Duke of Midnight

by Elizabeth Hoyt

  She thought he’d simply go back to searching her room, but he paused. “Then I’m sorry for your experience.”

  And the odd thing was that she thought he meant it. She pleated the coverlet between her fingers. “Why do you do it?”

  “Do what?” He rose and began on the top drawer.

  That held her few personal possessions: old letters from Apollo from when he’d been sent away to school, a miniature of Papa, Mama’s earbobs, the gilt flaking off and one of the wires broken. Nothing of interest, except to her. She supposed she should feel resentment that a stranger was laying hands on her meager possessions, but really, in the larger scope of all the things that had happened in her life, this was quite a small indignity.

  He stilled. “You’ve half a loaf of bread in here and two apples. Do they not feed you that you must steal food?”

  She stiffened. “It’s not for me. And it’s not stealing—not really. Cook knows I took them.”

  He grunted and resumed searching.

  “Why do you don the disguise of a harlequin actor and run about St. Giles?” She cocked her head, watching him. His movements were economical. Precise. Yet, strangely graceful for a man. “You know, there are those who think you a ravisher of women—and worse.”

  “I’m not.” He shut the drawer and glanced about her room. Had years spent hunting in the night made him able to see in the dark? She could hardly make out the outlines of her room and it was her own. He chose the old wardrobe next, a piece that had been replaced with something newer and finer in one of Brightmore House’s guest rooms. He opened the door, peering in. “I’ve never violated any woman.”

  “Have you killed?”

  He paused at that, before reaching into the wardrobe to move aside her spare day gown. “Once or twice. The men deserved it, I assure you.”

  She could believe that. St. Giles was a terrible place. A place where people were driven by poverty, drink, and despair to the depths of a human soul. She’d read reports in her uncle’s discarded news sheets of robberies and murders, of entire families found starved to death. For a gentleman to venture into St. Giles night after night for years to confront the demons unleashed by man’s worst state… he must have more than a trifling reason. She very much doubted he did it for excitement or on a dare.

  Artemis inhaled on the thought. What sort of man acted as he did? “You must love St. Giles very much.”

  He whirled at that, and an awful, loud laugh broke from his lips. “Love. Dear God, you mistake me, ma’am. I do it not for love.”

  “Yet the citizens of St. Giles are the ones who benefit from your…” She trailed off, trying to think of how to describe what he did. Hobby? Duty? Obsession? “Work. If, as you say, you don’t harm except those who deserve it, then those who live in St. Giles are the safer for what you do, surely?”

  “I care not how my actions affect them.” He closed the door to the wardrobe with finality.

  “I do,” she said simply. “Your actions saved my life.”

  He was standing, looking about the room. There wasn’t much left: the mantel and her bedside table, both without anything to hide something in. “Why are you so concerned with my actions in any case?”

  Even in his whispered voice he sounded irritable, and she supposed he had a right. “I don’t know. I guess that you’re a… novelty, really. I don’t usually have the occasion to talk to a gentleman at length.”

  “You’re Lady Penelope’s relation and companion. I would think between balls, parties, and teas you’d have more than ample opportunity to meet gentlemen.”

  “Meet them, yes. Have a true conversation?” She shook her head. “Gentlemen have no reason to talk to ladies such as I. Not unless their intentions are less than honorable.”

  He took a step toward her, almost as if the movement was involuntary. “You’ve been accosted by men?”

  “It’s the way of the world, isn’t it? My position makes me vulnerable. Those that are strong will always go after those they think are weak.” She shrugged. “But it isn’t often, and in any case I’ve been able to fend for myself.”

  “You aren’t weak.” It was a statement, final and without doubt.

  She found his conviction flattering. “Most would think me so.”

  “Most would be wrong.”

  They stared at each other and she had the idea that they were both somehow taking stock of the other. She certainly was. He wasn’t what she would have expected, had she bothered to think about what to expect from a masked harlequin. He seemed to be truly listening to her, and that hadn’t happened to her in a very long time. Well, except with the Duke of Wakefield last night, she silently amended.

