Chapter Ten
“Where are you taking me?” Artemis strove to disguise her uneasiness as they drove away from Hadrian’s house in a two-wheeled gig pulled by a roan gelding. They were traveling in the opposite direction from the churchyard, where she had surprised him the previous day. “I’m sure Lee would have enjoyed the opportunity to see the Durham countryside.”
“He’ll have plenty of chances for that in the years ahead,” replied Hadrian in a more amiable tone than Artemis felt she had any right to expect from him.
She had tossed and turned much of the night, fretting over the day’s unsettling events. Ever since Hadrian Northmore had marched into her life, she’d felt as if a small part of her was being pulled in a different direction from the rest. Yesterday the division had become much more painful, as if powerful forces were tearing her in two.
With all her heart, she regretted the devastating losses Hadrian had suffered—both in his youth and more recently. Contrary to what he might believe, she was appalled by the notion of children working underground. Any minor deprivations she’d experienced paled in comparison to theirs. But she had known enough to make her feel for their suffering and want to be of assistance. And yet…
The notion that Hadrian only wanted Lee as a tool to achieve his aims sickened her. She knew all too well the pain of striving for love and approval, only to fall short, often for reasons over which she had no control. She could not subject her nephew to that. He must never doubt she thought the world of him and always would—not as a reward for fulfilling all her expectations, but as a gift bestowed without conditions.
Why must two such worthy desires run contrary to one another?
“As to where we are going…” Hadrian’s words crashed in on her thoughts. “When we spoke yesterday, you seemed curious about my family and my past. I thought I could show you better than tell you.”
Show her his past—how could he possibly do that? An ominous undercurrent lurked beneath Hadrian’s offhand tone. Yet Artemis could not suppress her curiosity. The more she learned about this fascinating, complicated man she had married, the more she yearned to know.
A while later, they turned on to a bumpy, crooked road bordered by overgrown bushes that seemed determined to strangle it altogether. Artemis could imagine this path wandering back into the past. It certainly did not appear to lead anywhere else.
“Are you certain this is the right way?” she asked as the gig lurched over the ruts, jostling her hard against Hadrian. Every time her arm or leg pressed against his firm flesh, her heart gave an answering lurch.
“This is the way,” he muttered, his gaze fixed on the road. “I’ll not forget it as long as I live.”
“The way to where?” Artemis gave a most undignified squeal as one wheel of the gig dipped into a deep furrow.
Hadrian answered with a single word that was clearly laden with meaning for him. “Fellbank.”
A slab of stone seemed to settle on her chest—one inscribed with the words “Killed in the Fellbank Colliery Explosion.”
She struggled to summon breath enough to ask, “So near Edenhall?”
Hadrian gave a grim nod. “Rich seams of coal hereabouts. Edenhall used to belong to the owners of Fellbank Colliery. Quite a difference, this place from Edenhall and Bramberley, isn’t it?”
Forcing her gaze away from his hawkish profile, Artemis found herself peering down a narrow street that ran between rows of cramped, ramshackle dwellings, many of which had collapsed.
“The place didn’t look much better than this, twenty years ago,” said Hadrian. “The mine owners get pit cottages cobbled together as cheap as they can. I once asked my father why the cottages were put up in pairs like they are. He said it was so they could lean against each other to keep from falling down.”
He reined the gelding to a halt beside one pair of pit cottages that looked reasonably intact. “Then Ma said no, it was so there’d be one wall out of four that didn’t have a draft blowing through it.”
“What became of your mother?” Artemis asked as he helped her out of the gig. “You’ve never mentioned her.”
Hadrian looked toward the cottage with a distant gaze, as if picturing his brothers running through the broken door. “She died of lockjaw, a year before the explosion. It helped to think of her waiting in heaven to look after Pa and the lads.”
He entered the abandoned dwelling and Artemis felt obliged to follow, though she feared the slightest breeze might bring the walls crashing down upon them.
“Eight people lived here?” Artemis shook her head in disbelief as she stared around a single room not much larger than the linen cupboards at Bramberley.
“We had more room than some.” Hadrian pointed to a rough-cut hole in one corner of the ceiling. “At least there was a loft for us older lads to sleep in.”
What sort of people had his parents been, Artemis wondered, to raise a son who could go from this to amass an enviable fortune? When she recalled the purpose that had driven him to make his fortune, a lump rose in her throat. Her reasons for opposing his plans for Lee suddenly seemed trifling.
