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Chapter Thirty-One
Highfield Hall, Berkshire
“Yesterday evening’s newspapers have arrived at long last,” said Aunt Roberta as Artemis entered the fussily furnished morning room of Highfield Hall. Her aunt, enthroned upon a Queen Anne dining chair with her beloved Bertie on her lap, put down her teacup and waved a beringed hand toward a stack of broadsheets at the end of the table. “I thought you would want to know,” she added in a surprisingly gentle tone.
“Thank you.” It had been two whole days and nights since Artemis had left London, and not a moment passed without her thinking about Dominic and wondering how he was faring. Had his fever abated? Had he asked for her? Did Celeste and the Northams believe the reason she’d given for her sudden departure?
Of course, she was sure Horatia or her husband would have sent word if Dominic’s condition had deteriorated. Unless they were angry with her because Miss Sharp had already gone to them and disclosed her authorial identity, and now they refused to have anything to do with her…
There was no way to tell, so in the absence of any messages from London, Artemis had taken to scanning all of the broadsheets both morning and night for any news about Dominic, just in case the worst had happened and no one had wanted to inform her.
She picked up the papers and claimed a cushioned window seat. It promised to be a fair spring day—there was only a hint of clouds on the horizon—but the delightfully bucolic view of Highfield’s pristine grounds set against a backdrop of wooded rolling countryside held little interest for Artemis as she carefully perused all of the newspapers from front to back.
There was nothing about the Duke of Dartmoor or his fiancée, or her alter ego Lydia Lovelace, for that matter. Which in many ways was a relief, but also entirely frustrating. Being kept in the dark about Dominic’s condition was almost too much for her heart to bear.
Part of her—the all-too-reckless part—wanted nothing more than to throw caution to the wind and catch the next train back to London. How dare Rosalind Sharp hold her to ransom? It was unfair and malicious, and she had no right. But there was no doubt in Artemis’s mind that the woman would carry out her threat to expose her if she did return to spend endless hours beside Dominic’s sickbed. She couldn’t risk it, no matter how much she yearned to return to Dartmoor House.
Could she?
Her gaze wandered to her aunt’s rose garden, but the bright blooms became as hazy as a watercolor as her eyes filled with tears. She suddenly longed for a different view—one of the desolate, windswept moors and gnarled woods that surrounded Ashburn Abbey. Most of all, she longed for Dominic. For his strong arms about her, the scent of his cologne. The warmth of his breath against her ear as he whispered low, soft words that made her pulse race and her toes curl. The sound of his laughter, rich and deep, when she said something that amused him.
She wiped away a tear that had slipped onto her cheek, and when she looked up, it was to find that her aunt was studying her.
“You love him, don’t you?” observed her aunt in the softest, kindest voice that Artemis had ever heard; she thought she might lose all control and dissolve into a weeping mess right then and there.
Somehow, she swallowed past the ache in her throat and murmured, “Yes. I do.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I…” Artemis briefly contemplated then discarded the idea of confessing all to her aunt. She might be displaying uncharacteristic sympathy, but if she learned about the sort of books Artemis wrote, that sympathy might dry up faster than a drop of water beneath the Sahara sun in midsummer. So she settled on saying. “I’m afraid it’s rather complicated.”
Her aunt nodded knowingly. “It always is, especially for someone as complicated as you, my gel. I’d venture to say that in many respects, you’re a lot like your mother. Too smart for your own good and far too bold and passionate. And stubborn.”
Artemis abandoned the window seat and settled herself upon a chair near her aunt. Aunt Roberta had never once spoken about her younger sister, Clara, and Artemis was intrigued. “I’m definitely all of those things,” she agreed. “Actually…I’ve never really understood why my mother married someone like my father. She was so lively, at least when I was young, and he was always so serious and self-righteous. It was obvious to me, even when I was a child, that they didn’t suit.”
“No,” said Aunt Roberta, feeding Bertie a discarded corner of toast dripping with butter and egg yolk. “They didn’t.” She paused, but only for a moment. “Your motherhadto marry, if you take my meaning. And because beggars can’t be choosers and Obadiah Jones made an offer…”
“My mother was pregnant with me before she wed?”
“Yes. She was.” Her aunt’s gaze was unflinching as she added, “And not from Obadiah Jones but another man.”
Oh…Artemis inhaled a fortifying breath as so many puzzle pieces of her disordered upbringing fell into place in her mind. She was ostensibly a bastard. Another man’s by-blow. “Well,” she said at last, “that explains why my father never seemed to warm to me. It must have been difficult for him to raise another man’s child. Did…did he know my mother was pregnant when he proposed?”
Aunt Roberta wiped her fingers on a linen napkin. “Yes, I believe he did. He was the vicar in our village and had been smitten with Clara for some time, even before she had her London Season. Like you, she was quite gorgeous with her flaming-red hair and siren’s smile. But Obadiah couldn’t seem to see past her looks and that she would never be suited to the life of a village vicar’s wife. When Clara discovered she was in the family way, so to speak, and she hadn’t a fiancé, he was more than ready to jump in and play her knight in shining armor.”
Artemis nodded. “Do you know who my actual father is, then?”
Aunt Roberta sniffed. “Yes. Your mother confided the truth to me, just after your birth. Your father was a rakehell. And quite the Corinthian to boot. They fell in love during her one and only Season—indeed, everyone expected him to issue a proposal, including me—but then the idiot, who was fond of a wager by all accounts, went and got himself killed in a curricle race. Lord Roger Blakeney was his name. The second son of the Marquess of Sudley.”
Artemis blinked in astonishment. Her grandfather was the Marquess of Sudley? Her real father had been the son of a nobleman?
Not that it matters now, she told herself. Indeed, if Obadiah Jones hadn’t done the honorable thing, she’d have been labeled baseborn her entire life. Or perhaps her mother would have “gone abroad” and then Artemis would have been adopted out to some distant relative or, worse, placed in an orphanage. Clara and Roberta’s parents had hailed from the ranks of the landed gentry, and Artemis had always been led to believe they’d been comfortably well-off. But after Clara’s marriage to Obadiah, it appeared that her parents had cut ties with their daughter. Even though she’d wed, she was clearly a disappointment to them and no doubt Artemis was a source of shame. She might bear the surname Jones, but she was obviously still tainted by the stain of illegitimacy.
It suddenly occurred to Artemis that despite Roberta’s meddling when it came to her and Phoebe, she’d always supported Clara and she’d never abandoned her nieces. Artemis looked at her aunt with new eyes.
“It’s a lot to take in,” Artemis said at length. “I suppose it explains so many things about my parents and why I am the way that I am.”
Aunt Roberta’s smile was wry. “And now I’m sure you understand why I’ve been so insistent that both you and Phoebe wed. Especially you, given your rebellious streak. I didn’t want you to suffer the same fate your mother had—marrying a man she didn’t love because she had to. Or worse, becoming an unwed mother.”
