Bought: The Penniless Lady

by Deborah Hale

  If anyone had told Artemis she would one day be happy to entertain a houseful of strangers, she’d have thought they were mocking her. But that day had come. And the acquaintances she’d long kept at arm’s length were bidding fair to become something she’d never had before—friends.

  After several days spent taking the children for outings and evenings making music and playing cards, she was now on familiar terms with the countess and the Penrose sisters. She found all four ladies very congenial in different ways. Laura was the most like her, responsible and loyal. Genia was clever and forthright, Belinda gentle and amiable, while Susannah had a vivacious charm like Daphne’s. Artemis wished she’d made an effort to cultivate a closer acquaintance with Laura and her sisters years ago.

  Now, while the men were down at the beck fishing, the ladies brought the children outside to play in the garden.

  “You have such a pretty place here, Lady Artemis.” Susannah gazed around as she walked with her young nephew clinging to her hand. “Hawkesbourne is lovely, too, of course. But I have been there so long I scarcely notice it anymore.”

  Was it possible part of the charm of Edenhall lay in the presence of a certain awkward but ardent young politician? Artemis found herself eager to promote a match that might lead to the sort of true, lasting marriage she now longed for.

  “If you like it here, you must return for a longer visit after Christmas.” She stooped to dust off Lee, who had fallen on his bottom. “I shall want company once Mr. Northmore goes back to Singapore.”

  “Did you hear that, Laura?” Susannah called to her sister. “Lady Artemis has invited me to visit her this winter. I’d be delighted to. Winter passes so slowly at home since Daphne…I mean…now that I have no particular friends to call on.”

  When Artemis let a faint sigh escape her lips, Susannah reached for her hand. “Forgive me! I did not mean to bring back unhappy memories at such a pleasant time.”

  “Do not fret, my dear.” Artemis strove to raise a smile. “I have far more happy memories of my sister than unhappy ones. Lately it is the former I recall most clearly. You remind me of Daphne when she was in her brightest spirits. Having you here makes me feel close to her again.”

  Susannah looked torn between her own grief for her friend and pleasure at having cheered Artemis. But before she could reply, little Phillip spotted a squirrel perched on a nearby garden seat and darted after it. His aunt was obliged to lift up her skirts and give chase.

  No sooner had she gone than Laura and Genia joined Artemis.

  “Did I hear you correctly?” asked Laura. “Mr. Northmore is going back to Singapore while you and Lee stay behind? How soon do you expect him to return?”

  Those questions troubled Artemis far more than Susannah’s mention of Daphne. Hadrian’s departure would be a bereavement of sorts. Would she come to accept it in time, as she had the deaths of her brother and sister? Or would she wait and pine, living for that annual letter from Singapore, hoping he might return or send for her?

  “Not for many years.” Her voice caught in her throat. “If ever.”

  “And you cannot go with him?” Laura stooped to show her daughter a butterfly perched on a nearby shrub. “Is that your inclination or his?”

  “I cannot leave Lee,” replied Artemis. “And Hadrian would never risk taking him to the tropics. He says the climate is very hard on English children.”

  Hearing his name, Lee began to tug on her skirts, wanting to be picked up. Artemis welcomed the distraction.

  “That is true.” Genia kept a keen eye on her young son, who was pulling a toy boat on wheels. “Especially if they are accustomed to northern climates. Hadrian knows better than most, poor man. One can hardly blame him for not wanting to go through that again.”

  “Did you know his first wife well?” Artemis could not resist asking, though she knew she was only torturing herself to hear Genia sing Margaret’s praises.

  Genia nodded. “We were as close as sisters. Did Hadrian not tell you? I was Margaret’s bridesmaid. Her death came as such a shock I went rather wild afterwards. Hadrian couldn’t bear to stay in Madras. He moved his business to Penang and I did not see him again until the other day. I never thought he would wed again. It has done my heart good to see him so happy with you and your little nephew.”

