Charming Artemis, page 19
Her look of shock was everything he could have hoped for. He laughed out loud.
“Sit on the bed,” he instructed. “I need to grab a couple of things.”
“You are in earnest?”
He nodded and motioned for her to sit. He snatched the very wide-toothed comb from the dressing table and a length of ribbon. Artemis watched him with equal parts interest and confusion.
Perhaps he ought to take pity on her and explain.
“Caroline and I have spent large swaths of my school holidays running around the grounds of Lampton Park and Farland Meadows. She has curly hair as well, though not as curly as yours. Almost without fail, her hair would grow wild and unmanageable. She would become utterly frustrated with it, and our games and walks would have to end early.” He sat on the bed beside Artemis. “So I asked Marion to teach me how to tend to Caroline’s hair. I’ve grown decent at it, though I can’t do anything particularly fancy or impressive.”
“That you can do anything at all with curly hair is impressive.” Artemis glanced at his hair. “Yours has a bit of wave to it.”
He nodded. “All of us brothers inherited some degree of our father’s very wavy hair.”
“You told me once his hair grew curly and difficult in the rain,” she said. “Mine is the same way.”
“I believe you.” He set the ribbon beside him. “Turn about, if you would.”
She did, placing her back to him. He took up the comb and began to slowly, carefully untangle her hair.
“Do your friends at Cambridge know you are a coiffeuse?” she asked.
“No, and you’d best not tell them. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Do they not already have ample ammunition, you being a mathematician and, therefore, terribly easy to mock?”
He was growing more adept at hearing the amusement underneath her dramatics. “Fortunately, I am so suave and sophisticated that they are too in awe of me to jest overly much.”
“If they grow excessively mocking about your overfondness for numbers, you can always challenge them to a game of catch us, catch us. They would be bested so thoroughly they would never tease you again.”
He worked carefully at her knotted curls. “Your hair is considerably thicker than Caroline’s.”
She pushed out a frustrated breath. “There is far too much of it. When you arrived, I had very nearly convinced myself to cut it all off.”
He paused, his heart dropping to his stomach. “You wouldn’t really, would you?”
“If I had, you could be with your family just now. I’d not be proving a bother.”
“You have beautiful hair, Artie. It’d be a tragedy if you cut it all off.” He took an untangled bit of it between his thumb and forefinger. It was so soft and thick. Many ladies would have been swallowed up by it, the sheer volume overshadowing the lady herself. But Artemis carried it off beautifully. “Combing through it is no bother.”
“I still can’t believe you know how to style curly hair.”
“I am a gentleman of hidden talents: hair arranging, children’s games, mimicry, flower arranging, falling off roofs.”
“Flower arranging?” She turned her head the tiniest bit toward him. “You are the one bringing the flowers?”
“Of course.” He began working on another section of her hair. “My father taught me a lot about flowers, with his most important lesson being that many ladies like to have fresh flowers to add a bit of color and beauty to their home.”
“Were the flowers in my room at Brier Hill from you as well?”
“They were.”
He didn’t realize she hadn’t known that. “Though things have not always been easy between us, I have only ever wanted you to be happy in our home, Artie.”
She didn’t speak for a moment. Charlie couldn’t see her face. He didn’t think he’d upset her, and he was being very careful not to pull her hair as he combed through it.
“Why do you call me that?” The question sounded not upset but genuinely curious.
“‘Artie’?”
She nodded.
“Do you not want me to?” If she truly hated the name, he’d stop using it. But though it had begun as a way to irk her, he’d come to like having a pet name for her.
“Only one other person ever called me anything other than Artemis. I suppose I’m simply not used to it.” She didn’t sound upset. “Not anymore, leastwise.”
He was making progress with her hair, but there was so much of it. “Who else called you by a different name?”
“That is a very long story.”
“Well, you have a lot of hair,” he said. “We will be here for a while.”
“You won’t laugh?”
Never in his wildest imaginings would he have thought that Artemis Lancaster had any uncertainties or vulnerabilities. Yet, for the third time in short succession, she had hesitated to tell him something because she feared being laughed at. He was discovering she was not nearly as unshakably, arrogantly confident as she went to great lengths to appear.
He set down the comb and scooted around so he knelt on the bed a bit beside her and a bit in front of her. He took her face gently in his hands and held her gaze. “I’ll make you a promise right here, right now, Artemis Jonquil. I will not ever, ever laugh at you. With you, yes, but never at you.”
“Thank you.” Emotion clogged her voice. “And thank you for helping with my hair.”
“Thank you for not cutting it off.” He slipped his hand back enough to slide his fingers along one of her thick ringlets. “That would’ve been an absolute tragedy.”
Artemis blushed, something he thought he’d never see her do. She was proving full of surprises.
Charlie resumed his earlier position and took up the comb once more. It was an odd thing to feel heroic about, but he did.
“What was this other name that someone used to call you?” He resumed his work on her tangle of hair.
“Princess,” she said.