“My arm hurt.” Hadrian’s unexpected words startled her. They came out in a low, half-stifled voice, quite unlike his usual vigorous, confident tone. It was not the voice of a powerful, arrogant man, but an uncertain boy whose whole world had been violently wrenched apart. “I broke it the week before when I took a fall on an underground bank. That put me on the smart list for eighteen days. So I was here minding Julian when the cottage shook and I heard a noise like cannons firing in the distance. I wondered what it could be, but deep down I knew.”
There were many things she was curious to find out about Hadrian Northmore, but not the details of how his father and brothers had all been killed in a single moment. Artemis wanted to cover her ears and run away. But she knew he had come here for her benefit. She could not leave him if there was the slightest chance he might need her.
“I ran to the door and looked toward the works.” He brushed past her and stumbled out through the empty door frame.
Artemis followed, grateful to escape the desolate pit cottage, painfully empty of everything but wrenching memories. She found Hadrian standing beside the gig, staring down the narrow road toward a cluster of buildings on the top of a nearby hill.
“I saw a cloud coming up from the pithead. It looked like a big black arrow pointing the way to heaven.” Hadrian’s voice trailed off.
He drew several shuddering breaths, then began to move forward with slow, shambling steps. “I shouted for Julian to stay inside. Said I’d wring his bloody neck if he came out. Then I ran to the works. The sides of the shaft frames were on fire and the heads had been blown clean off. The ground was covered with splintered hunks of wood, bits of coal and corves.”
“Corves?” The question popped out before Artemis could prevent it.
Hadrian turned to stare at her as if he had never seen her before. Yet he answered her question like a child reciting lessons by rote. “Big baskets they load with hewn coal for the putters to drag up to the surface. Gus and Mark and me were putters. Titus and Quentin were trappers, the younger lads who opened and closed the doors when the putters came through hauling the corves.”
The man had spent his youth dragging great baskets of coal up from the depths of the earth. No wonder he was so strong…and confident to the point of arrogance. After what he’d endured and overcome, it would take more than one intractable woman to daunt him.
He looked from her face to the buildings on the hill and back again. A spark of recognition kindled in the misty gray depths of his eyes. He seemed to be making a conscious effort to pull himself from the dark pit of his past.
“After the explosion, they had to seal up the mine for six weeks to starve the fire. When they opened it up again, I was part of the crew that went in to collect what was left of the bodies. They buried all the rest of the dead together in a mass grave, but I had Pa and the lads laid to rest with Ma at St. Oswin’s.”
He sounded exhausted, as if he’d just done all those things again.
Artemis held out her hand to him. “I believe we’ve seen enough for one day, don’t you?”
Hadrian stared at her hand for a moment. Then he reached out to clasp it. “Reckon we have.”
She led him back to the gig as if he were sleepwalking, the way Daphne had sometimes done as a child. He seemed dazed, held captive by the terrible events he’d relived.
“Up you go.” Artemis coaxed him into the gig, then climbed up beside him and took the reins. “I’ll get us home.”
“Home?” Hadrian glanced toward the deserted pit cottage as they headed back toward Edenhall.
He had lost so much. Her arms ached to gather him close and comfort him, though she doubted she had either the ability or the right.
“Not that home.” She gave his leg a reassuring pat. “Your new one.”
Her heart gave a broken-winged flutter when he placed one of his hands over hers. “The new one…of course.”
His fine new mansion would never be home to him the way that drafty, tumbledown cottage had been. Or could it? Perhaps there was a way to atone for the most recent loss Hadrian had suffered.
She could make a home for him. She and Lee could become his new family…if he would let them.
What on earth had made him believe coming back here was a good idea?
As he and Artemis drove away from the abandoned pit village, Hadrian slowly emerged from the dark trance of his long-suppressed memories. What disturbed him almost as much as reliving the worst day of his life was that Artemis had seen him so confused and helpless, prey to emotions he could not control. He was tempted to resent her presence and the glimpse this had given her of his deepest fears and weakness. Such knowledge could be a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. But were her hands the wrong ones in which to entrust his secret pain?
He stared at the one that held the reins. It was a strong hand, capable of pulling him from the grip of his nightmare, giving him something solid and steadfast to cling to. He felt her other hand beneath his, resting against his leg. With it, she had offered him sympathy and comfort without demeaning him.
This wife of his was proving an altogether surprising woman. He could not help feeling his parents would have approved of her. Though his return to Fellbank had stirred up many unwelcome memories, it also made him feel closer to his family than he had in a very long time.
He cleared his throat, making his voice come out deeper and gruffer. “That didn’t go quite the way I planned.”
“You and your plans.” Artemis cast him a sidelong glance of exasperation mingled with something else. Could it be fondness?
