Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(99)

“Not jewels?” asked King Herla.

“No, my king.”

“Not land?”

“Indeed not, my king.”

“Not horses or cattle?”

“No, my king,” Lin whispered, for King Herla had stepped closer as he had questioned her and she had to tilt back her head to look him in the eye now.

“Nothing I have will tempt you?” King Herla murmured.

Lin could only shake her head.

“Then perhaps I should offer myself,” Herla said as he sank to his knees before her. “Wonderful girl, will you have me as your husband?”

“Oh, yes,” Lin said and all about her the King’s men cheered again.

Then King Herla married Lin in a ceremony that was quite nice but not nearly as grand as his first wedding so many centuries before. After that, he cleared the dark wood of brambles, tilled the fields again, rebuilt his crumbling castle, and caused fat cattle to graze upon his lands. The people were once again content and well-fed. And if King Herla ever felt the urge to go a-hunting, he ignored it and turned to see the smile of his wise queen instead, for he’d already found and captured the best quarry of all.

True love.

—from The Legend of the Herla King

MEANWHILE…

“Nine f*cking years.”

Apollo sat on an overturned tin pail and watched as his good friend, Asa Makepeace, thrust the bottle of wine gripped in his fist into the air, a defiant salute.

“D’you hear me, ’Pollo?” Asa demanded, waving the bottle so wildly he nearly boxed Apollo’s ear with it. “Nine f*cking years. I could’ve been whoring or drinking or pottering about the continent, seeing places, and instead I was working, nay, slaving on this very pleasure garden, building and planting and coddling fickle actresses and more fickle actors and now, now it’s nothing but a smoldering pile of shit. I say again: nine f*cking years!”

Apollo sighed and drank from his own bottle as Asa continued to repeat his profane refrain. Apollo’s bottle was half gone, which was good since he no longer cared that the wine stank of smoke. They sat in the only part of Harte’s Folly still standing: the actor’s dressing rooms behind the stage.

Or what had once been the stage. That part of the theater, and indeed the rest of it, was a still-smoldering blackened mess of fallen beams and debris, too hot to sift through to see if anything could be recovered, although Apollo was very doubtful on that score.

It might have been nine years of Asa’s life lost tonight, but it was also the last bit of capital Apollo had to his name gone, too. Just before he’d woken that dreadful day to find three of his acquaintances bloodily slaughtered around him, he’d taken that capital—a tiny legacy from his father—and invested the lot in Harte’s Folly. At the time it had seemed a sound financial move: he was terrible with money while Asa seemed on the verge of wealth and prosperity with the pleasure garden. Apollo hadn’t expected too much—maybe enough made in interest to keep himself and Artemis.

That dream had just turned to ash.

“ ’Spect I’ll have to live on the street now,” Asa was saying mournfully to his bottle. “My family isn’t too fond of me, you know. And I haven’t any talent or trade save the ability to talk people into things—like I talked you into giving me all your savings, ’Pollo.”

Apollo would’ve corrected Asa’s misconception—he’d made the investment decision of his own free will—but he still couldn’t speak, and he wasn’t sure it mattered anyway. Asa seemed to be almost enjoying wallowing in his own tragedy.

“Hullo?”

They looked at each other at the call from without.

Asa’s eyebrows rose comically high on his forehead. “Who d’you think that is?” he asked in a very loud whisper.

“Ah, there you are.” The prettiest man Apollo had ever seen picked his way through the trash strewn around their little shelter. He was exquisitely dressed in a silver waistcoat and a pink satin coat and breeches, but it was his hair that drew the eye: shining golden curls drawn back by a huge black bow.

Fop, thought Apollo.

“Who the hell are you?” Asa asked belligerently.

The fop smiled and Apollo’s eyes narrowed. He might be pretty, but this wasn’t a man to be underestimated.

“I?” The fop fastidiously laid a lace handkerchief on the remains of a bench and perched on it. “I am Valentine Napier, the Duke of Montgomery, and I have a proposition for you, Mr. Makepeace.”