That sounded like a name given to a young girl. “How old were you?”
“I was very little.”
He’d thought as much.
“I went with my sisters to Heathbrook one day, and I was separated from them. Our village isn’t large, but I became hopelessly lost. I plopped down against the outside wall of a shop and cried. A gentleman saw me there. He asked me why I was crying, and when I explained, he promised to help me find my family.”
A kindness that warmed the heart.
“He held my hand, and together we walked up and down every little lane and peeked into the shop windows. When I grew discouraged and teary again, he sat with me and told me I didn’t need to be afraid, that he would keep me safe.”
“You were fortunate to have found him.”
“More than fortunate,” she said. “I consider it to have been a miracle. I was so lonely—not merely in that moment but always. My sisters took care of me, but I needed something more than that. I needed a parent to love me and show me that I was worthy of being loved. His kindness was my first taste of that.”
“And he called you Princess?”
“He did,” she said. “And when I asked if I could call him Papa, he wasn’t shocked or disgusted. And he didn’t laugh at me.”
“Did he live nearby, then?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I went to Heathbrook regularly after that, watching for him. I saw him four more times over the next two years. Looking back, I suspect he was passing through the area, not a resident of it.”
A realization washed over him. “He is the one who gave you your handkerchief.”
The tiniest of nods. “On that first day, when I was crying.”
“That is why you treasure it.”
There was so much more depth to her than she ever let on.
“He bought me a sweet in the sweetshop each time I saw him.”
Ah. “Your five sweets.”
“I never felt more loved than I did when he was with me and called me Princess and said that he loved me.” Her shoulders drooped a little. “He was the only one other than Persephone who ever said that, you know. I wanted my father to. I silently willed him to, concentrating so hard I often gave myself a horrible headache. But he never did.”
He wished Artemis had lived closer to Lampton Park. Just as the family had unofficially adopted their neighbor Arabella Hampton, they would have embraced Artemis as well. She wouldn’t have been the least bit alone.
“When Papa—I still think of him that way—and I crossed paths after that first time, he remembered me and recognized me. He scooped me up and hugged me so tight and so lovingly.” She sighed. “It was the most wonderful feeling in all the world.”
“And you saw him only those five times?” He was making progress with her hair. More importantly, they were making progress in their connection. She was sharing personal memories and doing so without her protective armor.
“We left to live at Falstone Castle after that,” Artemis said. “He likely passed through the village again and again. He probably does so now, but I’m not there.” Unmistakable sadness hung in the words. “I’m frantic to see him again, but it often feels like an impossible dream.”
“Could you not send a letter or reach out to a family member of his?”
“I never knew his name,” she said.
He began plaiting her hair, the only style Marion had taught him but one that worked well with Caroline’s curls.
“And I don’t know that he ever learned my name,” Artemis said. “We were Papa and Princess, only ever crossing paths in Heathbrook.”
“Surely your sisters would have known who he was.”
“They didn’t see him on that first encounter. Once I spied them, he didn’t want me to lose sight of them again and urged me to run over to them. When I was safely with Persephone, I looked back and he was gone already. After that, I encountered him on my own. Our family life grew more difficult and chaotic, and it was very easy to slip away unnoticed.”
His heart broke for that little girl. It was little wonder the lady she was now kept everyone at arms’ length.
“I was so young when I last saw him, and my memories of him are broken by the passage of time. I remember that he dressed finely, considerably more so than my father. And I recall that his manner of speaking was very proper and refined, though I cannot recall the exact sound of his voice. I don’t remember what he looked like. I have guesses, but how much of that is my imagination and how much is actual memory, I can’t say.”
“How do you mean to find him if you remember so little of him?”
“I am dependent on him remembering me. I think he would, don’t you? He cared a great deal about me; he said he did. I think he would remember me.” She took a somewhat shaky breath. “He told me during our first time together to ‘keep to the light.’ He meant it literally then, but I’ve adopted that as a maxim these past years. I require myself to find a way to keep hoping, but sometimes, it grows very difficult. Sometimes it feels impossible.”
Charlie tied the ribbon around the tail of the plait he’d created. That would hold her hair in place. “There you are, Artie. Tamed and manageable hair.”
She reached up and touched it gingerly with her hand. “It feels far less chaotic. I might even be able to put on a bonnet.”
He slid around again, sitting at her side and facing her. “Do you look drastically different than you did the last time you saw your Papa?” he asked.
“I don’t think so, other than being older, obviously. My hair was the same color, the same curliness. My eyes are green, which is unique enough to be memorable. I think if he happened to see me or take note of me, he would realize who I was. He was an adult when we knew each other. Adults remember things far more clearly than little children do.” She looked at him with an expression of greater uncertainty than her declaration would indicate.
Here was someone who needed reassuring. “I haven’t the least doubt he remembers you. But with you not living in Heathbrook any longer, and he living elsewhere also, your paths aren’t as likely to cross. Not finding him yet, I am certain, is more a matter of geography than forgettability.”