  The Ghost had understood her truth in a shockingly short period of time.

  Then there was his anger—the underlying pulse of suppressed rage that seemed to vibrate through him. She could feel it, almost a living thing, pressing against her.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked abruptly. “It’s rather rude for a gentleman to enter a lady’s room without permission.”

  “I’m not a gentleman.”

  “Really? I thought otherwise.”

  She’d spoken without thinking and immediately regretted it. He was beside the bed in an instant, large, male, and dangerous, and she remembered at this inopportune moment what the creature had been in that clearing in her dream: a tiger. In an English forest. She almost laughed at the absurdity.

  She was forced to tilt her head up to see him, baring her neck, which was never a good idea when in the presence of a predator.

  He bent over her, deliberately planting his fists on the bed on either side of her hips, caging her in. She swallowed, feeling the heat of his body. She could smell him: leather and male sweat, and it should have repelled her.

  Except it did the opposite.

  He thrust his masked face into hers, so close she could see the glint of his eyes behind it. “You have something that belongs to me.”

  She held very still, breathing in his exhalations, sharing the same air as he, like a very dear enemy.

  His face dipped toward hers, angling, and her eyelids fell. For a very brief moment, she thought she felt the brush of something warm across her lips.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall outside her room. The maid was coming.

  She opened her eyes and he was simply gone.

  A moment later Sally the upstairs maid came in the room with her coal shuttle and brushes. Sally started when she noticed Artemis still sitting up in bed. “Oh, miss, you’re up early. Shall I send for some tea?”

  Artemis shook her head, inhaling. “Thank you, no. I’ll go down for some in a bit. We came in late last night.”

  “That you did.” Sally clattered at the hearth. “Blackbourne says as her ladyship didn’t get in until past two in the morn. In a right mood she is, too, for having to wait up so late. Oh, and how did the window get left open?” Sally jumped up and crossed to the window, slamming it shut. “Brrr! ’Tis too early for such a draft.”

  Artemis’s eyebrows rose. Her room was on the third floor and there was no convenient trellis or vine on the wall outside. She hoped the silly man wasn’t lying dead in the garden.

  “Will that be all, miss?”

  A fire was crackling on her hearth and Sally was already by the door, pail in hand.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Artemis waited until the maid had closed the door behind her before drawing the thin chain around her neck out from under her chemise. She wore it always because she didn’t know what else to do with what hung on it: a delicate pendant with a glittering green stone. Once she had thought the stone was paste, a pretty ornament Apollo had given her on their fifteenth birthday. Four months ago she’d tried to pawn it for more money to help Apollo—and found out the horrible truth: the stone was an emerald set in gold, which made it a treasure too dear, for ironically she couldn’t sell such a fine piece without awkward questions about its provenance. Questions she simply couldn’t
answer. She had no idea where or how Apollo could’ve gotten such an expensive piece of jewelry.

  She’d worn the emerald pendant for months now—too afraid to leave the damnably expensive thing alone in her bedroom—but yesterday she’d added something else to the chain.

  Artemis fingered the Ghost’s signet ring, the red stone warm under her thumb. She should’ve given it back. It obviously was important to him. Yet something had made her want to conceal it and keep it a little longer. She examined the ring again. The stone had once had a crest or other insignia carved into it, but it was so battered by age that only vague lines remained, impossible to decipher. The gold, too, had the matte patina of age, the band worn thin on the underside. The ring, and thus the family it belonged to, was very old indeed.

  Artemis frowned. How had the Ghost known she had his ring? She hadn’t told anyone besides Wakefield, not even Penelope. For one wild moment she imagined the Duke of Wakefield donning the motley of a harlequin.

  No. That was just absurd. More likely the Ghost had either known he’d dropped the ring in her hand or simply guessed by process of elimination.

  Artemis sighed and tucked the ring and pendant back under her chemise. Time to dress. The day had begun.

