrow,” he said, walking backward into the dark. “Shall I… show you the secret island… in the pond?”

“If you must,” she said, the tremble in her voice betraying her discomposure.

The last thing she heard before he disappeared into the garden was the sound of his laughter.

IT WASN’T EVEN dawn when Apollo woke the next morning, but he knew it was already too late.

He could hear people in the garden.

“In th’ gallery, ’e said,” a male voice called.

A disturbed bird shrilled as it flew away.

Another man swore softly.

They were close—very close.

Apollo rolled from his pallet, glad that he’d slept in his clothes, and grabbed his shoes and his pruning knife. There was no door to the alcove in the musician’s gallery where he slept, only the tarp he’d hung over the corner. He slipped, barefoot, to the side, down the gallery.

Just as men appeared in the pink-gray light of morning in his garden. They were closing in on him.

Soldiers. They were soldiers. Red-coated, with bayonets fixed on their guns.

The breath caught in his throat. His right heel skidded on grit-strewn marble, and he beat back a sudden, cowardly wave of panic.

He whirled to his right only to find a soldier within arm’s distance, just a young boy beneath his tall cap, blue, blue eyes wide and frightened.