Bran.
Artemis had struggled throughout the meal to keep her eyes off him, as he’d sat diagonally down the table across from her.
How handsome he was in his evening blacks.
He’d mostly kept to himself through the meal. But that was his temperament. He was a man content to let others air their opinions and form his to himself in his own time.
Artemis found his measured approach—like everything about him—to be exceedingly attractive.
“I don’t know what Rake’s wife is thinking,” came a voice to Artemis’s left—Mother. “Couples should most definitelynotbe seated next to each other at a supper party.”
Mother was the only guest who wasn’t content. Though one wouldn’t know it to look at her cool exterior.
Artemis angled her head discreetly and pitched her voice low so it wouldn’t carry beyond them. “Gemma is still finding her way as a duchess, I suppose.”
Even after all these months, Mother still hadn’t called Gemma by her given name.
Mother gave an elegant shrug of the shoulder, as if indifferent—and anything but.
Typically, the guest of honor would be seated to the host’s right. But this was Mother. The only place at the table she would be honored to take was, of course, the seat at its head with Rake at the opposite end. This arrangement clearly suited Gemma’s preference, as she was able to sit next to her husband. Which, now that Artemis thought about it, was the only reason Rake was assenting to Mother’s preference. If Gemma had wanted it any other way, that was the way it would have been. Artemis couldn’t help wondering if Mother understood that.
The precedent had always been that while Somerton was Rake’s house, when Mother was in residence, it was her rules.
That was the way it had always been, so one would naturally assume that was the way it would always be.
Yet …
Once Gemma gave birth to Rake’s first child in the coming months, Artemis suspected the rules would be changing. New rules that were more in line with the current duchess’s point of view than with the dowager duchess’s, which was only natural.
Mother was in no way prepared.
And though it was none of Artemis’s concern, she knew she would be the recipient of Mother’s thoughts on the matter.
Except that was no longer precisely true, was it? Now she had the animal sanctuary at the Grange. The old patterns of her life no longer applied, either, did they?
Unable not to, her gaze cut right beneath lowered lashes and found Bran.
Perhaps he was another new pattern in her life.
All you ever have to do is tell me what you want, Artemis.
No one had ever spoken such words to her.
But they were more than words, weren’t they?
They were a promise.
Her gaze fell and lingered where she rarely allowed it to—on the scar on his face.
That scar—and all the other ones accumulated on his body and in his mind—they were evidence of Bran’s valor, and also his steadiness. When this man made a promise, he kept it.
He’d promised to defend his country, and he had.
He’d promised to give her everything she wanted, and he …
She shied away from completing the thought.
She wasn’t sure she was worthy of it.
