“Well?” Maude demanded, pointing to one of the chairs at the table. “Have a seat, milord.”
For a terrible second Apollo couldn’t breathe. Then in the next moment he realized that the honorific had been meant sarcastically. He nodded, hoping his face hadn’t betrayed his surprise, and pulled out a chair to sit.
Maude was still scowling. “What’s wrong with him? Can’t he talk?”
“No, he can’t,” Indio said simply, saving Apollo from having to do his dumb show.
“Oh.” Maude blinked, obviously taken aback. “Has he had his tongue cut out?”
“Maude!” Miss Stump cried. “What a horrible thought. He has a tongue.” Her brows knit as if from sudden doubt and she peered worriedly at Apollo. “Don’t you?”
He didn’t even bother resisting the urge. He stuck out his tongue at her.
Indio laughed and Daffodil began barking again—obviously her first reaction to nearly everything.
Miss Stump stared at Apollo for a long second and he was aware that his body was heating. Carefully he withdrew his tongue and snapped his mouth shut, giving her his most uncomprehending face.
She humphed and abruptly took her seat.
“It’s a fair enough question, it is,” Maude defended herself. “Why can’t he talk, then, if’n his tongue works well enough, I’d like to know?”
“I don’t know why he can’t talk.” Indio took the chair next to Apollo. “But he saved Daff from drownding today.”
“What?” Miss Stump paused in the act of reaching for the plate of sliced chicken on the table. “You’re not to go near the pond, you know that, Indio.”
“I wasn’t near the pond,” Indio explained with a boy’s complicated logic. “Daff was. Caliban went in and took her out and wrapped her in his shirt. And then Daff spewed on his shirt.”
Both women swung their heads to eye his shirt askance.
Apollo repressed an urge to lift his arm and sniff to see if the shirt still stank of dog vomit.
Miss Stump blinked. “Spew isn’t a nice word, Indio, I’ve told you before.”
“Then what is?” Indio asked—rather reasonably, in Apollo’s opinion. “Can I have some of the chicken now?”
“Yes, of course.” Miss Stump began to serve the chicken, the skin crisp and brown, the meat tender and moist. “Actually, we don’t talk about such things at the dinner table.”
“Never?” Indio looked very puzzled.
“Never,” his parent said quite firmly.
“But if Daff eats an earthworm like she did last week, how—”
“So how did Caliban come to be nearby when Daffodil went into the pond?” Miss Stump asked loudly.
“He was chopping at a stump with a funny-looking ax,” Indio said, and Apollo wanted to tell him, adze, but instead he took a bite of the chicken. “And me an’ Daff were walking. But not,” he added, “to the pond. We was walking not near the pond.”
Apollo chanced a glance at the ladies and winced. Neither woman had swallowed that particular story.
“Then he’s a gardener.” Miss Stump picked up her wineglass and eyed him with far more interest than was safe.
“Not just any gardener,” Indio said. “He tells all the other gardeners what to do.”
At which point Apollo nearly swallowed his bite of chicken the wrong way. He choked and gasped and Miss Stump pounded him hard on his back.
“Does he indeed?” she asked, with a pointed look at him.
How the hell did the boy know that? Not even the other gardeners knew he’d designed the garden. He had a rather complicated method of leaving written instructions for the lead gardener—a slow but methodical man named Herring—so that none of them realized their employer was working right under their noses.
“Why do you think that?” Maude asked interestedly.
Apollo flicked his wrist and knocked his plate to the floor. It was a sad waste of good roast chicken, but not to be helped. The plate smashed on impact, shards skidding across the charred boards, gravy and meat oozing everywhere. Daffodil rushed over and began gobbling chicken as Indio and Maude tried keep her from inadvertently eating a piece of crockery.
In the melee Apollo looked over and met Miss Stump’s gaze. Her green eyes were narrowed speculatively on him and he felt a thrill shoot through him, low and visceral.
The feeling might’ve been simple fear, but on the whole he thought it was something far, far more dangerous.
MAUDE AND INDIO were shouting, grappling with Daffodil and the mess on the floor, but Lily was frozen, staring into murky brown eyes. Not eyes the color of coffee or chocolate or that lovely China tea that came in a little red paper packet and that she could no longer afford. No, Caliban’s eyes weren’t like any delicious beverage. They were simply brown. As dull and uninspiring as a dumb animal’s.
Except…
Except that they were surrounded by the lushest lashes she’d ever seen on a man: short, black, and thick, and exotically beautiful in their own way. Why hadn’t she noticed before? Caliban’s eyes were simply breathtaking.
But what was more disturbing, there was a glimmer, somewhere in the muddy-brown depths, that made Lily draw in her breath. It was a glimmer of intelligence—sharp intelligence—and it made her afraid. Because if Indio was right, if this man—this stranger—was not just a simple gardener, but was somehow in charge of the other gardeners, then he wasn’t at all what she’d first taken him for. She was aware, suddenly, of how huge he was, of how male. He was in her home, with her little boy and an old woman, and they had no defenses.
She knew all too well what destruction a big man could wreak.
She drew a shaky breath as Indio sat back down again, between Lily and Caliban.
Indio leaned close to the giant and whispered, “You can have some of mine.”
Lily swallowed, gripping her apprehension firmly. Perhaps Indio had misunderstood something he’d seen. Surely a mute couldn’t be the head gardener? Surely Caliban was exactly what he’d seemed when she’d first come upon him in the garden?
“That’s quite all right, Indio,” she said evenly. “Maude can serve him another portion.”
Her former nursemaid shot Lily a quick look, but said nothing as she fetched the only other plate they owned and began filling it.
“Indio,” Lily said carefully as she touched her wineglass. Her own appetite had fled completely. “Tell me about how Daffodil fell into the pond?”