Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(85)

He hit the chisel again before giving her a speaking glance and mouthed, pointedly, Maximus?

“I’ve already told you he’s a friend.”

He rolled his eyes. Artemis was lying to him for that bastard. He wished the duke’s skull was beneath the mallet. He struck the chisel for a third time as hard as he could. The link broke open.

“Oh, well done!” Artemis exclaimed and bent to help him work the broken link from the two still attached to the manacle around his ankle. “You’ll have to wrap that with a cloth or something so it doesn’t clink. I brought clothes.” She gestured to the bag.

He took the notebook from her and wrote, Why now?

She read his words and her face went carefully blank just before she smiled and looked back up at him. “I’ll be leaving Wakefield House soon and I wanted to make sure you were free before I go.”

Why was she leaving? What else was going on? Silently he mouthed, “Artemis.”

She pretended not to see. “Hurry up and get dressed.”

Troubled by her haste and his unanswered questions, he obeyed. He’d been given breeches and a shirt by the valet. Now he changed into the fresh clothes, which also included a waistcoat, coat, and shoes.

Everything was just a bit too small, including the shoes.

Artemis looked at him apologetically. “I got them from one of the footmen. He had the largest feet in the household.”

Apollo shook his head, smiling for her, and bent to kiss his sister. He had nothing save what she’d given him. He grabbed up the notebook and wrote, How will I contact you?

She stared at the notebook for a moment, and he could tell by her expression that she hadn’t thought of that.

He took back the notebook. Artemis. We must stay in touch. You’re all that I have now and I don’t trust your duke. At all.

“Well that’s just silly, the part about Maximus,” she said when she’d read what he’d written. “But you’re right—we mustn’t lose each other. Do you know where you can go from here?”

He’d been thinking on the matter as he lay in the cot for days and he had a ready answer of sorts. He wrote carefully, I have a friend by the name of Asa Makepeace. You may send a letter in care of him to Harte’s Folly.

He gave the notebook to her and saw when her eyes widened in astonishment. “Harte’s Folly? I don’t understand. Is that where you’ll go?”

He shook his head, gently taking the notebook from her hands. Better you don’t know.

She was reading over his shoulder. “But—”

Take care of yourself.

He thought he saw her smile waver when she read it, then she was hugging him tightly. “You’re the one who needs to take care of yourself. Your escape is still all the news. They’ll be searching for you.” She drew back to look at him, and to his consternation he saw that she had tears in her eyes. “I couldn’t bear to lose you again.”

He bent and kissed her forehead. Even if he could speak there was nothing he could say to comfort her.

He turned to go.

“Wait.” She laid her hand on his arm, forestalling him. “Here.” She thrust a smaller bag into his hands. “There’s three pounds sixpence. It’s all I have. And some bread and cheese. Oh, Apollo.” Her brave speech ended on a little sob. “Go!”

She gave him a shove just as he was about to bend to her again.

So without looking at her, he turned and ducked into the cramped tunnel he’d seen Wakefield take earlier that night.

He had no idea where it would lead him.

MAXIMUS DIDN’T KNOW how long he’d been searching St. Giles that night when he heard the pistol shot. He dived around a corner and ran flat out down an alley, heading toward the sounds. Overhead the moon guided him, his fair mistress, his unattainable lover.

The hoarse shouts of men and the clatter of hooves on cobblestones came from ahead.

He spilled into a cross street and saw to his right Trevillion riding hell for leather straight toward him. “He’s headed toward the Seven Dials!”

Maximus ran across in front of the horse, so close he fancied he felt the horse’s breath upon his cheek as he passed. On foot he could duck down one of the many tiny alleys too small for a man on horse and head Old Scratch off. For he knew, deep in his soul, that it was Old Scratch that Trevillion hunted tonight. Old Scratch, the man who wore his mother’s pendant at his throat.

Old Scratch, who’d murdered his parents nineteen years ago on a rainy St. Giles night.

A jog to the left, a duck to the right. His legs were aching, the breath sawing in and out of his lungs. The Seven Dials pillar loomed ahead, in the circular junction of seven streets. Old Scratch sat his horse casually under the pillar, as if waiting for him.

Maximus slowed and slunk into the shadows. The highwayman didn’t have his pistols out, but he must have been armed.

“Your Grace,” Old Scratch called. “Tsk. I’d thought you’d grown out of hiding long ago.”

He felt the coldness invade his chest, the fear that he was too small, too weak. The powerlessness as he’d watched this man shoot his mother. There had been blood on her breast, splattering scarlet over the white marble of her skin, running in the rain into her spilled hair.

He wanted to vomit. “Who are you?”

Old Scratch cocked his head. “Don’t you know? Your parents knew—it’s why I had to kill them. Your mother recognized me, even beneath my neck cloth, I’m afraid. Pity. She was a beautiful woman.”