“Mama, can Caliban come for supper?” Indio asked, his mismatched eyes wide and entirely too innocent.
“I… what?” Lily asked weakly.
“Caliban.” Indio gestured behind her.
She glanced over her shoulder to find—to her mingled relief and disappointment—that the man was slowly buttoning the falls of a ragged pair of breeches. The setting sun limned the wet slope of his shoulders, but his big fingers fumbled on the buttons. Whatever intelligence she’d imagined in his eyes was gone. But then it’d probably never been there in the first place.
She looked back at Indio, brow knitted. “Caliban? That’s Caliban?”
Her son nodded. “I named him just today.”
“You…” She shook her head. She’d found—shortly after Indio learned to talk—that letting him lead a discussion could result in a tangled web, incomprehensible to anyone over the age of seven. Sometimes one must simply cut through the tangle. “Indio, it’s suppertime and Maude is waiting for us. Let’s—”
“Please?” Indio came closer and took her hand, pulling her down to whisper in her ear, “He hasn’t anything to eat and he’s my friend.”
“I—” She looked helplessly back at Caliban.
He’d donned his shirt and was staring at her with his mouth half open. As she watched he scratched his… well, his male parts, quite obliviously, just as a half-wit might.
Her eyes narrowed. He’d not looked half-witted at all a minute ago. Perhaps she’d imagined it. Perhaps she’d wanted to condone her own baser impulses by giving the object of her thoughts reason that simply wasn’t there.
And perhaps she was dithering over the matter too much.
She glanced back at Indio’s pleading face and made her decision. She straightened and said loudly, “Of course, darling, let’s invite your friend to supper.”
A choking sound came from behind her, but when she turned, Caliban’s face was stupidly blank. He snorted, hawked, spat into the pond—ew!—and scrubbed his hand across his mouth.
She smiled widely. “Caliban? Would you like to eat? Eat?” She mimed lifting a spoon to her mouth and then chewing. “Eat. With. Us.” She pointed back along the path. “At the theater. We have good food!”
Her exaggerated miming was ridiculous—and if he wasn’t mentally defective, it was insulting. She watched him closely to see if he’d break—change expression, show in any way that he did harbor normal intelligence.
But he simply stared back blankly.
It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d misread a man. Sighing—and telling herself firmly that she most certainly wasn’t disappointed—Lily began to turn away.
Indio started forward and took the big man’s hand as naturally as he’d taken his mother’s. “Come on! Maude’s making roast chicken and there’ll be gravy and dumplings.”
Caliban looked at the boy and then her.
She raised an eyebrow. She’d already pled her piece—she wouldn’t do so again. Not for a lackwit.
Was there something behind the muddy-brown eyes? A glimmer, a glint of challenge? She couldn’t tell, and in any case she was no longer certain of her own perception.
But it didn’t matter. Caliban nodded slowly.
Lily turned and started back up the path, Daffodil scampering ahead. Her heart, that silly, mercurial thing, was beating in double time.
This was going to be interesting.
THIS WAS A very bad idea.
Apollo followed Lily Stump, watching her skirts sway from side to side as she walked. Her back was rigidly straight, but the nape of her neck was soft and unguarded, trails of dark hair curling down from the knot at the crown of her head. He had an animal urge to set his teeth against her nape, test the tender flesh, taste the salt on her skin.
He swallowed, glad the cool evening air kept him from embarrassment. There was no reason for him to have accepted her offer of supper. He had another cold pork pie safely stowed in the ruins of the musician’s gallery where he’d set up camp while he worked in the garden. He was tired and sore and still damp from washing off the sweat and mud of the day. His recently rinsed shirt clung, wet and uncomfortable, to his shoulders.
Everything—everything—he’d worked for would be forfeit if anyone discovered who he really was.
And yet he was holding the hand of a little boy and trailing the boy’s exasperating mother. Perhaps he was lonely. Or perhaps it was the look in her eyes when he’d emerged from the pond and found her watching him that urged his footsteps on. It had been a long time—a very, very long time—since a woman had last looked at him like that. As if she saw something she liked.