Page 53 of Charming Artemis

“Take your pick.”

She watched him, her closely guarded handkerchief still clutched in her hand. Who had given it to her? The question refused to dislodge itself from his mind.

“I wasn’t going to insist you kiss me during the game,” she said. “We could so easily have played the entire thing for a lark, chosen a kiss on the hand or cheek and then put up with a bit of teasing. You didn’t have to humiliate me.” A tiny break in her voice betrayed the emotion she was keeping very well hidden.

Charlie squeezed the hand he still held. “I truly am sorry.”

Her brow inched down in thought. “I know you didn’t appreciate the teasing from your brothers and me earlier, so I was quite careful tonight not to join any of their jesting in your direction. I am trying to make things at least a little better.”

“Believe it or not,” he said, “I am as well. You will, to your horror, discover that I am utter rubbish at anything that isn’t mathematics. Ask anyone in this house. I’ve spent my entire life making a mess of everything.”

To his surprise, she leaned a little against him. “We did so well getting along at the inns. Why is it so much harder here?”

He slipped his hand from hers and put his arm around her, sitting with her in a side-embrace. They still were on delicate footing, but it was a comforting arrangement. “I suspect our difficulties are due to my family,” he said. “I fully intend to blame them.”

“I’ll support you in that.”

This was the sort of camaraderie they’d enjoyed on the journey here. It was welcome and fragile and desperately needed.

“I think we should lay most of the blame at Philip’s feet,” Charlie said. “But none of it at Mater’s. I’ll not say anything against her, even in jest.”

Artemis rested more heavily against him, cozily situated under his arm. It reminded him a little of the way Caroline would sit with him when she was sad or tired or simply wanting to talk. Except Caroline didn’t quicken his pulse. Artemis was doing precisely that.

“What is it like having a mother?” she asked in a whisper. “I’ve always wondered.”

If anyone had told him six months earlier that he would find himself heartbroken on behalf of the lady he’d long considered his nemesis, he’d have laughed. There was no laughter in that moment.

He pulled her in closer. “No one enters Mater’s familial sphere without being fully and completely adopted by her. Ask Crispin or your sister-in-law Arabella, or any of my brother’s wives. Allow her the opportunity, Artemis, and she’ll make certain you know precisely how it feels to have a mother, because she will consider you her daughter.”

“Even though I’ve ruined your life?”

“I suspect she has greater hope for the two of us than that.”

She looked up at him. “Doyou?”

“I’m trying to.”

She took a steadier breath than she had up until then. “Perhaps, instead of trying to fool all your family into thinking everything is sunshine and flower-strewn paths between us, we should expend our effort on trying to have ‘greater hope’ that we can make something of this mess we’ve been thrown into.”

“I’ll support you in that.”

She smiled a bit, no doubt recognizing his exact repetition of her earlier words. “And let us begin by addressing the issue of this chaise longue.”

What did she mean by that?

“There is no reason you should always be the one relegated to the less comfortable arrangement. It’s not fair, and I won’t be bullied into being selfish.”

She put him a little in mind of the Dangerous Duke in that moment; implacable and determined in a way that might have been intimidating if not for the lingering mark left on her face from having slept against the seam of the chaise’s arm.

His pride wanted to object to being tossed from his position of gentlemanly sacrifice, but his neck and back were cheering. “Perhaps we could alternate?”

She gave a quick, single nod. “Excellent solution.”

“One I will accept without objection on the condition that you sleep in the bed tonight. I will consider it penance for having made such a mull of the game earlier.”

Mere moments later, she was settled beneath the heavy blanket on the bed, resting against the feather pillows. Her handkerchief, the mystery he still hadn’t solved, had been stored very carefully in the drawer of the bedside table.

Charlie returned to the chaise longue and sat silent and uncertain. He glanced upward in the general direction of the heavens.What would you have done, Father? Ought I to have done something more? Something different?

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