Chapter 16
Perseus did not often feel rage, but he did today. It was not an emotion he associated with Christmas or Christmastide, New Year’s or the Epiphany. And yet it tumbled through his veins.
He loved his cousin, Laertes, with all his heart.
He loved all his cousins with all his heart, but Laertes had always had a very special place in his life.
He had looked up to him for years. He had seen the way his cousin managed to negotiate his art, his love of music, his love of family, the importance of his position, and the sorrow in his soul.
And Perseus refused to stand by and watch as a woman who was clearly completely and totally lost destroy the future happiness of his cousin and of Seraphine.
Now he knew intellectually that the Duchess of Crestfield could not actually destroy the future happiness of the family, but she would make it difficult. She would be like a looming specter over her son Oliver and daughter-in-law Phoebe, and also Laertes and Seraphine.
Quite frankly, Perseus had had enough of it. He knew how often the Briarwoods decided to allow things to go, to let them pass, to see how they would work out, but not today.
He strode into the long library that the Duchess of Crestfield had moved to, clearly wishing to escape the Briarwood family.
“Is my room ready?” she said. “I will be gone in the morning, but I do not wish to travel at night. It seems far too dangerous.”
“I’m sure it’ll be ready in just a moment, Your Grace,” he said.
She whipped towards him. “You’re not a servant.”
“Well spotted,” he replied. “I’m indeed not a servant, but I am here to serve you.”
She tensed. “More nonsense of your family. Is that what you’re wishing to say?”
“Yes, we are a nonsensical group,” he agreed, “to those who cannot see.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What the blazes does that mean?”
He shrugged. “Only that those who do not understand what life is truly about think that those who do understand are mad.”
She narrowed her eyes even further. She seemed on edge herself, as if she was being swept up in a great storm and was coming undone because of it. “That is a confusing statement, young man. I think you should turn around and go.”
“You think I should turn around and go, but I’m not going to. I’m going to stay and have words with you.”
She stiffened. “Words with me?”
“Yes,” he said with surprising gentleness.
He did not know why, but he couldn’t feel the sort of loathing for her that he thought he should.
There was something afoot with this woman.
A longing that seemed to hover under her surface.
“About your future and about the potential outcome of your future. I’m going to paint a picture and see if it’s the future that you actually want. ”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she returned, winding her hands together, her knuckles white. “My husband told me what I would do all my life. He made sure I knew how I was to behave. And so I must.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “that is true. And you’re right.
Perhaps I should not interfere. I understand it is not easy for ladies.
They are often at the mercy of their husbands or father’s dictates.
I am not a husband, and I obviously do not have to follow many dictates because I’m a man, but I love my cousins.
I even love your son, Oliver, though I’ve barely known him, and I’m sure that I will come to love Seraphine as a sister.
And there is a very interesting possibility that I could come to love you too as a member of this family, you know? ”
“What?” she whispered, frowning. The very idea seemed to leave her adrift.
“If you were to become part of this family, you do understand that you would likely be loved by it, and I wonder if all this time, especially after what you’ve just said, that you’re not chasing power.
That you’re not chasing a prince for your daughter.
You’re chasing something else. You’re still just doing what you were told by your husband.
But I wonder if you always wanted what he wanted. ”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “I think what you’re suggesting is very dangerous.”
“Is it?” he queried.
“Please go,” she said. “I am not interested in having the foundations of my life shaken by a boy who’s likely only just graduated Oxford.”
Perseus laughed. “I’m glad you think that I’m capable of graduating Oxford, and I have, but that was actually several years ago.
I am older than I look, which bodes well for when I am genuinely old,” he tried to tease, for she now seemed genuinely shaken.
“But listen to me. It sounds as if your husband made you feel that if you did not act in certain ways, he would not love you.”
“Love?” she mocked, and her face had gone a painful white.
Her hands only tightened as if they bore years and years of pain.
“I was but a girl of seventeen when I married him, love in my heart, hope in my step.” Her mouth twisted.
“My husband never loved me. I fulfilled a position that he needed, and I did a very good job of it. I met his every expectation. But love? Never.”
“So you decided to make your daughter’s life better than yours,” he breathed.
