Chapter 24
D evoted lady’s maid that she was, Gemma came down to the country from London with stacks of manuscripts. They filled two trunks.
When Gemma had arrived at the vast castle which took up a good deal of the landscape, Mercy could not have been more pleased.
Leander had made a turn several days ago.
The dark sorrow which had enveloped him had vanished almost as swiftly as it had come. It had been hard, but she had stayed steady, knowing it would retreat, as the waves must always leave the shore after they arrive.
Leander was consumed with work at the estate now, but they spent the majority of every day and night together. He took her out walking and they went high over the hills, crossing through heather and rock, marveling at the beauty of nature.
Nature was something beloved to behold.
The truth was, at the end of the day, it was important to remember that dukedoms and kingship and all the power in the world would be forgotten. All that truly mattered was the blades of grass, the birds in the air, the streams cutting through the earth, and the eternal nature of the seasons.
People were so small.
They put such power in their machinations. They forgot that they would all be dust, and most would never be remembered.
So, she and Leander had gone hand in hand, focusing only on each other, only on the moment, only on their lives together. They focused on the bees flitting from flower to flower and the scent of roses on the summer wind.
Oh, it did not mean they did not plan for the future and work for the future together. Of course not! But letting go of all worries and just being with each other was the greatest gift they could give each other. Their love had not weakened from the episode, as Leander liked to call it. No, it seemed to have only grown, to have become stronger, fuller and more vibrant.
When she looked at her husband, she did not see a weak man who needed caring for. She saw a tree, a great oak, with powerful roots, which had faced storms and learned how to bend with them. Oh, how beautiful he was. He gave comfort to so many, just like that great oak tree gave shelter to so many.
As she sat outside at a table in a garden not too distant from the castle, working on manuscripts after manuscript, she found herself content. She was not afraid anymore. Just days ago, she had been so certain that it was all going to be stolen from her. She had lived in fear. She had spent every moment terrified.
Never again.
Oh, perhaps she’d be afraid of things, but she would not let her mind make a prison for her with fear.
Now? Now she was lifting voices from pages, finding writers, and Gemma was helping her. Her maid was far more than a maid now. Gemma had read all of the manuscripts and was reading them again to make certain she selected those with the most promise. And Mercy was beginning to decide which she would select.
She could not wait to write letters to authors, telling them that their work was going to be published and sent out into the world. Her heart bloomed with the hope of it.
The servants had been immensely kind, welcoming her because they saw that she was good for the duke. Her family only seemed to keep growing. She would never be alone again. She never need worry of it. And she had found all of this—she had chosen it—by saying yes to Leander.
“Your Grace,” a voice called.
She turned at the sound.
Hector was striding up the gravel path towards her and the charming garden she had found to work in.
She stood, delighted. “Brother-in-law,” she called back.
“My goodness, what a mouthful,” he teased. “But how absolutely true. It is a delight to see you, and you are looking well, which tells me that all has worked out, as it always does.”
She laughed, happy that he was right. “Are you so certain that it always works out?”
“Of course, I’m certain,” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s the only way to live. Why focus on doom and gloom? If you focus on doom and gloom, that’s what you’ll get.”
She laughed again, amazed by him. “You’re a very optimistic fellow, Hector.”
He shrugged. “Well, if one is not, one will be miserable. I’ve seen those people who are certain the worst will come to pass. I have no intention of throwing myself in with that lot.”
She held her hands out to him, and he took them, squeezing. “But in all seriousness,” he began, gazing down upon her, “how is my brother?”
She drew in a breath. “He is well. He is recovering.”
“Good,” he said. “He needed you.”
“Did he?” she queried, stunned at his comment.
“Yes, he really truly did.” Hector’s face softened in the late summer sun, as if he was contemplating all the hardship his brother had faced.
She cocked her head to the side and whispered, “You know, I thought the Briarwoods were perfect.”
He let out a full burst of a laugh. “Did you, my dear? There’s no such thing as perfection. Absolutely no such thing.”
