Chapter 20
M r. Hero could not stop turning his head right to left and letting out sounds of outrage. His face had gone bright red over his yellow cravat. His cheeks shook with indignation. His shoulders kept pumping up and down like a bellows as he sputtered.
He let out a wheeze of a sound before finally rasping, “You can’t possibly be serious.”
“Oh indeed, I am,” Mercy, the new Duchess of Westleigh, said to the publisher. “I have already started a request for manuscripts. The information went out the other day, and I expect to be hearing soon from several eager, young authors who wish to have their manuscripts treated with the respect that you clearly do not have for them. Especially for young lady writers.”
The man narrowed his eyes as he jerked his gaze from Mercy to her mother-in-law, the now dowager duchess.
He clearly did not wish to make his position worse, but he also clearly understood that he was not in a good position to begin with. He seemed to be weighing whether he should simply throw himself into the fire since he was already burning in the pan.
Her mother-in-law looked like a veritable goddess divine standing there calmly, eyes shining, hands clasped, and chin high.
“Your Grace,” Mr. Hero appealed to the dowager duchess, “you cannot condone this. Your family should not… Duchesses do not—”
“No one says what my family should or should not do,” the dowager duchess intoned. “I was an actress. If my daughter-in-law wishes to be a publisher, it shall be so. Whatever we dream can occur, Mr. Hero, if we work for it.”
The dowager arched her brow. “You clearly have a very narrow and limited scope of life, Mr. Hero. You are far from your name, for I see little heroic about you. In fact, you’ve been rather villainous. Thankfully, my dear Mercy here has not allowed you to damage her dreams. I can only imagine what she will discover. How many wonderful works have you turned down because of your limited views? How many writers have you crushed with your cruel spirit?”
Mr. Hero raised a hand, eager to protest.
The dowager shook her head, pursed her lips, and continued powerfully, “No, no. Mercy here? She shall foster those authors and grow them. Isn’t that the case, my dear?”
Mercy nodded, rather stunned by how entirely her mother-in-law believed in her.
But as she was coming to realize, now that she was fully immersed in the Briarwood family, she never had to doubt herself again. Day after day, Leander and his family had showed her such love, such strength, such welcome, that she wondered how she ever could have felt fear at all.
The dowager cleared her throat. “Now, do you have anything else to say before we leave?”
Mr. Hero’s face twisted in a petulant frown. “Are you going to ruin me?” he growled.
“Ruin you?” Mercy countered, her confidence and strength only having grown in the weeks after her marriage to Leander. “I don’t need to ruin you, Mr. Hero. I will simply do a wonderful job myself, and that will be enough. People will flock to the books my company prints. Perhaps they will still buy yours, but the truth is that I don’t need to think of you ever again. But I wanted to come back here, and I wanted to show you that you did not dissuade me and that you toyed with the wrong family.”
Her heart swelled at that.
As opposed to the mother and father who had cut her off so entirely, she now had a whole family who stood beside her, who stood behind her choices.
“That’s correct,” the Dowager Duchess of Westleigh affirmed, crossing to Mercy and placing her arm around her shoulders. Then she gave Mr. Hero a cold smile. “You continue to do your small things, Mr. Hero, and we… Well, we shall take the world on in style as we have always done.”
Mr. Hero collapsed a bit, his bluster fading, clearly having expected some sort of dire repercussion that he would be able to rant about to society.
But no, that was not at all what Mercy had wanted or intended. She had no desire to be portrayed as the villain in this piece or act in a sort of revengeful way.
They started for the door, but then the dowager paused and turned. With razor sharp intellect, she said firmly, “Oh, one last thing. I wanted to let you know that ladies might be meant for breeding and bearing children, which of course is one of the most important roles in the world. But it is also undeniable the amounts of things that we can accomplish whilst being mothers. And the truth is, we will accomplish far more than you could ever possibly hope to. So while my daughter-in-law is preparing to have the next duke, she shall also be at the height of any endeavor she pleases—politics, fashion, the arts, philosophy. Just as I have done, Mr. Hero. Us ladies, made only to breed, shall have more of an influence on this world than you ever will. Good day, sir.”
Mercy nearly swooned at the power of her mother-in-law’s defense.
Beaming and arm in arm, they sashayed out into hall and headed down the stairs and then out to the busy street.
Feeling full of triumph and completely alive, Mercy caught sight of a ducal coach, though not the one she and her mother-in-law had arrived in.
Leander popped his head out through the open window, a smile of intense pride upon his face as his coach pulled beside them on the pavement.
“Did you come here to spy upon us?” she teased.
Her husband opened the coach door and jumped down. “Not a bit of it. I came so that I could cheer for you after your victorious moment with Mr. Hero. Hail the conquering ladies!”
With a full laugh, Mercy threw herself into his arms, not caring about the people around them, and he looked positively thrilled as he wrapped his arms about her in turn.
She was letting go of all her rigid ideas, all her fears, and surrendering to the love that he was giving her. Surrendering to the love she felt for him.
And why wouldn’t she?
She was safe now. Her dreams were coming true. Dreams she had not even realized that she had.
She tilted her head to the side and teased, “You’re certain you did not come here to storm the gates and rescue us?”
He tsked. “Mr. Hero is the one who would need rescuing,” he said, “between you and Mama? You didn’t need me for a moment. Now, shall I take you both out for ices to celebrate?”
She beamed at him. “Yes, I think that would be perfect,” she said.
All of her life now seemed perfect. And she realized how silly she was to be afraid.
After all, he was the Duke of Westleigh.