  Before Artemis could digest all that and form a proper response, Laura chimed in. “Ford says Hadrian is quite a changed man and all for better. That is why I was so surprised to hear you are to be parted. Perhaps it is not my place to ask…” she lowered her voice “…but do you want him to go?”

  Artemis stiffened as she used to do when anyone approached too close for her comfort. “It is necessary.”

  “That does not answer the question,” said Genia in a gentle but firm tone.

  Artemis hesitated, torn between contrary inclinations. It was against her reserved nature to confide in others, yet she craved an outlet for her feelings.

  “No,” she whispered, holding their nephew as tightly as she wished she could hold Hadrian, “I do not want him to go, but there is nothing I can do to prevent it.”

  “Are you quite certain of that?” Laura challenged her. “Often we have more choices than we realize, if only we dare to make the difficult ones. Have you told Mr. Northmore how you feel?”

  “Men are admirable creatures,” added Genia, “but they sometimes have difficulty divining a woman’s feelings if she leaves the slightest room for doubt.”

  “It would do no good,” Artemis insisted. Did these women not understand how impossible a thing they were suggesting? “Hadrian and I have an arrangement to which we both agreed. I cannot change the conditions now.”

  “Are your feelings the same as they were when you made this arrangement of yours?” Laura’s candid blue gaze would accept nothing less than the truth.

  Artemis shook her head.

  Laura exchanged a subtle nod with Genia as if to say she had guessed as much. “Are his?”

  “No, but that signifies nothing. We detested one another at first. Just because we have overcome our differences and made an effort to be civil—”

  “Civil?” Genia laughed. “My dear Artemis, if all married couples were as civil as you and Hadrian, the courtesans of London would starve for want of patrons!”

  How could Genia taunt her with what she so desperately wanted to hear? “You should know better than anyone, his heart belongs to Margaret. Even if I wanted to I cannot fight a ghost…or an angel! Pray excuse me.”

  She set her nephew on his feet. “Could you please watch Lee for me?”

  Hoisting up her skirts, Artemis dashed away before her composure deserted her entirely. She finally staggered to a halt a few minutes later under a stout old oak tree beyond the stables.

  But before she had a chance to catch her breath, Genia appeared, breathless and anxious looking. “Forgive me…my dear! I did not mean…to distress you…truly. I have…a habit…of letting my tongue…run away with me.”

  Too winded and agitated to reply, Artemis could do no more than stand there, shaking her head like a perfect ninny while her galloping heart slowed.

  Genia recovered her voice first. “Perhaps I should not behave like such an infernal busybody when we have known each other such a short time. But I felt so sorry for what Hadrian suffered and it has gladdened my heart to see him so happy with you. Margaret was a dear girl and I believe Hadrian loved her very much.

  “But you must believe me.” She fixed Artemis with her expressive hazel eyes. “I never saw him happier with her than I have seen him since I came here. Margaret used to wonder if he had some secret sorrow and fretted that he would not share it with her.”

  Could it be that Hadrian had never told his beloved first wife, the mother of his child, about the tragedy that had befallen his family? Artemis was almost afraid to believe it. Then she recalled something he’d said on the night he told her about Margaret and Elizabeth. You are the only one I’ve ever been able to tell—first
about the Fellbank Explosion and now about this. After all you have been through in your own life, I reckon you understand better than anyone else can.

  Perhaps Genia saw some change in her expression that offered hope. Reaching for Artemis’s hand, she gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Laura was right, you know, about daring to make difficult choices. Love like yours is worth fighting for.”

  “Did you have to fight for yours?” Artemis could scarcely believe she was inviting such an intimate confidence from someone who was little better than a stranger. Yet she felt an inexplicable connection to Genia and Laura, as if they were all part of some secret sisterhood.

  “I did indeed.” A shadow of past distress dimmed Genia’s eyes for a moment. Then a blaze of remembered strength and triumph lit them brighter than ever. “I believe Laura did, too. And after what you have accomplished already, I am certain you can.”