The possibility made him a trifle tongue-tied. “I had…hoped…a visit to Fellbank might persuade you there are worse things our nephew could do with his life than take up the cause of the children who work in the mines.”
“I can assure you, I need no persuasion of that,” replied Artemis.
“You don’t? But yesterday you said—”
“I said a great many things, but I fear I did not make myself very clear. For that, I apologize.”
Once again it surprised him that a proud woman like her should be so willing to admit her mistakes. It did not make him think any less of her—quite the contrary. “You might have been able to explain yourself better if you had not been interrupted quite so much. Perhaps you could take the opportunity to enlighten me now?”
He hoped she would. The sound of her voice soothed him.
“Very well.” Artemis drew a deep breath. “I want to raise our nephew to care about other people and be ready to offer his assistance to anyone in need of it.”
Was it his imagination or did the pressure of her hand upon his leg increase, almost like a caress?
“When he is old enough, I want to take him to one of the mining villages to see and talk to children who work there. And, of course, I mean to show him the headstone you erected for your family at St. Oswin’s.”
“I could not ask for more than that.” Perhaps their trip to Fellbank had succeeded better than he’d realized. Was it possible his betrayal of weakness had done more than a blustery show of force?
“Don’t you see?” Artemis turned toward him with a plea in her eyes. So close, their color made Hadrian catch his breath. “I thought you were asking for much more.”
In answer to his questioning look, she added, “I do not want to burden Lee with our expectations or make him feel this problem is his to solve all on his own.”
“That was never my intention.” Though the denial came readily to his lips, a seed of doubt found fertile soil. “Do you reckon that’s how Julian felt and why he rebelled?”
Artemis shook her head. “If it was, that is all in the past. It is what we do from now on that matters. Is there anything we can do now to improve the situation? I cannot bear to let it go on for another twenty years without at least trying to help.”
“What can we do? There are dozens of collieries in County Durham and hundreds, maybe thousands, all over the country. You must know the power of the forces that will oppose any reform.” Even as he spoke, Hadrian’s mind began to turn in new directions, seeking fresh channels.
“Then perhaps we should start small,” suggested Artemis. “Lay a foundation so Lee will have something to work with when and if he is ready to take on the challenge.”
“You know, lass, you may be on to something. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as Pa used to say.” Suddenly Hadrian could hear those words in his father’s booming voice, clearer than he’d been able to recall it in many years.
“We could write letters to the newspapers.” Artemis turned toward him with a smile that illuminated her whole face. “Or draft a pamphlet, like the abolitionists. My cousin Jasper is an abolitionist. He might be able to help us.”
As she bubbled with ideas, Hadrian marveled at the change that had come over Artemis in the brief time he’d known her. Had she truly altered from that cool, disdainful lady he’d first met in the shadow of her family’s ancient estate? Or had this fervor and compassion been there all along, imprisoned by pride or reticence?
It made him anxious to discover what other intriguing qualities might still be constrained within her, waiting to be liberated. Passion, perhaps?
That thought made him conscious of her touch upon his leg in a whole new way. The unwelcome attraction he had fought to suppress now burst from its cage, growling and roaring. He knew better than to hope the beast would be so easily tamed again. It would not rest until it had stalked, hunted and satisfied its ravenous hunger.
Now that his mistrust of his bride had abated, Hadrian feared he no longer had the strength to fight his desire. Nor the inclination.
But memories of his encounter with Artemis on their wedding night warned him he would need to proceed slowly and with great care.
The roan gelding turned off the main road toward Edenhall with hardly any urging from Artemis. That was fortunate, since she was still managing the reins with only one hand. The other one rested on Hadrian’s thigh, with his hand covering it. This was by far the most prolonged physical contact she’d had with him. She had initiated it as an innocent gesture of comfort and reassurance, but somehow it felt different now—much less innocent. On her part, at least.
She could not ignore the heat of his skin rising through the fabric of his breeches to warm her palm. Or the muscular firmness of his thigh beneath her fingertips. Not to mention the size and controlled strength of his hand as it enveloped hers. Those sensations quickened her pulse and made her blood hum through her veins.
Her eager torrent of suggestions to help the young miners dwindled to a trickle, as she feared her breathless voice might betray her wayward thoughts. She felt vaguely ashamed of herself for entertaining such notions about Hadrian after what the poor man had just been through. A stolen glance at his rugged profile showed that he had lapsed back into his earlier daze. No doubt he was thinking more about the Fellbank Explosion and its wrenching aftermath.
Stopping the gig in front of Edenhall’s main entrance, she tossed the reins to a boy who came running from the stable yard.
“We’re home now,” she murmured to Hadrian as they alighted. “Would you like to lie down for a while before dinner? I believe it would do you good.”
