Darling Beast (Maiden Lane) by Elizabeth Hoyt Page A

is rumored that the people of this island once worshipped a god in the shape of a great black bull. Better, my liege, to let this thing live than risk offending such an ancient power.”…
    —From
The Minotaur
    Captain James Trevillion glanced at the small brass clock on the table next to his chair. Four fifteen. Time to return to his charge. Carefully he placed a lopsided cross-stitch bookmark between the pages of the book he was reading:
The History of the Long Captivity and Adventures of Thomas Pellow
. He picked up his two pistols and shoved them securely into the holsters of the wide leather bandoliers that crisscrossed his chest. Then he reached for the cane.
    The damnable cane.
    It was plain, made of hardwood, with a wide head. Trevillion leaned heavily on the cane, bracing his crippled right leg as he heaved himself to his feet. He paused a moment to adjust to standing, ignoring the ache that shotthrough the leg. The ache was bone-deep, which made sense, since it was a bone of that leg that’d been broken—not once, but twice, the second time catastrophically.
    It was the second break that had cost him his army career in the dragoons. The Duke of Wakefield had offered him another job instead—although Trevillion still wasn’t entirely sure if he should be grateful for that offer or not.
    He glanced out the window as he waited for the ache in his leg to die down. He could see several gardeners laboring over a crate in the back garden. As he watched, the top was pried off, revealing rows of what looked like sticks packed in straw.
    Trevillion raised his brows.
    He pivoted gingerly and limped out his door and into a hallway in Wakefield House—the duke’s London residence. His room was at the back of the house, at the end of one of the corridors. Not a servant’s room, certainly, but not a guest’s, either.
    Trevillion’s mouth quirked. He lived in a strange limbo between.
    It took him five excruciating minutes to negotiate the stairs down to the floor below. Just as well that the duke had been so generous with his living situation.
    The servants had the topmost fifth floor of Wakefield House.
    He could hear feminine laughter now as he laboriously approached the Achilles Salon. Quietly he pushed open the tall, pink-painted doors. Inside, three ladies sat close together, the ruins of a full tea service on the low table before them.
    As he began limping toward them, the youngest, apretty, plump, brown-haired girl, turned in his direction a full second before the other ladies looked up as well.
    He marveled at how Lady Phoebe Batten was always the first to be aware of his presence. She was blind, after all.
    “My warder comes for me,” she said lightly.
    “Phoebe,” Lady Hero Reading whispered, chiding. She was the middle Wakefield sibling—younger sister of the duke, elder of Lady Phoebe—but the two women looked nothing alike. Lady Hero was taller than her sister, with a willowy figure and flame-colored hair. No doubt she thought he couldn’t hear her undertone, but alas, he could. Not that it mattered. He was fully aware of what his charge thought of him and his duties.
    “Won’t you have a seat?” the third member of the tea party asked kindly. Her Grace the Duchess of Wakefield, Artemis Batten, was an ordinary-looking woman—excepting her rather fine dark-gray eyes—but she held herself with all the command of a duchess. If one were unaware of her history, one would never guess that she’d served as an impoverished lady’s companion to her distant cousin until her marriage to the duke.
    A formidable lady indeed.
    “Thank you, my lady.” Trevillion nodded and chose a chair a discreet distance from the trio. However much she hated it, it was his job to watch over and protect Lady Phoebe. Obviously he wasn’t needed when she was with her sister and sister-in-law—or indeed anywhere in Wakefield House—but should she wish to go out after tea, he was bound to accompany her.
    Whether she liked it