After all, they were in love.
Words of love had been spoken between them.
Weren’t words of promise implicit?
From her perch on the bed, Mother broke her stillness with a slow nod. “I shall speak with him.”
With no small amount of disappointment, Artemis understood this was the correct path. The time for spoken promises—and vows—had arrived. Yet … “Shouldn’t Rake be involved?”
As mortifying as it would be to confess her indiscretions—and,oh, so much more—to Rake, he wasn’t only her older brother, but he was the Duke of Rakesley and her guardian.
Further, he was her ally.
He always has been.
Mother shook her head, firm. “There’s no need to involve Rake just yet.”
Artemis should have felt soothed. Instead, she’d experienced a sense of foreboding that she’d immediately tamped down.
It was nerves.
After all, she was going to have a baby, and Bran was going to be hers—at last.
Three long days later, Mother had returned with information that would forever alter the course of Artemis’s life. Not only had Bran denied the possibility of the child being his, but he’d then turned around and demanded £20,000 to keep quiet.
The rupture of Artemis’s heart had been sudden and irrevocable.
She stopped leaving her house.
She stopped leaving her bed.
A few weeks later, Mother gently broke the news that he’d purchased a commission in the Light Dragoons and had taken himself off to the Continent to fight Napolean.
Not long after, Artemis lost their child.
It took months, but eventually she recovered her smile and her brightness—all the brighter to hide the shadow she ever carried in her heart.
Those four months of her life with Bran had yielded its greatest happiness … its greatest love … and its greatest despair.
Now, she saw with crystal clarity her mistake.
She should have allowed him to ask Rake for her hand. If she had, all the wretchedness that had followed would have been avoided. Bran wouldn’t have joined the Light Dragoons … He wouldn’t have been permanently injured or scarred …
Oh.
None of the past was Bran’s fault—all of it was hers.
As for their lost baby—Selena, for she’d been conceived beneath the moon—perhaps that loss was her fault, too.
But shame and guilt weren’t the reasons she wouldn’t tell him.
These last ten years, Bran had lost so much. Would it be a kindness to burden him further?
She owed him better.
A knot formed in her chest, making it impossible to breathe, as certain knowledge came to her.
She couldn’t have him.
