Darling Beast (Maiden Lane) by Elizabeth Hoyt

You didn’t deserve Bedlam and you don’t deserve this awful half life. Please don’t let—”
    He turned his shoulder to her, but that had never stopped his sister when she was on a tear.
    “Apollo. Please don’t let obsession or… or revenge consume you. A name is important, I know, but it’s not nearly as important as
you
. Don’t let me lose my brother.”
    At that he did look up to see—oh, God, no—that her eyes were glittering. That he simply could not stand. Hereached out and took her hand in his, the feel of it familiar and calming.
    She inhaled. “Just promise me you’ll not give up on life.”
    He pressed his lips together, but nodded firmly.
    She smiled tremulously. “Besides, perhaps with this Robin Goodfellow about you’ll find something else to find interest in. She’s quite pretty, isn’t she?”
    Pretty
wasn’t the right word.
Gamine, sly, seductive
… his brain stuttered on the last and for a moment he thought he’d give himself away. How fortuitous that he’d been practicing a dumb face. Apollo used it now on his sister, who retaliated by laughing and flinging an apple at him.
    He caught it deftly and wrote,
How is His Grace the Ass?
    She frowned over the notebook as he’d known she would. “You really must stop calling him that. He did, after all, save you from Bedlam.”
    He snorted and wrote,
And then chained me in his sinister cellar. I’d be there still if you hadn’t released me.
    She sniffed. “ ’Tisn’t sinister—especially now that he’s using most of it to store wine.
Maximus
is well, thank you for inquiring. He sends his regards.”
    He gave her a look.
    “He does!” She tried to appear convincing, but he merely shook his head at her. Had it not been for Artemis’s persuasion—and Wakefield’s regard for her—Apollo would still be languishing in Bedlam. Wakefield had certainly not freed him because he thought Apollo sane—or innocent.
    Artemis heaved a sigh. “He’s not nearly as awful asyou make him out to be—and I love him. For my sake, you ought to take a more charitable disposition toward my husband.”
    Apollo privately wondered how many times Wakefield had heard the inverse of this little speech, but he nodded at his sister anyway. There really was no point in arguing the matter with her.
    Her eyes narrowed for a moment as if she found his capitulation too easy, then she nodded in return. “Good. Someday I’d like you two to be friends, or,” she added hastily as he cocked an incredulous eyebrow, “at least
polite
to one another.”
    He didn’t bother replying to that. Instead Apollo rummaged in the bundle of foodstuffs further. There was a big loaf of bread and he brought it out and set it on a piece of wood to slice.
    “There’s actually another matter I needed to talk to you about,” his sister said, her voice unusually hesitant.
    Apollo looked up.
    She was turning an apple around and around in her fingers. “Maximus heard it from someone—I suspect Craven, because for a valet, he certainly seems to know everything about everyone. It’s just a rumor, of course, but I thought I should tell you anyway.”
    He abandoned the bread and placed a fingertip under her chin to make her look at him.
    He cocked his head in question.
    “It’s the earl,” she said, meeting his eyes.
    For a moment his mind went blank.
What
earl? Then, naturally, it came to him: the unsmiling old man in a black full-bottomed wig who’d come to see him once—only once—to inform him that as the man’s heir he was tobe sent away to school. The old man had stunk of vinegar and lavender and he’d had the same eyes as Apollo.
    Apollo had loathed him on sight.
    He stared into his sister’s eyes—thankfully the dark gray of their mother’s—and waited.
    She took both his hands, giving him strength as she said, “He’s dying.”

Chapter Five

    The king saw what his wife had birthed and drew back his arm to kill the monster, but his priest stayed his hand. “It