Maiden Lane [6] Duke of Midnight (7 page)

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.

M
AXIMUS 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 chance 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.

“Ah, Your Grace,” the valet drawled as he worked. “I’m gratified to see that you’ve returned in one piece and with barely any blood about your person.”

Maximus glanced down and saw the rusty stain on his tunic sleeve. “Not mine. I found a gentleman who’d been robbed in St. Giles.”

“Indeed? And was your other mission fruitful?”

“No.” Maximus stripped off the tunic and leggings of his costume, swiftly donning his more usual breeches, waistcoat, and coat. “I have a task for you.”

“I live to serve,” Craven intoned in a ponderous voice so solemn it could only be subtle mockery.

Maximus was tired, so he ignored the response. “Find out everything you can about Artemis Greaves.”