Charming Artemis by Sarah M. Eden
Chapter Thirty-Five
Watching the Jonquil brothers with their children and nieces and nephews, Artemis saw the undeniable reflection of her Papa in each of them. She missed him and mourned him—she felt certain she always would—but there was a bit of comfort in realizing she was now connected to him and, in a very real way, surrounded by him.
This was the last night all of the Jonquil siblings and honorary siblings would be at Lampton Park. The first wave of the exodus had begun a couple days earlier with the departure of all the Gents, except for Mr. Layton. They, in fact, had been gone by the time her siblings had descended on the estate. Mr. Layton would be leaving in the morning, along with Stanley’s, Jason’s, and Corbin’s families. The Lancasters would be leaving in the morning as well, each to their own homes, but with a promise to gather again soon.
Charlie and Artemis could not delay their departure forever. How Artemis prayed she was not mistaken, that Brier Hill would not return to the place of struggle it had been in those early weeks. She sat on a sofa in the drawing room with her hand in Charlie’s. A tenderness had grown between them in this house so filled with love.
“I propose,” Philip said, rising as if about to make a royal decree, “we spend our final evening engaged in a game of questions and commands.”
His suggestion was readily accepted by all. For her part, Artemis grew a little nervous. They had played this game once before, and it had not been a pleasant experience for her.
“Please promise me this will go well,” Artemis whispered to Charlie.
“Trust me, dear.” He’d asked that of her earlier that day when she and Rose had been offered the opportunity to live an impossible dream. Her faith in him had not been misplaced then, and she would allow herself to believe that it was not misplaced now.
A hat was procured and names written on slips of parchment.
“What is the forfeit?” Sorrel asked.
“Same as our last game,” Layton said, “but with a slight change. Any couples called up together still have the option of a kiss. But for everyone else, rather than offering something kind to say about the one we are partnered with, we will, instead, offer a memory of any person in the room.”
Everyone agreed, and the game began.
Layton’s name was drawn first, with Harold chosen to offer either a question or a command.
“What is a favorite game you played with Father?” Harold asked.
“He and I enjoyed playing battledore and shuttlecock. We once were able to achieve a twelve-turn volley. He was so excited. I remember him telling everyone in the house. ‘A full dozen! A full dozen!’ He was more excited even than I was.”
Mater laughed quietly. “Lucas loved games.”
Clara was called on to offer a question or challenge to Harold. Her voice as soft as ever, she posed a question to her brother-in-law. “What was your father’s favorite sweet?” she asked him.
“He never left a sweetshop without—”
“Peppermints,” the older Jonquil brothers and Mater answered in unison.
Peppermints.Twice Artemis had chosen peppermints when she’d ventured with him into the Heathbrook sweetshop. It was one of her fondest memories.
Mater was called up, teamed with Lady Marion.
“What activity did your late husband enjoy that might surprise us?”
“Harold will not be surprised,” Mater said, “but Lucas loved to climb. He took such delight in scaling mountains and standing on the top of the world. When he was younger, he climbed peaks all over Europe. The mountains around Brier Hill were a favorite of both of ours. We spent countless happy hours walking those paths and looking out over the valley below.”
He had climbed mountains. Artemis would never have guessed.
Arabella and Mariposa were called up next, with Arabella choosing to answer the question posed.
“The late earl had seven sons, but you were like a daughter to him,” Mariposa said. “How did he feel about daughters?”
Arabella answered not in a general way but with her gaze firmly on Artemis and speaking directly to her. “He loved his daughters, though we were not with him in the way his boys were. His little girl, who died just after she was born. I, the honorary daughter who lived nearby. And his little Princess, who was far away but never out of his thoughts. He loved us all.”
This was the first Artemis had heard that Mater and Papa had lost a daughter.
“When I was with him,” Arabella continued, “he never treated me like I was less important to him than his sons or less capable or less intelligent. I was made a part of the things he did with his sons and their chaotic games and playtime. My own doubts and pains made me wonder if he forgot me the moment I was out of sight. But he never did. He never forgot any of us.”
Artemis leaned against Charlie. He set an arm around her shoulders.
“They’re doing this for me,” she whispered.
“They want you to know him,” he said. “They want him to be more to you than vague moments and uncertainty.”
On and on the game went. Papa’s sons shared memories of their father. His daughters-in-law offered insights into the family, ranging from, “Keep headache powders on hand for use after spending an afternoon with them all,” to, “Anyone in the family can be teased by any other member, but insults and unkindness from the outside will not be permitted.”
