Penelope gathered her skirts and quickened her pace, nearly rushing at her.
Still, Artemis was surprised when the slap came.
“Whore!” Penelope shouted, her voice echoing around the theater’s lobby as Artemis staggered back from the blow, gasping.
Lady Hero and Isabel Makepeace caught her.
Miss Picklewood bravely stepped between her and Penelope, but there was no need. The Duke of Scarborough had moved very quickly to catch up with Penelope. He grabbed her arm roughly, pulling her back. His normally genial face was wearing a frown. “What is this about?”
Penelope kept her eyes on Artemis as she said, “You know I want Wakefield, yet you spread your legs for him like a common strumpet.”
Artemis stared, her hand at her cheek as a kind of icy numbness seemed to spread through her limbs.
“You had no right!” Penelope cried, tears in her eyes. “No right at all. He’ll never marry you, not with Apollo’s madness. You’ll be tossed into the streets and I’ll be glad! Glad, I tell you, for—”
She was abruptly interrupted in her diatribe by Scarborough turning her about and shaking her once. As Penelope had been yelling his face had gone completely blank. Now, it was dark with anger.
“Stop this! Stop it at once!” Scarborough snapped.
Penelope looked up at him and gasped, “But—”
“No. Whatever your imagined slights, you may not bellow about them in a public place like a mad fishwife. And to hit your defenseless cousin! This was badly done, Penelope. Badly done indeed.” He turned to Artemis and bowed. “Miss Greaves, I hope you are not hurt. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be escorting her ladyship home.”
Artemis blinked, able only to nod jerkily.
Penelope’s eyes widened and tears sparkling in them. “But, Robert—”
“No.” The duke frowned sternly. “I have much patience, my dear, and I think I have demonstrated my affection, but I have my pride as well. I simply will not have you bawling over another man like this. I fear I may have to reevaluate my courtship of you.”
“Oh,” Penelope said in a very small voice, and for the first time Artemis saw apprehension in her face.
“Come.” Scarborough took her arm and marched Penelope out of the theater.
There was a moment of absolute silence.
Artemis’s heart felt small and sore. She gently disengaged herself from Isabel and Hero and turned to face her former friends.
WHEN ILLINGSWORTH LANDED at Harte’s Folly, Maximus was disappointed. An entire day watching the man only to have him traipse off to the theater come night. It seemed he’d wasted his time. All at once he realized that if he’d given up the hunt, just for this once, he might’ve spent the evening with Artemis and his sisters. They were probably themselves already seated at the theater. Perhaps Artemis would even let him speak to her.
He hung back as Illingsworth murmured something to one of the brightly dressed footmen, then disembarked only after his quarry had gone ahead.
“What did Mr. Illingsworth want?” Maximus asked the same footman as he pressed a coin into the man’s hand.
“He asked if Lord Noakes was attending tonight,” was the reply.
Maximus raised his brows. “And is he?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” the footman said. “Both Lord and Lady Noakes are in attendance tonight. They’re at the theater now, as I told Mr. Illingsworth.”
Maximus looked at the footman—a sharp-looking young man. He took out a larger coin, this one gold. “Do you know Lord Noakes?”
“Oh, yes, Your Grace.” The footman eyed the gold coin. “He and his nephew attend the theater often.”
“His nephew?”
The footman raised his brows. “Didn’t you know, Your Grace? Mr. Illingsworth is Lord Noakes’s nephew.”
Maximus absently pressed the coin in the lad’s hand. No, he hadn’t known. Noakes wasn’t a particularly close acquaintance. He’d been mainly a friend of his father’s, although Maximus remembered now that his mother had never cared for the man, and he’d overheard her speak disparagingly of Noakes’s gambling. He had a sudden memory of Noakes at his parents’ funeral wearing a new suit.
Maximus whirled and strode up the path leading to the pleasure gardens and theater. Until now he’d mainly suspected Scarborough, but both Noakes and Scarborough were of an age. Too, they had—now that he considered the matter—a similar type of body. Average height, a very slight paunch, but athletic for their ages. The same build as Old Scratch.
Surely it couldn’t be that easy.
Maximus broke into a jog.
Someone shouted.
Maximus stopped and listened. There was music in the distance and the murmur of voices and laughter. This place had a myriad of paths, artistically lit so that there were darkened places perfect for romantic assignations. A man could very easily get lost here.
Something thrashed in the bushes to his right.
Maximus ran in that direction.
A man came rushing out, his head down, and hurried away without seeing Maximus. Maximus ran three steps after him before he was stopped by a cry.
“Help me!”
He turned and followed the voice, nearly tripping over a body.
He knelt and felt with his hands, finding a man. His chest was wet with a warm liquid.
“He’s killed me,” Illingsworth said. “He’s killed me.”
“Who?” Maximus demanded.
“I…” Illingsworth coughed with an awful dragging sound just as Maximus found the knife protruding from his chest.
“I told him you’d come to see me, that I’d tell you about finding that pendant in his desk drawer when I was a boy. I only needed a little money, not much. It isn’t fair…”
“Illingsworth, who was it?” Maximus demanded.
