Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(50)

“As you say, Your Grace, this is the best we can do, but I don’t like it very much. If we could but send for a physician more learned in the healing arts—”

“The same objection applies.” Maximus paced restlessly to the opposite wall of the cellar. Damn it, he needed Kilbourne to wake for Artemis’s sake. He remembered her shining, grateful face, and he couldn’t help but think she wouldn’t be so grateful now if she could see her brother’s condition.

“Besides,” Maximus continued, returning to Craven’s side, “you’re as good as if not better than most of the university-educated doctors I’ve seen. At least you haven’t a peculiar fondness for disgusting miracle draughts.”

“Hmm,” Craven murmured. “While I am of course gratified by Your Grace’s confidence in me, I must point out that most of my doctoring has consisted of tending to your gashes and bruises. I’ve never had to deal with a patient with a head wound and broken ribs.”

“Even so, I trust you.”

Craven’s face went completely blank. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

Maximus gave him a look. “Don’t let’s get maudlin, Craven.”

Craven’s craggy face twitched. “Never, Your Grace.”

Maximus sighed. “I must make an appearance upstairs, else the servants will begin to wonder where I’ve gone. Come at once, though, should he regain his senses.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” Craven hesitated, studying the unconscious man’s face. “I think, though, we will have to find another place to conceal Lord Kilbourne when he wakes.”

“Don’t imagine I haven’t already thought of that problem,” Maximus grunted. “Now if I only knew where to secrete him more permanently.”

With that dispiriting thought he turned and made his way to the upper floors. Craven would stay and nurse Kilbourne in the cellar while Maximus would return periodically as he was able throughout the day. He’d spoken only the truth: there was no one else to trust with the task save Craven.

As Maximus made the upper hall he was waylaid by his butler, Panders, who, fortunately, was too well trained to ever ask awkward questions. Panders was an imposing man of middling years with a round little belly who normally never had so much as a hair of his snowy white wig out of place, but today he was so perturbed his left eyebrow had shot up.

“Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but there is a soldier in your study who is quite insistent that he see you. I have informed him that you are not receiving, but the fellow will not be sent away. I had thought to call Bertie and John, but though they are stout lads, the soldier is naturally armed and I should not like to see blood upon your study carpet.”

At the beginning of this recitation Maximus had felt a thrill of alarm, but by the end of it, he had begun to have an idea who his visitor was. So it was with calm aplomb that he told Panders, “Quite right. I’ll see to the man myself.”

His study was at the back of the house—situated so that he might not be disturbed by the hubbub of the street or the frequent callers whom Panders usually dealt with quite adequately.

Today’s visitor was another matter.

Captain James Trevillion turned as Maximus opened the door to his study. The dragoon officer was tall with a long, lined face that lent him an air of austerity, even though he was much the same age as Maximus.

“Your Grace.” Trevillion’s nod was so curt that in any other man Maximus might have taken insult. Fortunately he was long used to the dragoon’s lack of obsequiousness.

“Trevillion.” Maximus murmured and took a seat behind his massive mahogany desk. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? We met just a fortnight ago. Surely you haven’t managed to stop the gin trade in London in that short a space of time?”

If the dragoon captain felt any resentment at Maximus’s sarcasm, he hid it well. “No, Your Grace. I have news regarding the Ghost of St. Giles—”

Maximus interrupted the officer by waving an irritable hand. “I’ve told you more than once that your obsession with the Ghost of St. Giles does not interest me. Gin is the evil in St. Giles, not some lunatic in harlequin’s motley.”

“Indeed, Your Grace, I am well aware of your thoughts on the Ghost,” Trevillion said with composure.

“Yet you persist in ignoring them.”

“I do what I think best for my mission, Your Grace, and between the Ghost and this new fellow, Old Scratch—”

“Who?” Maximus knew his voice was too sharp, but he’d heard that name before: the drunken aristocrat in St. Giles who had been robbed—he’d said his attacker was Old Scratch.

“Old Scratch,” Trevillion replied. “A rather vicious highwayman who has been hunting in St. Giles. He’s much newer than the Ghost.”

Maximus clenched his jaw as he glared at the man. A little over two years ago he’d caused the 4th Dragoons to be outfitted and brought to London to assist in the veritable war on gin in London. He’d handpicked Trevillion himself, for he wanted an intelligent, brave man. A man capable of making important decisions on his own. A man resistant to both bribes and threats. But the problem was that the same qualities that made the dragoon captain excellent at his job also made him damnably stubborn when he saw what he perceived to be a lawbreaker in his territory. Trevillion had been near obsessed with the Ghost almost from the start of his mission.