Adam was called up to accept either a question or a command from Linus. The Dangerous Duke rose and joined his brother-in-law in the midst of the gathering. He stood stoic and stiff, as usual. Nothing in his expression gave the slightest indication he was happy to be participating, yet Artemis suspected he had agreed to this ahead of time.
“I have either a terribly personal question or a very embarrassing challenge,” Linus warned.
Adam let out a breath that sounded almost like a growl. “I will choose the forfeit: sharing a memory of someone in the room.”
Linus dipped his head and retook his seat. Adam looked over them all. “I prefer not to recount my memories of the current Lord Lampton.”
“You wound me, Brother Adam,” Philip called out.
“Careful,” Stanley tossed back, “or he truly will wound you.”
Artemis was absolutely certain she detected a bit of laughter behind Adam’s indomitable expression. “I mean to break with the pattern,” he said, “and share a memory of the dowager countess.”
Of Mater?
“I was only just eight years old. My father was somewhat newly buried, and my mother was, as always, traveling who knew where. I was very much alone in this world when Lord and Lady Jonquil invited me to Brier Hill to spend a few weeks with them.”
He turned and faced Mater, though she would already have known this story.
“It was, without question, the happiest interval I had passed since losing my father. In their home, I was wanted and accepted. They rebuilt beneath me the foundation that had crumbled when my father died. Lady Jonquil, as she was termed then, was a mother to me when I desperately needed one, and she continued to be long after most anyone else would have washed their hands of any obligation toward a child not their own. I have not—could not—adequately express to her how significant her role in my life has been. I fear I have repaid her importance to me with inexcusable inattentiveness.”
Mater rose and, a look of tender fondness on her face, moved directly to him.
He watched her with a look of mingled hope and heartbreak. “When my father died, the two of you saved me.” Adam took an audible breath. “When Lucas died, I should have flown here without hesitation. I should have been with you.”
A tear trickled slowly down Persephone’s cheek.
“I failed you,” Adam said. “I failed you, and he would have been disappointed in me, just as you must have been.”
“Oh, my dear boy.” Mater took one of Adam’s hands. “Do you not think I know you well enough to understand the way you mourn? To know that you isolate yourself when you grieve? I knew why you didn’t come. I understood. I missed you, but I understood.”
Heavens, theirs was far more tender a connection than Artemis would have guessed, even having heard him recount their history.
“I told myself you didn’t truly care for me, that you never had.” Adam shook his head. “The lie eased some of the pain.”
“Your heart always was tender,” she said with a motherly smile.
A tender heart? Artemis had seen it when Adam interacted with his wife and children, and she had experienced it briefly during their stroll around the grounds. But to hear Mater talk of his softheartedness with such conviction was jarring.
“I felt so hopeless,” Adam said. “I’d given up, resigned myself to misery. Without Lucas, I—I was lost.”
“I worried when I heard you’d chosen an arranged marriage,” Mater said. “I feared it meant you had decided to fully cut yourself off. But then you invited me to your wedding, and I knew you wouldn’t have done that if, in your heart of hearts, you didn’t have some whisper of hope that your marriage could be a happy one.”
“I looked for you.” His voice dropped to an entirely unusual quiet, uncertain tone. “I knew logically you could not come while in deepest mourning. But then you didn’t come after that, and I worried you stayed away because . . . you were embarrassed at the idea of people knowing you’d helped raise someone you were ashamed of.”
Adam, the Dangerous Duke, the most infamous and feared man in the kingdom, was laying bare this very personal vulnerability in front of a room full of people.
Mater set a hand on either side of his face—and he didn’t snap at her. No one was permitted to touch his scars other than Persephone and his children. Artemis watched with wide eyes, her mouth a bit agape. This was a different Adam than she had ever seen.
“My brave Adam,” Mater said.
“You always used to call me that,” he whispered.
“And you used to call me Mother Julia.”
Artemis thought she saw the slightest hint of a tear in Adam’s eye.
“I have never and could never be ashamed of you,” Mater said. “I have watched you from afar and have seen my Lucas’s influence in your life. He would have worried to have seen you undertake an arranged marriage, as I did, knowing your parents’ unhappiness in theirs and our early struggles in ours. But you followed his example and loved and respected your wife and worked to build a life together that is happy and beautiful and hopeful. That is his influence.”
