“A child?” he asked, then demanded, “A child?”
Watchful, she nodded.
A strange numbness filled him, even as a barrage of questions demanded release. Yet it was one question that needed an immediate answer. “Where is the child, Artemis?”
She shook her head, swiping tears with the back of her hand when they fell. “I lost her.”
“Lost …her?”
“It was too early in the pregnancy for me to know for sure, but that’s how I think of our child.” She sniffled. “Selena.”
“Selena?”
“Because you and I always met by night.”
This conversation was both happening entirely too fast and entirely too slowly. “Artemis, please start at the beginning.” He braced himself.
“It’s simple, I suppose. You and I fell madly in love and we began our,erm, courtship, and I found myself with child.”
Bran fought the urge to jump off the bed and begin pacing the room. Instead, he remained very still.
“When I started becoming sick in the mornings, I realized I hadn’t had my menses in a couple of months.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He needed to know—now.
A new light entered her eyes—guilt. “You were away when I realized.” She hesitated. “I’d planned to tell you upon your return to London.”
There was more she wasn’t saying. “But?”
She inhaled as if she were struggling for breath. “One morning, after my usual round of vomiting, I returned to my bedchamber to find Mother waiting.”
And here it was—the ax dropping. “She knew.”
Artemis nodded. “She said she would take care of everything.”
“Not your brother.”
She shook her head. “Rake never knew about it.”
In a noxious mélange, dread filled his gut and rage flowed through his veins, as puzzle pieces clicked into place. It wasn’t a far leap to … “You thought I abandoned you and our child for twenty thousand pounds.” So many lies contained within that sentence. “And you continued to believe that for ten years.”
“Yes, but also no,” she said. “These last few weeks … I knew that wasn’t what happened.”
“And yet you withheld the truth from me.”
She gave a slow, reluctant nod. “I wasn’t sure it was right to tell you.”
After this night, he would have permanent trenches in his forehead, surely. “Help me understand that line of reasoning.”
“You’ve been through so much, Bran. I didn’t want to add to it.”
His mind, however, kept wanting to go back to the beginning. His fury had naught to do with the recent weeks. “All these years, after all we shared, you thought I was the sort of man who would abandon you and our child.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” she said. “I was little more than a bundle of feelings.”
But Bran wasn’t in any mood to hear her. “I was going to offer for your hand in marriage.” His voice had gone rough with emotion. “That first night we were together in the flat on Barlow Street.”
She nodded, but kept otherwise silent, giving him room to vent the rush of feelings that crashed through him.