She turned a little so she faced him more directly. “I have pinned all my hopes on crossing his path in London. Everything I remember of him indicates he is a gentleman and would likely be there for the social whirl. I am there every Season and, heaven knows, I draw enough attention that he ought to at least glance my way at some point. I make certain of it.” She sounded almost exhausted at the recounting of her whirl of activity in Town. “Thus far, he hasn’t found me, but I have hope that he still will. Well, not this Season; it ended too abruptly.”
When they’d departed for Brier Hill, she had been upset about leaving London when the social whirl had only just begun. He’d assigned her frustration to shallowness and bitterness. Making assumptions tends to land one in greater difficulties. “I was lonely and desperate for someone to care about me,” she said. “That likely lent our time together more meaning for me than for him. He told me he had a home and family of his own. I was likely very easily forgotten.”
He slipped his hand around hers. “No one who has met you could possibly forget you.”
She leaned forward a bit, resting lightly against his chest. “But what if my Papa did? What if I can’t ever find him?”
Charlie wrapped his arms around her, holding her to him. “Keep to the light, Artie.”
“I’ve spent my entire life waiting for him to come back to me,” she said, curling into Charlie’s embrace. “I even dreamed of him being at my wedding and a guest in my home and a loving and important part of my life.” She sounded as though she’d lost hope.
“I don’t think you should give up hope. He must be somewhere.”
“But I don’t know how to find him.”
“I’ll help you. I don’t know anywhere near as many people in Society as you do, but between Philip and Crispin and Marion, there’s likely not a member of the ton we can’t track down.”
Her arms wrapped around him as well. “I couldn’t bear for everyone to know about him. I’ll sound so pathetic. And he might be ridiculed for his kindness. I don’t want him to . . . to resent me the way you—” She stopped abruptly, but he knew what she’d been about to say.
He slipped his hand under her chin and gently raised her face to look at him. “I don’t resent you, Artie, though I understand your worry. I have the same one at times.”
“I don’t resent you,” she said. “I do wish this situation hadn’t been forced on us, but I don’t think we’re as miserable as we were at first.”
He brushed his thumb over her cheek, the touch setting his pulse pounding a bit. “I don’t think we could rightly even use the word miserable. We’re finding our way.”
“I’m glad.” Her voice emerged as little more than a whisper.
Charlie reminded himself to breathe, something his lungs had suddenly decided was optional. But looking into her emerald gaze, he found obeying those self-directed orders was difficult. So he leaned his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. The scent she always wore filled the slight space between them.
“I never have been able to sort your perfume,” he whispered. “I’ve tried.”
“It’s made from walnut blossoms.”
“Walnut.” He wouldn’t have guessed. “Wasn’t walnut one of your namesake’s symbols?”
Her hand moved to rest against his chest. “Most people don’t remember that about Artemis of old.”
He leaned closer. “I am not ‘most people.’”
Her fingertips tentatively touched his jaw. “No, you’re not.”
Her breath danced across his lips, an invitation he found himself unequal to ignoring. He brushed his lips over hers, a tentative touch, an unspoken question. She answered with a whisper of a kiss as well.
Bell-like chimes broke the moment.
“The clock.” Artemis pulled back. “The ladies will be leaving for the vicarage.” Her belabored breathing broke the words up a little.
He opened his eyes, trying to shake off the spell that had been woven around them. Her cheeks were as flushed as he suspected his were. She watched him, confusion and, if he wasn’t mistaken, a little longing in her gaze.
“They’ll think poorly of me if I don’t join them,” she said.
Unable to summon actual words yet, he simply nodded.
She slid off the bed but didn’t look away from him. “Thank you for fixing my hair.”
Again, he could manage only a nod.
“Charlie, I—” Her eyes lowered a moment. “I really am not miserable.”
“Neither am I,” he said quietly.
She looked at him once more, sincere pleasure spreading slowly across her breathtakingly beautiful face. Quick as anything, she spun about, snatched her bonnet from the wardrobe, and left the room with eager enthusiasm and that same lightness and authenticity he’d seen in her the day she’d first made the acquaintance of Mr. Digby Layton, authentic and open and sincere.
Watching her go, he realized that while he wasn’t entirely certain what to do with the feigned version of her she often put forward, the real Artemis Jonquil had, in short glimpses and encounters, stolen his heart.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Charlie knocked at the door of Philip’s bedchamber after the Jonquil ladies had left for the vicarage. Nothing short of his newly discovered affection for his unexpected wife could have pushed him to contemplate the course of action he was now undertaking.
Wilson opened the door, which was a spot of luck since Charlie’s request would involve the renowned valet.
“Is Philip in?” Charlie asked.
Wilson motioned Charlie inside. Philip was indeed there, as was Mr. Digby Layton. The three men present constituted quite possibly the most fashionable and dandified trio to ever grace Society. Oddly enough, that was precisely what Charlie needed.