  She had accomplished a great deal, Artemis realized as she looked back over the past weeks, both with Hadrian and with herself. It had not been easy, but the rewards had been worth the struggle. And the struggle had made the rewards even sweeter.

  Did she have the courage to fight all the ghosts from Hadrian’s past and her own, for the sweetest reward of all?

  “I say, Jasper.” Hadrian took advantage of finding the young viscount sitting by himself reading the newspapers, rather than enjoying a flirtatious argument with Susannah Penrose. “There’s some place I’d like you to see, if you wouldn’t mind taking a drive with me. Artemis thought you might find it of interest.”

  Jasper looked up from his paper with an eager glint in his eyes. “Will the ladies be joining us?”

  “Just you and me, I’m afraid.” Hadrian strove to suppress a knowing smile. Did the fellow not realize how obviously he was smitten with Ford’s pretty sister-in-law? “Where I plan to take you…it’s not a very agreeable sight for ladies.”

  Before Jasper could reply, Ford and Blade strolled into the drawing room, back from an afternoon ride.

  “That sounds intriguing.” Blade broke into a sly grin. “Where are you planning to take our young friend, Hadrian?”

  “Can we come along?” asked Ford.

  “It’s only a local colliery.” Hadrian wished the pair of them had stayed out riding a little longer. “I doubt you’d find it of much interest.”

  Ford shrugged. “It will be a novelty to me. With all the new industries running on coal-fired engines, it is something I should learn more about.”

  “Very true,” said Blade.

  Hadrian cudgeled his brains for an excuse to put his friends off without offending them. He had resigned himself to telling Jasper how he’d once lived and what had happened to his family. But Ford and Blade had long known him as a successful man of business. He wasn’t sure he wanted them acquainted with the details of his early life.

  Then he fancied he could hear Artemis whispering in his thoughts, reminding him that his old friends were now peers with seats in the House of Lords. If they took an interest in the plight of young mine workers, their influence could be a great asset.

  “Stay or come as you like,” he muttered. “I warn you it’ll be no pleasure excursion.”

  The pair of them were obstinate enough that his reluctance made them all the more determined to go.

  An hour later, the four men were on the road to the Stanehead Colliery, near the Northumberland border.

  “Do you mean to keep us in suspense?” asked Blade. “Or are you going to tell us why you want Ashbury to see this coal mine?”

  Hadrian inhaled a deep breath and forced himself to speak. “Jasper is an abolitionist. I thought he might care to know there are children as young as six spending most of their lives below ground, cut off from fresh air and sunshine, exposed to dangerous conditions that maim and kill many every year. They are not slave children in some distant colony, but native British, born and bred, enslaved by their poverty and ignorance.”

  “Six years old?” Blade repeated as if he’d misheard. “Surely not!”

  “If you don’t believe me,” said Hadrian, “you can see for yourselves when we get to Stanehead. The shift should just be coming up.”

  “If it’s true it is an outrage!” The words burst out of Jasper. “Why have I heard nothing of it until now?”

  “Because people like you never go to places like Stanehead or Fellbank or Kellsend. And because so few people ever get out of those places to tell their stories. Even when they do, they may think you won’t care.”

  That kept all three of the others quiet for a minute or two. Then Ford ventured to ask, “Hadrian, how do you come to know so much about all this?”

  “Because I started work as a trapper when I was eight years old—sitting in the dark from six in the morning until six at night, opening and closing the ventilation doors. After a couple of years I got big enough to become a putter—crawling through the tunnels on my hands and knees, hauling corves full of coal with a girdle harnessed around my waist.”

  The unspoken revulsion of his companions hung over the carriage like a thick cloud of noxious gas. And they hadn’t heard the worst. If he stopped now, Hadrian feared he might never be able to speak of it to them again.

  He forced himself to continue as he knew Artemis would urge him if she were there. “When I was seventeen, my father and four of my brothers were killed by a gas explosion, along with thirty-three others. At the time of their deaths, the eldest of my brothers was fourteen and the youngest was eight. In another year Julian would have been down there with them. If an injury had not kept me from work that day, so would I.”