And then much to his surprise, her eyes filled with tears. “You’re the first person to understand,” she said.
“Yes,” he whispered softly, his own heart breaking for the woman who had become rigid and bitter while trying to do the right thing.
“I do understand. You’re trying to take your pain and make certain that your daughter doesn’t have the same pain, but you’re actually making her have more pain by doing so. She cannot heal that for you.”
A muscle tightened in the beautiful face of the Duchess of Crestfield. “I am not asking my daughter to heal me.”
“Aren’t you?” he challenged. “Now consider this. She doesn’t need your permission to wed.
She’ll wed Laertes because they love each other.
It’s clear to everyone, no matter what shenanigans have occurred this night, with all its confusions and misunderstandings.
Oliver and Phoebe shall wed. But if you do not give your approval, your resounding approval to Laertes and Seraphine, and you continue this awful coldness, the only one who shall be alone is you. ”
Her mouth dropped open and her brow furrowed. “That’s not true. I cannot believe my daughter would do that. Not when everything I have done has been for her.”
He shook his head sadly. “You shall not have achieved your dreams of a princess, and not only that, you’ll be left alone on the estate that will be run by my cousin Phoebe.
You will no doubt choose to go live in a smaller house on the estate so that you do not feel the tension between yourself and your daughter-in-law.
You will celebrate Christmas alone because Phoebe and Oliver will come here.
They will have no desire to be with you because of your bitterness and, worse, that you could not wish your own daughter happy.
Is that what you want? To be alone, to be cast out? ”
Panic flooded her and she stepped forward. “You’re threatening me.”
“No,” he assured. “I promise you I am not. I am giving you a series of facts and a choice. You can choose to insist on trying to have your way, which is no longer possible. You will lose everything aside from your title and your wealth, or you can choose to have everything, Your Grace. Your daughter’s happiness, your son’s happiness, and even, dare I suggest, your own. ”
She sucked in a startled gasp and her hands began to shake, unlocking their stranglehold on each other. “I have not contemplated my own happiness in…”
“Years?” he asked softly.
“Decades,” she whispered in return. Her eyes shone now with something else. Something far deeper than her anger. “How are you doing this?” she demanded.
“Doing what?” he asked.
“Challenging everything that I’ve ever believed, making me feel…”
“Because,” he said, his heart at last daring to hope that his boldness would be worth it, “Christmas is a magic time, and miracles can occur, and I thought perhaps that if I had the courage to come in here and explain the consequences to you, for you are clearly a clever woman, that you would see your future, a cold and cruel future. A future where you will not have gotten what you wanted anyway. And I thought you might just wake up and see that the world is waiting to love you.”
“The world has never loved me,” she returned with a lament that cut through the room. “It has demanded things from me over and over again.”
“Well, it’s ready to love you now,” he said gently. “Here. In this house.”
“That’s right,” his grandmother said, all but floating in from the hall. “Oh, Perseus, you are a wonder, my boy, and a bit of a fool to try doing this, but I do love a good fool. They are always the wisest people in Shakespeare’s plays.”
“So you have always said, Grandmama,” he replied, his lips turning in a rueful smile. “And perhaps that’s why I dared do it because of how much you have always said to anyone who would listen how you love the fools.”
The Duchess of Crestfield shook her head as if she was coming out of the water for the first time in a very long time. “You love the fools. Isn’t that foolish itself?”
“We are a very foolish family,” the dowager duchess said with a laugh, and yet she was very serious. “But you will not find a family that is happier or more content, and we would like to have you join it. All you have to do is choose.”
The Duchess of Crestfield was silent for a long moment, and then her shoulders began to shake as sobs wracked her frame.
“All those years, I did what he wanted. And I wanted to give my daughter power. Importance. I have struggled for so long to do what I have been told was right,” the duchess whispered.
“I know,” his grandmother said softly. “Cease struggling. You don’t need to anymore.”
“But what if I fail?” the duchess exclaimed. “What if I fall?”
“Then we will catch you,” Perseus assured. “Briarwoods always do.”
And then a strange look came across the Duchess of Crestfield’s face, a look that only Christmas and the Briarwoods might bring. Change, awakening, and the promise of a life that could actually finally be touched by love.