Apollo sighed and crossed to his friend. He pushed one leg over ungently and perched on the side of the bed. Then he took out his ever-present notebook and a pencil stub.
He wrote, Who is the woman in the garden? and shoved the notebook in front of Makepeace’s eyes.
Makepeace went cross-eyed for a second before focusing on the writing. “What woman? You’re mad, man, there isn’t any woman in any garden unless you’re talking about Eve and that garden, which would make you Adam and that I’d pay to see, especially if you wore a girdle of oak leaves—”
During this ramble Apollo had taken back the notebook and written more. Now he showed it to the other man, cutting him off mid-rant: Green eyes, overdressed, pretty. Has a little boy named Indio.
“Oh, that woman,” Makepeace said without any show of embarrassment. “Lily Stump. Best comic actress in this generation—perhaps any generation, come to think of it. She’s impossibly good—it’s almost as if she casts a spell over the audience, well certainly the male members. Uses the name Robin Goodfellow on the stage. Wonderful thing, made-up names. Quite useful.”
Apollo gave him a jaundiced look at that. Asa Makepeace was more commonly known as Mr. Harte—though very few knew both of the man’s names. Makepeace had taken the false name when he’d first opened Harte’s Folly nearly ten years ago. Something to do with his family being a religious lot and disapproving of the stage and pleasure gardens in general. Makepeace had been vague about it the one time Apollo had quizzed him on the subject.
Apollo scribbled in the notebook again. Get her out of my garden.
Makepeace’s eyebrows shot up when he read the note. “You know, it’s actually my garden—”
Apollo glared.
Makepeace hastily held up his hands. “Although, of course, you have a significant investment in it.”
Apollo snorted at that. Damned right a significant investment—to wit: all the capital he’d been able to scrape together four and a half years ago. And since he’d spent most of the intervening time ensconced in Bedlam, he hadn’t been able to acquire any other capital or income. His investment in Harte’s Folly was it—his only nest egg and the reason he couldn’t simply flee London. Until Harte’s Folly was once again on its feet and earning, Apollo had no way of getting his money back.
Hence his decision to help by overseeing the landscaping of the ruined garden.
Makepeace let his hands drop and sighed. “But I can’t make Miss Stump leave the garden.”
Apollo didn’t bother writing this time. He just arched an incredulous eyebrow and cocked his head.
“She hasn’t anywhere else to stay.” Makepeace rolled off the bed, suddenly alert.
Apollo waited patiently. One good thing about being mute: silence had a tendency to make others talk.
Makepeace sniffed his underarm, grimaced, and then pulled off his shirt before he broke. “I might’ve stolen her away from Sherwood at the King’s Theatre, which for some reason Sherwood took personally, the ass. He’s made it impossible for her to get work anywhere in London. So when she came to me last week unable to pay the rent on her rooms…”
He shrugged and tossed the dirty shirt in a corner.
Apollo’s eyebrows snapped together and he wrote furiously. I can’t keep in hiding with strangers running about the garden.
Makepeace scoffed. “What about the gardeners we’ve hired? You haven’t made a fuss about them.”
Can’t help them—we need the gardeners. Besides. None of them are as intelligent as Mrs. Stump.
“Miss Stump—there’s no Mr. Stump, as far as I know.”
Apollo blinked, sidetracked, and cocked his head. The boy?
“Her son.” Makepeace reached for a miraculously full jug of water, which he poured into a chipped basin. “You know how theater folk are sometimes. Don’t be such a Puritan.”
So she wasn’t taken by another man. Not that it mattered—she thought him a literal idiot and he was in hiding from the King’s men after escaping Bedlam.
Apollo sighed and wrote, You need to find her other lodging.
Makepeace cocked his head to read the outthrust note, and dropped his mouth open like a gaffed carp. “Good God, what a wonderful idea, Kilbourne! I’ll just send her to my ancient family castle in Wales, shall I? It’s a bit rundown, but the seventy or so servants and acres and acres of land should more than make up for any inconvenience. Or maybe the château in the south of France would be more to her liking? I don’t know why I didn’t think of that myself, what with my many, many—”
Apollo cut short this diatribe by shoving his friend’s head in the basin of water.
Makepeace came up roaring, shaking his head so vigorously that Apollo might as well have taken the dip himself.
“Ahem.”