“You don’t have to tell me,” he said, low. “You don’t have to tell me.”
She shook her head violently and gasped, “You won’t understand completely otherwise. She… she was all over blood. I don’t know how she’d managed to come to us, but she loved her baby very much.” She inhaled, choking on a sob. “Very much.”
“God,” he groaned, holding her, rocking her now. “Oh, my darling girl.”
“He’d beaten her quite badly. One eye was closed completely, the other swollen so much…” She caught her breath. “Even had she lived it would’ve scarred her. I’m not sure she ever would’ve been able to see again from the closed eye. Something was wrong with her cheek and her nose was flattened into her face. She had to breathe through her mouth, and Apollo, oh, Apollo, some of the blood came from inside her. She was bleeding. Her baby was coming.”
He pressed her face to his cheek and she realized it was damp. He was weeping for a woman he’d never known. Weeping for her pain.
“There wasn’t time to call a midwife. Maude… Maude was a wonder. She got Kitty on my bed and put clothes beneath her and she scolded Edwin until he pulled himself together enough to help. He shouldn’t’ve been there, of course, but I don’t think Kitty knew at the last. She fainted and Maude said… said…”
She covered her face with her hands then, the old, old grief and shock overcoming her. Kitty, poor Kitty. She’d been so pretty, so vivacious, and now all Lily could remember of her was a bloody, beaten face. It wasn’t fair. It simply wasn’t fair.
“Hush, my love, my love, hush,” Apollo murmured into her hair, rocking her like a babe.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her face with the heels of her hands. Her nose was running and her eyes were red, she knew. This wasn’t what he’d come for tonight, an ugly, weeping woman.
“Don’t,” he said sharply and she jerked and looked at him for the first time in minutes. His eyes were bloodshot. “Don’t,” he said more gently. “Don’t apologize for what that monster did and how it hurt you.”
She nodded, catching her breath. “He was born only an hour or so after she arrived, just before dawn. So wrinkled and red and Kitty never saw him, she wasn’t breathing by the time he came into the world. I thought he wouldn’t last either, he was so small, but Maude knew what to do. She sent Edwin to find a wet nurse and bundled the baby with a hot brick on either side of him to warm him.” She smiled then, despite the painful memories, because he’d been her baby boy right from the first. “He never cried, do you know? He simply blinked and looked around with big dark-blue eyes. Of course later one eye changed to green, but when he was first born, they were both blue like the night sky, nearly black, and he had a little tuft of black curls on the top of his head, so adorable. Edwin said we should call him George, but I told him that was too common. I named him Indio.”
She looked up at him.
He stared back, steady and true. “Who was Kitty’s husband, Lily?”
“Lord Ross,” she replied, as easily as telling him the time of day, though she’d never told another soul the truth. “We knew at once that if he thought the baby had lived he would hurt it, for he’d told Kitty as he’d beaten her to death that he wanted a new wife. One who would give him heirs of a proper pedigree. So I left the city for a little while, playing in smaller towns, traveling about the country with Maude and the baby and a very young wet nurse. When I came back to London I simply said Indio was my own.”
“Ross doesn’t know.”
“He doesn’t know,” Lily agreed. “And he must never know. He has a new wife, two small boys, one of them his heir. I shudder to think what he’d do if he knew he already had an heir—one born of an actress with no family.”
Apollo slowly clenched his fists. “But for him to’ve beaten a woman to death—his wife—and face no punishment at all…” His face twisted. “It’s not right.”
She scrambled to her knees to face him, for she had to make him understand. “You mustn’t go after him, Apollo, and you mustn’t tell anyone. As long as he thinks the baby died with Kitty, he’s no real danger.”
His eyes snapped to hers, darkening. “Then why has he been watching you this entire party?”
She shook her head. “I saw Kitty at the last. He must realize whom she went to. I know what he did to her.”
“Then he sees you as a threat to his freedom.”
“I’m an actress—no one of consequence in his circles.”
“Did you not see the entire room stand to applaud you this morning?” He caught her hands, bringing them to his chest. “You might not think yourself important—and perhaps in strictly titled circles you are not—but in society as a whole? Before we knew you were a great playwright, you were lauded as a fine actress. Lily, he has good reason to fear you.”
“Even if you’re right, I don’t…” She closed her eyes, trying to gather the words. “I don’t want you telling anyone, Apollo. Indio has to be kept safe. He has to.”
“Hush,” he murmured, framing her face with his big hands. “I’ll not put you or Indio in any more danger, I promise.”
“Thank you.” She leaned forward to kiss him on the jaw, feeling the rasp of stubble beneath her lips. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry it ever happened to you,” he whispered, catching her chin and lifting her face to his. “No one should have to bear witness to the worst that men can do, and especially not you.”
Her lips curved in amusement. “Especially me? Why should I be sheltered in particular?”
“Because,” he said, pulling her into his lap, “you are my light and my laughter, and if you would let me, I would spend the rest of my life protecting you from everything that is ugly.”
“That can’t be done,” she whispered. “To live is to see both the beauty and the ugliness of life.”
“Perhaps not,” he said stubbornly, “but that wouldn’t stop me from trying. Every day I want to see your eyes alight with happiness.”
“Thank you,” she said, oddly touched by something that would never—could never—happen.
She kissed the corner of his mouth, and when he moved to more fully engage hers, she opened her lips beneath his, accepting his tongue in a long, languorous kiss.