Charming Artemis by Sarah M. Eden
Chapter Three
Charlie couldn’t have been more grateful that Sorrel was in attendance at the ball. She, like him, was not overly fond of London. Her deteriorating hip meant she spent most of any gathering sitting, which afforded him an excuse to sit out the festivities as well. Though he felt a little guilty experiencing anything resembling gratitude while she was suffering.
“Your brother is utterly gleeful that you’ve come to London,” Sorrel said.
The feeling was not likely an overly personal one. Philip didn’t need him to be in London; he simply felt everyone should be as enamored of Town as he was.
“Philip is always delighted to be here,” Sorrel continued. “I’ll make the agonizing journey here and sit in pain at every ball he wishes to attend simply so I can see him looking as overjoyed as he looks now.”
She could be a little gruff, a little terse, but when she spoke of Philip or of their children, she softened. Philip and Sorrel had chosen well when they’d picked each other to build a life with. All Charlie’s brothers had. They’d found their other half, and they were all deeply happy.
Philip stood not too far off, speaking to a group of attendees. He gestured broadly, injecting whatever tale he was sharing with overwrought dramatics, and he was grinning broadly. A much more subtle smile spread over Sorrel’s face.
Charlie couldn’t help a laugh. “He always was a performer. We all wondered if he would ever meet a lady who could endure him. Wilson tolerates him, but Wilson is a king among valets.”
“He is that.” Sorrel motioned with her head toward Ellie and Newton standing nearby. “Your friends appear quite happy together.”
“They are. They met by accident and fell in love without warning. Though he has a couple of years left of studying the law, he has income enough from his father’s estate to live on while he does. I have every confidence they will be almost nauseatingly happy.” Artemis joined the couple. “The ‘nauseating’ part is due to the company they keep, obviously.”
“I hope you have a strategy in mind for keeping the peace between the two of you now that your paths are destined to cross regularly.” Sorrel looked away from the attendees and directly at him. “I am not saying you have to suddenly decide she is your favorite person, but the future Mr. and Mrs. Hughes ought not be made to either endure a feud for decades to come or choose between the two of you.”
Especially since Charlie wasn’t entirely certain he would be the one chosen.
“That is a theorem I have pondered quite a lot of late,” he said. “I will not be in London as often as Artemis will be. During the Season, she and her group of particular friends can spend every evening possible with Newton and Ellie. I’ll come down from Cambridge now and then when the Huntresses have retreated from Town. We would likely do best to keep the peace by avoiding each other.”
Sorrel didn’t laugh often, and when she did, it was quick and quiet and subtle. “I never will grow any less impressed by Artemis’s decision to call her group of friends the Huntresses. Such a brilliant nod to the mythological goddess she’s named for.”
“A fittingly arrogant nod as well,” Charlie said.
“Perhaps adamantly avoiding each other really is your best strategy,” Sorrel said.
Charlie tapped a finger against his temple. “I’m an intellectual, you know.”
Sorrel leaned a bit closer to him. “Philip brags to anyone and everyone how he will have a brother who is a don and destined to be legendary in the field of mathematics.”
Philip hadn’t said anything like that to him. “He’s not embarrassed that I’m choosing something so . . . sedate?”
Sorrel shook her head. “He enjoyed school, but he was never truly academic. He’s baffled by how intelligent you are.”
“Baffled because he can’t believe I’m not entirely bacon-brained?”
“Far from it,” she said. “He is impressed.”
One of the many things Charlie disliked about being the only one of his brothers with a bit of ginger to his hair and complexion was how easily and obviously he colored up. Escape was always best when he was turning red. “Would you like me to fetch you a glass of raspberry shrub?” he asked. “I understand the duchess’s recipe is considered the very best in London.”
“I would appreciate that, Charlie. Thank you.”
He was grateful for the excuse, but he was also pleased to be of use. The Jonquil family had not merely an heir and a spare, as the saying went, but an heir and six spares. He wasn’t often needed or helpful.
