Darling Beast (Maiden Lane #7)(20)

“Terribly.” She groaned and slumped in her chair. “I can’t think how I ever wrote dialogue before—it’s so wooden, Edwin! Perhaps I should burn it and start over.”

Usually this was the point at which her brother teased her out of her doubts, but he was oddly silent.

She straightened, looking at him.

He was grimacing into his wineglass. “As to that…”

“What is it?”

He shrugged. “It’s nothing really, but I promised to have the play done by next week. I have a buyer who wants to use it for a house party theatrical.”

“What?” She gasped, feeling her chest tighten. For a moment she wondered if the house party the play was intended for was the same one she herself was to act at, but then sheer panic swamped the thought. However was she to finish in a week?

Edwin grimaced, his mobile mouth stretching into a comical shape. “It’s just that I’ve had a bit of bad luck at cards lately. I need my portion of the play proceeds and this is a quick sale. Apparently the buyer had originally engaged Mimsford to write the play, but the old sod has fled London and his creditors.”

They’d made a bargain years ago, when Lily had started writing plays: Edwin would take the plays and sell the works under his name. He was both a man and a much better salesman than she. He knew how to float on the fringes of aristocratic society—something Lily had never wanted to do—and thus had myriad associates. Their arrangement had worked very well in the past. She and Edwin had made a tidy sum together. But now she was at the end of her resources and had begun to wonder if she should try selling her plays herself. Of course that wasn’t very fair to Edwin…

She shook her head, trying to think. “Whom do you owe, Edwin?”

“Don’t take that tone with me.” He stood suddenly and tossed back the rest of the wine in the glass. “It’s insulting.” He glanced slyly at her. “And it reminds me of our dear mother.”

That sent a guilty chill down her spine. “But—”

He darted over and knelt in front of her chair, taking her hands. “Darling, it’s nothing to worry about, truly. Just finish the play, hmm? Quick as you can.” He squeezed her hands and bussed her cheek. “You know you’re the best. Far better than that hack Mimsford, and he’s had two smash hits in a row at the Royal.”

“But Edwin,” she said helplessly, “what if I can’t write that fast?”

She saw his eyes darken before he dropped his gaze. “Then I’ll have to find some other means of ready blunt. Perhaps Indio’s father—”

“No.” It was her turn to squeeze his hands. Her heart had begun to beat in terror against her rib cage. “Promise me you’ll not approach him, Edwin.”

“You must allow he’s very rich—”

“Promise.”

“Very well.” He made a discontented moue. “But I need to pay my creditors somehow.”

“I’ll finish the play,” she said, dropping his hands.

He looked up at her through his eyelashes. They really were quite long, she thought absently. They almost gave him an innocent demeanor.

Almost.

“By next week.” His voice was light, but no less hard for it.

“By next week,” she agreed.

“Splendid!” He kissed her again, on both cheeks, and rose to dance across the room, his good humor restored. “Thank you, darling. That’s a load off my mind. Now I really must dash. I’ll be back next week to pick up the manuscript, shall I?”

And he was out the door before she could say anything.

Lily stared stupidly at the door. However was she to finish her play in a week?

“WHY,” ASKED ARTEMIS Batten, the Duchess of Wakefield, “are we hiding in a ruined musician’s gallery?”

Apollo grinned fondly at his twin sister. A duchess only five months and she swanned about as if born to the role. She wore some type of dark-green costume with wide lace ruffles at the sleeves that even he could tell was outrageously expensive. Her brown hair was bound up neatly at her nape and her dark-gray eyes were calm and happy—a wonderful improvement over the four years when she used to visit him in Bedlam.

Then her eyes had been filled with sick despair.

He took out his notebook and wrote, Don’t want you to be seen by the other gardeners and Indio.

She frowned over his words as he dug into the wicker basket she’d brought with her: a new shirt—thank God—some socks and a hat and a smaller, cloth-wrapped parcel filled with lovely food.

After Bedlam, he’d never take any sort of food for granted again.

“Who’s Indio?” Artemis asked, quite reasonably, as he bit into an apple.

He held the apple between his teeth—ignoring his sister’s wrinkled nose—as he wrote: Small, very inquisitive boy with a dog, a nursemaid, and a curious mother.

Her eyebrows shot up as he crunched the apple. “They live here?”

He nodded.

“In the garden?” She glanced around at the charred, crumbling walls of the musician’s gallery. In front of the gallery was a row of marble pillars, which had once supported a roof over a covered walkway. The roof had caved in during the fire, leaving only the crumbling pillars. Apollo had plans for those pillars. With a little scouring, and a judicial blow from a mallet here and there, they would become very picturesque ruins. Right now, though, they were just gloomy, blackened fingers against the sky.