Chapter Twenty-Eight
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Daphne was doing her best to live her life as though nothing devastating had happened. She did not insist upon taking her meals on a tray in her room, neither did she seclude herself and refuse the company of her family. If she could pretend a degree of normalcy, eventually she might feel it.
She stepped into Adam’s book room at the usual hour for their afternoon appointment a mere four days after the disastrous picnic. He had been occupied at Lords the previous two days, but he was home today.
Over the past six years, these near-daily meetings had served as a healing balm. Adam had shown her personal, tender regard at times when she’d desperately needed it. Now, with her heart fractured and her soul heavy, she needed his loving kindness more than ever.
“Good afternoon,” she said from the doorway.
He glanced up from his desk. “Daphne.”
She stepped inside. Some of the tension she’d carried these last four days dissipated. Here she would find comfort, if only she could keep him to safe topics. “What shall we discuss today?” she asked as she crossed to the sofa. “Parliament? Society? The weather?”
Adam’s head turned toward the clock. “Is it that time again?” His was not the tone of enthusiasm she would have preferred.
“Yes. And you were not needed in Lords today.”
He had not risen from his desk, nor set aside his paperwork. Still, he sometimes spent their afternoon together working on business matters while she read. She would not object to that today.
“I can select a book,” she offered.
His next breath was loud and a touch impatient. “I don’t truly have time for this today, Daphne. I am meant to meet with a man about refurbishing the nursery here after we’ve left for Northumberland. I wish it to be finished and ready by the time we return.”
“You told me yesterday that you would set aside this time specifically for our afternoon together because it was the one day you didn’t have to be at Lords.”
He wrote something on the topmost paper on the stack before speaking again. “I cannot delay the start of this. The nursery is not at all ready for an infant. I will not risk having it unfinished when it is needed.”
She searched about for a means of reconciling the conflicting needs. “Do you have to meet with him just now? Cannot you delay even an hour?”
“He will be here any moment,” Adam said. “I thought, in fact, that he had arrived when you stepped in.”
He had, it seemed, forgotten about her. She pushed that aside, telling herself there was a different, less discouraging explanation. “I can sit in the corner with my book while you have your interview. I won’t disturb you.”
He set his forearms on the desk, interweaving his fingers.
“We’ll have our afternoon discussion another day, Daphne.
I need to see to the nursery. I have a responsibility to my child.
” He spoke the final word with the same tone and expression of anxious awe he’d had anytime Persephone’s condition had been discussed the past few days.
“Of course. I would never ask you to neglect your obligations.” She moved in the direction of the door once more. “Tomorrow, perhaps?”
“Persephone and I intend to begin interviewing nursemaids.”
She pushed back her disappointment. “The day after?”
“I don’t know.” He offered a brief, apologetic smile.
“Another time, then.”
He nodded, even as his attention returned to his pile of papers.
Daphne stepped out into the corridor, telling herself not to be selfish or maudlin. This was hardly the first time Adam had needed to cancel an afternoon with her, but it stung more acutely than it had in the past. He had sent her away when she needed him so much.
Though she felt sorely tempted to tuck herself away in her bedchamber, she knew if she gave in to the impulse, she might never convince herself to come back out. She made her way instead to the family sitting room and stepped inside with head held high.
Linus stood beside Artemis at the mirror. The two looked shockingly alike, even to Daphne, who had long-since grown used to the green eyes and golden curls of three of her siblings.
Artemis adjusted the bow on the bonnet she wore.
“The milliner told me it was a fashionable bonnet.” Linus obviously wasn’t entirely certain he’d been told correctly.
“Fashionable, yes.” Artemis gave him a look of exasperation. “But is it devastating?”
“Devastating to whom?” The look of utter confusion on Linus’s face brought a smile to Daphne’s lips.
“To simply everyone.” Artemis tipped her head slightly in one direction, then the other. “A bonnet is supposed to turn heads.”
“It seems to be turning yours quite effortlessly,” he observed.
She spun toward him, fists propped on her hips. “Would you stop being a brother, please?”
“But if I am not your brother, I cannot in all propriety purchase you a bonnet.” He tsked and shook a finger at Artemis, his voice pitched precisely at the level a scolding dowager would use with a recalcitrant young lady.