  “Good God, man!” Ford broke the stunned hush that greeted Hadrian’s confession. “You’ve never mentioned a word of this to me in all the time I’ve known you. I thought we were friends.”

  “We are,” said Hadrian, relieved by his response. “It is not something I care to talk about, or remember. But I reckon it is necessary to speak of now, if it might prevent the same thing from happening to others.

  “And you need not take my word alone,” he added, nodding toward a cluster of pit cottages ranged on either side of the road ahead. “You can see and hear for yourselves from the young ones who are about to come off their shift.”

  He had timed it well. As they drew near the pithead, the mine began disgorging its captives. They were blacker than tinkers and all seemed to walk with a stoop, a limp or an exhausted shuffle. Fortunately, there was still enough light for Hadrian’s companions to see how small some of the children were.

  “Girls, too?” Blade muttered a curse. “Some of them look no bigger than our Theo.”

  Jasper vaulted out of the carriage and waded among the workers, firing off questions about their ages, hours, wages and tasks they performed. Most of the adults gave him a wide berth and dark looks, but many of the children answered with brutal honesty.

  By the time he returned to the carriage, he was bristling with indignation. “This cannot be allowed to continue! Not in our day and age.”

  “Is there anything you can do, Ashbury?” asked Ford.

  “I shall raise some pointed questions during the next session of Parliament,” replied Jasper. “But there is so much badly needed legislation that has no hope of passing until Parliament itself is reformed. You must know the power of the forces arrayed against that.”

  Both Ford and Blade gave dispirited nods.

  “So that’s it, then?” His lip curled in a disgusted sneer, Hadrian turned the carriage back toward Edenhall. “You’re not even going to try because it might take a bit of effort? I should have known. This place is owned by the Earl of Jarrow—a crony of yours, no doubt. Lord Gateshead and Lord Bournemore made their fortunes from Durham coal, as well. You wouldn’t want to risk offending those fine gentlemen. I tried to tell Artemis that with Julian gone, his son is our only hope of changing things.”

  Jasper began to protest, but Ford broke in. “Was this why you spent every spare penny on your brother—sent him to the best s
chools, pushed him into politics?”

  “That’s right.” Hadrian softened his tone a little. Discouraged as he was by the others’ response, he didn’t want to destroy a friendship so recently mended. “You could say it was the reason I set out to make my fortune.”

  He glanced back at Ford, only to glimpse a look of deep chagrin on his partner’s face. Had Ford’s ambition sprung from some less noble motive?

  “We must do something,” insisted Jasper. “Otherwise the prosperity of this century will be built on the backs of those children, as that of the last was built on the backs of slaves.”

  “Well said, Ashbury!” cried Blade. “You must use that line during your speech in the Commons. I fear this will be a long fight. Just think how many years it took the abolitionists to see any results.”

  Ford heaved a sigh. “And remember how they’ve been attacked by their opponents—branded as traitors and halfmad revolutionaries.”

  “I’ve been called worse than that.” Blade gave a derisive chuckle. “And not in such a good cause, either. Count me in for whatever I can do.”

  “And me,” said Ford. “I am all for progress, but not at this price.”

  For a moment, Hadrian did not dare speak, lest his voice break. But he soon regained his composure enough to say, “It seems Artemis was right about you lot after all.”

  Blade laughed and slapped him on the back. “When you’ve been married a bit longer, you’ll discover wives are always right.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Had she done right to tell Hadrian’s friends that he and Cousin Jasper were planning an excursion? Artemis watched anxiously for the men to return that evening.

  She knew Ford had a good heart and cared about the welfare of his tenants. Surely he could not help but be moved by the plight of the young miners? And Blade was so devoted to his young son. How could he fail to picture Theo laboring under such conditions? With two such influential peers supporting him, Cousin Jasper would stand a much better chance of making headway in his efforts to bring about reform.