Maiden Lane [6] Duke of Midnight (2 page)

Still, she didn’t relax again until they turned the corner and saw Penelope’s carriage, left standing in a wider street.

“Ah, here we are,” Penelope said, as if they were
returning from a simple stroll along Bond Street. “That was quite exciting, wasn’t it?”

Artemis glanced at her cousin incredulously—and a movement on the roof of the building across the way caught her eye. A figure crouched there, athletic and waiting. She stilled. As she watched, he raised a hand to the brim of his hat in mocking salute.

A shiver ran through her.

“Artemis?” Penelope had already mounted the steps to the carriage.

She tore her gaze away from the ominous figure. “Coming, Cousin.”

Artemis climbed into the carriage and sat tensely on the plush indigo squabs. He’d followed them, but why? To discover who they were? Or for a more benign reason—to make sure that they had reached the carriage safely?

Silly
, she scolded herself—it did no good to indulge in flights of romantic fancy. She doubted that a creature such as the Ghost of St. Giles cared very much for the safety of two foolish ladies. No doubt he had reasons of his own for following them.

“I cannot wait to tell the Duke of Wakefield of my adventure tonight,” Penelope said, interrupting Artemis’s thoughts. “He’ll be terribly surprised, I’ll wager.”

“Mmm,” Artemis murmured noncommittally. Penelope was very beautiful, but would any man want a wife so hen-witted that she ventured into St. Giles at night on a wager and thought it a great lark? Penelope’s method of attracting the duke’s attention seemed impetuous at best and at worst foolish. For a moment Artemis’s heart twinged with pity for her cousin.

But then again Penelope was one of the richest heiresses
in England. Much could be overlooked for a veritable mountain of gold. Too, Penelope was esteemed one of the great beauties of the age, with raven-black hair, milky skin, and eyes that rivaled the purple of a pansy. Many men wouldn’t care about the person beneath such a lovely surface.

Artemis sighed silently and let her cousin’s excited chatter wash over her. She ought to pay more attention. Her fate was inexorably tied to Penelope’s, for Artemis would go to whatever house and family her cousin married into.

Unless Penelope decided she no longer needed a lady’s companion after she wed.

Artemis’s fingers tightened about the thing the Ghost of St. Giles had left in her hand. She’d had a glimpse of it in the carriage’s lantern light before she’d entered. It was a gold signet ring set with a red stone. She rubbed her thumb absently over the worn stone. It felt ancient. Powerful. Which was quite interesting.

An aristocrat might wear such a ring.

M
AXIMUS BATTEN, THE
Duke of Wakefield, woke as he always did: with the bitter taste of failure on his tongue.

For a moment he lay on his great curtained bed, eyes closed, trying to swallow down the bile in his throat as he remembered dark tresses trailing in bloody water. He reached out and laid his right palm on the locked strongbox that sat on the table beside his bed. The emerald pendants from her necklace, carefully gathered over years of searching, were within. The necklace wasn’t complete, though, and he’d begun to despair that it ever would be. That the blot of his failure would remain upon his conscience forever.

And now he had a new failure. He flexed his left hand, feeling the unaccustomed lightness. He’d lost his father’s ring—the
ancestral
ring—last night somewhere in St. Giles. It was yet another offense to add to his long list of unpardonable sins.

He stretched carefully, pushing the matter from his mind so that he might rise and do his duty. His right knee ached dully, and something was off about his left shoulder. For a man in but his thirty-third year he was rather battered.

His valet, Craven, turned from the clothespress. “Good morning, Your Grace.”

Maximus nodded silently and threw back the coverlet. He rose, nude, and padded to the marble-topped dresser with only a slight limp. A basin of hot water already waited there for him. His razor, freshly sharpened by Craven, appeared beside the basin as Maximus soaped his jaw.

“Will you be breaking your fast with Lady Phoebe and Miss Picklewood this morning?” Craven enquired.

Maximus frowned into the gold mirror standing on the dresser as he tilted his chin and set the razor against his neck. His youngest sister, Phoebe, was but twenty. When Hero, his other sister, had married several years ago, he’d decided to move Phoebe and their older cousin, Bathilda Picklewood, into Wakefield House with him. He was pleased to have her under his eye, but having to share accommodations—even accommodations as palatial as Wakefield House—with the two ladies sometimes got in the way of his other activities.