  MAXIMUS CROUCHED ON the sloping roof of Brightmore House, fighting the urge to reenter Miss Greaves’s room. He hadn’t found his ring—his father’s ring—and the insistent beat to return was strong in his chest. Under the impulse to take back what was his, there was a subtler, softer cadence: to speak again to Miss Greaves. To look into her eyes and find out what made her so strong.

  Madness. He shook off the siren’s call and leaped to the next house. Brightmore House was in Grosvenor Square; the white stone buildings around the green in the middle were new and close together. It was child’s play to travel by rooftop to the end of the square and then slither down a gutter into an alley. Maximus kept to the shadows for the length of the short alley and then once again took to the rooftops.

  Dawn was near and people rarely looked up.

  Had she pawned his father’s ring? The agony of the thought made him gasp even as he ran along the crest of a roof. He’d searched her room and meager possessions and the ring hadn’t been there. Had she given it away? Dropped it somewhere in St. Giles?

  Surely not, for she’d made a point of boasting about having it in her possession at the ball. But she was poor—that much at least was starkly evident after seeing the room her cousin had gifted her. A gold ring would fetch enough money for some small luxury.

  He waited at the edge of a crumbling building, watching as below a night soil man labored with two foully full buckets.

  Then he jumped to the next roof.

  Maximus landed silently, despite the distance across the alley, the only sign of his exertion the slight grunt as he rose. He remembered his father’s hands, the strong, blunt fingers, the dark hairs on the backs, and the slight curve of the right middle finger, broken as a child. His father might’ve been a duke, but he always had a healing cut or abrasion or bruise on his hands, for he used his hands without any regard for his rank. Father had saddled his own horse when he’d been too impatient to wait for a groom, sharpened his own quill, and loaded his own fowling piece when hunting. Those hands had been broad and scarred and had seemed, to Maximus as a boy, to be utterly competent, utterly reliable.

  The last time he’d seen his father’s hand, it had been covered in blood as Maximus had removed the signet ring.

  He dropped to the street and saw that his feet had brought him to St. Giles. To the spot where it had happened.

  To his left a worn cobbler’s sign squeaked over a door so low that all but children would have to duck to enter. The sign was new as was the shop—it had been a tavern selling gin all those years ago, beside it a narrow alley where barrels of gin had once stood. Maximus flinched, glancing away. He’d hidden behind those barrels, and the stink of gin had filled his nostrils that night. When he’d taken the mask as the Ghost, this had been the first gin shop he’d shut down. To the right was a teetering brick building, the upper stories wider than the lower, every room let and relet until it might as well have been a rat warren—only one inhabited with humans instead of animals. Near his feet the wide channel was so blocked with detritus that not even the next rain would clear it. The very air hung thick and wet with stink.

  To the east the sky had begun to pinken. The sun would soon be up, clearing the sky, bringing the hope of a new day to every part of London, save this one.

  There was no hope in St. Giles.

  He pivoted, his boots scraping against the grit underfoot, recalling Miss Greaves’s comment. Love St. Giles? Dear God, no.

  He loathed it.

  A faint cry came from the narrow alley where the gin barrels had once stood. Maximus turned, frowning. He couldn’t see anything, but daybreak was coming. He needed to return home, get off the streets before people noticed him in his Ghost costume.

  But then the cry came again, high and nearly animal in its pain, but most definitely human. Maximus strode closer to peer into the alley. He could just make out a slumped form and the glint of something wet. Immediately he bent, catching an arm and pulling the figure into the relatively better lit lane. It was a man—a gentleman, by the fine velvet of his coat—with blood on his bare, shaved head. He must’ve lost his wig.

  The man groaned, his head sagging back as he looked up at Maximus. His eyes widened. “No! Oh, no. Already been robbed. Don’t have me purse anymore.”

  His words were slurred. The man was obviously drunk.

  “I’m not going to rob you,” Maximus said impatiently. “Where do you live?”

  But the man wasn’t listening. He’d started wailing weakly, his entire body thrashing rather like a landed flounder.

