Charming Artemis by Sarah M. Eden
Chapter Nineteen
A week passed at Lampton Park. Stanley’s family had not yet arrived. Neither had Arabella and Linus—they too had been called to Lampton Park, Arabella being an honorary member of the family. Charlie told himself that was what was weighing on Mater, but he wasn’t fully sure. She’d grown quieter over the last couple of days.
He sat in the small sitting room the family had often used when there’d been fewer of them. Philip was inside reading the Times. Mater was there as well. A book sat open on her lap, but she wasn’t paying it the least heed. Her fingers were wrapped around the silver and blue topaz pendant she so often wore. Her gaze was not focused on anything in particular, and her thoughts appeared to be miles away.
Charlie moved to where Philip sat. Voice low, he said, “I’m worried about Mater. She seems unhappy.”
Philip talked to him from behind his paper, also speaking quietly enough to not be overheard across the room. “We are soon to be reopening Father’s will and reading the last of his instructions. I suspect her grief is growing a bit raw again.”
He did not at all like the idea of Mater grieving. “Could you not simply summarize what remains to be executed of Father’s will and spare her the reading of it?”
Philip shook his head no. “I am not the one who is charged with unsealing and executing it. I am as helpless to spare her this as everyone else.”
None of them could relieve her burden. “Do you at least know why this final portion is to be read now?”
“The instructions were that this final part of the will be opened once you either reached your majority or married, whichever occurred first.”
His heart dropped. “Then I am the reason she’s struggling.”
“Neither of our parents would have wanted you to be a child your entire life, Charlie. Neither would they have wished you to be alone. Setting current events in motion is not an unfortunate thing.”
Charlie slumped low in his chair. It wasn’t a very gentlemanly posture but one he’d assumed again and again as he’d grown up. “It has not particularly been a fortunate thing either.”
“If I could have thought of anything to allow you and Artemis to avoid this, I would have stopped it. But there was no escape.” Philip didn’t generally go so long without making some outlandish comment. That his expression and tone remained somber was a bit disconcerting. “Sorrel, in particular, racked her brain for any possible escape. Neither of us could think of a thing.”
If Philip was going to be responsible and insightful, Charlie would far rather his brother’s focus be on something else. Things were a little better with Artemis but not enough to bear too much scrutiny.
“Speaking of Sorrel,” Charlie said, “how is she faring?”
Philip folded his paper and set it aside. “She is not walking well. The pain is getting to be too much for her. I suspect it is time we begin considering a wheeled chair to help her get about, but she is not the least inclined toward the idea. My Sorrel is a bit stubborn, something I am certain will come as a complete shock to you.”
Charlie pressed a hand to his heart in what he knew was an exact mimic of one of Philip’s signature gestures. “A Jonquil marrying a lady with opinions? Shocking.”
“What is it about us that we are so drawn to ladies who challenge us at every turn?” Philip asked with a laugh.
“Masochism?”
“More likely a fear of boredom.”
Charlie pushed out a breath. “I am certainly not bored.”
That brought on the very scrutiny he’d wanted to avoid. “Are the two of you going to work this out?”
Charlie shrugged. “What choice do we have? Neither of us wants to live the rest of our lives in misery. We’ll have to sort something.” They were trying. He felt increasingly hopeful that they would manage to reach some kind of contentment between them. But while he couldn’t speak for her, mere contentment was not what he’d imagined when he’d thought of one day marrying.
He’d always wanted what his brothers had. What his parents had had. What Artemis’s siblings had. But it felt out of reach.
Voices sounded in the corridor, with footfalls seeming to draw nearer.
“Never fear, Mater,” Philip called out. “That’ll be Stanley’s brood and, I daresay, Arabella and Linus close on their heels. No need to worry further.”
She glanced back at him and nodded.
Charlie didn’t at all like how low her spirits were. What could he possibly do to help? It seemed all he’d done these past weeks was add to her worries. Having all of her grandchildren there would bring her some happiness. Then again, she’d had nearly all of them with her of late, and she was still heavyhearted.
