Chapter Nineteen
“Your uncle said the most foolish things before he went away.” Artemis pressed her cheek to her nephew’s silky hair as she sat in the nursery rocking chair with him on her lap. “He said he’d made a mistake in making me love him. Can you imagine? And he thought I could never love him because there are so many differences between us.”
Lee fussed a little, popping his thumb out of his mouth to whine, “Papapa?”
“Whisht, now!” Artemis tried to soothe him with the word Hadrian often used. “I know you miss Papapa. So do I. We may seem as different as two people can be in background and situation. But beneath all those outward trappings, we are very much alike. We are both interested in history and books. Our families matter a great deal to us and we take our responsibilities to them very seriously. We are both rather proud and neither of us gives our affections easily. But when we do—”
“Papapa,” said Lee again in a more demanding tone.
“He’s only gone to Newcastle.” Artemis patted her nephew’s back. “Whatever he may say to the contrary, I know you will miss him terribly if he sails off to Singapore. I wish I knew how to persuade him to stay, for all our sakes.”
Lee’s eyelids were starting to droop, but he struggled to resist sleep. Did he think Hadrian might come home while he was napping? “Papapa. La-eeoo.”
“I know you love Papapa,” Artemis whispered. “Whether he says so or not, he loves you, too. There is nothing in the world he would not do for you. He is so afraid of losing you and me through some calamity, he would rather lose us by sailing away to the other side of the world.”
Was she being selfish, asking Hadrian to stay and live with the constant fear that she and Lee would be taken from him? And what if something did happen to one or both of them? There were so many illnesses that afflicted small children. Many women died in childbirth or afterward of milk fever. The thought of dying troubled Artemis less for her own sake, than for Hadrian’s and Lee’s and her baby’s.
If only Laura and Genia were still there to offer wise advice and staunch support. Artemis felt desperately in need of both. Perhaps one of her friends had written to her.
She glanced down to see that Lee had fallen fast sleep, like a proper little Northmore. He did not stir when she carried him to his cot.
Once he was resting there, Artemis hurried downstairs in search of Mrs. Matlock. She found the housekeeper just outside Hadrian’s study.
“Has the post come yet, Mrs. Matlock?”
The housekeeper cast a skittish glance over her shoulder. “Not long ago, ma’am. I just put the master’s correspondence on his writing table.”
Artemis wondered why such a simple question appeared to ruffle the woman’s usual brisk composure. “Were there any letters for me from Lady Kingsfold or the Countess?”
“I don’t believe so, ma’am.” Again Mrs. Matlock gave a furtive look, as if something were bothering her conscience.
“You don’t sound very certain.” Artemis peered around her into Hadrian’s study. Was the housekeeper trying to hide something? “Are there or not?”
“One letter was in a woman’s hand.” Mrs. Matlock sounded as if the information were being extracted from her by torture. “But it came addressed to the master.”
“Perhaps Lord and Lady Kingsfold both wrote to us and her ladyship addressed the letter.” That made sense. Artemis could not wait to read it. Laura’s kindly good sense might help her decide what to do. “I’ll have a look.”
She slipped past the housekeeper and headed for Hadrian’s writing table.
“I’m certain the writing is not her ladyship’s.” There could be no mistaking the alarm in Mrs. Matlock’s voice. “Let it be, ma’am…please. I fear the master wouldn’t like you reading his post.”
“Why should he mind?” Artemis extracted a pair of folded, sealed letters from under Hadrian’s heavy pewter inkwell. “Unless he has something to hide. We both know Mr. Northmore is far too honorable for…”
Her voice trailed off as she stared at the second letter. Not only was it addressed in a woman’s hand, the faint but unmistakable scent of eau de cologne rose from the paper. The smell revived her morning nausea. It also revived the memory of Hadrian thrusting several letters into the top drawer of his writing desk.
When Artemis could open her mouth without fear of vomiting, she looked up at the housekeeper with a reproachful stare. “This is not the first such letter my husband has received, is it?”
Mrs. Matlock shook her head. “There were several others, perhaps a dozen, all within a fortnight. But that was over a month ago and nothing more until today. I hoped he might have thought better of it. He didn’t go to any great effort to hide what he was doing. I thought you must know, but you don’t, do you?”
Know what? Artemis feared her brain would burst from struggling to make sense of all this in a way that would not break her heart. There’d been one or two incidents that had given her passing qualms of suspicion. They had come and gone so quickly she could not recall the particulars, just the vague sense that something was not right.
With a violent tug, she jerked open the top drawer of Hadrian’s writing table and pulled out every piece of paper she could lay her hands on. There were some notes about Sunday schools for children in mining communities, the draft of a letter to the local Members of Parliament, a note from his solicitor about changes to his will, but no other letters from women. Then her eyes fell upon a scrap of newsprint.