“A proper young lady would never allow a gentleman to purchase something so very personal for her unless he is a relative. Shameful, I say. Absolutely shameful! I shall simply have to toss it to the wolves.”
“You are impossible.” Artemis turned back to the mirror, obviously still deciding just how much she liked her brother’s offering.
“I daresay you don’t know a thing about bonnets.” Artemis clearly intended the observation to be a sore slight on her brother’s intelligence.
Linus chuckled lightly, earning a momentary glare from Artemis. “I am afraid I missed most of the bonnet classes onboard ship these past few years. I chose embroidery instead. Marvelous pastime.”
“What do you think, Daphne?” Artemis turned to face her.
“I am not particularly fond of embroidery, myself.” Daphne sat in a nearby chair. “Though Linus may very well be enamored of it.”
“I meant the bonnet.” Artemis shook her head. “This is far more enjoyable when Athena is here. She has absolutely impeccable taste.”
Linus gave her a stern look, something he didn’t often do.
“Athena’s taste in headgear may be second to none, but my manners are generally considered beyond reproach, and I will tell you that debating the merits of a bonnet your brother has given you out of the goodness of his heart while that brother is standing next to you, no less, is horribly rude. ”
Daphne could have predicted with remarkable accuracy what happened next. Artemis’s lip began to quiver. Tears formed immediately. Her feelings had ever been easily wounded.
“Time to begin a very careful dance, brother,” Daphne warned. “Artemis will be inconsolable otherwise.”
Linus patted Artemis’s hand. “I know you take bonnets very seriously, so I will take no offense at your very thorough evaluation of my offering.”
Artemis sniffled but nodded what was likely meant to be an indication of forgiveness. Still, she glided toward the windows and settled herself in a posture of suffering and sorrow.
“Inconsolable over a scolding?” Linus shook his head. “Artemis weeps for being gently corrected, and you have not shed a single tear even though—”
“Did you not bring me a frilly present?” Daphne would not listen to yet another retelling of her dashed hopes and blighted future. Her spirits were low enough already. “I should have my opportunity to primp and preen in front of a looking glass as well.”
Linus was undeterred. “Persephone said—”
“Only Artemis receives gifts now?” Daphne managed a sigh her sister would have been proud of. “You are a cruel brother indeed.”
Linus studied her a moment, wearing the same expression she’d seen on all her family’s faces again and again since she had fully retreated from the social whirl.
Worry mingled with a sad kind of pity. Oh, how she wanted things back the way they had been.
No one had expected her to be a raging success, but no one had seen her as an utter failure either.
“Your present is not frilly.” Linus, it seemed, meant to not press the issue. He pulled a small box from the pocket of his coat and gave it to her. “I think you will like it just the same.”
She couldn’t begin to guess what it might be. The box was too small to hold a book. The only other thing she might have hoped for was herbs. But no one ever thought to give her that.
Daphne opened the package, curiosity displacing her momentary resurgence of heartache. In time, she hoped she would not need such constant distraction.
“Oh, Linus. It is lovely.” She pulled a dainty hair comb from the box. The thin tines and body of the comb were made of a dark, lacquered wood. Ornamental leaves carved of a deep-green stone adorned the comb. She knew the leaves on sight. “Laurel.”
“I know you have not always been fond of laurels, yet I can’t help but think of you anytime I see them.” He looked almost apologetic. “Father’s love of mythology rubbed off on me, I daresay.”
Daphne ran her thumb over the smooth stone leaves.
Her namesake’s myth had ever seemed a tragic one to her: an innocent girl pursued by one whose affections were not entirely honest transformed into a laurel tree to save her from her insincere suitor.
What had once struck her as merely sad now seemed painfully fitting. Heavens, she was living her own myth.
“You don’t like it.” Linus’s disappointment pricked her heart.
“I love it,” she insisted. “It is so beautiful and unlike anything I’ve seen. Where did you find it? I’ve not come across anything like it in London.”
Relief touched his features. “I saw it in a market in Africa.”
“Africa?” That brought her gaze back to the comb.
“Yes, but the stone is jade, which comes from the Orient. The laurel motif, however, suggests it was carved in the Mediterranean.”
She looked up at him once more. “Quite the world traveler, isn’t it?”