Darling Beast

by Elizabeth Hoyt

  He looked up.

  Kilbourne was squatting nearby like some hulking native, his hands hanging between his knees, the hooked knife dangling from one. The left side of his face was painted red with blood and he looked a veritable savage.

  Except for his eyes. He was simply watching Trevillion struggle—warily, to be sure, but in no way threateningly.

  Trevillion narrowed his own eyes, glancing around. “You’re expecting someone to come to your aid.”

  Kilbourne blinked and at last an expression showed in his blank face—sardonic humor. He shook his head.

  “What then?” Trevillion had managed to prop himself on his elbows, but with his leg in such pain he wouldn’t be standing anytime in the next half hour. “What are you waiting for?”

  Was the man a sadist to draw out death so?

  Kilbourne shrugged and pushed his knife into his belt, then reached to the side for something, making Trevillion tense.

  The other man handed him his stick.

  Trevillion glanced incredulously between his walking stick and the murderer before snatching it out of the other’s hand. “Why don’t you answer me? Can’t you talk?”

  Again the sardonic half-smile and Kilbourne simply shook his head.

  Trevillion stared. He was on his back, unarmed except for a walking stick, and pathetically helpless, and Kilbourne had made no move against him.

  Worse, he’d helped him.

  Trevillion cocked his head, the thought arising, simple, organic, and patently true. “You never killed those men, did you?”

  APOLLO STARED AT the man on the ground, ignoring the stinging of his scalp. He’d recognized him at once. Captain James Trevillion. He knew the soldier’s name now—he’d learned it years ago in Bedlam—but on the morning he’d been arrested, the other man had just been a dragoon in a red coat. The herald to his coming downfall.

  Now Trevillion wore unrelieved black, wide belts crisscrossing his chest, the holsters empty. The other man’s pistols lay in the dirt. A pity. They were rather fine, decorated with silver repoussé caps on the grips.

  This man had wanted to arrest him. To take him back to the hell that was Bedlam. He ought to kill the dragoon—or at the very least render him unable to ever come after him again. He’d known men who would do the same and never think on the matter after.

  But Apollo was, for better or for worse, not one of those men. He’d had more than enough violence crammed down his throat in Bedlam. On the whole he preferred more civilized methods of solving dilemmas.

  He opened his satchel, took out his notebook, and wrote, I didn’t kill them.

  Trevillion, from his position prone on the ground, craned his neck to read and huffed out a breath. “You certainly looked like you’d killed them that morning—you were covered in blood, clutching the knife, and not in your right mind.”

  His words were accusatory, but his tone was curious.

  Apollo began to feel a small, curling shoot of hope. He shrugged cautiously and wrote, Drunk.

  Trevillion’s right leg seemed to be bothering him, for he was kneading the calf muscle. “I’ve seen plenty of men after a night of drinking. Most have some kind of method to their madness. You didn’t make any sense at all.”

  Apollo sighed. His scalp stung from the bullet crease, his head hurt, and the blood from the wound was beginning to soak into his shirt. But worse, he could still feel Miss Stump’s cool, slim fingers on his cheek. So close, so intimate. The other man had ruined that fragile moment. She’d looked absolutely terrified when Apollo had warned her away with the boy. He wanted to find her and assure himself that she was safe and unafraid.

  That her look of terror had been caused by the situation, not him.

  Apollo almost rose and left Trevillion lying there in the mud. But the soldier knew him and had discovered him—somehow that must be dealt with.

  And, too, Trevillion was the first in a very long time to actually listen to his side of events about that morning.

  So instead of stomping off he picked up his notebook again and wrote carefully, I remember sitting down with my friends, remember drinking the first bottle of wine… and nothing after.

  While Trevillion read that, Apollo removed both waistcoat and shirt and wrapped his shirt around his bleeding head like a Turk.

  The soldier looked up. “Drugged?”

  Apollo tilted his head and shrugged, hopefully conveying, Probably. He’d had time to think the matter over in Bedlam—long, long years of regret and speculation. The idea that the wine had been drugged seemed more than obvious after the fact.