It was a notice of employment for a personal companion—a healthy woman between the ages of twenty and thirty to go to Singapore, all expenses paid, generous terms offered. Interested parties were instructed to write Mr. Hadrian Northmore for particulars.
Personal companion, indeed. A mistress—that’s what Hadrian was looking for. Was that the true reason he’d gone to Newcastle—to hire a young woman to accompany him back to Singapore? No wonder he’d refused her offer to go with him and her plea for him to stay.
Artemis sank onto Hadrian’s writing chair, assailed by memories of their disastrous wedding night when she had coldly advised him to find some strumpet to gratify his desires. Had he taken her at her word, even after she’d surrendered her body and heart to him? At the moment, her heart felt as if he’d ripped it from her chest and flayed it raw.
“Such goings-on,” the housekeeper muttered in a tone that mingled exasperated censure with grim sympathy. “Eliza Northmore would turn in her grave. She raised those boys proper, even after they went away to Fellbank. I know rich folk have their own ways and all, but…”
Though Mrs. Matlock’s words fell on her ears, it was Charles Nugent’s scathing abuse that echoed in Artemis’s heart—The only way I could stand being wed to such a pallid, scrawny milk-and-water miss would be to engage a plump, pretty mistress at the earliest opportunity. It appeared her husband shared that sentiment.
Then why had he gone to such lengths to persuade her of his passionate admiration and entice her to consummate their marriage? Another qualm of nausea reminded Artemis of the tiny life growing inside her. Was that all Hadrian had wanted her for—a brood sow on which to beget another Northmore heir? She’d longed for him to need her, but not for that alone. Even when Charles Nugent had denounced her so cruelly, she had not felt so worthless. An anguished sob rose in her throat and a tear as hot and caustic as acid trickled down her cheek.
“Come away from here and let me fetch you a cup of tea.” The housekeeper’s unusually gentle voice called Artemis back from the brink of despair. “I know you and I got off on the wrong foot at first, but you deserve better than this from him.”
Perhaps Hadrian had not given her what she longed for from him, Artemis reflected, but he’d helped her discover something precious within herself. The assurance that she deserved to be loved, not contingent upon what she did, but because of who she was. If she truly believed that, she could not allow his betrayal to take it away from her.
“You’re right, Mrs. Matlock.” Slowly she rose, like a newborn filly testing her legs. But when she got them under her, they held firm. “I do deserve better.”
It rained all the while Hadrian was in Newcastle. Thick clouds had shrouded the northern sky, mirroring the doubts and fears in his mind. The wind had sighed around the eaves of his inn at night like a broken-hearted lover. Raindrops had trickled down windowpanes, the way his tears might have fallen if he’d ever been able to weep for his lost loved ones.
Now as he rode home over muddy, rutted lanes, his heart ached with longing for Artemis and Lee, as if he’d already lost them, too. But he hadn’t lost them yet—at least he hoped he hadn’t. The tragedies that had twice robbed him of his family were not his fault. Indeed, one of the worst things about both was that there’d been nothing he could do to prevent them. This time would be different.
The rain ceased and the clouds began to disperse. Shafts of golden sunshine burst through, striking raindrops that clung to leaves and branches, giving the world a fresh, clean shimmer.
The moment he reached the stable yard at Edenhall, Hadrian sprang from his saddle and rifled his pack for an item that had caught his eye in a shop window. By the time he found it, the stable boy had come running to attend his horse.
“If ye’re looking for missus and the wee lad—” the young fellow pointed toward the garden “—I spied them out walking not long ago.”
Hadrian nodded and smiled. “I’m obliged to you for saving me the trouble of hunting them down.”
Catching the sound of his nephew’s infectious laughter in the distance, he followed it and soon found them.
Lee spotted him before Artemis did. Wriggling out of his aunt’s grasp, he pelted toward Hadrian. “Papapa! Papapa!”
“That’s right, Papapa’s home.” Hadrian swung the child up into his arms. “I hope you were a good boy for your auntie while I was gone. I brought you a present from Newcastle—a boat with wheels and a string so you can pull it around, just like your friend Theo had when he was here.”
Lee gave a shriek of glee when he saw the toy, but he seemed even more delighted to have his uncle home. Hadrian returned the sentiment. He bounced and swung the child around, making comical faces and strange noises until Lee could scarcely catch his breath for giggling.
“There, now.” Hadrian held his nephew to his shoulder and rubbed his back to calm him down. “I mustn’t get you too wound up to eat your supper or your auntie will have my head.”
He risked a glance at Artemis, wondering if she would have his head. Would he blame her if she did?
She started when their eyes met, but quickly composed herself. “Welcome home. I trust you accomplished everything you wanted in the city.”
