He was undeniably pleased at the thought that Artemis’s influence on him was both positive and apparent, and he hoped the same could be said in reverse. If only he knew how to lift her spirits and help her endure the heartbreak currently crushing her.
“We have sorted out that it is the front axle of a Bath chair that makes it so cumbersome,” Jason said, “but our very intellectual brother has rightly informed us that the front axle is also what makes the chair stable. We can’t simply do away with it.”
“Could the axle be moved behind the chair?” Harold asked.
Charlie nodded. “But it would only shift the cumbersomeness to the back.”
Philip rubbed at his temple. “She is quickly losing hope. I have to find a means of giving her back what she’s lost before she gives up entirely.”
How painfully familiar that sentiment was.
Stanley sat up a little straighter. “Philip, none of us is simply going to toss our hands up and say ‘Too bad, it’s not worth sorting.’ If your Sorrel needs a chair she can maneuver about in, then we will stop at nothing to get it for her. You know that.”
“We are Jonquils,” Harold said. “We save people.”
Philip’s composure returned once more. “Which, actually, brings us to the next matter before Parliament: the happiness of our newest sister.”
He was speaking, of course, of Artemis.
Philip continued. “She has been so obviously grief-stricken and downcast these past days. And though we all suspect Mater, Mr. Layton, and Artemis’s brother are aware of the reason for her sorrow, we are not so well-informed. And it is plain to see that her happiness is vitally important to Charlie’s.”
There was no point denying it. As featherbrained as his brothers could be at times, they were right on this score.
“Our marriage did not begin the way any of yours did,” Charlie acknowledged. “We weren’t granted the joy of marrying because we were in love. But I’ve come to know her better and... ” How did he put into words what he himself barely understood? “I can’t bear to see her unhappy without at least trying to—She tugs at my thoughts and—I would do anything—”
Philip waved a hand. “Yes, yes. You love your wife. We don’t need to sort that bit out.”
You love your wife.
“They had seemed to be doing better,” someone said.
“Hard to tell sometimes though,” someone else chimed in.
Charlie was too distracted to even identify the speakers.You love your wife.
“So what changed?”
You love your wife.
“Hold a moment, brothers,” Layton said. “Charlie’s either having an epiphany or a stroke.”
“IlikeArtemis better than I used to—I like her quite a lot, in fact—but I don’t know that I love her.”
“You do,” they all answered in near unison.
Charlie pressed the balls of his palms against his forehead. “I hated her not three months ago.”
“No, you didn’t,” Harold said. “She confused and frustrated you, but that’s not the same thing.”
Charlie shook his head. “None of your wives drive you mad.”
That was met with snorts and outright laughter.
“Perhaps not so mad as we drive them,” Jason said.
“But you love each other,” Charlie said. “You’ve known that from the beginning of your marriages. That makes a difference.”
Layton assumed the kindly, knowing bearing he was rather famous for among them all. “Mater and Father didn’t know that at the beginning of theirs, and I can’t imagine any of us don’t still aim to claim half the love they shared. Beginnings do not determine endings, Charlie.”