  He stood and held out his hand to the other man.

  Trevillion looked at his hand so long, Apollo nearly withdrew it.

  The other man grimaced at last. “I suppose you could’ve killed me by now anyway.”

  Apollo cocked an eyebrow at that, but heaved Trevillion up when he took his hand. The soldier’s body was stiff. He didn’t utter a sound, but it was quite apparent he was in pain.

  Trevillion leaned on his cane, but Apollo kept his arm around the other’s shoulder—and since the soldier didn’t complain, it was evident his help was needed. Apollo guided him the few steps to the fallen tree Miss Stump had used as a writing desk. The soldier gingerly lowered himself, wincing as he did so, his right leg held rigid and straight before him.

  Trevillion eyed him as Apollo squatted before him. “Why can’t you speak?”

  He wrote one word in the notebook. Bedlam.

  The soldier frowned over that, his fingers tight on the notebook’s edges. He looked up, his eyes sharp. “If you didn’t kill those men, then someone else did—someone who never paid for his murders. I arrested the wrong man. I condemned the wrong man.”

  Apollo simply looked at him, fighting to keep his lip from curling. Four years. Four years of starvation, beatings, and boredom, because some other man had killed his friends. Any regret seemed long past due.

  All at once he opened the door and let them in from that black room at the back of his mind:

  Hugh Maubry.

  Joseph Tate.

  William Smithers.

  Maubry, with his intestines spilling on the tavern’s sawdust floor. Tate entirely intact, save for a wound high on his chest and three missing fingers. Smithers, his boyish face surprised, eyes open, throat cut.

  He hadn’t known them particularly well. Maubry and Tate had been at school with him, Smithers had been some distant relation of Tate’s. They’d been jolly fellows, good for a night of drinking—before he’d woken to a nightmare.

  Apollo blinked, pushing back the images, the terrible memories, and looked at Trevillion.

  The soldier stared back, his spine straight, his expression grim and resolute. “This is an injustice that must be righted—that I must right. I’m going to help you find the real murderer.”

  Apollo grinned—though not in mirth. He took up his pencil and wrote, his words so angry that the point gouged the paper in places: How? I was in Bedlam four years and in that time no one doubted my guilt. You yourself thought me guilty when you attacked me just now. Where will you find the man or men who actually did the crime?

  Trevillion read that and said drily, “In point of fact, you attacked me.”

  Apollo snorted and waved aside the other’s reply. Besides, won’t your superiors resent your time spent away from the dragoons?

  The other man’s face went blank. “I am no longer a dragoon.”

  Apollo stared at that. Even in his unrelieved black, Trevillion looked every inch the dragoon captain. He glanced at the leg and wondered when the injury had happened. In his hazy memory of that awful morning, he didn’t recollect the other man’s being so badly lamed. He had a feeling, though, that any questions would not be welcome.

  Instead he wrote, My point remains: how do you expect to find the murderer after so long?

  The former soldier looked at him. “You must have some idea, some suspicion, about who could’ve killed your friends?”
>
  Apollo’s eyes narrowed. He had, in fact, spent hours—days—meditating on this very subject. He wrote cautiously, Our purses were taken.

  “A large amount?”

  Apollo twisted his mouth. Not on my part—I’d already paid for the room and wine. I doubt the others had more than a guinea or two between them. Tate had a rather fine gold watch, though—his late father’s. That was stolen.

  “Not a large haul for three men dead,” Trevillion said softly.

  Men have been killed for less.

  “True,” the soldier replied, “but not usually so methodically.” He stared for a moment at nothing, absently rubbing his calf. Then his gaze sharpened. “Who were they, the men who were killed? I was told at the time, but I’ve forgotten since.”

  Apollo listed the names.

  Trevillion pursed his lips over the notebook. “How well did you know them?”

  They were men I liked, men I drank with, but I was not especially close to any of them. Smithers I had only met that night.

  And yet his boyish face was now imprinted on Apollo’s mind forever.