“And yours,” Adam said.
Mater turned and looked at Persephone. “You loved my darling Adam when he was very much alone. You saw the good in him when he struggled to see it in himself. For that, I will love you for the rest of my life.”
Persephone wiped a tear. Many in the room did. Artemis herself was not immune to the enormity of the moment.
Mater returned her tender and loving gaze to Adam. “We brought you to our home more than thirty years ago, my brave boy, because we loved you. And we were family because—”
“Because family is who you choose.” He finished the sentence in a voice that clearly indicated he was completing verbatim an established phrase between them.
“That lesson, offered so long ago, has created this beautiful family you have now. Your sisters-in-law and brother-in-law are family to you not because they were required to be but because you chose them. In that, I see Lucas’s influence in your life.” Mater took his hands and held them tenderly but firmly. “His heart broke at not being able to save his Princess. But she found her way to you, and the foundation Lucas laid thirty years ago saved her. Through you, his beloved Adam, he saved her. You saved her. He would be beyond proud of you. Do not ever doubt that.”
Tears pooled in Adam’s eyes. Artemis was certain of it now. Never could she have imagined such a thing.
“It sometimes feels so cruel that he hasn’t been here,” Adam said. “Having him be part of these past thirteen years would have been . . . perfect.”
“Miracles are not found in perfection, Adam. We too often miss the crucial connections we have because we think they exist only in the intersections of our lives and fail to see the importance of the parallels. Lucas might not have had a direct hand in the miracles that have brought us to this point, but he laid the foundation. He is the reason for all of this.” She indicated the gathering. “And he did it by loving and caring and serving every day. Small things change the course of lives more readily than all the grandest coincidences ever could.”
“I wish I could thank him for all he was for me, all he taught me,” Adam said.
“I think he is with us in more ways and more often than we realize.” Mater smiled softly. “If there is any means at all of influencing our lives from heaven, I have not the least doubt he is doing precisely that.”
Adam smiled a little, something he seldom did. “He would insist upon it.”
Mater stretched and placed a very maternal kiss on his unscarred cheek. “Yes, he would. And he would be so pleased to see that you have been for this family”—she motioned to the gathered Lancasters—“what he was honored to be for you: a brother and father, a source of support and love.”
Artemis had butted heads with her brother-in-law so often and so entirely that she’d not allowed herself to think too deeply on the role he had played in the life of her family. In the time since his heartfelt confession to her, she had reflected on it again and again. Life in their family these past thirteen years had been just what Mater had described. Adam was their unlikely but unwavering father figure. Persephone was the glue that held them all together.
“I am sorry I kept my distance for so long,” Adam said.
“I knew you would come back to me when you were ready. I’d hoped at the house party, but the time was not yet right.” Mater took his hand once more. “Lucas left you a letter with the final portion of his will that we only just unsealed.”
“He did?” Emotion rendered the response quiet and uncertain.
“You were the first child to be part of our home, Adam. Of course he left you a letter. I was instructed to safeguard it until I thought the time was right to give it to you. I will do so before you leave, then you can read it when you are ready.”
“Thank you, Mother Julia.”
Apparently suddenly remembering their audience, Adam pulled his sternness around himself once more. Jaw set and expression unreadable, he crossed with Mater back to the chairs they had occupied.
Persephone linked her arm through his. Mater patted his hand precisely as a mother would do. How shocked Society would be to see the infamous Duke of Kielder unshaken by such personal gestures. Artemis would have been as well only a few days earlier. Everything between them was different since their walk on the grounds. He would likely never be openly affectionate. She certainly had no expectation of him becoming sentimental or publicly emotional. But she saw the subtle softness in him that was so easy to miss. She began to understand why Persephone insisted he was tenderhearted when that seemed so ridiculous a contradiction.
Stanley was called up next, and rather than accept a question or command from Catherine, he chose to share a memory of Charlie. “When Charlie was first born, we all called him Charles, that being his proper given name. But I never once heard Father call him anything but Charlie. He never wavered from that. Over time, we all adopted it as well.”
Which explained why Charlie was so adamant about the name she used for him. It, like so many other things, was tied to his father.
Sorrel and Philip were next. Philip requested he be permitted to accept the command and take the forfeit. Sorrel shook her head at his antics but obliged.
After accepting his forfeited kiss, Sorrel made her command. “Present our newest family member with the gift we’ve chosen for her.”