Though her lips curved in a faint smile, she was clearly not as happy to see him as he was to see her. It was as if, in his absence, Artemis had reverted to the cool, formidable lady she’d been when they first met.
“It was a very productive few days.” He moved toward her, hoping a kiss might thaw the frost in her manner.
But Artemis averted her face and took a quick step backward. “Were you able to find someone suitable for the position?”
“To manage the northern branch, you mean?” He shook his head. “I didn’t meet anyone who quite fit the bill. I believe you were right about who would be best suited for the job. But I don’t want to talk about business now. How have you been? I thought about you a great deal while I was away and the things you said.”
“Did you?” she replied in a brisk, biting tone. “I am surprised you had the time or the inclination with so many more agreeable things to occupy you.”
Hadrian tried to defuse the growing tension by addressing Lee. “You know, lad, I get the feeling there’s something troubling your auntie. Has she told you what it is?”
“Ee-oo!” echoed Lee.
“Me?” Hadrian gave an uneasy chuckle. “I was afraid of that. Tell her I’m sorry for what I’ve done to vex her. I’d like to make it up to her if she’ll let me.”
He hoped an appeal through their nephew might soften her resistance. Instead it seemed to have the opposite effect.
“I will thank you not to drag the poor child into the middle of this sordid business.” Snatching Lee out of Hadrian’s arms, she set the lad on his sturdy little feet and gave him his toy boat to play with.
Then she turned her attention back to Hadrian. A fierce amethyst spark flashed in the depths of her eyes. “You need not pretend to care how I feel. I know the true reason you went to Newcastle. A letter arrived while you were away, from another applicant for the position you posted in the newspapers.”
The position he’d posted? She must have found out he was trying to hire a mistress and assumed the woman was for his own amusement. “Artemis, you mustn’t fret on that account. I can explain, pet.”
“I am not your pet!” she bristled, wrapping her arms around her slender torso. “And I don’t want your…explanations. Perhaps I have no right to complain, since I told you on our wedding night to get yourself a mistress. But I will not stand to be treated like a fool!”
“A fool? But I never—”
Artemis was clearly in no mood to listen. “If you never wanted a real marriage with me, you should have said so. Instead you made me feel sorry for you by pretending to believe you were under some sort of curse. Claiming you must stay away from Lee and me for our protection, when all the time you were methodically going about hiring a mistress under my very nose. You did not even try to hide it from the servants!”
He wanted to explain, if she’d let him get a word in. But stubborn pride froze his tongue. How could Artemis think so ill of him after the closeness they’d shared and everything he had confided in her? Why should he grovel to a woman who thought of him as an unfeeling upstart, unworthy of her trust?
His fears made one last desperate appeal. If he still wanted to return to Singapore, it would be a great deal easier to face living without Artemis if he could convince himself she despised him.
But how could he believe it after he’d come to know her so well? Beneath her proud antagonism, he glimpsed the true source of her anguish and uncertainty. It was not his integrity she doubted, but her capacity to inspire and keep his love. Could he blame her after the way she’d been treated in the past and his recent intention to desert her?
He managed to untie his tongue and was about to speak when Artemis suddenly looked around, her splendid eyes widening in alarm. “Lee! Good God, where is he?”
Hadrian swept a glance around the grassy nook, bounded by hedges and shrubs. Only an instant ago, Lee had been happily pulling his toy boat in circles around his aunt and uncle, paying no heed to their sharp exchanges. Now there was no sign of him.
A stunning blow seemed to catch Hadrian from out of nowhere. Like the sudden rumble and shaking of his family’s cottage, and Margaret’s first mention that the baby seemed unwell—was it going to happen again? Was the life Artemis had coaxed him to rebuild about to crash down around him?
Artemis struggled to breathe.
“He was just here.” She dashed to the nearest hedge and looked behind it while Hadrian ran to check behind a pair of rhododendrons. “I only took my eyes off him for a second. I should never have made you set him down. If any harm comes to him…”
She knew this was what Hadrian had feared—what he’d been trying to spare her and himself. Whatever his plans to take a mistress, he had not deceived her about his true reason for wanting to keep his distance from her and Lee.
“No harm will come to him.” Hadrian strode to her side and clutched her hand in a grip as fierce as his resolve. “We will find him and all will be well. I’ll head down toward the beck—that’s the greatest danger and he may have taken a notion to sail that boat of his.”
His urgent but positive tone restored her shaken composure. “I’ll call the servants out to look for him and tell the groom to bring his dog.”
Raising her hand to his lips, Hadrian pressed a swift, ardent kiss upon it that Artemis took as a promise. Whatever happened, he would not let it destroy the bond between them.
The next instant he strode away, calling, “Lee, where are you? Lee, come to Papapa!”