Hadrian nodded. “I feel tired to the bone.”
Artemis recalled him telling her that strong emotion wearied him. After what he’d been through today, it was a wonder he remained conscious.
As they entered the house, Mrs. Matlock came bustling toward them. “Is something wrong with the master?”
It was clear from her sharp tone and stern frown that the housekeeper held Artemis to blame for whatever ailed him.
“Don’t fret,” said Hadrian. “It’s nothing a bit of a lie down won’t put right.”
“No need to trouble yourself, then, ma’am. I’ll see to the master.” Mrs. Matlock approached with a brisk, determined air, clearly intending to take charge of the situation.
“It is no trouble for me to tend my husband.” With a proud tilt of her chin, Artemis stared down Mrs. Matlock. “If I require any assistance, I shall be sure to inform you.”
The housekeeper’s eyes flashed with outrage.
“Mr. Northmore?” She appealed to Hadrian.
For an instant Artemis feared he might remember all the old hostility between them and turn away from her.
But he waved the housekeeper back. “I appreciate your concern, Mrs. Matlock. As you can see, I am in capable hands.”
Artemis treasured his modest tribute. It meant far more to her than any dubious compliment on her appearance. Tightening her hold on Hadrian’s arm, she steered him toward the stairs.
A few moments later, they reached his bedchamber, one door down from hers. The room was almost as large as the whole main room of the pit cottage in Fellbank.
“Let me help you off with your coat.” She spoke in a gentle, matter-of-fact tone. “You will rest more comfortably that way.”
Without a word, Hadrian let her remove his well-cut coat. While she turned to lay it over the back of a nearby chair, he sank onto the edge of the bed and began to pry off his boots.
Artemis hastened to assist him.
“And your neckcloth.” She unwound the lightly starched fillets of linen from around his neck, leaving his shirt collar hanging open, snowy white against his sunbronzed throat. Her fingers trembled.
Hadrian stretched out on the bed with a drowsy sigh. Artemis covered him with a light blanket. As she drew it up under his chin, a bewildering impulse compelled her to raise her hand and smooth a stray lock of dark hair back from his forehead.
“It feels quite pleasant, being tucked in like a wee lad. I’d almost forgotten.” One corner of his mouth curled into a crooked smile that was dangerously endearing. “Do I get a kiss to sweeten my dreams?”
The word kiss caused Artemis a spasm of alarm mixed with a searing flare of desire. He did not mean that kind of kiss, she chided herself. All he wanted was the sort of innocent peck on the forehead she gave Lee when she put him to bed at night. Having caught a heartbreaking glimpse of Hadrian’s nightmares, she knew he needed something to sweeten his dreams, if anyone did.
“If you like.” The words came out in a tremulous whisper as she bent over him.
Her lips grazed over his brow, relishing the warm smoothness of his skin. She inhaled a deep draft of his spicy, smoky scent. Her well-honed sense of discretion warned her that she should not linger so close to Hadrian, but her body was slow to respond. After a brief struggle with herself, she tried to pull away, only to feel the hot mist of his breath and the velvet caress of his lips upon her throat. The unexpected thrill of those sensations held her captive there, hovering over him.
Though she could not break away, she was not entirely paralyzed, either. His overture called forth an answer from her. Before caution had a chance to intervene, her lips grazed the outer corner of one devilish dark brow, then trailed down to the crest of his high cheekbone. As she moved, his kisses swept along the sensitive flesh just below her jaw, moving over her chin and finally upward to meet her approaching lips.
She’d received enough kisses from Hadrian by now so that this one had a deliciously familiar feel. But it held a subtle thrill of novelty, too. She sensed a tender restraint on his part, which appealed not only to her physical desires but also to her wary heart.
Her heart had good reason to be wary, painful memories reminded her—all the more because she had allowed herself to feel something for her husband. It was only a compound of compassion, curiosity and admiration, spiced with reluctant desire. But that could be more than enough to scorch her if she risked playing with fire.
Abruptly she drew back, ignoring the protest of her pleasure-starved senses.
“Rest well.” She tried to pretend nothing of consequence had passed between them. But her ragged breath betrayed her.
Hadrian caught her hand. “Don’t go.”
It was not a command from the husband she’d vowed to obey, nor an order from the master of this fine house. It was an appeal to which she dared not respond, much as part of her longed to.
“I must.” It required an enormous effort to extract her fingers from his tantalizing grasp. “I do not want to.” She hadn’t meant to speak those words, for they revealed divided desires, which he might exploit. Yet she owed him the truth. “I do not want to, but I must.”