Chapter 8
Eight
ARTEMISIA
With two days of travel still ahead of her, Artemisia had ample time to grieve the loss of Henry. She missed his smile. The way he volleyed every quip and insult like they were playing a verbal game of tennis.
She missed his cock.
Her soft parts were still tender when her carriage rumbled up the drive to Margaret’s stately country home. While not nearly as grand as Artemisia’s manor home, her cousin’s house was comfortable and elegantly appointed.
“I’m so glad you’ve arrived,” Margaret said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t make it in time.”
“So was I. The rain delayed us, and you will never believe what happened in Cavalier Cove.” Artemisia had to bend forward quite far to embrace her cousin around the bulge of her stomach.
She described finding Henry by the side of the road—omitting the fact that he was naked when she found him, as well as the detail about sharing a room with him at the crowded inn, and the fact that they had spent much of those two nights and three partial days together having torrid sex together.
There were some things you simply did not confess even to your friends.
“You did the right thing,” her cousin told her. Artemisia smiled tightly, for she wasn’t at all certain she had. Leaving Henry with the viscount had felt wrong, yet bringing him here was no solution.
Would he write to her? She clung to the possibility for days, until Margaret went into labor and her husband rode off to fetch the midwife himself, rather than stay and risk viewing the birth.
Margaret laughed and said men were useless in such situations anyway, but Artemisia was indignant upon her behalf.
He was the father and he should be there to witness the arrival of his firstborn.
After that, she had no further time to contemplate Henry or Margaret’s cowardly spouse, for everything moved quickly.
The midwife arrived near midnight, and the baby a few hours thereafter.
A tiny boy, pink and wailing his confusion at being pushed from the warm security of his mother’s womb into the cold world.
Artemisia held him by the window to watch dawn spread over the horizon of his first day while Margaret slept, entranced by his tiny toes and hands barely big enough to curl around her forefinger.
Impossible to believe that she had been this tiny once. Henry, too.
She pushed the thought of him away.
He didn’t write to her. Day after day, she asked the head maid whether any correspondence had arrived for her. Each time, she was disappointed. Eventually, she stopped asking.
An ache bloomed in Artemisia’s chest as she packed to depart for the two-week journey home.
She would be lying if she said it hurt not to know what had happened to him, yet there was no one to lie to except her own self.
She had never told her cousin about the precious, secret affair she’d had in Cavalier Cove.
That story would remain untold. It would live on in her heart.
Six Weeks Later
Artemisia was standing in the circular drive outside the Gibbs’ home, kissing the baby’s sweet fingers one by one, tickling his toes, basking in the gummy smile he had just begun bestowing upon people.
“Thank you for coming all this way, Artie. You’ve been such a help.”
“It was my pleasure. This little one is a joy.” She poked his round tummy.
The boy kicked his feet and drooled. She wasn’t going to say it out loud, but six weeks of sleepless nights had her feeling fatigued beyond anything she had ever experienced before.
Her breasts felt achy and she had found all forms of food off-putting for the last several days.
Artemisia thought she might be coming down with an illness.
While she did not relish the thought of traveling while indisposed, she would welcome getting a full night of sleep for once.
“Do you ever think you’ll remarry?” asked Margaret pensively. “I see how much you adore babies. Isn’t that right, little one?” She waved her son’s hand at Artemisia. He gurgled wetly.
“I cannot see that happening, no. I have the luxury of independent wealth. My time is my own.” She ignored the pinch in her middle and fondly smoothed the baby’s fuzzy head. “I don’t like all children,” she lied. “Only yours.”
There was no use mentioning the fact that she was barren.
The facts were plain to anyone who thought about them for five seconds—three years of marriage and not once had she fallen pregnant.
She’d been grateful at the time. Had she known her husband was going to get drunk and die in a carriage wreck, she might have made a more concerted effort to have a baby with him.
Raising a child without his interference would have had its challenges, but on balance, it would have been worth it.
She wouldn’t have felt so lonely all the time.
There it was. The ache that had driven her to sleep with a man she hardly knew. To fall in love with him—or at least, with the image she had built up in her mind.
Henry hadn’t written to her. Not once. Clearly, he did not feel the same about her as she had about him. She must have hallucinated the yearning in his eyes when he handed her into her carriage and drove away that morning.
“You’re sure you’re alright?” her cousin asked, startling Artemisia out of her thoughts.
“Of course. I’m only thinking about how much I will miss this sweet boy.” She kissed his cheek. The infant smelled of sour milk and a nappy that needed changing.
“You must come back and visit us again next year,” Margaret insisted. “Maybe by then he will have a little sister or brother.”
An entire year. He would be so different by then. Walking. Babbling as he learned to speak words. He would have forgotten her.
“I appreciate that,” she said, fighting the hot press of tears. “Do keep me apprised of his progress.”
“I will.”
A blur of motion from the periphery of her vision startled Artemisia into peering down the road.
“What on earth is that?” Margaret breathed, following her.
“I believe that is a rider.” Artemisia gasped when the horse bucked, a wild kick to try and unseat the man clinging to its back.
“He’s coming too fast up the road.” She covered her mouth with one hand.
“The horse has bolted. Someone try to catch him!” Margaret’s husband darted off, doing the most unhelpful thing imaginable and waving his arms while running straight toward the frightened beast. Too quickly—so fast Artemisia could hardly comprehend what she was seeing—the horse dodged the oncoming man, kicked viciously, and unseated the rider.
He went flying comically into the air, his hair a crown, his eyes wide and startled.
He landed with a sickening roll into the gutter.
“Henry!” Artemisia screamed, and ran to his prone body.