The other man’s voice was being overtaken by his wheezing breaths. “Not… fair. I’m family. He owed…”
Illingsworth shuddered and went still.
Maximus swore, holding his open hand over the other’s nose.
He couldn’t feel anything.
He stood, looking around. Illingsworth hadn’t said so in so many words, but it must be his uncle who’d killed him. If it had been Noakes, would he flee the pleasure garden or go to his theater box as if nothing had happened?
Maximus started for the docks.
Behind him there was a popping sound. He turned. A woman screamed.
He was already running toward the theater when he smelled it.
Smoke.
Artemis.
Chapter Twenty
The wild hunt was turning, preparing to race away into the clouds, but Lin had made up her mind. She leaned around the Herla King and stole the little white hound sitting before him on his saddle. King Herla grabbed for her and the dog, but his fingers caught only air. Lin had already leaped to earth, the little dog clutched to her breast.…
—from The Legend of the Herla King
“Is it true?” Phoebe asked Artemis, her sweet hazel eyes worried.
Phoebe had somehow managed to get Artemis away from the others, despite Miss Picklewood’s eagle eye. They were walking now in the lower corridor of the theater.
Artemis had been shocked when, instead of refuting her, the other ladies had seemed to come to a tacit agreement to simply forget the whole scene with Penelope. Indeed, Isabel Makepeace had made it a point to link her arm with Artemis’s as they’d walked to the theater box. Although, now that Artemis thought about it, Lady Hero had had a rather determined gleam in her eye.
A determined gleam very like the one in Phoebe’s face. Most of the time the two sisters looked dissimilar. Right now, though, anyone could see that they were related.
“I knew it,” Phoebe exclaimed when Artemis didn’t immediately answer her question. “My brother has seduced you.”
“I shouldn’t be talking about this with you,” Artemis said hastily. “In fact, after tonight, I doubt I’ll ever be allowed to have a private conversation with you.”
“Ridiculous!” Phoebe looked like a small, fierce nuthatch. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. This is entirely Maximus’s fault.”
“Well…,” Artemis began, because truth be told, it had been she who’d gone to Maximus’s bed, not the other way ’round.
Not that she could tell his sister that.
“I could throttle him, I really could,” Phoebe said. “He never even offered for you, did he?”
“No,” Artemis said starkly. “He didn’t. But I didn’t expect him to. I chose this, dear. I really did.”
“Did you?” Phoebe looked up with unfocused eyes, as if trying—and failing—to see Artemis’s expression. “Did you really? So you’d turn down my brother if he offered you marriage, is that what you want me to believe?”
“It’s just such a mess,” Artemis whispered.
“Do you love him?”
“What?” Artemis stared at Phoebe. “Yes, of course. Yes, I love him.”
“Then I really don’t see the problem,” Phoebe said with determination. “For it’s obvious he loves you.”
“I…” Artemis frowned, distracted. “How can you tell?”
Phoebe looked at her as if she were a half-witted schoolgirl. “My brother is the most contained man I know. He keeps the books in his library ranked by language, then age, then author, then alphabetically. He prepares his speeches for Parliament weeks in advance and makes sure to know exactly which lords will be attending and how they will be voting in advance. He’s never, as far as I know, kept a mistress—and before you comment, even a virginal younger sister like myself has ways of finding these things out. He’s fanatical about family and is so worried about my safety that he had bars put on my bedroom windows, presumably so that I wouldn’t, in a fit of absentmindedness, blunder into them and fall out.”
Phoebe took a deep breath and fixed Artemis with a gimlet eye. “And yet he dragged you into the woods in front of his entire country party, loses his tight rein on his temper with you, and has seduced you in his own home—a home he shares with me. Either my brother has a brain fever or he’s fallen hard in love with you.”
Artemis couldn’t help smiling, even though it didn’t matter. Maximus wasn’t marrying for love, after all. He was marrying to please his long-dead father.
She opened her mouth to gently tell Phoebe as much when there was a woman’s scream.
And then she smelled smoke.
A pale wisp innocently curled into the corridor where they stood.
Artemis’s heart started beating fast. The theater was an old one, made of wood and plaster.
“I smell smoke,” Phoebe said.
“Yes.” Artemis took her hand. “We must leave here.” Where was Apollo? Was he even at Harte’s Folly? He’d been so cryptic as to where exactly he’d go. In any case there was no time to search for him. She could only hope that he could make it out of the theater if he were indeed here.
Artemis pulled Phoebe toward the entrance. Of course everyone else had the same idea of escape. People began crowding into the corridor, pushing in their panic. A stout gentleman shoved Artemis hard into the wall as he hurried past.
Her fingers slipped and lost Phoebe’s.
“Phoebe!” Her shout was swallowed by the melee. She fought her way back through the crowd, elbowing people with utter disregard for propriety. “Phoebe!”
She caught sight of the other woman’s face, unseeing eyes wide with panic. Artemis grasped her hand, squeezing tight.
“Artemis!” Phoebe cried. “Please don’t leave me here.”
“I won’t, dear.” There were too many people between them and the main entrance. “Come this way—I thought I saw a side door here.”