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Artemis laughed. “How can you tell?”
His eyes opened. Mirth sparked briefly in the deep-gray depths. “For one thing, she didn’t hurl the butter boat or her knife at you.”
“Very true. And I’m glad.” Artemis hesitated but then admitted, “I like her as well. She’s a lot like you, you know. Intelligent, gracious, sharp witted. I sense she feels things keenly.”
“Yes…” Dominic sipped his port, then studied the ruby-brown depths as he held the glass up to the firelight. “Although, perhaps she gets that from her mother too.”
Artemis didn’t know what to say to that. Of course, now that she was at Ashburn Abbey, she was more curious than ever about Dominic’s first wife and all of the mystery surrounding her untimely passing. But she didn’t want to bring up painful memories. She’d already noticed a change in Dominic’s demeanor since they’d arrived.
The dancing light of the fire highlighted the stark lines of fatigue etched around his eyes and mouth. But there was something else about Dominic—the way he carried himself, the shadows in his gaze—that suggested it wasn’t just exhaustion weighing him down.
It was grief.
Dominic claimed Ashburn Abbey wasn’t haunted, but Artemis was certain these walls, this entire place, must be haunted with sorrow. This man had lost the woman he loved, the mother of his child, in the most tragic of circumstances. By all accounts, she’d disappeared from Ashburn Abbey—vanished without a trace—and he’d had to wait for seven years before she could be declared dead. Artemis hadn’t yet spied a portrait of the last Duchess of Dartmoor at Dartmoor House or here. And she wondered what that might mean.
Perhaps Dominic had sensed the direction of her thoughts, because at length he said, “I suppose you’d like to know more about Juliet.”
“I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I have thought about her and what happened. What your marriage was like. But as I said earlier today, I understand how hard it must be for you. I’m happy to wait until you’re ready to share such intimate details.”
“No, it’s all right. You have a right to know everything. I don’t want you to think I’m keeping secrets from you.” Dominic’s gaze drifted to the fire and grew distant as he said, “Juliet and I were both young when we wed. I was twenty-two and she was only nineteen. She hadn’t even had her debut at court or a Season. Her family—the de Burghs—hailed from Exeter, and when she and I met through mutual friends at a local ball, we were both instantly smitten.”
His mouth quirked with a small smile. “It was as though Cupid had struck us with an arrow simultaneously. So we courted, and then we wed—with the mutual consent of our families—and we were blissfully happy until…” He emitted a deep sigh, and his next words were weighted with immeasurable sadness as he continued, “Until Juliet had Celeste…and then everything changed.”
“You mentioned that she’d been unwell.”
“Yes…” His fingers clenched and unclenched on the arm of his chair as though he were bracing himself to continue. “After Celeste’s birth, Juliet became ill almost overnight, but not in a physical sense. It was as though a dark fog rolled in off Dartmoor itself and surrounded her, and she could never seem to escape from it. The physicians said it was some sort of terrible melancholia, and it lasted for months. Years…”
“Oh no, Dominic. My heart weeps for all of you. For Juliet, for Celeste, and for you.”
Dominic nodded, then swallowed. His voice was hoarse as he continued. “But it wasn’t only sadness that consumed Juliet. She also suffered terrible attacks of strange, sometimes irrational behavior that the doctors described as mania. I tried to keep her safe. Consulted the very best medical minds that I could find, and money was no object. She did have periods when she seemed well again, but then something would trigger another episode. Her friends would announce they were pregnant or talk about their recent additions to the nursery, and the fog would descend once more.
“She went through years of endless treatment, and in the end, it was to no avail. All because of me.” Dominic dragged a hand down his face, his expression haggard with remorse. “I wasn’t strong enough for both of us. I should have said no, but I told myself she was well at long last and that giving her another child would make her happy again. So I gave in and when she lost the babe—a son who came far too early—she became ill. Even worse than before.”
“Oh, Dominic. I had no idea. I’m so, so sorry for your loss.” Artemis didn’t know what else to say. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through.”
His eyes gleamed with tears as he met her gaze. “Thank you,” he said softly. “We named him Alexander, and if he’d lived, he would have been nine by now. After we’d laid our son to rest, Juliet began to see and hear things that weren’t real all of the time—it was as though she’d gone mad—and for her own safety, I had to have her confined to her own suite of rooms. Even though she was watched around the clock by nurses, one night she somehow managed to escape.”
“She strayed onto Dartmoor?”
“Yes…yes she did. She’d tried to abscond on other occasions, each time claiming there was an evil witch on the moors who’d stolen our son, and the pixie lights in the marshes and bogs would lead her to him. Although I have no proof, I believe that’s exactly what Juliet did. She went searching for our boy. I was away, had been called to London on urgent business and was only supposed to be gone for a night, but I was held up and stayed away for two. During my absence, she apparently wandered out onto the moors and got lost and strayed into a mire…”
Dominic’s voice cracked. He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “I can’t bear to think of her suffering out there. The way she died, all alone, frantic and fearful. I sometimes have nightmares. That she’s calling to me, and I can’t reach her. Especially when I’m here at Ashburn. And perhaps I deserve to be tormented so because what happened is all my fault. I shouldn’t have gone away. Not when she needed me.”
“Dominic. I’m so sorry.” Tears filled Artemis’s eyes and her own heart clenched with pain. “That’s so, so tragic and terrible, and I don’t know how you bear it. But I’m sure that you did everything that you could.”
He shook his head. His expression was bereft, his voice leaden with grief and self-recrimination as he said, “Not enough. Nowhere near enough. Perhaps I am as dastardly as everyone says.”
“I don’t believe it for a minute.” Artemis abandoned her seat and knelt on the floor before him. Took his hands in hers and squeezed them. “You are a good man, Dominic Winters. I sense it and I have done so from the very first moment I met you. And I won’t have you thinking anything else. No one is perfect. You couldn’t have been at your wife’s side every waking minute of every day. From what you’ve just told me, you did do everything that you possibly could to protect Juliet. The laws of this land have exonerated you from any wrongdoing, even if your ignorant peers haven’t. You need to do the same and forgive yourself.”
He gave a crooked, heartbreaking smile. “I wish that I could.”
“Oh, Dominic…” She cupped his square jaw. Her fingertips could feel the tension vibrating through him, the muscles pulsing in his lean cheek. “I wish I could take your pain away. I wish…”I wish that I could be the woman you need and deserve.
His expression changed. The darkness in his eyes cleared as though bright sunlight had just burst through the clouds. “You do. When I’m with you, you make me forget. You make me believe that I might find some sort of happiness again.”
Artemis’s breath caught.Oh God. Please don’t fall in love with me,she prayed. I don’t want to break your heart when I leave you.
To escape the tenderness in Dominic’s gaze, to break the tendrils of this intimate spell that seemed to be binding them together, Artemis slid her hands up Dominic’s muscular thighs and then higher until they came to rest upon his rock-hard pectoral muscles. Through his silk waistcoat and fine linen shirt, she could feel the steady thud of his heart. The rise and fall of his chest.
His heat.
“I can think of the perfect way to keep you occupied and your mind diverted,” she murmured. “Come to my room. If you’re not too tired…”
Lust flashed in his gaze and then he caught her face between his hands and kissed her. “For you, my beautiful Artemis, I’d stay up all night.”
Artemis arched a brow, her expression entirely skeptical as she teased, “Really, my arrogant peacock of a duke? With a pronouncement like that, you’re going to have to prove it.”
He grinned. “Oh, don’t worry. I will.”