  “Were they rich? Had they enemies?”

  Apollo shrugged. Maubry was the third son of a baron and doomed to the church. Tate was his uncle’s heir, I believe, and would’ve come into a comfortable sum—or so the rumors went at school. Whether they were correct or not, I cannot say. Smithers seemed to have no blunt at all, but he was dressed well enough, certainly. As to enemies, I do not know.

  Trevillion read carefully before looking up, his eyes intent. “Had you enemies?”

  He wrote with a wry twist to his mouth, Until that night I would have said no.

  Trevillion glanced at his words and nodded sharply. “Very well, then. I shall investigate the matter and return when I can to consult with you.”

  The man got laboriously to his feet. Apollo moved to help him once and was met with a furious scowl.

  He didn’t again.

  When Trevillion was at last upright, his face was reddened and shone with sweat.

  “Be careful, my lord,” the former soldier said, for the first time giving him the courtesy of his title. “If I could find you, others might do so as well.”

  Apollo glared at him. How did you find me?

  “I followed your sister,” Trevillion said drily. “Her Grace is very discreet, very circumspect, but I noticed that she made regular errands. None at Wakefield House knew—or at least would admit to knowing—where she was going. I decided to follow her secretly, though it was some time before my employment would allow the opportunity. Today is my day off.”

  Apollo raised his eyebrows. The former dragoon knew an awful lot about Wakefield House and its inhabitants. He wrote hastily, How are you employed?

  “I guard Lady Phoebe,” the other man said simply.

  He bent and, one at a time, picked up his pistols and placed them once more in the holsters on his chest. If his bearing weren’t so military, he’d look like a pirate, Apollo thought in some amusement.

  “Good day, my lord.” Trevillion nodded his head. “Please do heed my warning. Should the King’s men find you before I can prove your innocence, I think you know well what would happen.”

  He did: death. Or worse, Bedlam.

  Apollo nodded stiffly in return.

  He watched Trevillion make his way slowly down the path toward the Thames and then picked up his satchel, stowed his notebook, and turned in the opposite direction.

  He was feeling light-headed now with an unpleasant tinge of nausea, no doubt the result of his head wound, but he simply couldn’t wait to discover if Miss Stump was all right.

  Apollo picked up his pace, breaking into a jog along the path, trying to ignore how his movements worsened his headache. She’d looked at him with such wonder before, as if he might be something special, almost lovely. No one had ever looked at him in such a way, especially no woman.

  When he burst into the theater at last, the first thing he saw was Miss Stump and the maid, Maude, bent over Indio. The boy was eating a biscuit smeared liberally with jam and seemed quite all right.

  The second thing he saw was Miss Stump’s look as she straightened and turned to him.

  Stark fear.

  CALIBAN CAME CRASHING through the theater door and Lily thought, Thank God—for he was at least alive—followed very quickly by Dear God, for his face was streaked with gore and his head was wrapped in a bloody rag. Also, and this was of course not nearly as important as the fact that he was hurt, he’d somehow lost his shirt again, and his bare, muscled chest was rather distracting.

  “Remember Kitty,” Maude hissed like some dolorous chorus at her shoulder, and Lily felt a very strong urge to slap her beloved nurse.

  “Heat some water,” she snapped instead to the older woman.

  Maude muttered to herself, but turned to the hearth.

  “What’s wrong?” Indio said at the same time. “Why is Caliban all over blood? Did he kill that other man?”

  He sounded elated rather than frightened, and Lily could only stare in horror at her son.

  Caliban came closer, bloodied head and distracting chest and all, and knelt at Indio’s feet. He shook his head and took out his notebook from a battered cloth bag. It was a misunderstanding between friends.

  Lily read the notebook aloud and stared at him incredulously. Not even Daffodil was naïve enough to believe that explanation.

  The mute swayed where he was squatting and she rushed forward to take his upper arm—his very hard upper arm—and help him into a chair. If he fainted on the floor, he’d have to lie there, for there was no way she and Maude could lift him.

