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“You come back within the minute or I find you. Understand?”
Sully nodded frantically.
Maximus let him go.
Sully was back in less than a minute with an iron ring of keys. “Should be one o’ these—”
“What’re you doing in here?”
Maximus rose and whirled at the voice, both swords out.
Sully squeaked and froze, his hands clutching the keys before him like a shield.
The man who stood in the doorway to the cell paused with Maximus’s sword at his throat, his eyes wide. Maximus recognized the voice now as Ridley’s. He was a big man—nearly as big as the one sprawled at their feet—and he had the look of a bully.
“Sully, take off the manacles,” Maximus ordered, careful to keep his eyes on Ridley.
He heard the clank of the manacle falling to the floor.
“You”—Maximus gestured to Ridley with his sword—“pick up his feet.”
“What d’you want with ’im?” Ridley sounded sullen, but he bent to grab Kilbourne’s feet. “ ’E’s near enough dead as ’tis.”
“Give me the lantern and take his head,” Maximus said to Sully, ignoring Ridley.
The first attendant looked doubtful, but he surrendered the lantern readily enough. With a grunt and a bit of swearing, both men lifted Kilbourne’s limp form.
“Weighs a bloody ton, ’e does.” Ridley spat into the straw.
“Less talk,” Maximus said softly. “If another guard comes, I won’t be needing you, will I?”
That shut up the second attendant. They made their way back down the hallway and—with more difficulty—down the staircase. Maximus watched carefully that they didn’t drop Kilbourne, but otherwise didn’t help, preferring to keep his hands free in case more guards showed up.
“Would’ve finished the job if’n I knew you was coming for ’im anyway,” Ridley muttered as they finally made the ground floor.
were within sight of Pelham House, and here Miss Picklewood stopped and looked wistfully up at the magnificent mansion. “Then you know the rest. Poor Mary died along with the duke, her husband. Well. Our relation was distant, you know. Quite distant. But Mary and I were bosom bows as girls, and when I heard about the tragedy I came at once. There was a time at the beginning when the lawyers and men of business were swarming ’round, when I thought someone would throw me out. Find another to bring up Hero and Phoebe. But then Maximus started speaking again and that was that. Even at fourteen he had the bearing of a duke. I showed him the letters his mother and I had exchanged, and he made up his mind that I should raise his sisters.”
Miss Picklewood stopped to draw breath and for a moment both ladies stood staring up at Pelham House.
Artemis turned to the older lady. “You said he ‘started speaking again’?”
“Hmm?” Miss Picklewood blinked. “Oh, yes. I suppose not many remember now, but Maximus was so shattered by the deaths of his parents that he went mute for a full fortnight. Why, some of the quacks that came to look at him said his brain was addled by the tragedy. That he’d never speak again. Rubbish, of course. It simply took him time to come to rights again. He was quite sane. Just a sensitive boy.”
A boy who, when he came to himself again, was no longer a boy but the Duke of Wakefield, Artemis thought. “It must have been horrible for him.”
“Yes, it was,” Miss Picklewood said simply. “He witnessed their murders, you know. A terrible shock for such an emotional lad.”
Artemis looked thoughtfully at the older lady. Emotional wasn’t a word she’d ever use to describe the duke.
But perhaps he’d been a different person before the tragedy.
“Goodness!” Miss Picklewood exclaimed. “I have gone off track. Your pardon, my dear. I’m afraid sometimes my words run away from me. I simply wanted to let you know that you and I aren’t that different, after all—we’re merely at dissimilar stages of life. I, too, can understand the temptations of our position. But you must learn to resist them—for your own good.”
“Thank you,” Artemis said gravely, for she knew the advice was meant kindly.
Miss Picklewood cleared her throat. “I do hope this little talk won’t come between us?”
“Not on my part,” Artemis assured her.