Careful to avoid Newton and Ellie on account of Artemis and her Huntresses gathered there, Charlie made his way around the room. A few people stopped him to offer greetings as he passed. Though he was not in London often, nor did he interact a great deal with the ton, his family was well known and respected. They all looked enough alike that he would never be able to be in Society without being identified as one of them.
Toss cornered him briefly to suggest Charlie join the group he’d spent the past few sets with. If not for his promise to Sorrel, Charlie might have agreed. He didn’t dislike people or socializing. It was London’s ready acceptance of hypocrisy that bothered him.
At last, he managed to find a footman with a tray of glasses and obtained two. If Sorrel had been thirsty before, she would be parched now. Moving quickly but carefully, he wove through the crowd back in her direction. He did his best to keep an eye on the people around him and carefully evaluate the steadiness of the glasses of deep-red liquid in his hands. His family teased him endlessly about his tendency to find himself in unintentional scrapes. He wanted to believe he’d finally outgrown that, but his brothers certainly didn’t think so.
He dipped back around the outer edge of the room. It seemed the most logical place to find a clearer path. As he reached the open doors of the ballroom, someone jostled him. He firmed his grip on the crystal glasses, watching them with worry. He managed not to spill any.
Then someone else bumped into him with greater force than the first. The cups slipped in his hands. He fumbled with them, not wishing to see them break. That effort managed to save the glasses, but he could not save the contents . . . or his clothing. The deep-red raspberry shrub spilled all down his front.
“Blast it all,” he muttered.
“Adam says far worse with far less provocation.” Artemis. Of course.
He looked up from his red-stained jacket, waistcoat, and shirtsleeves directly at the one person who could actually make his current predicament worse than it already was. “I should have known you would be the one who knocked into me.”
“It was an accident.” An immediate note of annoyance filled her words. “One that might have been avoided if you had been watching where you were walking.”
“This is my fault, is it?” He motioned with an empty glass toward the unsalvageable state of his clothing.
“It was an accident.” She emphasized each word.
Could he not get through a single evening without being involved in a disaster?
He shoved the empty cups into her hands. “Pardon me, Miss Lancaster. I need to go address the consequences of your accident.”
She followed him out of the room. “You are, without a doubt, the grumpiest person I’ve ever known, and that is not a designation I recommend one aspire to.”
“And I do not recommend aspiring to be the one person with whom even the most cordial of people grow grumpy.”
She set the cups down on a table in the corridor but did not miss a single step. She continued on at his side. When he made to turn toward the gentlemen’s withdrawing room, she tugged at his sleeve. “Adam has vodka in his bookroom. It is your best chance of getting that stain out.”
“An expert in hard liquor, are you?”
She sighed in obvious frustration. “I am attempting to help you, though why, I don’t know.”
“Guilt?” he suggested with theatrical innocence.
“The inevitable result of being an exceptionally wonderful person.” She pushed open the door to her brother-in-law’s bookroom. “It is a burden I am learning to bear.”
Artemis never did stop performing, even when her audience of one had no interest in the theatrics. The red liquid on his front had begun dripping on his trousers as well. His clothes were ruined, and he looked an absolute sight. He would do best to focus on that difficulty and formulate a logical approach to addressing it.
Artemis made directly for the liquor cabinet and pulled open the doors. “Look about and see if you can’t find a towel or a rag or something of that nature.”
It was not a bad suggestion. Still, he felt foolish pulling open drawers and searching for something to help him clean himself up. “This is ridiculous.”
“That is my brother-in-law’s favorite word,” she said. “It makes your presence in this room feel very appropriate.”
“You are a young lady digging about in a liquor cabinet whilst I rummage through the drawers of another gentleman’s private room. I can see very little about this arrangement that is appropriate.”
“Are you always this tedious?”
He took a calming breath. “I am simply being rational.”
She turned around, a glass bottle in her hand. “I’ve found what I was looking for. Have you?”
He located in the drawer of the desk a neatly folded cravat of whitest linen, no doubt one kept there should His Grace find himself in need of a change of neckwear. It would be utterly ruined after this. “If the duke asks, I’m telling him that destroying his cravat was your idea.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “He’ll rant a bit at me, but I exhaust him far too much for him to do more than that.”
