Bought: The Penniless Lady (10 page)

The full implication of his words sent Artemis reeling. “Are you saying that your only reason for wanting custody of Lee, for marrying me, for bringing us here, is so he can be molded into an instrument to further your plans?”

“What’s wrong with my plans?” Hadrian looked as taken aback by her response as she was by his. “I am not proposing we send the lad down to work in the mines. Only that we prepare him to lead the fight for reform one day.”

Did Hadrian not see? He was asking for the one thing she could not give up—her nephew’s freedom and happiness. “What if he does not want that responsibility? Is he to be raised with no say at all in his own future? I’m sorry, Hadrian. I truly want to help you, but I cannot agree to that.”

Could Artemis mean what she’d just said? Mouth agape in disbelief, Hadrian stared after his bride as she turned her back on him and walked away for the second time in an hour.

But so much had happened in that hour. So much had changed between them…at least he’d thought it had. Could that shift have been entirely on his part, while Artemis continued to regard him the same way she had from their unfavorable first meeting?

No. He could not accept that the things she’d told him about herself, and the flashes of intense emotion she’d betrayed, were less than sincere.

Reason warned him to let the matter rest for a while, not to press Artemis now, when feelings on both sides were running dangerously high. But pride refused to heed that sensible warning. How could he let her raze his cherished plans to smoking rubble, then march away victorious?

“Artemis!” For the second time in an hour, he followed her. Not as a regretful supplicant this time, to beg her pardon, but charged with iron purpose, determined to have his way.

He caught up to her on the wide landing of the main staircase. “Stay and listen to me, will you?”

When she did not deign to reply, he caught her by the arm and spun her about. He judged his grip carefully. He did not want to hurt or intimidate her, only get her attention. And perhaps he just needed to touch her. “This matter is not resolved.”

She glared at him—for daring to lay hands on her, no
doubt. If only she knew how he longed to lay hands and lips on her again, the way he had on their wedding night. Not in a fumbling, half-awake daze, but in full possession of his senses and abilities. Somehow, her challenge to his authority whipped up that suppressed desire, like a rogue breeze over the embers of a bonfire.

Hadrian fought to quench the flames. He did not want unwelcome desire to cloud his judgment or give Artemis an unfair advantage over him. But the sight of her did nothing to quell his unruly urges. She’d removed her bonnet upon entering the house, letting her windblown hair tumble over her shoulders. Her lips looked fuller and softer. Her eyes glittered with a dozen shades of purple—a different one for every emotion he glimpsed, but could not readily identify.

“Is it not resolved? Well, I am.” She made no attempt to shake off his hand. Was it because his touch had no effect upon her…or quite the opposite? “I cannot raise our nephew to be a slave to your plans, no matter how well intentioned.”

Did she mean that backhanded compliment to appease him? It would take more than that from her to make him abandon the purpose to which he’d dedicated his life.

“You took a vow to obey me, remember?” He tried to release her arm, but his fingers froze around it, unable to let go. “It is not one I mean to impose upon, given the circumstances of our marriage. Indeed, there is only one thing I will ever ask of you as a husband.”

There was something else he would have liked to ask, but Artemis had made it clear that was out of the question.

With his free hand, Hadrian gestured around. “As the man who will provide you with a house that is not centuries
old and crumbling around your ears, servants, fine clothes, the opportunity to travel and entertain in a manner befitting your rank, is what I ask really so much in return for all that?”

“I don’t want
all that!
I never did and I never will.” As she flung the words at him, Hadrian fancied her a defiant warrior queen. One of the Brigantes, perhaps, standing up to a Roman centurion. “That was why I came looking for you earlier. To tell you for the last time that I am not a fortune hunter. I want no part of this splendid house or the fine clothes you summoned a seamstress to make me. And I most definitely do not want Lee being tended by some strict old nurse who will keep me from him and train him to be a passive pawn in your grand schemes for the future. You cannot buy my cooperation or coerce it.”

Artemis twisted his words in ways he’d never intended them. She refused to do the one thing for which he’d wed her. Yet Hadrian could scarcely keep his mind on those things because he yearned so urgently to kiss her. Why had his inconvenient desire chosen the worst possible moment to threaten his control? Was it because contesting the things they cared about most passionately provoked other kinds of passion as well?

He could not let that kind of passion overcome his zeal for the cause that had sustained him through the battlefield of tragedy and the wasteland of loneliness.

“I am not trying to buy you.” He forced his hand to release Artemis, one stubborn finger at a time. “And I would never coerce you. I am only trying to make you see how important this is to me, and to a great many others. You said you wanted to help. Was that just idle talk? Does
one child’s future matter so much more than the lives and futures of thousands of other children, because he has Dearing blood and they haven’t?”

He stalked past her, inwardly conceding that she had fought him to a bloody draw this time. But the campaign was far from over.

“You don’t honestly believe that, do you?” Her words pursued Hadrian, reminding him of their agreement to make a fresh start.

He paused and glanced back at her, his shoulders raised in a helpless shrug. After all that had happened, was it possible the two of them could ever forge a steady cooperative understanding? Or would relations between them always be capricious and volatile? “What else am I to think?”

Artemis seemed to search for an answer that might alter his opinion, but after a moment she gave up in defeat. With a stony nod to her, Hadrian retreated to consider his next move.

Without giving much thought to where he was going, he wandered up more stairs and down a long hallway that opened on to a high balcony with a breathtaking view of the dales. From that high perch, the rolling countryside looked like a patchwork in every possible shade of green, stitched together with seams of brown and gray stone fencing. In the wide blue sky above, plump clouds rolled before the wind like flocks of yearling lambs.

Off to the east was a different landscape altogether. Barren black slag heaps replaced verdant hillsides. Instead of snug cottages and cowsheds, shaft frames towered like the iron skeletons of hulking, hungry beasts. Tall chimneystacks
spouted columns of black smoke that blighted the sky with a jaundiced haze.

But those visible signs of the Durham collieries did not weigh half so heavy on Hadrian as the scenes he could only see in his memory—young lads and lasses toiling in the stifling darkness, deep in the bowels of those hills. Hard as he’d worked the past seventeen years, they had been one long, sun-drenched holiday compared to the bone-grinding labor of his youth.

He could not bear to think how many more lads like his brothers would die in the dangerous depths of the earth before they had a chance to live, with no hope of escape.

Hadrian chided himself on not following through on his original plan for his young nephew. He should have gained custody of Lee by whatever means necessary then hired someone to raise him—someone who understood and approved of what Hadrian wanted the lad to do with his life. Someone more like
him.

But where would he have found anyone more like him than Artemis? The woman was strong, stubborn and proud. Yet she was fiercely loyal and devoted to her family. She had known great loss and heavy responsibility from an early age. Though she’d tried her best to fulfill that duty and done a fine job by anyone else’s standards, she remained acutely conscious of her failings.

Perhaps the combustible friction between them came not from their superficial differences, but from the many deep similarities in their character?

As he mulled over that intriguing, disturbing notion, Hadrian asked himself how someone might persuade
him
to change his mind about a matter of great importance. A
direct confrontation would never work, so why should he expect it to work on Artemis? A better strategy would be to lay the facts before him in a way best calculated to appeal to his reason and sense of justice.

He had an idea how he might do the same for Artemis. But could he bear the jagged reminders of things he’d spent nearly twenty years trying to forget?

“
W
here 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?