“Not today,” he decided, scraping whiskers from his jaw. “Please send my apologies to my sister and Cousin Bathilda.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Maximus watched in the mirror as the valet arched his eyebrows in mute reproach before retiring to the clothespress. He didn’t suffer the rebuke—even a silent one—of many, but Craven was a special case. The man had been his father’s valet for fifteen years before Maximus had inherited him on attaining the title. Craven had a long face, the vertical lines on either side of his mouth and the droop of his eyes at the outer corners making it seem longer. He must be well into his fifties, but one couldn’t tell by his countenance: he looked like he could be any age from thirty to seventy. No doubt Craven would still look the same when Maximus was a doddering old man without a hair on his head.

He snorted to himself as he tapped the razor against a porcelain bowl, shaking soap froth and whiskers from the blade. Behind him Craven began laying out smallclothes, stockings, a black shirt, waistcoat, and breeches. Maximus turned his head, scraping the last bit of lather from his jaw, and used a dampened cloth to wipe his face.

“Did you find the information?” he asked as he donned smallclothes.

“Indeed, Your Grace.” Craven rinsed the razor and carefully dried the fine blade. He laid it in a fitted velvet-lined box as reverently as if the razor had been the relic of some dead saint.

“And?”

Craven cleared his throat as if preparing to recite poetry before the king. “The Earl of Brightmore’s finances are, as far as I’ve been able to ascertain, quite happy. In addition to his two estates in Yorkshire, both with arable land, he is in possession of three producing
coal mines in the West Riding, an ironworks in Sheffield, and has recently bought interest in the East India Company. At the beginning of the year he opened a fourth coal mine, and in so doing accrued some debt, but the reports from the mine are quite favorable. The debt in my estimation is negligible.”

Maximus grunted as he pulled on his breeches.

Craven continued, “As to the earl’s daughter, Lady Penelope Chadwicke, it’s well known that Lord Brightmore plans to offer a very nice sum when she is wed.”

Maximus lifted a cynical eyebrow. “Do we have an actual number?”

“Indeed, Your Grace.” Craven pulled a small notebook from his pocket and, licking his thumb, paged through it. Peering down at the notebook, he read off a sum so large Maximus came close to doubting Craven’s research skills.

“Good God. You’re sure?”

Craven gave him a faintly chiding look. “I have it on the authority of the earl’s lawyer’s chief secretary, a rather bitter gentleman who cannot hold his liquor.”

“Ah.” Maximus arranged his neck cloth and shrugged on his waistcoat. “Then that leaves only Lady Penelope herself.”

“Quite.” Craven tucked his notebook away and pursed his lips, staring at the ceiling. “Lady Penelope Chadwicke is four and twenty years of age and her father’s sole living offspring. Despite her rather advanced maiden status, she does not lack for suitors, and indeed appears to be only unwed because of her own… ah… unusually high standards in choosing a gentleman.”

“She’s finicky.”

Craven winced at the blunt assessment. “It would appear so, Your Grace.”

Maximus nodded as he opened his bedroom door. “We’ll continue downstairs.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Craven picked up a candle and lit it at the fireplace.

A wide corridor lay outside his bedroom. To the left was the front of the house and the grand staircase that led to the public rooms of Wakefield House.

Maximus turned to the right, Craven trotting at his heels. This way led to the servants’ stairs and other less public rooms. Maximus opened a door paneled to look like the wainscoting in the hall and clattered down the uncarpeted stairs. He passed the entrance to the kitchens and continued down another level. The stairs ended abruptly, blocked by a plain wooden door. Maximus took a key from his waistcoat pocket and unlocked the door. Beyond was another set of stairs, but these were stone, so ancient the treads dipped in the middle, worn away by long-dead feet. Maximus followed them down as Craven lit candles tucked into the nooks in the stone walls.

Maximus ducked under a low stone arch and came to a small paved area. The candlelight behind him flickered over worn stone walls. Here and there figures were scratched in the stone: symbols and crude human representations. Maximus doubted very much that they’d been made during the age of Christianity. Directly ahead was a second door, the wood blackened by age. He unlocked this as well and pushed it open.