“I know that now,” she confessed. “I was mistaken. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. But it is the lack of perfection, isn’t it, that makes it beautiful?”
He nodded at her. “Yes. You see, to the world, we are wild with no inhibitions or fears. But we are human. And even we have things we do not wish to share with the world. Things that are ours and ours alone.”
She nodded. She might not have understood before, but she did now. The Briarwoods didn’t have to share every part of themselves with the world. And that was a strength, not a weakness. But then she ventured, “Why do you think your mother and father named you after such tragic figures? Ajax, Hector, Leander?”
He blew out a breath, then smiled with surprising wisdom. “Because all those mythic figures lived great, fulfilling lives. Do you think they would’ve traded those lives to live little existences where nothing happened to them? I wouldn’t want that,” he said softly. “Would you?”
She thought about that for a long moment, choosing a totally safe life in which nothing ever happened. The heroes of old that the Briarwoods were named after, well, they had lived! Dear heaven, how they had lived!
They had lived with every fiber of their being, and their names were still sung. Thousands of years later. “You are right, of course,” she breathed. “And you? Will you live now? Will you have a great love affair like Hector of Troy with his wife or—”
“Cease!” he called out, raising his hands in surrender. “Enough! You keep trying to take me to the noose. I shall not have the rope put about my neck just yet.”
“Whatever you say,” she countered, “I will be at the wedding.”
He laughed merrily. “If I marry, of course you will be. You’re family.”
And then as if Hector had just been the first in a long line of family members, a Briarwood and then another and then another began to appear in the garden.
She swung her gaze about. “Did you all arrive together?”
Hector grinned. “Of course we did. What else would we do? We all wanted to come and make sure that Leander was fine.”
“Must have been a very rowdy carriage ride,” she said.
“Oh, indeed,” he agreed jovially. “You’ve no idea. We love to play games to alleviate any sort of worry or boredom. We must keep ourselves distracted, you know.”
“What kind of games did you play?” she queried.
“Oh, you don’t want to know.” He waggled his brows. “Several of us nearly died.”
And she believed it because that was how the Briarwoods lived. Completely and totally with absolute joy and little fear. And if there was fear, they stood by each other until that fear was met.
Now she would stand with them too.
Zephyr and Ajax appeared, and then the dowager duchess as well. Then Perdita, Hermia, her husband, Lady Juliet, and Mercy’s brother, Tobias.
They’d all come.
They descended with baskets full of food, and servants followed behind them with jugs of lemonade. Ajax broke out an instrument, sat upon the grass, and immediately began to play.
And that was when Leander arrived. He followed the path, a smile upon his face. “Well-met, family mine,” he declared.
They embraced each other, one after the other, and Mercy felt swept up in a blanket of so much love she could barely stand it. What could possibly stop this feeling of love?
And as if her question had been an incredibly silly one, one meant to test the universe, a servant suddenly rushed up and called, “Your Grace, there is a man here to see you.”
She did notice the term man as opposed to gentleman.
The servant frowned, a rare gesture. “He’s rather rude, and he’s insisting that he see Miss Mercy Miller.”
“Truly?” she blurted.
She supposed it was no secret that she was here, but it seemed odd that someone would come seeking her now.
“Yes, he’s most insistent,” the servant stated. “We did try to send him away, but—”
As if to emphasize the footman’s point, a man came charging down the gravel path, his face like thunder.
Her stomach twisted. No, no. After all she had fought for, after all they had gone through, Norris had followed her here?
The family grew suddenly silent and still as they observed her.
Tobias took a sharp step forward. “Get the hell out of here, Norris,” he growled.
Her husband took her hand and held it.
Leander was very, very quiet. But then he cocked his head to the side, eyeing the invader, and said, “I know who you are. You are that damned American.”
“I’m the man who was supposed to marry her,” Norris gritted as he jabbed his finger towards Mercy. “And you’ve taken that right from me.”
