Darling Beast (Maiden Lane 7)

“You mean a great deal to me,” he said, low.

“Do we?” she asked, her mouth tight. “Truly? And yet you left us—me—without word or warning.”

“Lily…”

“I thought we were friends.”

He rose in one movement. “I thought we were more than friends.”

Her eyes widened and she backed up a step, seemingly without conscious thought, as he advanced on her, until her bottom hit the door.

He should be gentler, should approach her with caution. Even now she might be afraid of what had been said about him. But he was weary—so very, very weary—of things being taken from him.

He wasn’t going to lose her as well. Not if he could help it.

He halted inches from her. “Weren’t we, Lily? More than friends?”

Her lips parted as her breath quickened, but she showed no fear of him. “You know we were.”

“Then that hasn’t changed.”

She laughed, incredulous. “Are you insane?”

“That was the charge.”

“Don’t hide behind quips.” She shook her head impatiently. “Everything has changed. You… you’re an aristocrat. A viscount—someday a bloody earl. I’m the bastard daughter of a drunken actress and an illiterate porter.”

rsquo;d hardly begun on a rather watery beef broth when Mrs. Jellett, a lady of mature years in a frock of a startling yellow-green shade, leaned forward and said loudly, “Have you heard aught of your mad cousin, Mr. Greaves? I understand that he barely escaped capture by soldiers in the destroyed Harte’s Folly pleasure garden.”

Mr. William Greaves’s mouth thinned into nonexistence and anyone could see that he did not like the subject—which of course hardly dissuaded his guests.

“ ’Tis said he killed three men with an enormous knife.” Mrs. Warner shivered dramatically. “The very thought that a murderous madman is on the loose is enough to make one want to hide under the bed.”

“Or in the bed?” the duke murmured over his glass of wine.

“Are you offering bedchamber protection, Your Grace?” Lady Herrick asked lazily.

The duke bowed from the waist. “For you, madam, I would make the sacrifice.”

“Such bravery,” cried Moll from the other side of the duke. “I vow ’tis enough to send a lady into a paroxysm.”

That comment prompted a round of titters from the ladies.

Lily stared at her plate, trying not to feel any sympathy for Caliban—Apollo—but it was hard. The others talked about him as if he were a maddened beast to be shot on sight. Would she have felt that way if she’d only heard the stories and not known the man beforehand? Would she have condemned a stranger at once without benefit of trial?

Probably. Fear had a tendency to drive away the courtesy of civilization.

Mrs. Jellett was still curious about the original topic of conversation. She addressed George Greaves. “Tell me, Mr. Greaves, was your cousin always mad? Did he do anything bizarre or cruel as a boy?”

Mr. William Greaves spoke up from the head of the table, his voice grim. “I fear, madam, that that side of the family has always had strange turns. My brother, alas, was prone to overexcitement followed by melancholies from which he could hardly rouse himself. A pity”—he took a sip of his wine—“that as eldest the title naturally falls to his side.”

“ ’Twould be better,” his son joined in, “if our English great families could set aside the titles from those members who, because of some disease or defect of the brain, are rendered feeble or otherwise weaken the lineages of the aristocracy.”

“If that were done,” drawled the Duke of Montgomery, “half the titles of England would go obsolete due to brain weakness. I know my own grandfather fancied himself a cowherd at times.”

“Really, Your Grace?” John leaned forward to see down the table. “Not a shepherd or goatherd?”

“I’m told he was quite specific in his mania and only cows would do,” His Grace replied. “Of course there were those who said his affliction was the direct result of a certain type of disease, which I won’t mention in the present company as it is of an indelicate nature.”