Behind the door was a cellar, long and with a surprisingly high ceiling, the groin vaulting picked out in smaller, decorative stone. Sturdy pillars paced along the
floor, their capitals carved into crude shapes. His father and grandfather had used the space as a wine cellar, but Maximus wouldn’t have been surprised if this hidden room had originally been built as a place to worship some ancient pagan deity.

Behind him Craven shut the door, and Maximus began taking off his waistcoat. It seemed a waste of time to dress and then undress again five minutes later every morning, but a duke never appeared in dishabille—even within his own house.

Craven cleared his throat.

“Continue,” Maximus murmured without turning. He stood in only his smallclothes now and looked up. Spaced irregularly along the ceiling were iron rings he’d sunk into the stone.

“Lady Penelope is considered one of the foremost beauties of the age,” Craven intoned.

Maximus leaped and clung to a pillar. He dug his bare toes into a crack and pushed, reaching for a slim finger hold he knew lay above his head. He grunted as he pulled himself toward the ceiling and the nearest iron ring.

“Just last year she was courted by no less than two earls and a foreign princeling.”

“Is she a virgin?” The ring was just out of arm’s reach—a deliberate placing that on mornings such as this Maximus sometimes cursed. He shoved off from the pillar, arm outstretched. If his fingers missed the ring, the floor was very, very hard below.

But he caught it one-handed, the muscles on his shoulder pulling as he let his weight swing him to the next ring. And the next.

“Almost certainly, Your Grace,” Craven called from
below as Maximus easily swung from ring to ring across the cavernous room and back. “Although the lady has a certain amount of high spirits, she still seems to understand the importance of prudence.”

Maximus snorted as he caught the next ring. This one was a little closer together than the last and he hung between them, his arms in a wide V above his head. He could feel the heat across his shoulders and arms now. He pointed his toes. Slowly, deliberately, he folded in half until his toes nearly touched the ceiling above his head.

He held the position, breathing deeply, his arms beginning to tremble. “I wouldn’t call last night prudent.”

“Perhaps not,” Craven conceded, the wince evident in his voice. “In that regard I must report that although Lady Penelope is proficient in needlework, dancing, playing the harpsichord, and drawing, she is not considered a great talent in any of these endeavors. Nor is Lady Penelope’s wit held in high esteem by those who know her. This is not to say that the lady’s intellect is in any way deficient. She is simply not… er…”

“She’s a ninny.”

Craven hummed noncommittally and stared at the ceiling.

Maximus straightened and let go of the iron rings, landing lightly on the balls of his feet. He crossed to a low bench where an array of different-sized cannonballs lay. He selected one that fit easily in his palm, hoisted it to his shoulder, sprinted across the length of the cellar, and heaved the cannonball at a bank of straw pallets placed against the far wall especially for that purpose. The ball flew through the straw and clanged dully against the stone wall.

“Well done, Your Grace.” Craven permitted himself a small smile as Maximus jogged back. The expression was oddly comical on his lugubrious face. “The straw bales are undoubtedly cowed.”

“Craven.” Maximus fought the twitching of his own lips. He was the Duke of Wakefield and no one was permitted to laugh at Wakefield—not even himself.

He picked up another lead ball.

“Quite. Quite.” The valet cleared his throat. “In summary then: Lady Penelope is very wealthy, very beautiful, and very fashionable and gay, but does not possess particular intelligence or, er… a sense of self-preservation. Shall I cross her off the list, Your Grace?”

“No.” Maximus repeated his previous exercise with a second cannonball. A chip of stone flew off the wall. He made a mental note to bring down more straw.

When he turned it was to find Craven staring at him in confusion. “But surely Your Grace wishes for more than an ample dowry, an aristocratic lineage, and beauty in a bride?”

Maximus looked at the valet hard. They’d had this discussion before. Craven had just listed the most important assets in a suitable wife. Common sense—or the lack thereof—wasn’t even on the ledger.

For a moment he saw clear gray eyes and a determined feminine face. Miss Greaves had brought a
knife
into St. Giles last night—there’d been no mistaking the gleam of metal in her boot top. And what was more, she’d appeared quite ready to use it. Then as now a spark of admiration lit within him. What other lady in his acquaintance had ever displayed such grim courage?