Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(2)

She glanced up to see Penelope pouting.

“But you were very brave to defend me,” Artemis added hastily.

Penelope brightened. “I was, wasn’t I? I fought off a terrible rogue! That’s much better than drinking a cup of gin at midnight in St. Giles. I’m sure Lord Featherstone will be very impressed.”

Artemis rolled her eyes as she turned swiftly back the way they’d come. Lord Featherstone was at the moment her least favorite person in the world. A silly society gadfly, it was he who had teased Penelope into accepting a mad wager to come into St. Giles at midnight, buy a tin cup of gin, and drink it. They’d nearly been killed—or worse—because of Lord Featherstone.

And they still weren’t out of St. Giles yet.

If only Penelope weren’t so set on becoming daring—loathsome word—in order to attract the attention of a certain duke, she might not have fallen for Lord Featherstone’s ridiculous dare. Artemis shook her head and kept a wary eye out as she hurried out of the alley and into one of the myriad of narrow lanes that wound through St. Giles. The channel running down the middle of the lane was clogged with something noxious, and she made sure not to look as she trotted by. Penelope had quieted, following almost docilely. A stooped, shadowy figure came out of one of the sagging buildings. Artemis stiffened, preparing to run, but the man or woman scurried away at the sight of them.

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.

MAXIMUS 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.