“What’s your real name?” she demanded as he made her side, and if she had to blink back wetness from her eyes, she told herself it was tears of anger.
He glanced around, presumably making sure no one could overhear him. Fortunately, Mr. Phillip Warner had moved away to flirt with his own wife and no one was within earshot.
He replied in a very low voice, “Apollo Greaves, Viscount Kilbourne.”
Apollo? Apollo? She nearly goggled.
Well, he certainly couldn’t use Apollo with Smith—what an entirely inane name. Almost as bad as Caliban when one considered it. What mother looked down at an infant son and thought, god of light? No one could live up to a name like that. Especially since he had a twin sister…
Lily’s brain stuttered to a stop and she realized simultaneously both who Apollo-the-god’s twin sister was and who Apollo-the-man’s twin sister must be.
“Your sister is Artemis Batten, the Duchess of Wakefield,” she hissed.
“Hush,” he muttered.
“Your sister’s a bloody duchess.”
“Yes?” He looked at her oddly, as if everyone had a duchess as a sister.
“Which means the duke is your brother-in-law.”
“He’s rather an ass, if that makes any difference.”
“It doesn’t,” she said decisively. “It truly doesn’t. Why are you even talking to me? I’m the blasted help.”
“You are not and you know it,” he said impatiently. “I need to talk to you. To explain—”
“I’m paid to be here,” she said with as much dignity as possible under the circumstances. “And you’re born to all this”—she waved her hand at the room, which, ill-lit though it was, still had a gold ceiling—“and more. You and I have nothing—absolutely nothing in common. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’ll thank you to stay away from me.”
She pasted a smile on her face and moved away from him as gracefully as she could. There was no need to cause a scene, just because her heart was breaking. Ridiculous, really. When he’d been a penniless workman in a garden, shabby and mute, he’d been well within her reach. Now that he was cleaned up and dazzling in his expensive clothes—that waistcoat alone must have cost more than she’d make in half a year—he was as high above her as the sun itself.
Apollo, indeed. Perhaps his name really did fit him.
If he was the god Apollo then she was merely a shepherdess or suchlike. Someone quite lowly and of the earth, not the sky. Shepherdesses might mate with gods in mythology but it always ended rather badly for the poor mortal.
And she had good cause to know that such was the case in this world as well.
The butler entered at that moment and announced supper and they went in to another dark room, this one long and narrow so as to fit an endless mahogany table. Lily found herself seated with the Duke of Montgomery on one side and the delightful Mr. Warner on the other. Directly across from her was Mr. George Greaves with Mrs. Jellett on one side and Mrs. Warner on the other.
They’d hardly begun on a rather watery beef broth when Mrs. Jellett, a lady of mature years in a frock of a startling yellow-green shade, leaned forward and said loudly, “Have you heard aught of your mad cousin, Mr. Greaves? I understand that he barely escaped capture by soldiers in the destroyed Harte’s Folly pleasure garden.”
Mr. William Greaves’s mouth thinned into nonexistence and anyone could see that he did not like the subject—which of course hardly dissuaded his guests.
“ ’Tis said he killed three men with an enormous knife.” Mrs. Warner shivered dramatically. “The very thought that a murderous madman is on the loose is enough to make one want to hide under the bed.”
“Or in the bed?” the duke murmured over his glass of wine.
“Are you offering bedchamber protection, Your Grace?” Lady Herrick asked lazily.
The duke bowed from the waist. “For you, madam, I would make the sacrifice.”
“Such bravery,” cried Moll from the other side of the duke. “I vow ’tis enough to send a lady into a paroxysm.”
That comment prompted a round of titters from the ladies.
Lily stared at her plate, trying not to feel any sympathy for Caliban—Apollo—but it was hard. The others talked about him as if he were a maddened beast to be shot on sight. Would she have felt that way if she’d only heard the stories and not known the man beforehand? Would she have condemned a stranger at once without benefit of trial?
Probably. Fear had a tendency to drive away the courtesy of civilization.