As she lifted the hem of her gown and raced toward the stables, she heard Hadrian in the distance, trumpeting like an elephant and gibbering like a monkey. Had he gone mad?
Then she heard another sound that ripped a sob from her throat and brought tears to her eyes—Lee’s sweet, bubbling laughter.
Spinning about in midstep, she raced in the direction of the sound, wading through herbaceous borders, dodging around shrubs, catching her gown on rose brambles. Then suddenly, she rounded a hedge and there he was, without a scratch on him, still clutching the string of his boat and laughing at his uncle’s comical animal noises.
“Thank God!” She swooped down on Lee, gathering him into her arms, laughing and sobbing with relief.
Hadrian appeared an instant later and wrapped his arms around both of them. “Still laughing are you, naughty little monkey? You think this is a fine game, making your poor auntie and uncle frantic.”
As he gave the child a cheerful scolding, his voice sounded husky. And when Artemis grazed his cheek with her lips, she tasted tears that were not hers.
“Dearest!” she crooned. “Angel!” She meant those endearments for both of them.
For it was not only Lee who’d been delivered from harm, but all of them, including the tiny flicker of new life within her. During those brief, terrifying moments, when their future had seemed under threat, she’d realized nothing meant more to her. And there was nothing she would let stand in the way of their happiness. Not her doubts, nor Hadrian’s fears, nor their pride.
Drained by their alarm and outburst of intense emotion, she and Hadrian sank onto the grass, their arms still entwined around each other.
“Dry your eyes, pet.” Hadrian pulled out a handkerchief and offered it to Artemis. “You’ll have no more reason to weep today, I promise you. About this mistress nonsense—”
“You needn’t explain.” Artemis wiped her eyes. “I know love and faithfulness were never part of our original bargain, but you gave me so much more than you ever promised.”
“You exceeded our bargain, too, pet.” A silvery mist rose in his eyes, which glowed with love. “Somehow you eased the burden of my past and leeched the poison from my wounds. You brought back to life the parts of me I thought had died with each member of my family. It is a debt I can never begin to repay.”
Artemis shook her head. “Not a debt. It was a gift that brought me happiness and fulfillment in the giving. We can make each other happy, Hadrian. I know we can, if only you would let us try.”
“I never doubted that.” He raised a hand to stroke her cheek. “It was the price I might pay in heartbreak if I lost you that made a coward of me. But I’ve come to realize whatever time we have together will be worth even that.”
He’d promised she would have no further cause to weep, but he was wrong. His words brought fresh tears to her eyes, but they were happy tears. Cleansing tears. Like welcome rain on drought-parched fields.
Lee seemed to sense something momentous was passing between the two people who loved him most. He did not make a sound, or squirm to escape their embrace, but snuggled into it with a contented sigh.
“Do you remember,” murmured Hadrian, “when I told you I had a commission to perform for my partner, Simon Grimshaw?”
Though she did not understand why he’d changed the subject, Artemis nodded. She recalled everything from the night he’d first come to her bed—every look, every touch, every word.
“Simon asked me to fetch him back a mistress from England. He was badly used by his late wife and wants nothing more to do with marriage. I reckon it was a daft way to go about finding one, putting a notice in the papers, as if I was hiring a cook or a laborer. I didn’t tell you about it because I thought you wouldn’t approve. But I didn’t try to hide it, either, because it never occurred to me how my actions might look.”
A hiccough of laughter bubbled out of Artemis. The world suddenly looked brighter, its colors more vivid, as if her tears had washed away a film of dust from her eyes…and from her heart.
“As for me…” Hadrian caressed her tear-streaked face with his eyes “…there is only one mistress I will ever want. Only one woman I will ever love. That is the one I’m married to.”
Even as her heart swelled so full of joy Artemis feared it would burst, one final foreboding chilled her. Hadrian loved her and she loved him. That changed many things, but not everything.
“Then you will take us with you to Singapore?” she whispered, half-afraid to ask.
Hadrian shook his head. “I shall have to find someone to escort Simon’s mistress to Singapore, because I have no intention of leaving you and Lee. I mean to stay here, do everything I can to help the young mine workers and start up a new branch of Vindicara. Mind you, I do not expect to work the long hours I once did. I have found a great many pleasanter ways to spend my time.”
Taking Hadrian’s hand, Artemis slipped it behind Lee to rest against her belly. Now she had no qualms about sharing her happy news with him. “By next spring, we should have one more thing to keep us both happily occupied.”
A look of dumbfounded delight warmed Hadrian’s features as he caressed her taut, subtly rounded belly. When he recovered his voice at last, it was husky with emotion. “I hope it will be the first of many.”
As he inclined his head for a kiss that would seal their new commitment to one another and to the family their love would create and nurture, Artemis whispered, “Bless all Northmores!”