Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(64)

But wasn’t that what she already was?

“It’s only right,” Phoebe was saying stubbornly. “You came to stay with me without any thought for your own schedule.”

Artemis crimped her lips, trying not to laugh. What schedule? She lived at the beck and call of Penelope. She had no plans of her own.

“Besides,” Phoebe said more bluntly, “I’m tired of looking at that brown thing.”

Artemis smoothed a hand over her lap. “What’s wrong with my brown dress?”

“It’s brown,” Phoebe said. “Not coffee or fawn or that delicious shade of dark copper, but brown. And not your color at all, in any case.”

“No,” Lady Hero said thoughtfully, “I think some shade of blue, or perhaps green, would be quite interesting.”

Phoebe looked startled, then thoughtful. “Not a light pink?”

“Definitely not.” Lady Hero shook her head decisively. “Mind, I saw a lovely cream with red, pink, and dark green embroidered flowers we might look at, but no pastel colors overall. Her own coloring is too delicate. Light shades would simply wash her out. Dark and really rather dramatic, I think.”

Both ladies swiveled to examine her, and Artemis suddenly realized what a lump of dough might feel like under the scrutiny of a master baker. She knew from this morning that though Phoebe had trouble discerning shapes, she had no trouble with colors if the object were large enough.

“I see what you mean,” Phoebe said, squinting.

For just a second, Lady Hero’s face revealed a deep sadness, then she straightened with determination. “Yes, well, I do think we ought to get started, then.”

Nodding, Phoebe sipped the last of her tea and set her teacup down.

Artemis watched the ladies as they rose. They thought they were simply giving her a present as friends, but the money for the dresses would come from Maximus, that much was clear.

She’d slept with Maximus.

Her mind caught on the thought, here in this respectable tea shop. She’d run her hands over his bare back, wound her legs over his hips, and clenched deep inside when he’d thrust his penis into her.

He was her lover.

To take a gift from him now was to make her no better than a bought woman. A bought woman was the lowest of the low. Little more than a whore. For a moment the breath stopped in her throat in panic. She’d become everything she’d been warned against. Everything she’d struggled not to be in the last four years. She’d succumbed both to her own weakness and the perils of her position.

She’d fallen.

And then she drew breath again, almost in a gasp. Because there was something liberating in reaching the depths. It was a strange place, true, new and foreign, the way murky with hidden perils, but she found she could breathe here. They’d been wrong all along, all those who’d warned her of this place. She could live here well enough.

Perhaps even flourish.

Artemis lifted her chin and rose from her seat, meeting the curious stares of her friends. “Yes, please, I would like a new dress. Or even three.”

Chapter Thirteen

On the night of the next autumn harvest, Lin ventured out into the dark bramble wood. She stood in a clearing, shivering, and waited until the moon rose, huge and round, in the sky. She heard a rushing, like a thousand voices sighing in lament, and when next she looked, there were ghostly riders urging their silent mounts through the clouds. Leading them was a giant of a man, intent, strong, his crown a silvery glow in the moonlight. She just had time to catch the flash of his pale eyes before the Herla King reached down with one great hand and took her.…

—from The Legend of the Herla King

The full moon lounged in the black velvet sky as Maximus crept into St. Giles that night disguised as the Ghost. He glanced up and watched as she draped herself in the wisps of white clouds, mysterious and coy and everything he could never have.

He snorted derisively to himself and stole into a dark alley, ears and eyes alert to danger. What kind of fool longed for the moon? The kind that forgot his duty, his obligations, the things that he must do if he were to continue to call himself a man.

No, not just a man, but the Duke of Wakefield. Romantic fools didn’t qualify for the job.

Better to concern himself with the present. Which was why he was haunting St. Giles tonight. It had been far too long since he’d seen to his duty: the hunt for the man who had killed his parents. Night after night, year after year, he’d stalked these stinking alleys, hoping to find some trail, some clue to the identity of the footpad who had robbed and killed them. The man was probably dead by now, yet Maximus couldn’t give up the chase.

It was the least he could do for the parents he’d failed so fatally.

Maximus froze as the scent of gin hit his nostrils. He’d emerged from the alley. A man lay in the channel of the larger street the alley emptied into. Broken barrels gushed the nauseous liquid as the man groaned next to his weary nag, an overturned cart still hitched to the horse.

Maximus’s lip curled. A gin seller—or perhaps even a distiller. He started forward, pushing down the roiling of his stomach at the stench of gin, when he saw the second man. He sat a great black horse just inside an alley kitty-corner to Maximus’s own, which was why Maximus hadn’t seen him at once. His coat was a dark blue, gilt or silver buttons glinting in the dark, and in both hands he held pistols. As Maximus emerged, his head turned, and Maximus could see he wore a black cloth over the lower part of his face, his tricorne hiding the upper part.