“Right?” Leander laughed, a deep mocking sound. “There’s no right to marry anyone, sir. You’re lucky if the lady says yes. She never belonged to you, and she doesn’t belong to me. She never will. She’ll never belong to anyone. She belongs to herself, and she has given herself into my keeping.”
Norris’s face flashed with fury. He began striding forward and, suddenly, Hector grabbed him by the shoulders. “Old boy, old boy. Come now. Surely, you Americans have won enough. Your country won the war. Let my brother win the bride. Eh?”
Hector smiled slowly, then he looked at Ajax and Zephyr. “Don’t you think we should show our new friend here a good time in town?”
Ajax and Zephyr both shot up from their seats on the ground and let out merry sounds.
“Of course, we must make him welcome,” cried Ajax.
“After all, he’s had such a loss in love,” Zephyr affirmed.
“Come, come, man,” Hector soothed. “We shall make it all right.”
Norris swung his gaze around, completely flummoxed. He was apparently prepared to shout more, but as he stared around him, he realized that it would do him no good.
“We must settle business affairs,” he said instead. “Miss Miller left the printing press in New York in tatters. I should take it over. I think that is the best thing.”
“Duchess,” Leander said simply.
“Pardon?” Norris bleated.
Leander smiled, a dangerous smile. “Duchess. My wife. Her Grace.”
Norris blanched. “It hasn’t even been two months since Mercy left New York. My God, I was on a bloody ship for weeks, the journey made longer by a blasted summer storm. And this madness is what I find. She was supposed to marry me. The printing press was supposed to—”
Tobias folded his arms across his chest and cut in, “I will be returning to New York for half the year and running the press. I shall appoint a general manager for when I’m away. Norris, it shall never be you. And I think the sooner you accept that, the better.”
Norris looked slightly, well…wild. He had always been so certain of his path. He would marry her, and then he would take the business. But she’d fled, foiling those plans.
She was shocked that he had come to London though. He must have left not so very long after she did. Even now, crossing the Atlantic was no small endeavor.
Did he truly think that this would do him any good though?
Yes, she realized as she stared at him. He did. And that’s when she realized how appalling the world could be. Because her husband, who suffered frenzied thinking sometimes and great swaths of sorrow, was not mad. Not a bit of it.
No, men like Norris were mad. Men who traveled half the globe, trying to make a woman marry them who did not wish it, or take a company that did not belong to them, simply because they believed it was their right.
And he did believe it. She could see it on his face.
“Come on then,” Zephyr said. “You’ll make no progress here, Norris. You can always try again another day.”
Hector clapped Norris on the back. “Yes, come along, man.”
Norris frowned. “But—”
Hector just kept nodding and kept a firm hold on Norris’s shoulders, striding down the path now.
Norris looked furious but clearly understood that, with so many big men, he was never going to win his point.
“I shall find another way,” Norris insisted to Hector. “I shall sue in the courts!”
“Go ahead,” the duke said. “I look forward to it.”
And then Leander whispered down to Mercy, “If I wish, I can sway any court.”
She laughed and then let out a half groan. “Of course you can, my love, of course.”
And as the voices of Norris, Ajax, Hector, and Zephyr drifted off on the wind, she glanced at the dowager duchess. “Are they going to murder him? They do seem rather fond of murdering.”
The dowager duchess threw back her silvery blonde head and laughed with delight. “It’s possible,” she said. “But it’s more likely that he’ll wake up on the other side of the globe.”
And then her husband pulled her into his arms. “You don’t need to worry about him,” he said. “We shall protect you from his nonsense. My brothers are very persuasive.”
“Oh, I’m not worried,” she assured, and she wasn’t. “Not with all of you around me. There’s nothing to fear now. There’s only love.”
And without another word or another thought, Leander pulled her into his arms and kissed her with all his heart, with all his passion, because both of them were completely and totally free.
Free of it all.
Except for the love they had for each other.