Darling Beast (Maiden Lane 7)

“He’s a madman—everyone knows it and I’m tired of him dragging down the family name.” He looked at her with a reddened face, his eyes bulging.

Oh, dear. Perhaps George was the real madman in the family. Lily put on her most fluffy-headed female face. “I’m afraid I don’t understand all these matters and it’s not quite nice for you to be in here when I haven’t even my chemise on. If you’ll just go—”

“My father should’ve been the viscount, not my mad uncle or his bloodthirsty son,” George said, and Lily wondered if he’d even heard her. “Ridiculous that the family line has sunk into the mire of insanity and mental disease. I’m going to put a stop to this outrage once and for all.”

Lily blinked and then shook her head, taking a deep breath. Fluffy-headedness hadn’t worked. Perhaps bluntness would. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because,” George said precisely, “your connection to my cousin has provided me with an opportunity to end all this. You’re going to help me right the wrong. Kilbourne has escaped into the night, I have no idea where, but I’m sure you do.”

“I don’t,” she said immediately. “I’m sorry, but I don’t. He’s probably decided to flee England.”

His smile wasn’t amused at all. “No, I doubt that very much. And it would be a very great pity if you don’t know where he’s headed, because if you don’t then I have no further use for you—or your supposed son.”

“What…” She swallowed, her throat thickening. “What do you mean?”

“I believe you call him Indio? A boy of about seven with one blue eye and one green.”

“How do you know about Indio?” she breathed, bewildered.

For a moment George’s eyes flickered to the side before he glared at her. “Eyes just like my good friend Lord Ross.”

She simply stared at him. She ought to get up, dress, and leave the room. Walk out of here and forget everything he’d insinuated. But there was Indio.

Indio.

“Have you met his wife?” he asked softly. “Daughter of a rather wealthy marquis. Ross was ecstatic to’ve caught such a wife. Mind, a large portion of her dowry is tied to her eldest son’s inheriting his name. He won’t be very pleased to find that his perfect little lordling has been displaced by a child got on an actress. God only knows what Ross would do if he found that his eldest son still lives. Really, I wouldn’t give tuppence for the boy’s life.”

She sat in silence, her world crashing down around her ears, because there wasn’t any choice, any hope for her and Apollo. Probably there never had been any hope. It’d been the dream of a silly girl, easily burned away with the rising of the sun.

He’d said he loved her. Something in her clenched, sharp and painful, as if she’d been cut deep inside and the blood were slowly leaking out where no one could see.

But that didn’t matter anymore.

She was a mother and Indio was her son.

She lifted her chin and looked George Greaves dead in the eye, and she was oddly proud that there was no tremor in her voice when she said, “What do you want me to do?”

Chapter Nineteen

Ariadne stayed by the monster’s side for days as he recovered from his injuries, and despite his fearsome aspect she found him gentle and kind. Around them the garden was lovely, but terribly silent. One day Theseus burst from the maze, dirtied and smeared with dried blood. “Get thee away from the beast!” he cried to Ariadne, brandishing his sword. “For I shall not be routed this time. I shall not rest until I have severed this terrible monster’s head from its body.”…

—From The Minotaur

It was near six of the clock the next evening when Lily cautiously approached the pond in Harte’s Folly. The sky was just beginning to take on a mauve cast as the sun floated low in the sky, and the birds had started their evening chorus. It was almost lovely, and for the first time she saw how the garden would look one day. Most of the dead trees and hedges had been cleared and in the few days she’d been away the remaining plants had burst into the light green of spring.

Of life.

Except she wasn’t walking to life. She marched to death with a gun at her back.

Behind her, George Greaves’s tread was heavy and ominous. He was probably stamping on the new grass she took care to avoid.

In the last day and a half he’d not left her side except when she’d had to relieve herself, and even then he’d stood close outside the shut door. If she’d disliked him before—and she had—she’d grown to loathe him in the last thirty-six hours. He was a truly disgusting man without, as far as she could see, any redeeming quality. He’d even refused to pay the wherryman a fair price when they’d made the garden docks.

A nasty, petty, small-minded man, but sadly a dangerous one as well.

She was going to betray her love to this man.

“Make no sound, now,” he murmured in a voice she’d come to despise. “We’ll wait for your lover and then you’ll be free to go.”