  Maximus frowned, looking around. The people of St. Giles had begun to creep from their houses in preparation for the day. Two men scurried by, their faces averted. Most here knew better than to show interest in anything resembling danger, but a trio of small boys and a dog had gathered at a safe distance across the lane, staring.

  “Oi!” A little woman wearing a tattered red skirt advanced on the boys. They made to run, but she was quick, grabbing the eldest by the ear. “What did I tell you, Robbie? Go’n fetch that pie for yer da.”

  She let go of the ear and all three boys darted off. The woman straightened and caught sight of Maximus and the wounded man. “Oi! You there! Leave ’im alone.”

  Tiny though the woman was, she was brave enough to confront him, and Maximus had to admire that.

  He ignored the man’s continued moaning and turned to her, whispering. “I didn’t do this. Can you see him home?”

  She cocked her head. “ ’Ave to see to me man, then start me work, don’t I?”

  Maximus nodded. He dipped two fingers into a pocket sewn into his tunic and came out with a coin, which he tossed to her. “Is that enough to make it worth your time?”

  She caught the coin handily and glanced at it. “Aye, ’spect it is.”

  “Good.” He looked at the wounded man. “Tell this woman your place of residence and she’ll see you home.”

  “Oh, thank you, fair lady.” The drunken man seemed to think the little woman was his savior.

  She rolled her eyes, but said with a sort of gruff kindness as she came over and bent to take his arm, “Now what mess ’ave you gotten yerself into, sir?”

  “ ’Twas Old Scratch, plain as day,” the man muttered. “Had a great big pistol and demanded my purse or my life. And then he hit me anyway!”

  Maximus shook his head as he moved off. Stranger things had been imagined in St. Giles than highway robbery by the Devil, he supposed, but he hadn’t time to stay and learn more about the matter. It was already far too light. He swarmed up the side of a building, making his way to the roof. Below he could hear the clatter of hooves and he swore under his breath. It was early yet for the Dragoons to be about St. Giles, but he didn’t want to take the c
hance it might be they.

  He ran across the angled rooftops, leaping from building to building. He had to descend to the ground twice, each time for only a short run before he was back traveling by London rooftop.

  Twenty minutes later he caught sight of Wakefield House.

  When he’d first started his career as the Ghost of St. Giles, he and Craven had very quickly realized that he would need a secret means of access to the town house. Which was why, instead of approaching the house directly, Maximus slid into the gardens in back. They were a long, narrow strip of land between the house and the mews, and at one side was an ancient folly. It was small, little more than a moss-covered stone arch enclosing a bench. Maximus entered and knelt to sweep aside a pile of dead leaves by the bench. Underneath was an iron ring set into the stone paving. He grasped it and lifted and a square block of stone pulled back on well-oiled hinges, revealing a short drop to a tunnel. Maximus lowered himself inside and pulled the covering stone back on top. He was in complete and utter blackness.

  Wet blackness.

  Maximus crouched, for the tunnel was only about five feet high—not nearly tall enough for him to stand upright—and began crab-walking through the cramped space. The walls were barely wider than his shoulders and he brushed against them often. Water dripped in a slow lament, and he splashed through stagnant pools every third step. He could feel his chest tighten, his breath coming too light and fast, and he fought to breathe deeper, to lay his hand against slimy brick without flinching. Only a few feet further. He’d used the tunnel for years. He should be resigned to its horrors—and the memories they evoked—by now.

  Even so, he couldn’t help but draw a deep, relieved breath when he came to the wider entrance to his underground exercise room. He felt carefully along the wall as he stepped down, searching for the small ledge that held tinder and flint.

  He’d only just struck a spark when the door that led to the house opened and Craven appeared with a candle in hand.

  Maximus exhaled in relief at the light.

  Craven advanced toward him, holding his candle high. Maximus had never told his valet his feelings on the tunnel, yet as in innumerable times past Craven was lighting the candelabras set into the walls as swiftly as he could.