Darling Beast (Maiden Lane #7)(57)

Apollo could detect no hint of a family resemblance in his uncle, but his cousin, George, had been a revelation. Like Apollo, he was a big man, well over six feet, with broad shoulders and brown hair. His facial features were rather better formed than Apollo’s own, but there was enough similarity that it made seeing the man like catching his own reflection in a mirror out of the corner of his eye. It puzzled him at first, this sense of familiarity, until he realized what it was: they moved alike, he and his cousin.

Apollo frowned, thinking, only to be interrupted by Montgomery. “Try not to look too much like the tragic hero of a melodrama, if you please. We’re at a party.” And with that he sauntered over to Lady Herrick, who was not only quite a beauty but apparently wealthy as well.

Just Montgomery’s type, Apollo thought sourly. Poor woman.

“He collects people, you know,” the architect said. “Like a spider collects flies. Traps them, ties them up in silken threads, and keeps them until he has use of them.” MacLeish turned to Apollo, his blue eyes very cynical for one so young. “Has he collected you, too?”

“No.” Apollo was watching Lily again, as she threw back her head in laughter at something Mr. Phillip Warner had said. Her throat was long and white and he wanted, rather violently, to lick it until she stopped laughing at other men’s jests. “He may think he has me, but he’ll find he’s very much mistaken.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” MacLeish murmured, following his gaze, “but ’twas I who was mistaken in the end.”

Apollo spared a glance at the other man and then moved away without comment. Whatever was going on between Montgomery and his architect, he hadn’t the time for it.

His eyes were fixed on Lily.

CALIBAN—NO, LORD KILBOURNE—was coming toward her and Lily wasn’t entirely certain what to do. She’d been aware of him this entire time, for his eyes seemed to burn into her back no matter where she moved in the room. It really wasn’t fair: it was he who had disappeared into thin air without so much as an explanation or word to her whether he was all right or not. And now he’d turned up at a house party of all things, still using that ridiculous name, Mr. Smith. Had he even invented an appropriate Christian name to go with Smith? A thought struck her, low and terrible. Dear God, she didn’t even know his proper Christian name! She’d let him kiss her and yet didn’t know the first thing about him. The realization made her bitter and a little unwise.

“What’s your real name?” she demanded as he made her side, and if she had to blink back wetness from her eyes, she told herself it was tears of anger.

He glanced around, presumably making sure no one could overhear him. Fortunately, Mr. Phillip Warner had moved away to flirt with his own wife and no one was within earshot.

He replied in a very low voice, “Apollo Greaves, Viscount Kilbourne.”

Apollo? Apollo? She nearly goggled.

Well, he certainly couldn’t use Apollo with Smith—what an entirely inane name. Almost as bad as Caliban when one considered it. What mother looked down at an infant son and thought, god of light? No one could live up to a name like that. Especially since he had a twin sister…

Lily’s brain stuttered to a stop and she realized simultaneously both who Apollo-the-god’s twin sister was and who Apollo-the-man’s twin sister must be.

“Your sister is Artemis Batten, the Duchess of Wakefield,” she hissed.

“Hush,” he muttered.

“Your sister’s a bloody duchess.”

“Yes?” He looked at her oddly, as if everyone had a duchess as a sister.

“Which means the duke is your brother-in-law.”

“He’s rather an ass, if that makes any difference.”

“It doesn’t,” she said decisively. “It truly doesn’t. Why are you even talking to me? I’m the blasted help.”

“You are not and you know it,” he said impatiently. “I need to talk to you. To explain—”

“I’m paid to be here,” she said with as much dignity as possible under the circumstances. “And you’re born to all this”—she waved her hand at the room, which, ill-lit though it was, still had a gold ceiling—“and more. You and I have nothing—absolutely nothing in common. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’ll thank you to stay away from me.”

She pasted a smile on her face and moved away from him as gracefully as she could. There was no need to cause a scene, just because her heart was breaking. Ridiculous, really. When he’d been a penniless workman in a garden, shabby and mute, he’d been well within her reach. Now that he was cleaned up and dazzling in his expensive clothes—that waistcoat alone must have cost more than she’d make in half a year—he was as high above her as the sun itself.

Apollo, indeed. Perhaps his name really did fit him.

If he was the god Apollo then she was merely a shepherdess or suchlike. Someone quite lowly and of the earth, not the sky. Shepherdesses might mate with gods in mythology but it always ended rather badly for the poor mortal.

And she had good cause to know that such was the case in this world as well.

The butler entered at that moment and announced supper and they went in to another dark room, this one long and narrow so as to fit an endless mahogany table. Lily found herself seated with the Duke of Montgomery on one side and the delightful Mr. Warner on the other. Directly across from her was Mr. George Greaves with Mrs. Jellett on one side and Mrs. Warner on the other.