Philip dipped his head. “It would be my pleasure.” He turned to Artemis and pulled a wrapped parcel from his pocket. “We”—he motioned to all the other Jonquils—“wish you to have this.”
She accepted it. The hand-decorated paper was beautiful, and the ribbon it was wrapped in matched perfectly. It seemed almost a shame to open it.
Careful not to tear the paper, she untied the ribbon and unrolled the wrapping. Inside was a miniature, a little larger than her hand. The painting was of a gentleman who looked a little like Charlie and a lot like Philip and bore a tremendous resemblance to all the Jonquil brothers.
She knew him on the instant. “Papa,” she whispered.
“He is younger in that portrait than he was when you knew him,” Philip said, “but the mischievous expression in his eyes is one we all remember well. It is the one he wore most of the time. We want you to have the miniature so you can remember what he looked like and how happy he always was.”
She looked from Philip to Charlie. “I don’t know that I can accept this. It should stay with his family.”
“You are his family,” Mater said. “You were long before now, and we are all in agreement that you should have it.”
Emotion cracking in her words, Artemis said, “I can’t. I really can’t.”
It wasn’t a Jonquil who crossed to her but Persephone. She knelt in front of Artemis and took her empty hand. “I have come to know your Papa through Adam and through your Papa’s sons. I can say with certainty he would want you to have this remembrance of him. He would want you to have whatever you need to remember him and remember that he loved you.”
“But I am not actually one of his children.” How she ached admitting out loud the truth of her role in her beloved Papa’s life.
“You are not actually one of my children, Artemis,” Persephone said, “but I raised you as my own. I love you as more than my sister. You have been in my care and keeping from the moment you were born, and I have loved you fully and entirely.”
“You are the best mama I ever had,” she said quietly.
Persephone pulled her into an embrace. “How well I remember you saying that at Falstone Castle.”
“My heart broke that day,” Artemis said. “I felt so alone.”
“You aren’t alone now, my little Artemis. You will always have your Lancaster family, and you now have your Jonquil family. And”—Persephone pulled back enough to look her in the eye—“you will always have him.” She nudged the hand holding Papa’s portrait. “Keep this reminder of him. Keep it and him close to your heart.”
Artemis dropped her gaze to the miniature. She looked into those beloved eyes. How long she had struggled to remember what her Papa looked like. Having studied the large portrait over the fireplace and now holding this small portrait of him, she could hardly believe she’d ever forgotten. His face had grown so familiar once more.
“He loved me,” she whispered.
“He did.” Persephone rose once more. “And you are loved now. Do not forget that.”
Artemis offered a tremulous smile. “I will try.”
Once Persephone had retaken her seat, the hat filled with slips of paper was taken up once more. Artemis’s name was drawn. Then Charlie’s.
She entrusted her precious miniature to Marjie, who sat nearby, then joined Charlie in front of them all.
She turned to face him, strained memories of this same situation rushing over her. He’d humiliated her, insisted the possibility of kissing her was so abhorrent to him that he would rather do anything else. But so much had changed between them since then. She felt entirely certain this night’s undertaking would play out differently. He would know to allow her a moment to formulate an easily answered question, one they could laugh about before returning to their seats. And there would be no humiliating rejections.
Charlie slipped an arm around her. “What should I choose, Artie?” he whispered.
“What would you like to choose?” She traced the outline of one of his brass jacket buttons with her finger.
“Might be interesting to hear what question you’d ask.” He bent his arm enough to pull her up flush with him. “And I’d very much enjoy discovering what odd task you might set me to.”
“I am very creative.” She set her palm on his chest.
His other arm wrapped around her, enveloping her in an embrace so close, so tight that the warmth of him seeped through every inch of her. “You are also very, very tempting.” His voice had taken on a husky edge. His breathtaking blue eyes crackled with heat, lighting answering flames of anticipation in her.
He bent close. She tipped her head enough to all but close the minute distance between his lips and hers.
“I choose the forfeit, Artie.”
He kissed her. Not the quick peck on the cheek or polite kiss on the hand she’d thought he might choose the last time they’d played this game. His warm, soft lips met hers, fervent and tender.
Artemis slid her hands up and over his shoulders, wrapping her arms around his neck. Her heart beat an ardent rhythm, a cadence filled with the promise of a lifetime of love.
Against her lips, he whispered, “I will always choose the forfeit.”
