Charming Artemis by Sarah M. Eden

Chapter Twenty-Nine

For the second night in a row, Artemis sat in her night rail on the floor of the dim drawing room long after everyone had gone to bed, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs, looking into the face of the late Earl of Lampton.

She had studied him in the large family portrait these past nights when she ought to have been sleeping, trying to force his face to grow familiar to her, all the while hoping it never would. So long as he remained a stranger in her memory, she could tell herself that Mater and Mr. Layton had been mistaken. Her Papa was still somewhere, looking for her and loving her. She could still have hope that she would find him, and he would embrace her as he had before, that all the dreams she’d had of him could still come true.

But in her heart of hearts, she knew they were not wrong. They’d known too much she hadn’t told them. And all she’d learned of Charlie’s father matched what she’d known of her Papa.

Looking into his kind eyes and seeing the way his family gathered around him in the large portrait, love and togetherness emanating from them in palpable waves, she knew this was the man she’d been looking for. She knew it, and it shattered her very soul. There was no one left in the world who loved her the way he had. He’d sworn he would keep coming back. She had always assumed he’d kept that promise. But it wasn’t true. He had left her, just as everyone else had.

“Charlie told me you had been leaving your room at night.” Linus’s voice broke the silence of her grief. “He’s worried about you, you know.”

Artemis didn’t look back at him. “Please leave me be, Linus.”

“I can’t do that.” He sat on the floor beside her. “You see, I promised our brother before he died that I would look after you and Daphne. I am not one to break my promises.”

She dropped her eyes to the empty fireplace. Seeing Papa’s face, knowing he was gone, was too painful. But neither had she the strength to look at Linus and see pity there.

“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.”

Artemis closed her eyes, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to fall anew.

“A time arose when she was injured, not physically but emotionally and, in her pain, was convinced that she needed to prove how very stalwart and independent and able she was. She shot one of her legendary arrows at a target far in the distance, knowing that should she hit it, everyone, including herself, would be alleviated of any doubts as to her strength and independence, something she insisted she valued above all else.”

“She hit her target?” Artemis asked quietly.

“She always hit her target,” Linus said. “This time, however, the target she hit with such deadly accuracy was, unbeknownst to her, Orion.”

Artemis did not remember that. She swallowed against the thickening lump in her throat. “She killed him?”

“In her determination to prove her strength and resilience, she lost the man she loved. Do not repeat her mistake, my dear Artemis.”

“It isn’t the same,” she insisted, pulling away from his embrace.

“It is though,” he said. “He has touched your heart in a way no one else has been permitted to.”

She shook her head as she stood. “I don’t love anyone. I won’t. My heart cannot endure it. Not again.”

Linus didn’t follow when she left the room. She didn’t want him to.

No one could make this ache go away. There was no light left to keep to, and she would rather endure the darkness alone.

Everything was easier when she was alone.

Everything.