Darling Beast (Maiden Lane 7) - Page 152

She frowned. “Why would that matter?”

“Because,” he whispered, leaning his cheek against her temple, “remember what I already said? Aristocrats don’t labor. When my grandfather found out, he cut me off. He considered my desire to learn the art of garden planning on a grand scale to be an early sign of the same disease that had driven my father mad. He thought our entire line tainted.”

“Oh, Apollo.” She hadn’t much family herself, but to be so harshly judged simply because one had found an interest in life? It seemed ridiculous.

He nuzzled her hair. “That day I was in London. I met up with three friends. We resolved to spend the night together—two were from school and I’d not seen them in some years. We reserved the back room of a tavern in Whitechapel and ordered wine and food.”

She stirred. “Why such an awful part of London?”

“We hadn’t much money, I’m afraid. The tavern was cheap.”

He stopped speaking, but she could feel his uneven breaths.

“What happened?”

He inhaled. “I don’t know. We shared a bottle—and after that all is blackness. I woke the next morning with my head pounding as if it would split. As soon as I moved I vomited. And then I saw my hands.”

“Apollo?” She tried to twist her face to see him, but he tightened his hold on her.

“I’d been drunk before,” he rasped. “But this was nothing like that. It was as if I were dreaming and couldn’t wake. My hands were covered in blood, I held a knife in my right hand, and there was screaming. I couldn’t stand—when I tried, I fell. And my friends…”

She squeezed his hands. She already knew what had happened to his friends. The scene of the murder had been recounted in countless newssheets—and whether the details had been correct hardly mattered at this moment. They’d been murdered.

Horribly slaughtered.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “so sorry.”

“The soldiers came,” he murmured, his voice flat now. Had he even heard her? “They took me away in chains—on my ankles, wrists, and neck, for they were afraid of me. I was taken to Newgate to await trial. I vomited again and again and was half out of my mind for several days. I don’t remember much of Newgate. But I remember Bedlam.”

She raised his hand, pressing her lips to his palm to keep from blurting that he didn’t have to tell her. For she was very much afraid that he did have to tell her—not for her, but for himself.

“It…” He panted for a second, then burst. “The smell. Like a stable, only the manure is from humans, not horses. They chained me there as well, for I raged, in fear and desperation, for the first days. Until I was too weakened by lack of food and water.”

She sobbed, turning swiftly. She could not bear to hear of this—such a strong, good man brought low. Chained like a beast by petty people who didn’t understand him. She knelt on the bed, wrapping her arms around his head, bringing it to her breast, and only then did she feel the wet trails of tears on his face.

He kissed her between her breasts, a sweet brush of his mouth. “Artemis came when she could. She brought me food and gave all her coin to my attendants—more jailers, in truth—to make sure they wouldn’t beat me to death while she wasn’t there. My father died a year before the murders and our mother passed away in the first month I was in Bedlam. No doubt my incarceration hastened her death. My sister, my brave, proud sister, was forced to become a companion to our cousin.”

His voice broke.

She smoothed her palms over his great head, running her fingers through his hair, trying to comfort though she knew she must be failing.

He turned his face, laying his cheek against her chest. “At least Artemis had a roof over her head and food aplenty. I lay awake for nights after I received word of our mother’s death, fearful that Artemis would be tossed into the streets. I could do nothing. Nothing. She was—is—my sister. I should’ve been able to protect her, to care for her and make sure she never had to worry, and yet I was helpless. Hardly a man at all.”

“Shh,” Lily murmured, pressing kisses against his hair. She could taste her own tears on her lips now. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Apollo—her Apollo—should’ve had to endure such inhumanity.

“The things they did there…” His voice was hoarse, broken. “There was a woman,” he whispered. “A poor mad thing, but she sang in such a lovely voice. One night the keepers came to do her harm and I called to them, mocking them, and they came to me instead.”

She stiffened, her throat clenching in fear. Oh, her brave Apollo! How noble and how foolish to draw the ire of his jailers.

“They beat me until I passed out,” he said. “That was when I lost my voice. Afterwards—after I was rescued by the Duke of Wakefield, after, when I lay abed, regaining my strength, though not my voice, I thought of her. I went back one night, but she was already gone. Some fever had taken her. Perhaps it was for the best.”

She looked down and saw that he’d closed his eyes, though his brow was knit fiercely.

“But I made sure that guard—the one who’d meant to harm her, the one who’d led my beating—could harm no one ever again. I dragged him from that place and gave him to a press-gang. Wherever he is now, he’s not around women. I never would’ve done that before. Bedlam changed me.”

They had taken away something very important from him when he’d been made helpless. It should’ve broken him, being forced into chains. Yet it hadn’t.

Even in her grief she was amazed.

Tags: Elizabeth Hoyt Maiden Lane Romance
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