“So you have that effect on everyone.”
“I will have you know I was told only yesterday that the Season would be an utter waste without me in it.”
“People are known to lie in social situations.” He dabbed at his front with the soon-to-be-ruined cravat, trying to soak up some of the raspberry shrub. Bumbling Charlie was making a mull of things again. His brothers would never let him hear the end of this if they discovered his current state. “Lud, Artie, this has soaked all the way to the skin. I’ll never clean it all up.”
“Lud is not an appropriate word to use in front of a lady,” she said, her nose a bit in the air.
He could not even begin to soak up the liquid on his shirtsleeves. His jacket and waistcoat made it impossible. “I cannot believe this,” he muttered. He tossed the cravat on the desk and yanked off his jacket. “I am still a student, you know. I haven’t loads of money at my disposal to replace ruined clothing.”
“Quit being so dramatic, Charles. You haven’t even attempted to clean the stain.”
He took up the cravat again and pressed it firmly against the wide, deep-red splatter. “I look like I’ve been shot.” The color seeped into the bright white of His Grace’s cravat.
“Was there a second cravat in that drawer?” Artemis asked. “I can’t exactly pour vodka all over you.”
“Why not?” he said dryly. “It would be in keeping with tonight’s pattern.”
She tipped her head and eyed him with raised brow. “Wouldn’t the ton be shocked to know that Lord Lampton is not, in fact, the most dramatic of the Jonquil brothers.”
He pressed a dry section of the cravat to another place on his waistcoat, but that simply drove home the damp state of his shirt beneath. “I cannot believe this.” He tugged at the buttons of his waistcoat. He’d not manage to dry out anything if the bottommost layer was soaked.
“Hand me your waistcoat.” She held her hand out for it. “I’ll see if I can get some of the red color out.”
“We’re back to pouring vodka on my clothes, are we?”
“I’ll try to find a rag or another cravat lying around, though I’d be surprised if I can.”
He yanked at the knot in his own cravat. It had managed to escape with only a few tiny splatters of red. He pulled it off and tossed it to her. “Might as well use this.”
He used the duke’s cravat to soak the stain from his shirt. Artemis poured tiny amounts of vodka on his cravat and dabbed at the stain on his waistcoat. What a ridiculous mess.
Charlie unbuttoned the top of his shirt and stuck the cravat inside, trying to dry off his skin. “You soaked me through.”
“It was an accident.” Again, every word emerged as if it were its own sentence. She turned back to face him, his waistcoat held up for his inspection. “The stain is already beginning to come out.”
“Even if it does, I can hardly return to the ballroom smelling of liquor and soaked to the skin. I really should just call up my brother’s coach and return to Lampton House.”
“Nonsense.” She hung his waistcoat over her arm and closed the distance between them. “Do you always give up so easily?”
“Are you always so stubborn?”
With his vodka-soaked cravat, she rubbed at his open shirtfront. “Newton would not want you to run off in the midst of his betrothal ball. And I will not see Ellie disappointed either.”
“Your loyalty to them is admirable, but fealty does not require you to torture others.”
She shook her head. “I’m helping you not torturing you.”
“There seems to be a fine line between the two.”
She looked up at him, her mouth tight with annoyance. They stood close enough for him to see the minute narrowing of her eyes and hear the tension in each breath. He returned her look of fiery disapproval with one of casual challenge. She, after all, had caused their current debacle. He would not be made to blame.
“I do not like you, Charles Jonquil,” she said through a rigid jaw.
“Mutual, my dear.”
They were standing that way, he in his shirtsleeves, his jacket discarded, his cravat and waistcoat in her hand, his shirt unbuttoned, one of her hands pressed to his chest, looking intently into each other’s eyes, when a voice rang through the empty room. And the word the new arrival chose was not a genteel one.
A glance in the direction of the doorway revealed the duke and duchess, Philip and Sorrel, two wide-eyed Society matrons, and a smattering of young people with mouths agape.
“Oh bother,” Artemis whispered.
One look at Philip told Charlie this was far, far more than a mere bother.
