Page 86 of Charming Artemis

“Why didn’t you tell me about your Papa?” he asked.

She shrugged. Talking about this was not making it any easier.

“Maybe we could have helped you find him.”

“You had a father. All of you did but me.” She picked at the lace on the hem of her nightdress. “You wouldn’t have understood.”

“Perhaps not entirely.”

“It’s too late now anyway,” she muttered.

“You are in a house full of people who could tell you more about him,” Linus said. “It might help.”

“Nothing will help,” Artemis said, pulling her legs closer.

He set something on the floor between them. “The dowager gave these to me with instructions that I should give them to you.”

She glanced long enough to ascertain that the items were sealed letters.

“Though she did not offer an explanation, I suspect they were written by the late earl either to or about you.”

She looked away again, tears dripping off her chin.

“If you would rather, I can give them to Charlie to safeguard until you are ready, just as you did for him during the reading of his father’s will.”

She rested her cheek against her knees, still turned away from her brother.

“Watching the two of you my first night here and again the day of the reading set many of my worries at ease,” Linus said. “I believe you could be very good for each other, something I’ve worried about since hearing of your forced nuptials.”

“Every dream I have has died since I married him,” she whispered.

“I have my doubts,” he said, a bit of a light laugh in his voice.

“I should have turned him into a stag like I told the Huntresses I would,” she muttered.

Linus’s arm dropped around her. After a moment, she leaned against him. There was little true comfort to be had, but she would accept what he offered.

“Did it ever occur to you, Artemis, that Charlie might not be your Actaeon?”

“Of course he is.” She heard the pain in her voice but could not prevent it. “Everything was grand. I had my friends. I had my future. I had my Papa to find. Charlie presented himself as someone harmless, just as Actaeon did, then he ruined it all.”

Linus sighed a little. “I sometimes feel I am forever recounting mythology, yet here I go again.”

She let herself lean more heavily against him.

“Artemis of myth had an excessively difficult history with men.”

That was something of an understatement.

“Many of them betrayed her. Others abandoned her. She learned to guard herself well, to reject them all, to punish them for coming too close or showing too much interest. Some of those upon whom she exacted revenge inarguably deserved their punishments.”

“I cannot think of a single one who didn’t,” she said.

“That depends on which version of Orion and Artemis one espouses,” Linus said.

She let a lungful of air slip from her. His brotherly embrace was proving more comforting than she would have expected.

“The version of that myth I have always preferred,” he continued, “offers a different view of Artemis than one usually sees. She and Orion were friends, the very best of friends, in fact. She, who seemed to trust few beyond her group of huntresses, grew to trust and value him. Indeed, it is generally asserted that she, who had solemnly vowed never to love anyone, loved him. Truly and deeply loved him.”

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