“I can call you whatever you like. But you can call me Bran.”
Annoyance glittered in her dark eyes. At last, she said, “I give you liberty to call me Artemis.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Do you, now?”
The thing was, what they were doing now almost felt like flirting. And perhaps to the outside observer, it would be taken as such.
But it wasn’t.
It was a skirmish.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you doing this?”
“Sir Abstrupus is an old family friend.” The answer held some truth.
“He’s your godfather, I believe?”
Bran lifted his brow in silent question, despite his intent to maintain a level neutrality for the duration of this exchange.
Artemis didn’t keep him waiting. “My cook makes it her business to know everything about everyone around here. She remembers the Roost receiving a few visits from the Earl of Stoke and his two lads many years ago.”
Of course, those childhood visits with Father and Edward were etched into Bran’s memory. The Roost had been so exoticand exciting then—Sir Abstrupus had peacocks strutting around the estate, along with a herd of ibex goats. And Sir Abstrupus himself had been nothing short of a force of a man, and not unlike the Roost’s peacocks on the estate with his flair for dressing in the mode of an Arabian sultan, a phase that had thankfully passed.
Looking back as an adult, Bran had come to understand the purpose of those visits with Father—to secure loans. Sir Abstrupus had hinted as much, and Bran saw no reason to doubt him. Father hadn’t been a gambler or wastrel, but there had been a string of bad-luck occurrences through Bran’s childhood involving drought, fire, and failing crops—likely darkness and locusts, too. But Father had managed to keep everything afloat for those who depended on him until his heart had given out one sunny afternoon, and the matter had fallen to Edward—who had set about squandering any meager gains with immediate effect.
The extent of which Bran hadn’t realized until his return to England.
His evasion of a meaningful response produced a decided dissatisfaction about Artemis. “Why are you herenow?”
The urgency contained within that last word snapped Bran to attention. “To do precisely what I’m doing.” He indicated Radish and Lafferty in the distance.
It was the truth.
A facet of it, at least.
She shook her head slowly. “You weren’t a racehorse trainer in the Light Dragoons. You were a soldier.”
Bran’s back teeth ground together.
You were a soldier.
“If you tell me your true reason,” she continued, “I’ll leave you be.”
As tempting as the offer was, Bran didn’t believe her.
His snort told her as much.
And still she didn’t let up. “Are you here for …” Two vertical lines formed between her eyebrows. “I mean, did you learn that I was Sir Abstrupus’s neighbor and think?—”
“No,” he said, firmly and without equivocation. No version of reality existed in which he could allow her to finish that question. “No,” he repeated for good measure.
The fact was it wasn’t the truth.
Further, even if it were—and it wasn’t—he couldn’t allow her to leave here believing it.
“My sister,” he ground out by way of an answer. Truly, he’d become unsettlingly inept at forming complete sentences.
“Lady Gwyneth?”