  “Is he gone?” she asked urgently. “That other man?”

  Caliban nodded wearily.

  She leaned closer and whispered, “Is he dead?”

  His mouth twisted wryly at that, but he shook his head slowly. His eyes were beginning to droop and his skin, usually a lovely golden color, was going gray.

  She hurried to the mantel and snatched down their one bottle of awful wine. In the state he was in, he was unlikely to notice the quality—and in any case it was for medicinal purposes at the moment.

  She poured him a glassful and pressed it into his hands. “Drink this.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Maude, the water?”

  “ ’Tis only God can make water boil faster,” the maid muttered sourly.

  “He’s hurt, Maude,” Lily chided and got to her feet. “Don’t move,” she said sternly to Caliban, for she wouldn’t put it past him to try to stand.

  She crossed swiftly to her room. She had an old chemise tucked away and she scooped it up and brought it back into the main room.

  Indio was now off his chair and peering into Caliban’s face while Daffodil licked the boy’s sticky fingers.

  “Indio, don’t crowd him,” she said gently, and unwrapped the rag from Caliban’s head.

  She had to lean close to do so and she could feel the heat radiating off him, smell his male musk. Her arm accidentally brushed his shoulder and that little contact made her shiver.

  He sat docilely, letting her do as she would. The rag turned out to be the remains of his shirt, now entirely ruined, and she wondered if he had another. Maybe he’d have to go naked from the waist up, except for his waistcoat, as he labored about the garden. That would be a distracting sight: his huge arms flexing as he wielded a shovel or his savage hooked knife. She fancied she could charge ladies a shilling to come sit by the theater and sip tea as they watched him work—and wasn’t that a silly idea?

  Frowning to bring her wayward thoughts under control, she carefully pried the last of the shirt from his head. The blood had begun to dry, sticking the material to his hair and scalp. She winced as fresh scarlet stained the tawny strands.

  “An’ here’s the water,” Maude said, bringing over the steaming kettle and setting it on a cloth on the floor. She bent to peer at Caliban’s head as Lily began delicately washing the clotted blood from his hair. A seepin
g furrow appeared, about three inches long, running along the top of his head, slightly right of center.

  Maude grunted and straightened. “Creased from a bullet, he is.”

  She went to the corner where she kept her trunk.

  “Cor!” Indio exclaimed, and for once Lily didn’t correct his common expression.

  She frowned over the bleeding wound. “Shall we have to stitch it closed?” she called to Maude.

  “Nay, hinney. Not much point since it’s so shallow.” The maidservant returned with a rag. “Pour a bit of wine over this and press it to the wound.”

  Lily raised her eyebrows doubtfully, but did as she was told.

  As soon as the cloth met his head, Caliban’s eyes widened and he grunted in pain.

  “It hurts him!” Lily took away the rag.

  “Aye, but the wine’ll help it heal, too.” Maude put her hand over Lily’s and pressed the rag back. “Now hold it there.” She carefully poured a little more of the wine onto Caliban’s scalp, ignoring his wince.

  Indio, watching closely from the side, giggled. “He looks silly. Now his hair is red and brown and black.”

  Caliban’s mouth lifted in a wan smile.

  Lily frowned, concerned. “How do you know about such things, Maude?”

  “Been around theater folk a long, long time,” the maid replied. “A right quarrelsome bunch, they are. Patched up more’n my fair share of young men after an argument got out of hand.”

  Indio seemed deeply interested in this bit of information. “Has Uncle Edwin ever been shot in the head?”

  “ ’Fraid not, lad. Your uncle is good at wriggling out of such things—likes to keep his skin whole, he does.” Maude tapped Lily’s hand to get her to lift the cloth, and inspected the still-bleeding wound. She nodded her head. “We’ll use your old chemise to wrap this, hinney.”

  They tore the chemise up and while Lily held a folded pad over the wound, Maude wrapped strips around Caliban’s head to hold it in place. By the time they were done, he looked as if he’d been shrouded for burial and Indio was in fits of laughter.