The butler did not step into the doorway to announce Charlie’s one remaining brother or honorary sister. Indeed, it wasn’t either of the anticipated arrivals who appeared there. It was, instead, one unknown gentleman after another. All at least two decades older than Philip, all complete strangers. They looked immediately to Mater, who sat facing the other direction.
At the very front of the group was a gentleman who rivaled Philip’s flair for colorful and dandified fashions, the brightness of his attire marred only slightly by the black armband he wore. Another was dressed in the more somber tones Harold preferred. One of them put Charlie firmly in mind of a few of the dons at Cambridge. The remaining two were a study in contrasts: large scale with an aura of authority and a shorter, thinner gentleman one might be excused for not noticing. An odd grouping, to be sure, made even stranger by the fact that Charlie could not begin to identify any of them.
The fashionable one at the front spoke two words. “Our Julia.”
Mater spun about. She pressed her hand to her mouth, and tears began immediately.
“Why is she crying?” Charlie asked, ready to rush to her defense. “They’ve made her cry.”
“Calm yourself, Tadpole,” Philip said. “Those are happy tears.”
Charlie used to be known amongst his brothers as Tadpole. They didn’t call him that often any longer.
Mater leapt from her chair and ran like a young girl across the room. The men embraced her on the instant. They all spoke at once. Charlie couldn’t make out a single word. Mater affectionately touched each of their faces in turn. They were clearly not unknown to her.
“Who are they?” Charlie asked Philip.
With a grin, he said, “The Gents. Father’s best friends.”
That was, apparently, all the explanation Charlie was to receive. Philip abandoned him and crossed to the group of new arrivals. The men greeted him with handshakes, and he offered words of welcome. Mater remained among them, slipping from one friendly embrace to another. It was the highest her spirits had been since Charlie’s arrival at Lampton Park.
Father’s best friends, and Charlie didn’t know a single one of them. Was there no end to the ways his father was a stranger to him?
Mater waved him over. “Come offer your greetings, dear.” To the gentlemen around her, she said, “You all, of course, remember Charlie.”
“This can’t be little Charlie,” the bespectacled, professor-like gentleman said.
“He can, indeed,” Mater said. “He’s grown now. And married, if you can believe that.”
The subdued gentleman chimed in. “He looks like Stanley.”
Mater nodded. “I think that every time I see him lately.”
Charlie couldn’t make heads nor tails of that declaration. “I don’t look that much like him.”
“Not your brother Stanley,” Mater said. “My brother, Stanley.”
“You all knew Uncle Stanley?” Charlie had only ever heard stories of his aunts and uncles. All of Mater’s and Father’s siblings had died by the time the two of them were married.
“And your grandparents,” one of them answered.
These gentlemen knew more about Charlie’s family than he did.
The fashionable Gent put an arm about Mater’s shoulders, but he spoke to Philip. “The lot of us intend to steal away your mother for a time. Don’t waste your breath arguing; you know you’ll never emerge victorious.”
Philip held up a hand in a show of innocent denial. “Arguing creates wrinkles. I’d not risk this”—he motioned to his face—“over a futile disagreement.”
The dandified one dipped his head regally. And quick as that, Father’s friends whisked Mater away.
Charlie swallowed back the temptation to call her back again. Had he not matured in the least since his early years at Eton when he’d cried and cried every time Mater had left him there?
“Thank the heavens they came,” Philip said with a tense sigh. “She needs them here.”
“They’ll be kind to her?” Charlie pressed. “Can you absolutely guarantee they will?”
With a firmness that would have shocked anyone who knew him as the dandified Earl of Lampton, Philip said, “If I couldn’t guarantee it, I’d have thrown every last one of them out of the house, personally and violently. I would do as much and more to anyone who dared to mistreat Mater.”
“And all of us would help you.”
Nothing stoked the flames of the Jonquil brothers’ fury as quickly and thoroughly as unkindness directed at their mother. Mater was the thread holding all of them together. She’d sewn up the wounds of this family’s grief again and again. If not for her, Father’s death would have fractured them all.
Her sons would do anything in the world for her. If Charlie and Artemis, in the end, could not find peace between them, he would spend the rest of his life hiding that from his mother. He would not burden her with that heartache, even if it meant carrying that weight all alone.
